Workers' Liberty

“Britain remains a nation dominated by class division”, reported the Guardian on 20 October. The division is dramatised by David Cameron’s Tory front bench, which includes no fewer than 15 men schooled at Eton. The Lib Dem leadership contest is being fought out by two men schooled at Westminster, a school almost as posh as Eton.

[posted March22]
"At last a budget which business can be pleased about", said the chief of the right-wing Institute of Directors.

By Bruce Robinson

Casino capitalism is coming to Manchester! The government plan to use the licensing of large scale gambling as a means of urban regeneration. Manchester, the surprise location for the first "super-casino", is frankly referred to by the chair of the independent Casino Advisory Panel as "a good place to test the social impact" of large casinos or, as the Manchester Evening News put it, "a better guinea pig" than the alternatives of Blackpool or the Dome.

Workers at Volkswagen in Germany face a longer working week. In a deal with the union IG Metall bosses have secured an increase of 15% extra hours without pay. The deal comes as car makers throughout the world are udner pressure with a global overproduction in cars, and increasing production coming from low cost producers in China, Asia, and Eastern Europe.

BBC News today had a very good report from Worsley in Manchester showing yet again ordinary working people showing the way in how to deal with their problems.

The story was linked to the headlines about a crackdown on alcohol abuse by under age drinkers. Residents in Worsley spoke of how people using the nearby shops were being intimadted at night by gangs of youths insisting they bought alcohol from them from the shops. The attendant anti-social behaviour meant that younger kids didn't dare go out to play in the evening, and women were sending their menfolk out to do the shopping - which could of course be seen as a good by-product other than - because they were afraid to go out themselves.

According to a report in the Guardian of 11 July, profiteers will grab maybe £10 billion this year in VAT fraud in Britain.

On our front page we report the huge sums pocketed by the rich through tax avoidance, tax evasion, tax fraud — and the straightforward continuation of the tax cuts for the well-off introduced by the Tories in the 1980s.

by Polly Toynbee (Bloomsbury)

Polly Toynbee believes in gradual and modest social reform. But to call her a Fabian would be an insult to the Fabians – some of whom helped to organise industrial trade unionism in Britain. This is Polly on union struggle: “In the last century the unions effected relatively little social change.” A fantastically stupid remark.

I could never see Polly handing out leaflets, advocating struggle. Or fighting (in any sense), let alone pushing police on a picket line, or shouting, “Scab!”. There is not an ounce of hate, not a smidgen of bitterness, not a gram of, “There’s no way I’m putting up with this — they can shove it,” in her entire being.

By Lucy Clement

The record slump in the stock market provides gloomy evidence of the chaotic nature of the market economy. Since its peak of 6,930 in December 1999, the FTSE index of the UK’s top 100 shares has lost almost half its value and last week fell below 3,500, its lowest level since 1995. But while it may offer a chance to say to the more capitalist-minded “we told you so”, for many workers the latest falls on the FTSE and Wall Street are far from being good news.

Unions must take up rural issues

Over 400,000 people joined the Countryside Alliance march through London on Sunday 22 September. But what did they want? Most were against a ban foxhunting, but beyond that?

By Adi Kemp

September 22nd sees the second Countryside Alliance demonstration - the so-called 'Liberty and Livelihood' march in London.

It's not often that the ruling class - even a section of it - has to resort to the kind of mass protest usually employed by the labouring classes in order to make a point to the government of the day.

Solidarity 3/8 contained an article by Lynne Moffat: Dignity in Life as well as death, which commented on the case of Diane Pretty and argued that as well defending her right to choose the time of her death, socialists need to look at their own prejudices about disabled people anbd the idea that society views the existence of disabled people as a 'shame'.
This letter is a response to that view