London Underground union RMT has begun balloting for strikes to stop a management cuts plan that will lead to the closure of every ticket office on London Underground and the loss of nearly 1,000 jobs.

Charlotte Monro, an occupational therapist and chair of the Unison branch at Whipps Cross Hospital in north east London, has been sacked for speaking out against cuts.

Charlotte faced disciplinary charges, and was ultimately dismissed, after she raised concerns about a planned reorganisation resulting from the merger of two NHS trusts in 2012 which created Barts Health, the trust which now controls Whipps Cross (along with five other hospitals, including the Royal London in Whitechapel).

The threat of strikes by teachers in seven secondary schools in Lewisham, south London, has forced school managers to withdraw an unfair pay policy.

The NUT’s national dispute on pay, workload, and pensions, provides a framework for union groups at school or borough level to escalate action in order to “secure an acceptable pay policy”, and the victory in Lewisham shows that, by standing firm, teachers can force concessions from local managements.

Higher Education workers in three unions struck on Tuesday 3 December against a 1% pay deal. University and College Union members in Further Education also struck to win better pay. A Unison activist in a large university spoke to Solidarity about the strike and the future of the dispute.

The strike seemed more solid at my workplace than the 31 October strike. We’re recruiting to the union as a result of the dispute, but it’s a slow process.

Back in July of this year, a senior aide to SNP First Minister Alex Salmond briefed the media that Salmond “would not object to the term ‘independence-lite’ as a description of what was on offer at next year’s referendum.”

The publication of the SNP government’s White Paper “Scotland’s Future — Your Guide to an Independent Scotland” on 26 November confirmed that. The Queen will remain Head of State. Scotland will remain a member of the European Union. Scotland will remain a member of Nato. And the pound sterling will remain the currency.

A caravan of protest against the development of a new gold mine on the mountain of Skouries, on the Halkidiki peninsula in north-east Greece (near Thessaloniki), made its way to Athens on 25 November.

At a time of relative lull in other battles (participation was low in the general strike at the beginning of November), this movement has mobilised thousands of people on the street (not restricted to the “usual suspects”).

Thirty-three years ago Tariq Ali quit the International Marxist Group (IMG), then the second-highest-profile group of the revolutionary socialist left in Britain. He had never been a rank-and-file activist. He had been a well-known leader in the IMG ever since he joined it in 1968.

He called for the withdrawal of the Russian troops which had invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, while most of his comrades thought that their definition of the USSR as a “degenerated workers’ state” (which Ali shared) ruled out that call.

Thom Hartmann is a prominent left-wing radio broadcaster from the USA. I first came across him when he interviewed me at a conference in Washington and was promptly told by everyone just how prominent he is. He describes himself as a “democratic socialist” and his nationally-syndicated radio show has an estimated 2.75 million listeners. George Galloway needs no introduction to a left-wing audience in the UK.

In Solidarity recently we have discussed how political Islam can be both a “sigh of the oppressed” and a reactionary, right-wing movement.

The Christian right in the USA shows the same paradox more extravagantly. Thomas Frank, in his study of the rise of the right in Kansas, found that in Olathe, a poor Kansas City suburb which is a bastion of the right, “each of the conservatives I spent time with was either a blue-collar worker or married to one”

Outsourced cleaning, catering, and security workers at the University of London have been fighting for sick pay, holiday, and pension equality with directly-employed staff through the “Tres Cosas” (“Three Things”) campaign since they won the London Living Wage in 2012. On 27 and 28 November, they struck to win those demands, as well as to stop job cuts at the Garden Halls, and to win recognition of their union, the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB).