Solidarity 069, 17 March 2005

The two faces of George Galloway

At a time when New Labour and the Tories are competing to display the most virulent hostility towards asylum and immigration rights, you might expect the left to be united in its opposition to this reactionary filth. Unfortunately, you’d be disappointed. Writing in the Morning Star on 12 February, George Galloway not only denounced the idea of open borders but endorsed the “points system” for immigration recently mooted by various ruling-class politicians. Feeling comfortable in his natural Stalinist habitat, Galloway lets the mask slip and abandons even the customary nod towards working-class...

Merseyrail guards’ action

Merseyrail guards, members of the RMT union, are to strike on Friday 25 March and for 48 hours on Friday and Saturday 8–9 April in a dispute over the implementation of a 35-hour week. RMT members voted by 20 to one to take action after rejecting “unacceptable” strings attached to proposals for a 35-hour week. “The company is giving with one hand and taking away with the other,” RMT general secretary Bob Crow said. “Merseyrail want our members to pay for their 35-hour week with more restrictive rostering and, worse leave arrangements and an attack on sick-pay. “Our members have been waiting for...

CalMac strike

RMT members at Scottish ferry operator Caledonian MacBrayne will strike for 12 hours on 23 March to defend jobs, pay, conditions and pensions. Members voted, 155 (66%) in favour, and 81 (34%) against for strike action, after the company failed to provide assurances that there would be no compulsory redundancies and no worsening of pensions, pay and conditions for its present or future workforce. CalMac was recently saved from privatisation following a concerted campaign by the union. The strike will coincide with other public sector unions’ action in defence of pensions, helping to make it the...

Putin’s victims

By Dale Street Aslan Maskhadov, a long-standing Chechen separatist leader and one-time president of Chechnya, was killed by Russian forces on 8 March in the south-Chechen settlement of Tolstoy-Yurt. Maskhadov was born in Kazakhstan in 1951. His family had been victims of the mass deportation of the Chechen people carried out by Stalin at the close of the Second World War. Maskhadov’s family survived and was allowed to return to Chechnya in 1957. Maskhadov became a career soldier in the Soviet army, serving in Hungary, Lithuania, and, according to some of his biographies, Afghanistan. After the...

FE colleges’ strike

By a lecturer On Tuesday 15 and Wednesday 16 March thousands of lecturers in further education colleges took part in a national two-day strike, the second stage of industrial action being taken over pay. Despite a national agreement being reached two years ago between NATFHE and the Association of Colleges, many colleges have refused to fully implement the deal, which, alongside a pay increase, would also see the introduction of a national pay scale for lecturers (at present, pay scales and rates vary from college to college). The action is long overdue and well supported (75% voted in favour)...

Fitters’ strike solid

By Stan Crooke Pickets were out in force at Marshalls Aerospace in Cambridge last Tuesday 15 March as fitters — members of Amicus — staged a 24-hour strike in a dispute over regrading. A gap of £7,000 a year separates fitters in the factory from the grade above them. Negotiations about regrading have been dragging on for four years. In early 2003 management promised that a deal would be done by July of that year. But July came and went with no deal in sight. This lack of progress had much to do with the cosy relationship which Marshalls management enjoyed with certain union officials at the...

One hundred years ago: The birth of the “Wobblies”

In June 1905 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was founded. Delegates from America’s most militant unions and workers’ organisations came together in Chicago to discuss the foundation of the “one big union”, an “industrial union”, organising all workers. The “Wobblies”, as the organisation became known, aimed to break down all the barriers between workers of craft and tradition put up by right-wing labour bureaucrats. It was especially successful in organising casual, itinerant and temporary workers, whom the conservative craft unions spurned. Its experience there deserves study today...

Housing campaign builds

Solidarity spoke to Tony Osborne , Vice Chair of Aspland and Marcon Estate Tenants’ and Residents’ Association, Hackney about their campaign. An inquiry organised by the House of Commons Council Housing group of MPs met at Parliament on 8 March. I attended. The group is an MPs’ campaign, running alongside the Defend Council Housing campaign, which aims to get the Government to endorse a so-called fourth option for council tenants — that is, that council tenants should be allowed to stay with councils, rather than been transferred to Housing Associations or managed by other organisations, with...

Left nationalism

Harry Glass reviews “The Politics of Empire: Globalisation in Crisis” , Alan Freeman and Boris Kagarlitsky eds Pluto 2004. Alan Freeman, one of the book’s editors, is a bag carrier for Mayor Livingstone, associated with Socialist Action and the recent ESF. The book reflects these politics. Beneath its urbane pessimism, it is a manifesto for second-camp “socialism” that abandons the central role of the working class. The editors define globalisation as a distinctive historical era between 1980 until 2003. That regime has now broken down, to be replaced by an age similar to classical imperialism...

Ken Livingstone and anti-Semitism (2002)

On 4 March Ken Livingstone wrote a piece in the Guardian explaining where he stands on anti-semitism, what he thinks about the Israeli state, and why criticising the actions of that state is not anti-semitism. I wrote this letter in response. It wasn’t published. Is Ken Livingstone an anti-semite? His motley career includes four years as an upfront editor of Labour Herald, a “Labour left” weekly so dependent on the Workers’ Revolutionary Party (WRP) that it collapsed when that organisation did, in 1985. David Blunkett, Margaret Hodge, and others such were regular Labour Herald contributors...

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