Solidarity 142, 20 November 2008

Planning for a new revolutionary party

Cathérine Ayme is an activist in the JCR (Revolutionary Communist Youth, linked to the LCR, Revolutionary Communist League) in Lille, France. In London for the Workers' Climate Action gathering on 15-16 November, she talked to Martin Thomas about the efforts of the LCR and JCR to launch a broader new anti-capitalist party in January 2009. This is a longer version of the article than in the printed paper . M. After long years of discussion about the possibility of creating a new anti-capitalist party by a coalition with other formations, the LCR eventually made the decision to try to build such...

PCS and NUT: lessons for the left

The decisions by the PCS civil service union and the National Union of Teachers not to strike over pay in November mark a setback. The Government has imposed a two-and-a-bit per cent pay rise limit, a limit which cuts real wages. Over two pay rounds now, public-sector union leaders have put out vast volumes of talk about united union action to beat that limit. Both pay rounds have passed without any serious such joint action being organised. We should take stock both of the condition of the left in the unions, and of the effects of the economic crisis on the labour movement. The NUT's decision...

Matt Wrack: "Build unity around demands"

Matt Wrack is general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU). He spoke to Martin Thomas at the Labour Representation Committee conference on 15 November. The main policies need to be based around defence of the working class - rejection of privatisation, defence of jobs and wages. We need to put on the agenda a genuine nationalisation of the banks and financial institutions. These demands require government action. But we face a New Labour government which is plainly not going to do anything like that, and a Labour Party conference where the unions can't even put down motions... I don't...

Fight for a "workers' government"!

The "workers' plan for the crisis" published in our last issue concludes by calling on "activists to build - through the trade unions, Trades Councils, and other working-class organisations - a movement for independent working-class representation in politics, as the basis for a new workers' party. "Its aim should be a workers' government , based on mass working-class mobilisation and accountable to the labour movement - a government which serves our class as the Tories and New Labour in power have served the rich, and reshapes society in the interests of people, not profit". What does the...

What will come from the G20 summit?

The 15 November meeting in Washington of leaders from 20 governments representing 85% of global output will have little effect on the tsunami of job cuts and home evictions already heading for us. This version of the article is longer than the one in the printed paper In the wordy text agreed at the Washington meeting, measures "to stabilise financial markets and support economic growth" are invoked, but vaguely. The most specific commitment is a negative one. For the next 12 months, at least, all the governments promised not to raise "new barriers to investment or to trade in goods and...

Save Naomi and Jemima from deportation and mutilation!

Naomi Izevbekhai, aged seven, and her sister Jemima, aged six, are at threat of being deported from Ireland to Nigeria, where their mother Pamela says that her busband's family is likely to force them to submit to genital mutilation. Pamela Izevbekhai has said she left Nigeria in January 2005 due to her husband's family's practice of genital mutilation. The High Court in Dublin is due to give a decision on her appeal on Tuesday 18 November. Her first daughter Elizabeth died at 17 months from blood loss, which the attending doctor described as being possibly the result of female circumcision...

PCS backdown was a mistake

The PCS National Executive Committee's decision to "suspend" the national civil service one day strike planned for Monday 10 November is at best a dreadful mistake. Or it may be a prelude to abandoning the action, possibly on the pretext of some relatively minor concession. This is a longer version of the article than in the printed paper. See also: The Politics of the PCS Dispute PCS leaders' record on national pay negotiations PCS leaders' record on action for national pay The SWP in PCS PCS leaders' explanation for calling off the 10 November strike The explanation was given somewhat...

A workers’ plan for the crisis

1. Nationalise the entire system of banks and financial institutions, without compensation for the bosses and under democratic control. 2. Reverse cuts and privatisation; tax the rich to rebuild the NHS, education etc. as public services under workers’ and service-users’ control. 3. Resist the job cuts. Jobs for all: a shorter working week, maximum 35 hours, without loss of pay; expand public services; nationalise firms declaring mass redundancies. 4. The labour movement should calculate its own, realistic, inflation figure and demand, as a minimum, that wages, pensions and benefits are...

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