Solidarity 246, 16 May 2012

There is a rift emerging not just within British universities, but between them. The National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts has released a report detailing the incredible expansion of executive pay in the last decade. High pay at the elite universities has spiralled out of control; a total of £382 million is being spent on the highest paid members of staff in just 19 universities, roughly double what it was a decade ago. These universities are spending nearly 2% more of their total income on high paid jobs than they were a decade ago, while cutting back on student support and now nearly £4 in...

Sam Carrow is a catering worker in a hospital in north west England. I work a minimum wage job for a chain coffee outlet in a big hospital. I’m employed on an agency contract, but there’s a mix of different employment types. Some workers, who used to work in the hospital’s own canteen, are directly employed by the NHS and have better pay, terms, and conditions. That creates tension. Agency staff are supposed to work a minimum of 20 hours a week but our contracts are “fully flexible”, which means we aren’t guaranteed to work that minimum. The atmosphere in the workplace is okay, and people tend...

The new Islamist-controlled government in Morocco has been engaging in increased repression against the social movement which started last year under the name of the “20 February Movement”, as the Moroccan expression of the Arab Spring. In the Berber-speaking Rif region, this repression has been intense for several weeks, with housing demolitions, widespread use of tear gas and other weapons, with deaths and many injuries. Ziyad Mohammed, an activist of the Trotskyist group Revolutionary Marxist Current, spoke to Solidarity . The Rif region where al Hoceima is, it is a unique region...

In Egypt’s 2011-12 parliamentary elections reactionary religious parties swept the board. The Muslim Brotherhood (standing as the Freedom and Justice Party) won 47.2% of the vote and 235 seats out of 498. Salafist candidates won 123 seats with 30% of the vote (with the al-Nur party winning 107 seats). A depressing result for socialists, secularists and democrats. But what will happen in Egypt’s Presidential election on 23-24 May? Under Egypt’s provisional constitution the President appoints the Prime Minister and has a lot of power. Last month the Constitutional Assembly, dominated by...

Workfare schemes are being “piloted” at a number of hospitals including West Birmingham hospital, Frinnage Hospital in South Tees and Stockport NHS foundation trust. Untrained claimants are being forced into hospitals to care for the sick at the same time that paid staff are being served redundancy notices. However, there are also stirrings of worker resistance to these attacks. On 16 May, cleaners working for Carillion at Great Western Hospital, Swindon will strike as part of a long campaign against institutionalised bullying, discrimination and corruption. Carillion bosses made the workers...

24 free schools have opened in the UK and many more are planned to open next September. Free Schools, after academies, are the second bow in the government’s plans to privatise education, under the guises of giving parents greater “choice”. Further expansion will have extremely damaging consequences for comprehensive state education. So far there has been less resistance to free schools then academies. This is partly because you cannot have a fight from within in a school that doesn’t exist. The free schools agenda offers a certain style of education aimed at niche audiences, with no public...

Children's Minister Sarah Teather has announced changes to provision for children with special needs. Despite her claim that this will create 'a more integrated and less bureaucratic system', the plans amount to a significant attack on support for the most needy kids, perhaps a new low even for this government's austerity drive. Government plans include giving parents a 'personal budget' for their children. Rather than being able to expect the support and services that our kids need, parents will need to 'shop around' for services, putting cost rather than need at the centre of decision-making...

A reading group in London on Marx's Capital volume 1, organised by Workers' Liberty, has recently completed its labours, and discussed what to study next. Capital volume 1, according to both conventional wisdom and the stated opinion of Marx's close comrade Frederick Engels, was Marx's "chief work", and anyone who wants to express even a half-informed opinion about the body of ideas which has become known as "Marxism" needs to study it. It is a sizeable book, and it rewards re-reading. Yet, as Marx himself wrote in a preface: "With the exception of the section on value-form [chapter 1 section...