Solidarity 292, 17 July 2013

Let’s be clear — the shift from opt-out to opt-in is what the Tories have long wanted, and what [Labour’s right-wing faction] Progress have campaigned for inside the party. The Tories wanted it because it will damage the party’s finances, and weaken the party. And Progress want it because they want to eliminate union influence on the party, and they have no interest in challenging class-based inequalities of wealth and power. Whatever took place in Falkirk doesn’t begin to justify it. The contents of the secret report into what happened in Falkirk have now been revealed. According to Seumas...

On 9 July Labour leader Ed Miliband proposed that the link between unions and the Labour Party be reorganised so that individual union members must “opt in” to Labour affiliation. “Opting-in” seems speciously democratic. But really it enlists pressures from the billionaire press, and all the built-in biases of capitalist society, against collective working-class intervention in politics; and immediately it threatens to break up unions’ political action. Despite what Ed Miliband and the press say, no individual is “automatically” affiliated to Labour now. Unions decide affiliation to Labour, or...

In the February edition of Socialist Review Alex Callinicos took on the internal and external criticism which followed the SWP’s mishandling of a complaint of rape within their organisation. It was the only such public political statement to be made; a mainly weary defence of the SWP’s model of democratic centralism, tying it to Lenin’s political legacy. The SWP’s organsational regime was, Callinicos claimed, fully democratic and still relevant. We published a critique of Callinicos’s piece at the time. Members of the SWP’s new internal opposition have since responsed to Callinicos. In...

On the edges of the SWP’s annual “Marxism” weekend (11-15 July), oppositionists who had remained in the SWP talked with Workers’ Liberty activists. The opposition had held a hundred-strong caucus shortly before the festival. They decided not to walk until a second lot of charges of sexual harassment, against formerly leading SWP organiser Martin Smith, by another SWP woman, is heard. They admit that under the SWP’s regime they have little chance of replacing the current leadership, but hope that through keeping up the argument they can isolate what some called the “Smith faction”, the hardcore...

Shock, horror and then rage. These were the feelings experienced by tens of thousands of people across the country as they struggled to comprehend the meaning of George Zimmerman’s acquittal. How could Zimmerman be free? It was he who stalked Trayvon Martin, confronted him, pulled out a gun and ultimately murdered the unarmed teenage boy. The facts surrounding this case, from its beginning to its shocking end, show the depth of racism in the United States. It took more than six weeks for George Zimmerman to even be arrested and charged with any crime. The police immediately and instinctively...

Anti-fascists in Croydon, south London, have called a counter-mobilisation against a planned action by the English Volunteer Force, a right-wing splinter from the EDL, on Saturday 27 July. The official assembly point, announced by local unions and UAF, is 11.30am at Lunar House, 40 Wellesley Road, CR9 2BY. The South London Anti-Fascist group, which is independent of UAF and affiliated to the national Anti-Fascist Network (AFN), will also have a presence on the day. AFN is also calling for a direct-action mobilisation to counter a planned EDL action in Tower Hamlets, East London, on Saturday 7...

The Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign (OTJC) has been established to campaign for an independent public enquiry into the policing at Orgreave coke works during the 1984-85 Miners’ Strike. The campaign focuses particularly on events of 18 June 1984, when 95 miners were arrested and later charged with riot or unlawful assembly; the former charge carrying a possible life sentence at the time. The cases were subsequently dropped, but no apology has ever been offered. Campaigners also believe an independent enquiry could reveal the truth about the policing operation at Orgreave. Sign the campaign...

Residents in Brixton, south London, built barricades on 15 July to resist eviction by bailiffs and police from the homes they had lived in for 13 years. Police raided an apartment block on Rushcroft Road, Brixton to evict residents who had been squatting the building since 2000. Lambeth Council plans to create 22 socially-rented homes in the blocks, but also plans to sell off three of the six blocks for luxury housing, to generate what the council calls “a significant capital receipt”. The council claims it is supporting residents in finding alternative housing, but a local resident said: “A...

A Maltese government plan to send back Somali refugees from Libya has been halted, for now, by protests, just hours before their midnight Air Malta flight to Tripoli's military airport. Dozens of people who had gathered outside the police HQ at Fontiana (just outside the capital Valletta's city gates) in a “stop the trucks” demo, cheered as they heard that the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) had issued an interim measure to stop the deportations. Over 1,000 black African refugees fled Libya over two days in a mass escape by sea in dingies and rafts. Many of Libya’s country’s already...

The inquest into the death of Angolan deportee Jimmy Mubenga returned a verdict of “unlawful killing” on Tuesday 9 July. Mubenga was killed in October 2010 when he was handcuffed, belted, and restrained in an unsafe position aboard a British Airways flight by G4S guards. Following his death, the guards colluded with G4S senior management to write up and collate their accounts of the event, in which they claimed Mubenga forced himself into the unsafe position, thus causing his own death. Evidence from passengers, however, attested that Mubenga had been forced, face-first, into the doubled-up...