Solidarity 315, 5 March 2014

The last in our series of extracts from Janine Booth’s new book, Plundering London Underground: New Labour, private capital and public transports 1997-2010. When New Labour came to power, they were keen to distance themselves from the demands of the labour movement and to appeal to big business for support. This lead them to privatise industries that even the Tories had never dared to touch. In this extract, Janine looks at how this disastrous approach was applied to London Underground. The London Underground Public-Private Partnership is an indictment of New Labour, whose turn away from the...

Protests continue in Bosnia, taking the form of a widespread revolt. The artist Damir Niksic says: “It’s a new paradigm, a new Bosnian example. In other words, we do not talk any more about nationalities, tribes, races and nations. We are now talking about the proletarians, the unemployed, the reserve army of labour. “ “This is no longer a riot, it’s a social revolution”, says Sakib Kopić, president of the Polihema union. Demonstrations unite Muslims, Croats, Serbs and “Yugoslavs”. Demonstrations with similar social demands are taking place in at least 36 cities across Bosnia, which since the...

Ukraine got independence only in 1991. Ninety per cent of its people, west and east, voted to separate from Russia after the old bureaucratic command-economy regime collapsed. They had been under foreign rule, Russian or Polish, for centuries. By 1991 they had been under especially vicious foreign rule — Stalinist terror, deliberately-sustained famine, then police-state bureaucratic “Russification” — for six decades (east) or five (west). Russia’s creeping invasion of Ukraine is a drive to restore that foreign domination. Probably Russia’s ruler Vladimir Putin does not aim at the old direct...

Reading Frank Furedi’s article ‘Culture War: the narcissism of minor differences’ (Spiked Online) I became aware of the debate in Scandinavia on whether to ban the ritual circumcision of boys. The way Furedi framed this debate alerted me to the need to think through a socialist response. Take his opening paragraph: “On Sunday, a majority of Swiss voters said yes in a referendum on imposing quotas on the arrival of immigrants from EU countries. On the previous weekend, there were mass demonstrations in France, at which protesters chanted slogans in defence of the traditional family and...

Blairites in Young Labour have smeared young trade unionists in Murdoch’s Sun, in response to the growing influence of the left in the party’s youth wing. Their crime? Asking their trade unions to help out with the cost of Young Labour and Labour Students’ much-too-expensive and inaccessible annual conferences. The smear is retaliation for being defeated at Young Labour conference in the debate on the Collins Review; Young Labour delegate Simon Darvill was forced to vote against it at the Special Conference. “Hardline union chiefs”, screeches the Sun, have launched a “crusade to radicalise...

Egypt’s new prime minister Ibrahim Mehlab used his first speech in the role to plead for an end to strikes and protests. The former Housing Minister, ex-chief of giant building company Arab Contractors, called on Egyptians to “stop all kinds of sit-ins, protests and strikes” and to focus on “building the nation”. Mehlab was appointed prime minister by acting-president Adly Mansour after the previous cabinet resigned in its entirety. The ministers stepped down amid increasing public anger over shortages of fuel and electricity, as well as a major strike wave in a number of different sectors...

On Saturday 1 March over thirty trade unionists, campaigners and activists demonstrated outside Hellesdon Hospital, a low-security mental health hospital in Norwich. The demonstration was in support of a continuing campaign to defend jobs and services which has united staff, patients, relatives, community groups and Trade Unions, and won support from UNISON, Norfolk Coalition Against the Cuts, Left Unity, the People's Assembly and the Green Party. The campaign was launched last November by front-line workers at Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT). They were appalled at the...

Ukrainian leftist Volodymyr Ishchenko has written a blast against Russia's military intervention in his country and against the new government there. I hate! On war in Ukraine http://www.criticatac.ro/lefteast/i-hate-on-war-in-ukraine/ Writing from a critical position is not something to be widely appreciated in turmoil times. For some hysterical idiots I’ve succumbed to the fascists, for others–betrayed the Fatherland. Time is now precious and to be used efficiently. This is why I respond to all in a single post. I hate the Euroidiots who started all this because of their little ticks and...

The Collins review, with its time-bomb provision to recalculate all the unions' affiliation numbers in 2019, was soft-soaped through the Labour Party special conference on 1 March 2014. Given the way things have been with the constituency Labour Party (CLP) delegates for many years now - usually reluctant to rebel against the platform unless the unions also rebel - it was a relatively good result for the campaign against Collins that 24.26% of the CLPs voted against. Among the affiliated organisations (primarily the trade unions), only 3.16% voted against. As far as I know, that 3.16% was the...

We received this message on 2 March from the Praxis Centre in Moscow, "an independent, voluntary collective, founded in 1998 by scholars and social movements activists grouped around the Victor Serge Public Library in Moscow.". "Today in Moscow two rallies against the war were organised, but dispersed by the police. Of 1500 participants, over 400 have been arrested. Some are still inside the police stations. "We call on you to demonstrate outside Russian Embassies, and to draft and sign petitions calling for a halt to Russian military intervention in Ukraine. It is truly very urgent in the...