Workers' Liberty

On 22 December, Peter Mandelson wrote to the Higher Education funding body outlining nearly £400 million in cuts in higher education for 2010-11. The figure exceeds by £135 million the £180 million cuts and £83 million in “efficiency savings” announced in the 2009 budget.

Under the banner of the obvious (“A Year for Change”) David Cameron has ushered his party, the media and “political classes”, if not the rest of us, into full election mode.

The behaviour of Britain’s two biggest revolutionary socialist organisations where they have trade-union positions is coming to resemble more that of the old Communist Party than any of the best elements of the Trotskyist tradition both the SWP and SP claim affinity with.

In many ways, the coming general election does not seem an inspiring one for socialists and militants. Faced with the choice between a discredited, right-wing, anti-working class Labour government and a revived Tory party, some will be tempted to sit it out. Things are made worse by the fact that there are few left Labour candidates, and that the main “left” coalition outside Labour (the “son of No2EU” effort) looks very thin and shaky politically.

In a depressing piece of political jockeying, David Cameron has played a race card, with a sweeping pledge to cut immigration to “tens of thousands” (down from around 200,000 a year).

After announcing a “March 4 Sharia” in London on October 31 (and then calling off at the last minute), Anjem Choudary’s Islam4UK — a far-right descendant of al-Muhajiroun — recently pulled another bluff by announcing and then cancelling another action, this time in the small Wiltshire town of Wootton Bassett.

Nottinghamshire Stop the BNP group, together with similar organisations, is planning a conference some time in March to create a network of groups, national materials and resources for the upcoming struggles against the BNP and EDL.

Lee Waker, Labour councillor for Dagenham Village Ward and a CWU activist, spoke to Solidarity about fighting the BNP in Barking & Dagenham, where BNP leader Nick Griffin will stand in the General Election.

There is a strong Stoke division of the EDL, based around Stoke City supporters, and unofficial Stoke City internet message boards are full of talk about their mobilisation in the city on 23 January.

“Work is, by its very nature, about violence — to the spirit as well as to the body... It is, above all (or beneath all), about daily humiliations. To survive the day is triumph enough for the walking wounded among the great many of us.” Studs Terkel.

This year the two million trade unionists in Unite will get to elect a single general secretary who will replace Derek Simpson and Tony Woodley in 2011.

A decision by the PPP Arbiter in December may prove to be a fatal punch to private infrastructure company Tube Lines and the whole “Public-Private Partnership” set-up on London Underground.

Patrick Beckford lives in Nottingham and works as a driver for East Midlands Trains.

Before Christmas there was a lot of fuss in the press about dirty hospitals. The new NHS inspection body, the Care Quality Commission, had highlighted shocking issues at Basildon University Hospital — dirty commodes, curtains, and equipment; blood stains on trays. How common is this experience and why does it happen?

Penny-pinching bosses are contriving a whole range of methods to make sure workers, rather than profits, take the hit during the cold weather.

Of course the Tory commentators make the most of what they can rake up. But for now they can rake up a lot.

In early December, cabin crew working for British Airways voted — by a huge majority on a massive turnout — for strike action against job cuts and pay freezes. BA management went to court and, eventually, they got an injunction against the strike. The union has now announced a further strike ballot starting on 21 January. But it is a cumbersome process — the earliest BA workers will be able to strike is from the beginning of March!

Further street battles between Iranian pro-democracy protestors and the police are expected on 10-12 February, the anniversary of the 1979 revolution.

The following tribute to Daniel Bensaïd appeared on the website of the New Anticapitalist Party on Tuesday 12th January, 2010.

The following (abridged) article by Farooq Tariq from the Labour Party Pakistan was first published on the International Viewpoint website on 28 October 2009.

“It is not easy to persist in the struggle, to hold on, to stay tough and fight it out year after year without victory; and even, in times such as the present, without tangible progress. That requires theoretical conviction and historical perspective as well as character. And, in addition to that, it requires association with others in a common party” — James P. Cannon, Trade Unionists and Revolutionists, 1953.

Bruce Robinson reviews A Critique of Intelligent Design: Materialism versus Creationism from Antiquity to the Present by John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark, and Richard York, Monthly Review Press.

Vestas occupier and activist Ian Terry who was in Copenhagen to speak at the Klimaforum and take part in Workers’ Climate Action activity against Vestas, spoke to Dan Rawnsley.

Workers Climate Action activists at the Copenhagen climate summit (7-18 December) marched in to the entrance hall of the 18th-century Odd Fellow palace, where the multinational wind turbine manufacturer Vestas was holding a drinks party, with banners and a megaphone. We remained there for around half an hour, chanting slogans and handing out leaflets to partygoers.

Sixteen AWL members were among 200 anti-fascists who turned out to stop the far-right in Harrow on 13 December.

The richest 10% own 44% of all wealth in the UK. They own, of course, the great bulk of the shares and other financial assets in private hands; they also, less obviously, own the big majority of the wealth held in pension-fund assets.

Prospects for the "son of No2EU" coalition for the coming general election look poor. The Executive of the RMT rail union has adopted a policy on the General Election that does not include backing the coalition.

The Copenhagen climate talks were an utter failure. But what lessons do Marxists argue climate campaigners should draw from this experience?

Muayad Ahmed, a leading member of the Worker-communist Party of Iraq, spoke to Solidarity in November, while the Worker-communist Party was still planning to contest the election.