Solidarity 3/165
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Solidarity 3/165, 7 January 2010
Mandelson’s higher education cuts will speed "marketisation": occupy! strike!
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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.
The dynamics of the 2010 General Election
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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 'Loftus affair' and the left in the unions
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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.
Socialist candidate Jill Mountford to stand against Harriet Harman in Camberwell and Peckham
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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.
Immigration: Tories play "race card"
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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).
Islam4UK and the English Defence League: mobilise against both
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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.
Anti-fascism: linking up the activists
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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.
Anti-fascism in Barking and Dagenham: "we have to offer an alternative"
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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.
English Defence League in Stoke, 23 January
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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.