Workers' Liberty

The latest figures from the British Social Attitudes Survey show that while people have become more liberal on social issues such as gay rights, there has been a rightward drift on economic questions.

On Monday 1 February the higher education funding body, the HEFCE have announced the details of how the budget cuts imposed by Peter Mandelson back in December 2009 will fall. The headline cuts is one in the universities' teaching budgets — £215m in the acedemic year 2010-11.

Moishe Postone is a Marxist academic based at the University of Chicago. As well as writing extensively on Marx’s political economy, he has also been central to the development of theories of “left anti-semitism”, which look at ways in which positions taken by left groups, particularly on Israel/Palestine, can feed into, or be based on, hostility to Jews.

At the conference of the Socialist Workers' Party which took place on 9-10 January, the expulsions of dissident members Clare Solomon and Alex Snowdon were confirmed.

The Socialist Party has launched a “Trade Union and Socialist Coalition” (TUSC) for the general election. Seeing itself as a successor organisation to the “No2EU” slate, TUSC has so far failed to achieve significant trade union backing: Bob Crow is involved in a personal capacity, but the RMT Executive decided to concentrate on re-electing its sponsored MPs.

As we reported in Solidarity 3/164, the University of Sussex Students’ Union recently passed a policy committing it to a boycott of Israeli goods. Workers’ Liberty opposes such boycotts because we believe they cut against what is objectively necessary — international working-class solidarity to help Palestinian and Israeli workers build unity around a programme of mutual respect and equal rights — and create the potential for an anti-semitic backlash by exceptionalising Israel.

Following a law passed in 2004 banning the hijab (Muslim headscarf) and other symbols of “religious affiliation” in state schools, the French government is now discussing a proposal to ban the wearing of the burqa (the full body veil) in various public spaces, including on public transport. It takes place as part of a concerted government campaign to assert a secular French “national identity”.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission investigation into the case of rapist black cab driver John Worboys has highlighted again the criminal justice system’s appalling handling of rape allegations. It does nothing to inspire confidence in an already mistrusted system, which contributes to the low rape conviction rate, currently 6%.

A Labour Party plan to scrap prescription charges for people with long-term health conditions has been shelved, and is now expected to reappear as a manifesto pledge in this year's general election.

New legislation giving rights to Britain’s 1.8 million temporary workers should be in place by April this year, but will not be enforced until 2011.

Violence, religious conspiracy, boozy teenagers. The Buckfast Code certainly provided low-brow entertainment. Unfortunately, it also missed an opportunity to explore poverty in one of Europe’s most deprived “prosperous nations”.

Created between 1983 and 1988, The Hoerengracht is a reproduction of Amsterdam’s red light district, a series of small buildings housing models of sex workers, framed by the familiar red neon lights.

These two recent films provide conflicting visions of the future. They are both set on mining outposts, a century or two in the future, but the conclusions of both films are rubbish.

“Harriet Harman puts class at heart of election battle,” shouted the Guardian front page on 20 January, while the 21 January Telegraph proclaimed “Harriet Harman reopens class war with speech on inequality”. What prompted all this?

Although in most constituencies, working-class socialists will vote for the Labour Party because of its structural and
historic links to the trade unions, Workers’ Liberty’s election campaign in Camberwell and Peckham — where we are standing Jill Mountford — shows what might be possible at election time with a healthier left.

Faced with the prospect of a Tory government and little or no left-of-Labour presence at the polls, how should the working-class left respond to the general election and the cuts that will inevitably follow, whichever party wins? Solidarity spoke to a range of activists from across the left.

The “cold war” between the US and Iran took an icy turn on Monday 1 February when the US announced plans to station missile defences in states bordering Iran.

In the aftermath of the devastating earthquake that rocked Haiti, some sections of the British labour movement are stepping up to deliver the solidarity that Haiti’s workers and poor so desperately need.

Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) leader Mark Serwotka has promised a strike campaign in the run-up to the general election aimed at causing “the most disruption possible” to the government.

The Tory led Local Government Association (LGA) has said there will be no increase in pay in 2010-2011. They say there is not enough money available to fund an increase and this is the only way they have to protect jobs and services in the economic crisis.

The snap election for General Secretary of Unison, called on 20 January, has caught many by surprise. Dave Prentis, the incumbent, got the National Executive to nod through his personal timetable for the ballot.

The three-way contest for Deputy General Secretary of the largest teachers union, the NUT, resulted in a major victory for the left. Kevin Courtney, the Camden NUT secretary and leading light in the Socialist Teachers’ Alliance (STA), was elected after an impressive campaign which maximised his support amongst activists and local branch officers of the union.

Members of the BASSA branch of the Unite union, which represents cabin crew working for British Airways, began re-balloting for strike action over pay freezes and job cuts on 25 January, with results due back on 22 February.

An audit demanded by Unite and GMB unions into the pay of workers building a new gas turbine power station at Staythorpe in Nottinghamshire has showed that a sub-contractor (Somi) is paying its Italian workers less than UK rates for the job —by an average of 1,300 euros a month.

A long-awaited report from the Government inquiry into Wirral Council's plans to close 11 libraries was finally made public just before Christmas.

Barnet Tory council’s decision to axe its sheltered housing wardens and replace them with a roving support service with far fewer staff was ruled illegal by the High Court in December 2009. The court ruled that in its consultation Barnet had not met its duties under disability discrimination legislation.

Around a hundred trade union and community activists attended an anti-cuts meeting organised on Saturday 23 January by Glasgow City Unison branch. Trade unions and community organisations have come together into a single campaign against council cuts in jobs and services.

Want to know the reasons for the 2003 invasion of Iraq? Better read the testimony by Paul Wolfowitz — US deputy Defense Secretary at the time of the invasion — to a US Congress committee on 25 February 1998 than Tony Blair’s words to the UK Iraq Inquiry on 29 January 2010.

“We are not getting excited about the election.” (Duncan Hallas, a central leader of the Socialist Workers Party, in Socialist Worker, on the eve of the 1979 general election which gave power to Thatcher’s Tories.)

One of two things. Either the outcome — the new government — of a May 2010 general election, is a matter of little or no consequence to the working class and to the labour movement and therefore a matter of indifference to socialists. Or it is of consequence, perhaps of great consequence, to the working class and therefore of great importance to socialists. We think it is important.