Solidarity 319, 2 April 2014

Threat to annuities

Robin Blackburn, author of Age Shock: How Finance is failing us and other books, comments on pension changes made in George Osborne’s Budget. I can understand why there has been a reluctance to criticise allowing holders of pension plans to cash out their pension pot rather than being forced to buy an annuity at retirement. In recent years, with miserable interest rates, annuities barely keep pace with inflation. However this measure will offer greatest rewards to those with higher incomes. About half of all tax relief goes to the top 10 per cent of earners. To those with small pension pots —...

March in March: Australian indignados?

It seemed to come from nowhere, then it was everywhere. It was against everything, but not clearly for anything. It was the largest political mobilisation for years, but the mainstream media virtually ignored it. It was inspiring and revitalising for workers, union and community activists, but had little support from the larger campaigns and parties. “March in March” on March 15-17 brought over 100,000 people onto the streets against the Abbott government’s policies — over 30,000 in Melbourne. Rallies were held in all cities and dozens of regional towns. Initiated through social media by a few...

French right and far right make gains

Francois Hollande’s governing Socialist Party (PS) lost control of around 155 towns and cities in France’s municipal elections on 30 March. There was a strong showing for the far-right Front National (FN) and a boost for the centre-right UMP. In what is already being dubbed “Black Sunday”, voters sought to punish Hollande — who is now polling as the most unpopular President of the Fifth Republic. His only consolation is that the PS held Paris, with Anne Hidalgo succeeding Bertrand Delanoë to become the city’s first woman mayor. Hollande reshuffled his government on 1 April, with Prime Minister...

Left Unity makes policy

It would be easy to be snide about Left Unity’s 29 March policy making conference but that would be unfair. Left Unity has over 1,500 paying members and 200 signed up in a couple of days in late March after it got serious media publicity. Around 200 members attended the conference that tried to set out its positions on the economy, the NHS, housing, immigration, Europe, anti-racism, foregn policy and electoral strategy. For a one-day conference with people with a wide range of views on the left it did fairly well, even if the debate was often limited and sometimes confusing. The main confusion...

How Norway's Labour helped Stalin against Trotsky

When Leon Trotsky published his autobiography, My Life (1930) aged 50, he had already experienced three periods of exile. The first, from 1903 to 1905, took place between two spells of underground work, two prison terms and two banishments from Tsarist Russia. The second, between the two Russian revolutions (1905 and 1917) and included the First World War, was spent in Austria, the Balkans, France, Spain and then the US. His third and final banishment began in 1929, following a year of internal exile in Central Asia, and commenced with his expulsion to Turkey. With some justice he could...

UKIP: whose favourite party?

In the run up to the May European elections, UKIP have been getting a lot of attention. A new book, Revolt on the Right, by academic Matthew Goodwin and Robert Ford highlighted why the interest in UKIP. The book argues, more or less convincingly, that UKIP is now similar to, and as stable as other “radical right” populist parties around Europe (such as the Freedom Party of Austria, the Swiss Peoples Party or France’s Front National). They have expanded their political base to take in older, precariously employed or unemployed working-class voters (mostly men) and broadened their appeal to...

Welcome China's unions back into the family?

At the end of March, the International Labour Organisation’s Bureau for Workers Activities (known as ILO-ACTRAV) and the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) signed a Memorandum of Understanding “to promote Trade unions South-South Cooperation in the Asia- Pacific region”. The Director-General of the ILO, Guy Ryder, said “we need to find a way which so that the ACFTU can work more closely with other parts of the international trade union movement, sharing common objectives.” Ryder is a former General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation, which has decided to invite...

Cuba's new oppositions

Fifty-five years after its revolution overthrowing the Batista dictatorship, its original generation of leadership has begun to pass away and the future of its “socialist” project remains uncertain. Will it experience capitalist “shock therapy” like the countries of the former Eastern bloc? Will it follow the state-capitalist road established in China and Vietnam? Will economic liberalization be accompanied, as some claim, by an expansion of political freedoms and tolerance for dissent? A socialist democracy may not be on the cards; if so, what does that mean for the nascent critical left on...

Campus battles and NUS conference 2014

For a report of the conference published on 11 April, see here . The weakness of the labour movement after the defeat of the public sector pensions dispute has had its effect in the student movement too. Student activism is stronger than before the student upsurge of 2010-11, but still sluggish. Nonetheless, the National Union of Students conference (8-10 April, Liverpool) comes after six months which have seen important struggles. These struggles have been focused around two main issues: workers' rights on campus and repression against student activists. The two are connected, because the...

Which side are you on?

Look Back in Anger by Harry Paterson is published by Five Leaves, Nottingham. It describes the events of the 1984-5 miners' strike in Nottinghamshire, one of the areas where many, though not all, miners scabbed. The overtime ban that was going from November 1983 was strong in Notts and the coal stocks were nowhere near as high as the Tories had hoped for. When the first closures of a handful of pits were announced, thousands of Yorkshire miners were already on strike and insisted on solidarity. MacGregor had already met with Thatcher six months before the strike to discuss kickstarting the...

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