Solidarity 325, 21 May 2014

Boko Haram and #Bringbackourgirls

I am not a fan of conspiracy theories... not just because they are mostly misguided but because they do tend to cause pain to victims and their families. However, I know that silence in the face of oppression is never the answer. If things don’t add up in the Chibok kidnappings, better to voice concerns than keep silent especially since I can’t keep saying “No comment” whenever I am asked to comment on the issue. Boko Haram is real. It is a monster that has claimed many innocent lives and blown children up in their dormitories since it started its nefarious activities in Nigeria. However, the...

Fran Broady, 1938-2014

Fran Broady, who was a leading member of our organisation in the 1970s, died on 18 May at the age of 75. Fran met us in 1970, when we were an opposition tendency in IS (forerunner of, but very much more open than, today's SWP). The IS/SWP expelled our tendency in December 1971, because of our campaign against the switch of line to "No to the Common Market" from advocating European workers' unity. Fran chose our small expelled group without hesitation. I remember a conversation with a student member of another left group in 1972, when we were labouring to get a circulation for our new, small...

International fast food strike

Fast food workers and supporters across the world organised strikes and other direct action on 15 May as part of an international protest for decent wages and rights at work. Workers in 150 American cities struck, with strikes and other actions organised in New Zealand, Italy, Pakistan, Japan, and the UK. In London, protesters gathered at McDonald’s on Whitehall, near Parliament. The day of action was launched at a conference organised by the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers (IUF), which includes the unions behind American fast...

Unite policy conference to debate Labour and Europe

No merger with the PCS this side of a General Election. And maybe never. Although they do not put it as bluntly as this, that’s the substance of two of the motions submitted to the Unite Policy Conference being held in Liverpool late June and early July. Merger with a union not affiliated to the Labour Party would be “a huge distraction” from winning the election for Labour. Mergers are a good thing only if the unions involved have “similar industrial interests”. Mergers are bad for Unite if its financial situation would be damaged by the pensions liabilities of the other union. Consequently...

University of London workers fight job losses

The higher echelons of the University of London's management have announced the closure of three of Bloomsbury's intercollegiate Halls of Residence on Cartwright Gardens, with over 80 redundancies threatened, effective from 30 June 2014. Amid delay and obfuscation, many long-serving cleaners, porters, catering and security staff, have now learnt that they will have to look for new jobs. Having previously promised that jobs would be safeguarded in event of closure, the workers have so far received no guarantees of future employment. The catering staff believe that their employer, Aramark, are...

Russian imperialism threatens Crimean Tatars

Sunday 18 May marked the 70th anniversary of Stalin’s deportation of the Crimean Tatars. But the new Russian authorities in Crimea systematically undermined attempts to commemorate the anniversary. Beginning in the night of 17/18 May 1944 the entire Crimean Tatar population was deported and scattered across Soviet Central Asia, Kazakhstan and the Urals. Some 100,000 Tatars – 40% of the population – died during the deportation and the first year of ‘resettlement’. After decades of campaigning, Crimean Tatars were allowed to return to their homeland in the dying days of the Soviet Union. But in...

Soma mining massacre: the terrible cost of capitalist exploitation

On 13 May, the capitalist system of exploitation took the lives of around 300 workers in a coal mine “accident” in Soma, a town in western Turkey. This is the biggest massacre of workers in the form of a “work accident” in the history of Turkey. The technical reason for the incident is still unknown. But for some reason a fire erupted in the mine, producing carbon monoxide with the fatal effect of poisoning the miners. What happened in Soma cannot be downplayed as a “work accident”. What happened was a mass murder at a workplace perpetrated by the boss of Soma Holdings and its accomplice, i.e...

Eleanor Marx

Karl Marx's daughter, Eleanor, played a major leading role in the early history of the Trade Union movement. She was active strike organiser and a member of the executive of the Gas Workers and General Labours' Union, one of a number of unions which later fused to form the General and Municipal Workers Union, which became the GMB. Fran Broady describes the life of Eleanor Marx and the early days of the Marxist organisation in the British labour movement. Eleanor Marx was born into the workshop and armoury of scientific socialism on the 16 January 1855. Her father Karl Manx was immersed in the...

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