Solidarity 393, 10 February 2016

On 9 February, in Berlin, former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis launched a new “Democracy in Europe Movement”. It seems not so much a movement as a personal vehicle. But the spirit of its manifesto — demanding, by 2025, a EU constituent assembly that will create a democratic federal Europe — is right. It aims beyond the petty “what’s best for our little corner” or “what’s safest” calculations which dominate the official debate, and dares to restate the old ideals which motivated calls for a United States of Europe as early as the mid-19th century. “A Europe of reason, liberty...

I am a little concerned about the call in Solidarity to build the British Medical Association ( Solidarity 392). It’s not that I think it’s wrong: rather that it would benefit from some further calls to address the anomalous position of the BMA. Firstly, the BMA is not affiliated to the TUC. The more it acts like a proper trade union (like now), the stronger the case for it to affiliate. Secondly, the BMA is a craft union, organising one relatively-privileged section of health workers. This can lead it to play an unhelpful, sectionalist role at times (for instance during the establishment of...

In response to the decision of the SNP Holyrood government to cut £350 millions from local government funding — at a cost of some 15,000 jobs — Scottish Labour Party leader Kezia Dugdale has called for a 1p increase in income tax rates in Scotland. Although the power to vary the different income tax bands will not be devolved to Scotland until next year, Holyrood already has the power to increase (or cut) the income tax rates currently set by the Westminster government. Dugdale’s proposal enjoys broad support among Labour Party members. Some affiliated unions, such as the GMB and ASLEF, have...

The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) is not an organisation that many of you will have heard of. Which is odd, considering that it is one of the largest membership organisations in the world. The ITUC is a federation of 333 national affiliates, mostly trade union centres like the TUC in Britain and the AFL-CIO in the US, and it represents about 180 million workers in 162 countries and territories. The ITUC suffers from being somewhat remote from ordinary workers, as those workers join unions which in turn affiliate to national trade union centres, and it is those centres — not...

Refugees seeking asylum in Denmark will have their belongings confiscated by the police, in order to finance their own asylum process. This is the result of the new “asylum package” bill, or the so-called “jewellery law”. The broad parliamentary agreement was proposed by the Danish right-wing liberal party Venstre, the right-wing parties in parliament including the Danish People’s Party and the Conservatives, and the Social Democrats. The bill was put to a vote in the parliament, Folketing, on January 26 and will be in effect from February 5. The discussions on the Danish parliament’s new...

Renting rules introduced under Right to Rent at the beginning of February mean that landlords who let property in England will have to carry out checks on tenants’ immigration statuses to establish whether they have the right to be in the UK. Landlords that are found to be letting a home to tenants who don’t meet the criteria to stay will be fined up to £1,000 for a first offence, and up to £3,000 thereafter. Results from the West Midlands, where this scheme was trialled, suggest that the scheme will certainly lead to an increase in racist profiling of tenants, and to a rise in homelessness...

On 3 February, the High Court of Australia ruled that the running and funding of immigration detention centres in foreign countries did not breach the Constitution. That ruling affects 267 refugees previously transported from Nauru to Australia, many of whom required emergency medical treatment. Of these 267 refugees, there were 54 children and 37 babies. By this ruling, there is the risk that these refugees could return to conditions threatening their physical, sexual, psychological and emotional health, safety, and wellbeing. There have been reports of sexual assault and rape and of self...

As Solidarity goes to press on 9 February, 35,000 refugees are trapped on the Syria-Turkey border as they flee from a renewed assault by the Assad regime on Syria’s largest city, rebel-held Aleppo. Supplies to Aleppo have been cut off by Russian bombing. The Turkish government is refusing to let the refugees across the border. A grade less inhumane than EU governments, it is providing food and shelter in areas just on the Syrian side of the border, and says “if necessary, we have to and will let our brothers in”. Turkey is haggling with the EU governments and the USA, hoping to get more aid...

On 25 January, during celebrations in Cairo of the fifth anniversary of the rising against the Mubarak dictatorship in 2011, Giulio Regeni disappeared. He had been seized by the thugs of the secret services of the Al Sisi government. On 4 February, his tortured and broken body was found in a ditch outside Cairo. Giulio Regeni, aged 28, was a doctoral student from Cambridge University, a socialist militant, and a freelance writer for the Italian left-wing paper Il Manifesto, for which he wrote extensively on the Egyptian trade union and labour movement. His last article, “In Egypt, second life...

Across areas in south-eastern Turkey, areas that are overwhelmingly ethnically Kurdish, a virtual civil war is going on. The right wing Turkish AKP government’s response has been what they describe as “security operations”. These were first launched in the Sur district of Diyarbakır and the Cizre and Silopi districts of Şırnak in mid-December. The alleged target of this offensive is the Kurdish PKK (Kurdish Workers Party), which had an on-off ceasefire with the Turkish government in the last few years, whilst Kurds increasingly turned to legal political campaigning through their party, the HDP...