Solidarity 079, 1 September 2005

German Elections: A left alternative?

In the 18 September federal election, Die Linke.PDS, Germany’s “left party” is set to make big gains. This is against a background of workers’ anger at an unemployment rate of over 10% and cuts in social welfare by the incumbent SPD Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder. Schröder is far behind the conservative Christian Democrat (CDU) candidate Angela Merkel in the polls, although it is likely that neither will be able to form a coalition with an overall majority, forcing them into a “grand coalition” together. There is in fact an agreement in which the WASG (Labour and Social Justice Party) candidates...

Gate Gourmet: Solidarity Can Win!

On 10 August the international catering firm Gate Gourmet sacked some 670 workers, mainly Asian women, at Heathrow for “illegal strike action”. Gate Gourmet had brought in 120 “seasonal workers” despite planning a restructuring “…that was likely to see hundreds of full-time staff fired” (Financial Times briefing, 23 August). Laying off permanent staff whilst hiring temporary staff was obviously a move to casualisation and seasonal working. Provoked by Gate Gourmet’s move, the staff went to the canteen in readiness for a union meeting whilst their Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU)...

Debate and Discussion: Santising Deportations

I fully support the Socialist Caucus within the PCS in its fight over job losses. However there is one area of PCS membership where I’d fully support job losses. This is among that major sector which works for the immigration service. The PCS has its own Immigration Staff Branch which is divided into regional constituencies and which, according to its web site, “represents all grades in the Immigration Service, up to and including Assistant Director”. [The PCS is a minority union in the Immigration Service -editor]. It is problematic and arguable as to whether the labour movement should be...

Lessons of the Commune

In 1884 Ernest Belfort Bax, one of the pioneer British Marxists, wrote a long series of articles on the Commune in Justice, the paper of the first British Marxist group, the Social Democratic Federation. In the last two issues of Solidarity we have published an abridged and adapted version of Bax’s narrative and also incorporated a few pages from a mid-1880s Socialist League pamphlet, written by Bax and William Morris. This is the final instalment. We have seen that the Commune had one special fault, that of a fatuous moderation in all its doings. We have seen that probably never since history...

Mass protests in China

China faces a huge wave of protests which may push the regime into a serious political crisis. In June 10,000 people rioted in Chizhou, Anhui province, after police sided with the rich perpetrator in a fight. Supermarkets were ransacked after the owner, the head of Chizhou’s business chamber, was seen delivering drinks to the police involved in the case. In October 2004 30-40,000 people rioted, burned police vehicles and set the city hall alight in Wanzhou district in Chongqing after a roadside fight between a porter and a government official. The official had beaten up the porter and...

Australia: Fighting anti-union laws

This year, John Howard plans to bring in anti-union legislation more drastic than former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher ever attempted in one instalment, and arguably more drastic than the sum total of the whole long series of laws introduced by Thatcher’s government through the 1980s. By Bob Carnegie and Martin Thomas It is an attempt to change the balance of class forces radically and suddenly - to set in train a process which will transfer most workers to individual non-union contracts (Australian Workplace Agreements, AWAs) in place of union-negotiated, publicly-registered...

Asylum Actions

Two campaigns in suport of asylum seekers threatened by Britain's repressive laws. STOP THE DEPORTATION OF THE KHANALIS! The racism of immigration controls operates in many different ways. One way is to take asylum seekers out of the welfare state and make them dependant on a new poor law where they are involuntarily dispersed throughout the country and supported at 70% of income support level. The whole scheme is run by a Home Office body — the National Asylum Support Service (NASS). The latest way controls operate is through Section 9 of the 2004 Immigration and Asylum Act. This allows NASS...

After Gaza Withdrawal

The left in Israel/Palestine (those, broadly on the left of the peace movement) have expressed a mixed reaction to removal of Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip. For some it signalled a little hope. An important taboo over the status of Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories has been broken, they said. Maintaining the settlements in the West Bank — they are much more widespread there — might no longer be sacrosanct, in the eyes of broad Israeli public opinion. Those hardliners who fought against the pull-out in Gaza have been shown to be isolated. For others, the furore over the...

A level row: fight for equality in education

As predicted well in advance, A-level pass rates rose this year, continuing the trend of the last 23 years. To read some of the right-wing newspaper coverage, you'd be forgiven for thinking everyone had passed with four A grades; in fact, the proportion of entries resulting in a pass grade (A-E) rose just 0.2% from 96%, with only 2% of pupils gaining 3 or more A grades. The focus of the media was of course on how “easy” exams are, with the usual aim of defending a more restrictive and elitist system of entry to higher education; bourgeois critiques of the current system are not motivated by a...

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