News

UK-based international banking and finance giant HSBC has increased the “bonus pool” for its bankers by 50%, to £650m, after its profits grew more than fourfold in the second quarter of 2021. It says it may increase it further before pay-outs early next year.

Last year HSBC paid 324 of its bankers more than £850,000 in salaries and bonuses, while eight received more than £4m and one more than £8m.

“Its main effect will be to add an extra dose of cruelty to the existing arrangements.” That’s the impact the Tories’ Nationality and Borders Bill — just passed by the House of Commons for a second time — will have on asylum-seekers, as summed up by migration writer Daniel Trilling. The arrangements are extremely cruel already.

We republish this interview with Morad Shirin of the Iranian Revolutionary Marxists' Tendency and the Shahrokh Zamani Action Campaign about the current wave of strikes and workers' struggles in Iran. Originally published by the Greek socialist group Xekinima. For more see the Shahrokh Zamani Action Campaign website.

Since the military coup that took place in Myanmar in February of this year, the workers’ movement in that country has been leading a fight for democracy.

It was my great pleasure to read and now comment on the three part autobiography of Dave Chapple, someone I have known for over thirty years.

New figures from the TUC say that after the 3% pay rise the government is proposing, NHS workers will still be than 7.5% worse off than in 2010. Other figures have suggest the pay cut is bigger. Certainly for many NHS workers it will be much bigger.

The Tories are also saying that 3% must come from existing NHS budgets, i.e. from cuts to services. We demand a 15% increase, and fully funded.

Following the government's 3% award to NHS workers, all the health unions will be running informal consultations of their members over the next month.

The award falls way below the claims of each union, Unison £2,000, RCN 12%, GMB and Unite 15%, and the current RPI rate of inflation, 3.9%, making it yet another real-terms pay cut. The fact that the government has met the Pay Review Body recommendation only shows how inadequate that body is.

In November 2018, the longtime Irish-based Trotskyist Rayner Lysaght debated with Sean Matgamna, a founding member of Workers’ Liberty, on Marxist perspectives on Irish history and the Irish revolution. The following day they had an extended discussion on related topics. This has been recoreded and released as nine viddeos.

Luiza Xavier spoke at Ideas for Freedom, the Workers' Liberty summer school 2021.

I feel like people in the UK, especially people, are not really tuned into what's going on in South America, are a bit surprised by the mad figure that is Bolsonaro suddenly taking power in Brazil, especially after years of PT government led to massive social reforms.

At the Workers' Liberty summer school, Ideas for Freedom, on 10-11 July, Ruth Cashman debated John Strawson on "Is socialist revolution possible? Is it desirable?"

Ruth Cashman

In 2020, strikes by workers at the Rolls-Royce plant in Barnoldswick, Lancashire, forced the company to abandon a plan to offshore work and cut jobs at the site. Strikes have now resumed after the employer reneged on commitments. Ross Quinn, a regional officer for Unite, spoke to Solidarity.

In our editorial this week we argue to “get socialists organised”. What do we mean by socialism?

We fight for emergency policies, like taxing the wealth of the super-rich and public ownership of key industries and corporations, to allow action to halt and reverse ever-greater inequality and to slow down climate change. We fight to build a stronger workers’ movement, including trade unions, to win these steps.

It looks like the government’s pay “award” for NHS workers will be 3%. Maybe only 1.5% will be a basic ongoing increase, and the other 1.5% a one-off payment.

This falls way below all the claims the unions put into the Pay Review Body.

Three per cent does nothing to address the real-terms pay cuts faced by NHS workers over the last 10 years, or the 100,000 vacancies that are taking many workers to breaking point and crippling NHS services.

A review of Estate Regeneration and its Discontents: public housing, place and inequality in London, by Paul Watt.

This is a most important book, and a powerful indictment of the Tory and Blairite housing agenda.

The objective of council housing was to give everyone a decent place to live, as a right, at a rent they could afford, and with security of tenure irrespective of income. In that it was largely successful.

Workers’ Liberty is saddened to learn of the death of Dr Dinah Murray.

On 10 July, towards the end of a two day visit to Northern Ireland (NI), Labour leader Keir Starmer was asked, in an interview by BBC NI, what he would do in the event of a future border poll on a United Ireland.

At first he dodged the question by insisting that such a poll was not an imminent possibility and it would be up to the people of NI to decide. When pressed by the interviewer though, he said that he “believed in the United Kingdom” and would campaign for the union and against a united Ireland.

It is the centenary year of the Poplar council rates rebellion, an inspiring victory in London’s east end rich with lessons for today.

At the time the rebellion took place, just after the first world war, the London Borough of Poplar comprised the dockland area in the big bend in the River Thames (Poplar) and an area of similar size to its north (Bow). A quarter of its people lived in (official) poverty, 83 of every thousand of its babies died, and over thirty thousand people lived in overcrowded housing.

On 9 July a fire at the Shezan Juice food and drink factory outside the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka killed dozens of workers.

Initial reports confirmed 52 deaths, but searches were ongoing. 49 died from the fire and three after jumping from third floor windows; dozens were injured in that way. Some of the murdered workers were children.

The workers were trapped by an illegally locked door. Yet Abul Hashem, chairman and managing director of Sajeeb Group, which owned the factory, has refused to accept any responsibility and blamed “workers’ carelessness”.

The Labour Party leadership’s new move to ban some groups, following on a new wave of suspensions and exclusions since December 2020, and the previous waves in 2015 and 2016, is built on a rulebook allowing much scope for arbitrary purges. In this article, written before the move for new bans, Dave Levy argues for a rulebook providing democracy and due process.

What do we mean by socialism? More here

Following pressure from Labour MPs, notably Emily Thornberry, and the Safe and Equal campaign last winter, we were told that “the Department of Health and Social Care has approved the payment of occupational sick pay for periods of self-isolation for all workers at Test Centres. This commitment has also been included in the tender specifications for the new Test Centre contract which commences in July 2021.”

In Myanmar, the workers’ movement is continuing the struggle against the military dictatorship which was installed by a coup in February this year. Moe Sandar Myint and Khaing Zar Aung, leaders of Myanmar trade unions, spoke at Ideas for Freedom on 10-11 July to report that military repression against trade union activist in cities like Yangon is extremely harsh. Trade unions have issued a united call for all international brands to cease procuring any products from factories in the country, in order to strike a blow against the military Tatmadaw regime.

Outsourced workers at the Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) strike from 19-21 July. We’re prepared for a long dispute there if necessary. Neither ISS, the outsourced contractor, nor BEIS itself has offered a settlement to avoid the strike, so our members will continue taking action.

The Tory government is setting England on course for a gamble with Covid-19.

The labour movement is not well-placed to second-guess scientists. But we must step up our fight for the social measures we’ve long been campaigning for, and which are known to alleviate the spread of Covid.

On 1 July the editor of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) responded to the appointment of Sajid Javid as health minister with a list of demands. Those included:

• Proper financial support for those who need to isolate.

• Invest in ventilation.

• Petition to free arrested Cuban socialists
• Summary of Cuban-American socialist Sam Farber’s analysis of the Cuban system

Marxism and ecosocialism: study course Thursdays 8pm (UTC+1), 15 July 2021 to 5 August 2021

Please register (free) on Eventbrite

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/karl-marxs-ecosocialism-study-group-on-saitos-book-tickets-162039455373

Zoomlink each Thursday

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81679399952?pwd=WW9lRzF1M1l4VVVsWTZVOFdyTS84dz09M

The Labour leadership is planning to propose that the party’s National Executive Committee, at its meeting on Tuesday (20 July), bans four organisations.

The four are Labour Against the Witch-Hunt, the Labour in Exile Network, Resist / Resistance Movement and Socialist Appeal.

The report in the Mirror cites a “Labour source” saying Starmer wants to “stamp out anti-Semitism and toxic extremism” and condemning the “far left fringes”.

Just over 200 people took part in Ideas for Freedom on 8-11 July, including our Thursday night film showing of Dear Comrades and our Friday evening “Battersea vs the British Empire” walking tour.

This is an excerpt from a speech at Ideas for Freedom, 10-11 July 2021

In Workers’ Liberty, we believe that the liberation of women can only happen with the emancipation of humanity as a whole, through the socialist transformation of society through class struggle.

More on the Unite election here.

Following discussion and voting in our caucus of members active in Unite and on our elected committees, Workers’ Liberty will support a vote for Sharon Graham in the election for general secretary of the Unite union, against Steve Turner and Gerard Coyne. 

As US, British, and other troops quit Afghanistan, predictably the Taliban is surging forward.

The Taliban had been stalling in negotiations for a post-withdrawal settlement, and there had been an increase in sectarian-Islamist attacks on civilians in the cities (some disavowed by the Taliban, but with not much credibility).

On 3 July Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer launched their new economic Big Idea: “ask every public body to give more contracts to British firms big and small”.

So far this feeble Big Idea (only “asking”) has been saved from the derision which overwhelmed the “I’m backing Britain” campaign of then Labour prime minister Harold Wilson in 1968, but only by attracting little comment of any sort.

In any case, what is a “British” firm? One owned by a British boss? What if most of its production chain is overseas? Yet a non-British-owned firm has most of its workforce in Britain?

Protests against the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (“Police Crackdown Bill”) began again in the week of 5 July, but the Tories have rammed it through the final stage of its passage in the House of Commons. It now goes to the House of Lords.

On 6 July, Angelo Del Boca, the most honest and fearless historian of Italian colonialism and its crimes, died aged 96.

He was a lifelong socialist, a former partisan fighter and journalist. As a historian, his work was concentrated on the demolition of the presumed “humane and generous” character of Italy”s imperialist adventures. He was rewarded by the open and fierce hostility not just of the country”s reactionary Right but also of the intellectual and historiographical currents of social-democrats and Stalinists for ever in the search for a “progressive” patrimony.

Pablo Velasco and Sacha Ismail review Cuba since the revolution of 1959: A Critical Assessment, by Cuban-American socialist Sam Farber.

The 1959 revolution that brought Fidel Castro and his 26 July Movement to power was a bourgeois revolution which smashed Fulgencio Batista’s dictatorship, but replaced it with their own Bonapartist regime.

Half driven by US hostility and half by choice, this government opted to become a Stalinist state in 1961, adopting the model of the USSR and similar states.

If you’re a British trade unionist or a member of the Labour Party, where might you go to find news about Cuba? An obvious choice is the Morning Star, a newspaper largely funded by trade unions, which regularly runs articles about the island nation. Another is the website of the trade union-backed Cuba Solidarity Campaign (CSC).

Rayner Lysaght (centre of the photo) debating with Sean Matgamna in London, November 2018

Rayner Lysaght died in Dublin on 2 July 2021, at the age of 80. He was one of the earliest and longest serving members of the Mandelite Trotskyist organisation in Ireland, from 1971.

A Welshman of Irish descent, he went to Ireland to study, and stayed; from a well-off background, which his accent and manner never ceased to proclaim, he migrated in his mid 20s to Marxist working class socialism, and there too he stayed, for the remainder of his life.

A student involved with the Sheffield University Save Archaeology Campaign spoke to us.

Back in February, a few students were emailed, asking us to attend an “informal chat” with the Deputy Vice Chancellor. Only a few of us were chosen and around a dozen or more of us turned up. She asked us for negative views as well as positive views about the department – she only received positive views.

World Covid rates are on the up again, with surges in Russia, Indonesia, Bangladesh. Countries with very high vaccination rates such as the Seychelles and Israel are still seeing spikes. This pattern is likely to continue as Delta spreads across the world. In Britain, thanks to vaccination, hospitalisations and deaths are rising much slower than cases, but they are still rising, and will likely rise more if precautions are lifted on 19 July. To reach “Zero Covid” may be unrealistic.

Watch Rayner Lysaght and Sean Matgamna discuss, in a November 2018 debate, how Marxists have analysed Irish politics.

Joe Biden will take over as president from Donald Trump on 20 January with the USA in the midst of its second or maybe third attempt to extricate itself from Afghanistan.

After the 11 September 2001 Al Qaeda attack on the World Trade Centre in New York, the USA sent troops and support to help Northern Alliance warlords in Afghanistan to drive out the Taliban, which then controlled most of the country and provided a reserve base for Al Qaeda.

On 21 January, 1919, Dail Eireann held its opening session and the Irish Volunteers drew their first mortal blood since 1916 at Soloheadbeg, Co. Tipperary. These facts have set the seal for subsequent historians of the first months of the year.

Labour has won the Batley and Spen by-election of 1 July 2021, but only narrowly, after over 20% of the vote was taken by the demagogue George Galloway.

Formally Galloway stood for the "Workers' Party of Britain", an ultra-Stalinist sect. In fact he stood to gain publicity (and money, because he makes his ample income as a media figure) for George Galloway.

The Workers’ Liberty summer camp will be on 3-5 September, near Haslemere in Surrey.

A weekend of fires, partying, nature, good food and socialist education. In previous years we have run the camp in a farmhouse; this year, due to coronavirus, the camp will be fully outdoors, sleeping in tents only. We will have access to hot water, showers, and toilets.

Watch this space for more info, tickets, social media, etc!

Over fifteen thousand (15,263) working-aged people have died of Covid-19. Employers have registered just 387 as work-related deaths. That is just one example of the extraordinary efforts the boss class has made to deny and minimise workplace transmission.

A review of books by Elizabeth Kolbert and Holly Jean Buck. Buck will be speaking at Ideas for Freedom, 10-11 July.

Elizabeth Kolbert’s new book Under a White Sky describes a pattern in the relationship between human beings and our environment that we can observe being played out at different scales and on different terrains throughout recent history.

The Tory-dominated Education select committee released a report, The Forgotten: How white working class pupils have been let down, on 22 June.

The main conclusion of the report should have been: poor students are disadvantaged at school and New Labour and Tory education “reforms” coupled with cuts, austerity and increasing inequality in the UK have made matters worse.

On 3 July health workers and supporters across the country will be marking the 73rd anniversary of the creation of the NHS by protesting for patient safety, for pay justice and against privatisation: see here

Clive Lewis, Labour MP for Norwich South, spoke to Sacha Ismail in late March.

There could still be another 30,000 deaths as we approach the end of lockdown, and maybe much more. Even with the vaccine program at full tilt, in the absence of a proper test and trace system, an isolation system and social support for people, it’s still potentially a dire situation and could still overwhelm the NHS. [This was even before the "Indian variant" of Covid was widely discussed.]