Camden workers fight contract cuts

Local government workers in the London borough of Camden are facing an attempt by bosses to bribe them into signing new, worse, contracts.

The new contracts will increase working hours, and some staff are being told they could have to work as late as 10pm, and at weekends. The new contracts also institute local bargaining, meaning workers would be outside any pay increases or improvements to conditions negotiated at a national level.

Civil servants continue strikes

Civil servants continued their industrial action on pay cuts, pension reform, and job losses with two half-day strikes in April.

The campaign began with a national strike on 20 March. A half-day strike involving all Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) members, apart from HMRC and Home Office staff, followed on 5 April, with HMRC staff striking from 1pm on Monday 8 April. A planned 24-hour strike of Home Office workers due for the same day was postponed following a legal challenge.

Unison officials sabotage democracy

A worker involved with the “3 Cosas” campaign spoke to Solidarity about their fight for equal rights and union democracy.


“3 Cosas” (“Three Things”) is a campaign organised by outsourced workers at the University of London, mainly cleaners in halls of residence and the university’s flagship Senate House building, but also catering staff, post-room workers, and security workers.

The three things we’re demanding are equal sick pay, pensions, and holiday rights with our colleagues who are employed directly by the university.

Hollywood homophobia and economic crisis

Four years ago, the stars of the successful BBC comedy series Gavin and Stacey made the mistake of starring in an abysmal comedy known as Lesbian Vampire Killers.

The movie was quickly forgotten, but I was reminded of it recently when I saw the latest — and last — film by acclaimed American director Steven Soderbergh, Side Effects.

Soderbergh’s film could easily have been given a similar title, even though it was not in any sense a comedy. But the theme of homicidal lesbians is central to the plot, and the film absolutely reeks of homophobia.

Has Syria's democratic revolution been hijacked?

We print US socialist Pham Binh’s criticism of the AWL’s analysis and attitude on Syria.

The article originally appeared on the North Star website.


As the Syrian revolution progresses, support for it abroad among Marxists recedes. [This shift to the right] parallels the evolution of petty-bourgeois Arab intellectuals such as Jadiliya who supported Syria’s peaceful demonstrators but recoiled in fear when these same demonstrators grew tired of being cut down by machine gun fire and took up arms to defend themselves.

SWP: criticise, don’t “no platform”

Solidarity has criticised the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) on its handling of allegations of sexual harassment and then of rape brought by a young woman member of the SWP against leading SWP organiser Martin Smith.

The SWP leadership’s approach, over two years and more, was to steer as near as it could to bureaucratic brush-off. The case is not closed: the woman involved should have the option of an independent investigation by labour movement people unconnected with the SWP and with some legal qualifications.

The Marxists on oppression

The fourth part of a review article looking at the themes of John Riddell’s new book of documents from the early communist movement.

The week Paul Hampton looks at how they debated women’s liberation and other issues of oppression.


The early Communist International’s focus was on working class self-liberation and this was reflected in the time spent on discussions on party building, work to transform the labour movement and on the specifics of class struggle strategy.

Help us raise £15,000

It’s been a good week for the AWL fund appeal, but we’ve had to step up to respond to a crisis.

The risograph in our office finally gave up the ghost after a decade of dedicated service.

A risograph is an industrial duplicating machine — basically a heavy-duty photocopier — which allows us to copy the thousands of leaflets, posters, and campus and workplace bulletins that we use in our organisation’s day-to-day activity.

Thatcher: now her politics must die

If we believed in a hell, we would have no doubt Margaret Thatcher would now be in it.

Now we must send to hell, too, the politics which she represented.

Labour leader Ed Miliband declared that: “We greatly respect her political achievements and her personal strength”.

With a low-key comment that he “disagreed” a bit with Thatcher, he said that she had “moved the centre ground of British politics”. That, from a Labour leadership always keen to claim that it is occupying that same “centre ground”.

Labour must make a positive case for welfare

The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled, as the Kevin Spacey character argues in The Usual Suspects, is convincing the world that he doesn’t exist.

Given our government’s success in persuading the electorate, millions of claimants included, that it doesn’t need the welfare state, I’m starting to suspect that Old Nick numbers among Lynton Crosby’s sources of inspiration.

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