Solidarity 515, 5 September 2019

The left and the coup: side-stepping the issues

The Communist Party of Britain (Morning Star) claims that Boris Johnson’s shutdown of Parliament was really the fault of the anti-Brexiters in Parliament. Other left groups and papers which have backed Brexit have been less off-the-wall, but maybe more confusing. Socialist Worker essentially calls on its readers to shout other slogans so loudly as to drown out all thoughts about Brexit. It writes: “There was fury at Johnson [at the anti-coup protests]. Beyond that people came with a range of views. “A substantial number had EU flags or anti-Brexit placards. But others were focused on fighting...

Solidarity-US says “not dissolving”

You recently reported our convention’s motion to “to set up a committee to explore converting it from an organisation into an educational centre” as a kind of “dissolution”, and implied that we are “too small, weak, elderly, and divided to function as an organisation”. This characterisation is speculative and inaccurate. There was no motion to dissolve Solidarity or fundamentally alter its organisational structure at the convention. In the 2019 National Convention, Dan La Botz and other members organised a discussion around developing an educational centre for revolutionary socialism in the U...

Ágnes Heller 1929-2019

With the death of Ágnes Heller on 19 July an era in Hungarian politics has come to an end. She was one of the last links to the Hungarian Marxist György Lukács and the so-called Budapest School of the 1960s, which consisted of a number of his former students, including Heller’s husband Ferenc Feher. Born to a Jewish family in Budapest, Heller survived the Holocaust. Her father – an inspirational figure who helped many Jews to survive – perished in the final months of the war. After 1945 she enrolled at university and joined the Hungarian Communist Party in 1947 after hearing Lukács give a...

Socialist Party split still unclear

The first issue of the monthly newspaper of the new Socialist Alternative group (a splinter from the Socialist Party) is now out. Unfortunately it has little to mark it out politically from The Socialist, paper of the Socialist Party. The editorial on Boris Johnson is completely evasive on the question of Brexit. The only real difference is that Socialist Alternative have realised, correctly, that it is embarrassing for them to talk about “Lexit” after all that has happened, especially when their main selling point is that they are more hip and trendy than the Socialist Party. They do hint at...

London Young Labour shuts down debate

In the winter of 2018, the left – backed by Momentum – took over London Young Labour from the right wing of the party. The largest lecture theatre at UCL, with a capacity of 400, was full, with members spilling out onto the floor. This summer’s policy conference, on 24 August, had about 40 people. As if deliberately to minimise attendance, the conference had been called at three weeks’ notice, at the height of summer. We were told off by a member of the committee for handing out leaflets unless we showed “politeness” by “asking the committee first, so we can check if it has offensive material”...

Uyghurs: a history of oppression

The book The Uyghurs: Strangers in their Own Land was published in 2010, so it predates by six years the intense escalation in repression by the Chinese State against the Uyghurs and other national minorities in Xinjiang. In Xinjiang, a region in the northwest of China which is known to most Uyghur people as East Turkestan, recent years have brought indoctrination-internment camps and intensified intrusive surveillance on a mass scale. But the ongoing, unresolved and undiminished conflict between the Uyghur people and the Chinese state over many decades goes back further. The author, Gardner...

Post workers to ballot for strike

Postal workers’ union CWU is planning a strike ballot of around 100,000 workers in Royal Mail, with the vote due to run from 17 September to 8 October. The union also balloted Royal Mail workers last year, succeeding in meeting the thresholds of the anti-union laws, but strikes were called off after bosses agreed to a number of concessions, including a reduction in the working week from 39 to 35 hours. CWU now says the company is not abiding by this agreement. A postal worker told Solidarity : “There are other issues in the background to the dispute as well. There’s widespread bullying and...

Rail workers strike again against DOO

Guards on South Western Railway are striking again from 30 August – 2 September, as their fight against the imposition of Driver Only Operation (DOO) goes on. Company figures expected that 40% of services would be cancelled on Friday 30 August and Monday 2 September, with up to 50% of services cancelled at the weekend. Union activists believe these figures could be conservative. As guards prepared for the strike, the news that SWR’s parent company First had received £32 million from the government, in compensation for the impact of anti-DOO strikes. This means that taxpayers have subsidised a...

Industrial news in brief

Tube union RMT suspended strikes planned by drivers on London Underground’s Central and Victoria Lines on 3-4 September, after bosses made a number of concessions. The issues at the heart of the dispute include authoritarian management culture on both lines, and driver numbers on the Central Line particularly. The union remains in dispute and activists say strikes should be reinstated if management renege on agreements. Plans for TUC congress At the time of writing discussions are taking place among labour movement anti-coup people about activities at the 2019 TUC Congress (8-11 September, in...

Plans for climate action on 20 September

As record-breaking Hurricane Dorian tears across the Bahamas, destroying tens of thousands of homes and slotting into the longest recorded streak of category 5 Atlantic hurricanes — and as flames continue to devour chunks of the Amazon rainforest — workers, students and environmental activists worldwide are gearing up for a “climate strike” on Friday 20 September. Alongside the school student action, UCU, BFAWU, IWGB and other unions are offering vocal support for actions on 20 Sep, although little concrete is yet to materialise from the unions centrally. TUC congress, 8-11 September, looks...

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