Solidarity 598, 23 June 2021

Sleeper battle continues with ban

The 11-day strike by RMT rail union members on the Caledonian Sleeper service finishes on 26 June. One of the strikers on the picket line in Glasgow spoke to Solidarity . Support for the strike in Glasgow and the rest of Scotland is excellent. It is a dispute which we did not seek. All we want is a level of fairness from the employer, Serco, which runs the sleeper service. Serco’s Chief Executive had his pay increased to £4.9 million last year. Serco has paid out £17 million to its shareholders. But then Serco turns round to us and tell us we’re not getting a penny. This shows contempt for a...

Diary of an engineer: Poring over the permit

After a month of 360 decision-making and discussions with friends and colleagues, I’ve taken the job offered me as Compliance Technician. I’m now working in an open-plan office with two of the senior engineers. There are technicians, managers and contractors coming in and out all day for chats, updates, complaining or getting permits signed. P — the young Slovakian bloke doing maternity cover for the plant accountant/receptionist — is friendly and good fun. Somehow rumours have sprung up that he has a prosthetic leg (he doesn’t, and walks normally, I don’t get it.) We are both new starters and...

Kino Eye: Medical pioneers on film

Here’s a film about the man whose name is forever associated with vaccination — the Frenchman Louis Pasteur. The Story of Louis Pasteur (director William Dieterle, 1936) concerns his struggle to convince a conservative medical establishment that diseases are caused by bacteria. He is opposed by Emperor Napoleon III’s personal physician Dr. Charbonnet. The Republican government which ousts Napoleon encourages Pasteur (actor Paul Munni) to continue his research which, in his experiments with anthrax, ultimately demonstrates the validity of his approach. One American review quipped: “If this...

Pamphlets on the way

Within the next weeks, barring hitches, we will have two new publications in circulation from Workers’ Liberty, plus another one which we’ll promote, from the Momentum Internationalists Labour left network. They should all be available at Ideas for Freedom on 10-11 July. Corbynism: what went wrong?, a 60-page Workers’ Liberty booklet by Martin Thomas, recounts the story of the Corbyn era in Labour, 2015 to late 2019. Things “went right” for the left unexpectedly, and then “went wrong” again. Why? What lessons can we learn as we regroup? The booklet is £4 (three copies for £10). The occupation...

DVLA out again 5 July (John Moloney's column)

Our campaign at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) complex in Swansea increasingly looks like becoming a long and bitter dispute. The union is in it for the long haul and it’s certainly necessary here. The next selective action strikes will be on Monday 5 July, Wednesday 7 July and Friday 9 July We still don’t know who pulled the plug on the deal that was on the table a few weeks ago and which could have settled the dispute. All the signs suggest it was Grant Shapps, the transport minister. MPs have asked questions in Parliament about who withdrew the deal, and he’s simply refused...

Resist rail job cuts and pay freeze!

The commencement of talks under the aegis of the "Rail Industry Recovery Group" (RIRG), a body convened by the Department for Transport including Network Rail and the Train Operating Committees, has prompted a somewhat varying set of reports.

The Guardian would have us believe that the talks are a...

Osime Brown: how we stopped a deportation

From Neurodivergent Labour On 15 June, the Home Office decided that it would not proceed with their barbaric intention to deport autistic, learning-disabled man Osime Brown to a place he has no knowledge of. The victory comes after more than a year of campaigning by a coalition of activists and organisations, under the instrumental guidance of Osime’s mum, Joan. When ND Labour came into the campaign about a year ago, awareness about the case was limited to a layer of autistic and neurodivergent activists and migrants’ rights groups. It was a campaign typical of the classic style: a petition...

Covid won't end. It can be curbed, with different policies

Sixty-four per cent of applications for the official £500 Covid-isolation payment have been rejected since the scheme was expanded early this year. The councils who administer it complain of restrictive government rules and limited funds. Even after many gains on isolation pay won by campaigning in the last year and a half, 51 per cent in insecure jobs get zero sick pay, and 31 per cent receive just Statutory Sick Pay (SSP, £95.85 a week). 30% of all low-paid workers get just SSP, and 19% get no sick pay. All those figures are from a TUC survey . Back in early 2020, civil service bosses saw a...

Skwawkbox, Beckett and Waterloo

For more on the Unite General Secretary election, see here . One of the many benefits of the 18 June decision by Howard Beckett to withdraw from the Unite General Secretary contest was that it exposed – yet again – the abyss which separates the "investigative journalism" of the Skwawkbox website from mundane reality. For nearly a year Skwawkbox has propagated a narrative in which Beckett, a millionaire lawyer and charlatan-socialist, was a man of principle hated by the Establishment for his uncompromising commitment to class-struggle politics. At every stage the narrative combined factual...

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