Solidarity 654, 23 November 2022

After 12 grisly years of “austerity” — cuts to living standards and public services to further enrich employers and the rich — and decades of rising inequality, the working class in the UK faces a dramatic new assault. One that poses a stark challenge to workers, the labour movement and every individual who wants a better society. The growing surge of workers’ struggles can defeat these attacks and start to turn things around — but only if we organise to take it much further . Under the Tories’ plan, people in this country will suffer the biggest fall in living standards on record: a 4.3% cut...

Andrew Gamble titled his book on Friedrich Hayek The Iron Cage of Liberty . Hayek (1889-1992) was a theorist of ruthlessly free-market capitalism, influential with Thatcher. The “iron cage” image came from Max Weber : “Fate decreed that the cloak… [of] care for external goods… should become an iron cage... Since asceticism undertook to remodel the world and to work out its ideals in the world, material goods have gained an increasing and finally an inexorable power over the lives of men as at no previous period in history. Today... victorious capitalism, since it rests on mechanical...

Railworkers will strike on 13-18 December and 3-8 January, and run an overtime ban on Network Rail from 18 December to 2 January. Those strikes, and the six further strikes by postal workers (Communication Workers’ Union, CWU) in December represents a meaningful escalation, after a period of lull, in the major national disputes in the current strike wave. Strikes are already spreading into education, with UCU and some Unison strikes planned for 24-25 and 30 November, and teachers and other school workers in NEU and NASUWT returning ballots in January. Nurses could soon strike, following RCN’s...

BALLOTS Until 22 November: Outsourced cleaners on multiple TOCs (RMT) ballot Until 25 November: NHS staff (Unison) ballot for action over pay Until 29 November: Ambulance workers across 11 trusts in England and Wales (GMB) ballot for action over pay Until 8 December: London Underground workers (RMT) re-ballot in their dispute over jobs, pensions, and conditions 5 December-23 January: Firefighters (FBU) ballot for action over pay Until 9 January: Teachers (NASUWT) ballot for action over pay From 9 January: Junior doctors (BMA) ballot for action over pay Until 13 January: Teachers and school...

At 3.40pm (local time) on Tuesday 15 November, a Russian-made missile fell on the Polish village of Przwodow, killing two people. Within hours, Joe Biden and Poland’s leaders said they believed the missile, though Russian-made, had been fired by Ukraine, defending itself against a massive wave of Russian missiles targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. The first news of this, apparently passed to Associated Press by “a senior US intelligence official”, appeared to blame the Russians, but even so most initial reports in the mainstream media were cautious, making it clear that the incident...

Teamster shop stewards in the United States. But vast numbers of US workers have no union representation at all. The same in Australia, and the UK In my life as a working-class and trade-union activist [mainly in Australia], I guess I’ve usually been described by such words as “Oh, you know Bob, he’s a militant”. For me it’s a great badge of honour, however many in the trade union movement scorn genuine militants. Another description used by both employers and more than a few union crawlers: “Oh, Carnegie, he is belligerent”. To be honest up, until about a decade ago, that side of my nature...

Malta’s government is to propose a change in the law to allow abortion when a mother’s life or health is at risk. Malta, a Catholic country with more than one church per square kilometre, was the last EU state to have a total ban on abortion. Malta’s current criminal law states a doctor who knowingly provides a woman with the means for a termination faces a jail term of 18 months to four years and a permanent professional ban. Any woman who arranges her own termination can also face up to four years in prison, although no woman is thought to have faced criminal charges in recent years...

Local authorities will face a spending squeeze following the Tories’ Autumn Statement. Their funding may not have been cut directly, but it will have been significantly reduced because of inflation and no commensurate increase in funding. The Government is giving local authorities in England the ability to set higher Council Tax by increasing the referendum limit to 3% per year from April 2023. It is also giving local authorities with social care responsibilities the ability to increase the adult social care precept by up to 2% per year. The ability to raise council tax by up to 5% could make...

Sign the statement protesting against the Labour leadership's attempt to ban Workers' Liberty here Labour’s new lead in the opinion polls has encouraged the unreconstructed Blairites who now run Keir Starmer’s office to push further to make the Labour Party ultra-safe for capitalism. Labour has expelled Andrea Egan, president of Unison, and Martin Mayer, formerly a Unite rep on Labour’s National Executive. The charges are risible: “liking” social media posts from Socialist Appeal (Egan) and Labour Against the Witchhunt (Mayer), many years ago, when (even if you think the current bans are right...

The government’s Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, Defra, has announced a £156,000 fund aimed at protecting Britain’s sea bird population. Of the 4,400-plus islands in the British Isles, a number are particularly important for migrating sea birds. The fund is designed to improve “biosecurity” measures and prevent invasive predators, like rats and stoats from getting to these islands. Alongside direct predation, habitat destruction, climate change and the production and release of biocidal chemicals, invasive species are one of the great drivers of the current mass extinction...