Solidarity 538, 11 March 2020

Students ramp up support for UCU strikes

In the last week of the strikes by the university workers’ union UCU (9-13 March), students are escalating solidarity actions. By the end of Monday 9 March there were eleven universities in occupation: UCL, University of the Arts London (UAL), Cambridge, Royal College of Art (RCA), Edinburgh, University of Nottingham, Manchester, Brighton, Exeter, Imperial, and Liverpool. The occupations at Imperial and Liverpool have been organised by Extinction Rebellion Universities to demand universities decarbonise, decolonise and democratise, as well as standing in solidarity with the UCU strike. There...

Vote Maisie for VP HE!

Maisie Sanders, an activist with Student Strike Solidarity, the Student Left Network, and Workers’ Liberty, will be standing for Vice President Higher Education (VPHE) in National Union of Students (NUS) elections being held on 16-31 March, in the run-up to NUS conference on 31 March/ 2 April. In that election she will be the only distinctly socialist left candidate, with a clear commitment to support the UCU dispute and to take a clear political stand against marketisation. A number of other candidates across three full-time officer positions are generally leftist; however, the emphasis is on...

Why is Biden winning?

Joe Biden turned out to be the big winner on Super Tuesday. While not all of the votes have been counted, Biden seems likely to end up with a majority. He is now positioned to do well in the rest of the primaries and is likely to come into the Democratic Party Convention with majority of delegates. The major media, as to be expected, are hailing him as the Democratic Party saviour. Bernie might make a comeback. Perhaps, as some have suggested, Elizabeth Warren, whose own campaign has no way forward, might endorse him. Sanders and Warren aides are reportedly discussing that possibility. That...

Clive Lewis on the left after Corbyn

Clive Lewis talked with Sacha Ismail. What Corbynism started to talk about in 2015 was an end to austerity, and trying to return to a sort of 1945 moment, trying to recapture a Keynesian economic approach — redistribution of wealth, trying to use social democracy to move us towards a more socialist economy in stages. But also at the beginning it was about democratising the party, which I think is what attracted so many of us. The idea of democracy and membership engagement and members having a real say over policy really resonated. New Labour came in and put their boot on the throat of the...

A left opposition to Starmer

Barring a surprise, Keir Starmer will be elected Labour leader on 2 April by a big margin. How will the left respond? The signs are that Starmer will want to not marginalise left MPs, but rather “incorporate” them, as Harold Wilson “incorporated” the left MPs in his day. Although the 2019 Labour Party conference showed that at constituency level the Labour Party is much more left-wing, in a general way, than it was before 2015, the actual organised Labour left is weak. Momentum has a big membership, but does not even aspire to discuss and campaign for left-wing policies. What left MPs do, and...

Phillips: argue it out, not suspend behind closed doors

The issues involved in the suspension of former Equality and Human Rights Commission chair Trevor Phillips from the Labour Party on charges of Islamophobia are somewhat murky. Listening to Phillips talk about them does not clarify a great deal, and the party itself seems to be avoiding comment. Phillips is a longstanding Blairite, but until this row burst I had no idea that he held controversial views on anything to do with Muslims or Islam. Looking around to catch up now, my reading is firstly that Phillips is unpopular for saying some things, for instance about the failures of...

Democracy means that conference decides

Labour deputy leader candidate Richard Burgon has launched a set of ten democracy proposals for the Labour Party, including a clear statement that conference should be sovereign over Labour policy. His argument that Labour’s national conference must be its sovereign decision-making body is clear and welcome, and is evidently not just a passing gesture for tactical advantage. He made the same case in not-very-widely-circulated interview with Aaron Bastani and Michael Walker on 10 February. Burgon’s wider politics are close to those of the Stalinist Morning Star , and it is not clear why he has...

Migrant rights day of action on 25 April

The Labour Campaign for Free Movement has called a day of action fxor 25 April against the Tory government’s plan to illegalise immigration of “unskilled” workers to Britain. Initial signatories to the statement below, circulated by the campaign, include: • Nadia Whittome MP • Kate Osamor MP • Apsana Begum MP • Ronnie Draper, General Secretary, Bakers Food and Allied Workers Union • Ian Hodson, President, Bakers Food and Allied Workers Union As trade unionists, Labour members and supporters we call on our movement, our Labour Party and our unions to fight the Tory government’s new immigration...

Who’s “skilled”, who’s “unskilled”?

Home Secretary Priti Patel has announced the government wants to “encourage people with good talent” and “reduce the number of people coming to the UK with low skills”. Rightly, this has provoked a flurry of articles and social media content arguing that the government’s characterisation of care work, which is very badly paid, is ignorant and offensive. Under the proposed point system, people wishing to move to Britain will need 70 points to be eligible. Migrants must have spoken English (10 points) and a job offer from an approved sponsor (20 points) at the skill grade of A-level or above (20...

A hard-hitting fable

When I started watching the new BBC drama Noughts & Crosses I was pretty sure I’d seen something like it before. A society where racial oppression holds sway in much the same way as it did in apartheid South Africa except the twist is that the roles are flipped, black African-heritage people are the oppressors and the white population of a fictitious England the oppressed? Then I remembered my cockney working-class father being more than a little outraged at the self-same premise of another play by the BBC. It was called Fable, written by John Hopkins for the groundbreaking Wednesday Play slot...

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