Solidarity 565, 30 September 2020

Unison: unite to back Paul Holmes

The nomination period for General Secretary of the big public services union Unison closed on 25 September. Four candidates qualified to enter the ballot (28 October to 27 November): two rank-and-file candidates, Paul Holmes and Hugo Pierre, and two assistant general secretaries, Roger McKenzie and Christina McAnea. Workers’ Liberty is supporting Paul Holmes. McAnea, the continuity establishment candidate, has 200 nominations and the support of the National Executive Committee (NEC), won narrowly over Paul Holmes, after a last minute change of voting system, plus Scotland, Wales and a number...

Deliveroo action spreads

On Thursday 24 September, Sheffield Deliveroo drivers stepped up their campaign of action on low pay and unfair sackings. They hit one of Deliveroo’s biggest exclusive national partner restaurants, Wagamama, with a 24-hour boycott. Meanwhile, Deliveroo are preparing to further immiserate their workforce with a mass hiring drive. Deliveroo workers face sackings with no hearing, no chance to see the evidence against them, and no right of appeal — as recently befell a Sheffield union activist, Khalid, and seven others in the city. Whereas 18 months ago couriers would make no less than £4.25 per...

NEU conference: support amendments!

The National Education Union (NEU) is holding a virtual conference on 3 October. The union’s annual conference in April 2020 was cancelled due to the Covid-19 crisis. The virtual conference will deal with rule changes. Most of them are benign. Some, such as the possibility of job-sharing elected roles, are probably positive. However, the ones reducing the Executive from 70 to 55, and allowing the General Secretaries to extend their term in office beyond five years if they announce they are retiring, should be opposed. Unfortunately, it seems the rule changes will be taken as a job lot, making...

The case for backing Hawkins

• See here for other articles debating the US election, Trump, etc . Anyone committed to basic human decency, let alone socialism, should hope that Donald Trump loses the American presidential election in November. Given the nature of the US’s electoral system, this means hoping that Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee, wins. Does it follow that socialists should campaign for a Biden vote? This article will argue that it does not, and support the position of those US socialists who back Howie Hawkins and Angela Walker, rank-and-file working-class militants running on the Green Party ticket, with...

New protests for Breonna Taylor

On 23 September it was announced that a grand jury in the US state of Kentucky had indicted only one of the three police officers — Brett Hankinson, Jonathan Mattingly and Myles Cosgrove — involved in the murder of healthworker Breonna Taylor in March. And, surreally, Hankinson was indicted not for shooting Taylor but for firing at a neighbouring home. Protests demanding justice have flared across the country. Mattingly wrote that “I know we did the legal, moral and ethical thing that night”… The “legal, moral and ethical thing” was spraying 32 bullets into Taylor’s home, in response to a...

Free Osime Brown!

Joe Booth was speaking at the “Free Osime Brown” protest on 25 September. More about the Osime Brown campaign here . Hey everyone. My name’s Joe. Joe Booth. I’m 18. And I’m autistic. And I’m socialist, or activist, or whatever you wanna call me. And first of all, I just wanna say: whatever I say now is not said as a soundbite, or for my own popularity, but because I literally mean it… and I want Osime Brown released! So, why am I here? Because I’m absolutely furious and appalled, so much that it’s actually a miracle I ain’t swearing. Because Osime Brown is being convicted for a crime that not...

Tories put lid on transgender rights

The Gender Recognition Act became law in 2004. It allows transgender people to apply for a “Gender Recognition Certificate”, and that allows a replacement birth certificate to be issued with the correct gender. But the process is lengthy and requires a medical report to confirm a diagnosis of “gender dysphoria”. If the applicant is married they also require consent from their spouse. In 2017 the government announced that they would consider reforming the Gender Recognition Act. Several countries had made changes to legislation that allowed trans people to self-identify. Those included Ireland...

Not so progressive

Progressive International (PI), the latest project of Yanis Varoufakis, who was the negotiator with the EU for Greece’s Syriza government in 2015, held its “inaugural summit” on 18-20 September, drawing many “big names” of the left. Varoufakis was an opponent of Brexit. Then he became an advocate of it. He created DIEM25, an as a movement for reform of the EU, then moved on to PI. At the opening session Varoufakis made a “by the way” comment that there are serious human rights issues in China. Vijay Prashad, a PI Council member responded that the left would tear itself apart if it attempted to...

Donald Trump is a fascist

• See here for other articles debating the US election, Trump, etc . The President of the USA is a fascist who is trying to steal the 2020 Presidential election. You can soften that down to saying Trump is an “authoritarian”, or a delusional psychotic would-be king of the USA, but fascist is better: a fascist is what Trump is in his opinions and in his actions where he is free to act as he likes. The USA is not fascist. It is a creaking, malfunctioning, ill-designed old state, now with a fascist as its elected chief executive. Its mechanisms were created in the late 18th century and modified...

Saklatvala and the Indian workers

25 of the accused in the Meerut conspiracy case This is part five of a series. For the other articles, see here . Buy our pamphlet on Saklatvala here . “Mr Saklatvala… has great influence in India. Irrespective of his Communist views, the Indian people are proud of him… They, a subject race… are naturally proud of the courage with which Saklatvala, one of themselves, denounces the British domination of India in unmeasured terms in the very House of Commons itself. He is a rebel by proxy for them all… When he speaks to them, therefore, they listen, and he speaks to them frequently.” - “India’s...

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