Solidarity 570, 4 November 2020

Reinstate Richie Venton

The campaign to overturn the dismissal of Richie Venton — USDAW shop steward, USDAW convenor, and member of USDAW National Executive Council — continues, despite the lack of support from the leaders of his own union. Richie was sacked by his employer, IKEA, at the end of August. Richie had worked in the IKEA store in Braehead on the outskirts of Glasgow for twelve years, during which time he had built an effective trade union organisation in the store and achieved major improvements in working conditions. In the midst of the first lockdown IKEA informed union representatives of plans for major...

Sadiq Khan's local Labour Party supports Tube cleaners

Tooting Constituency Labour Party in south London has passed a resolution supporting RMT's campaign for full sick pay, staff travel passes, and direct employment for Tube cleaners.

Whilst any wider support throughout the labour movement is welcome and important, this development is especially...

TfL bailout agreed... but £160m "savings" to be found?

The government has agreed a six-month, £1.8 billion funding bailout for TfL, after a period of intense negotiations that saw deadlines extend and talks go down to the wire.

The package is being widely reported as a "win for Sadiq Khan", as the deal does not include many of the concessions the...

Yes, Labour must confront antisemitism!

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) report into the handling of complaints of antisemitism in the Labour Party, published on 29 October, confirms what Solidarity has argued for many years about a large swathe of what thinks of itself as the left. We were arguing that even before that swathe reassembled itself within the Labour Party and gained extra weight after 2015. "The horrible truth that has to be faced is that large parts of the ostensible left is — for all practical purposes — antisemitic, hostile to Israel’s very existence. That it endorses and circulates malice-ridden...

Covid-19: what do we know?

George Davey Smith, professor of Clinical Epidemiology at Bristol University, spoke to Martin Thomas from Solidarity . Click here to view the video interview online : this is a tidied-up transcript. What do we know about how and where the virus is transmitted? All of this sort of knowledge is provisional and it's not incredibly well defined. But there are some things that are pretty clear. Indoor transmission on average is higher than outdoors. It is known that the virus survives longer at low temperatures, and also at very low humidity or very high humidity. Cold, dry places or cold, very wet...

US: "Mobilise on the streets"

Traven Leyshon, a socialist and trade unionist in Vermont, spoke to Sacha Ismail from Solidarity on 3 November, polling day for the US presidential and congressional elections. This is a very tense country now. There’s a widespread perception among the Trump supporters that there’s going to be violence from the left. They expect their homes and cars to be vandalised after the election if Trump wins, and in general rioting in the streets “from the other side”. It’s a deep paranoia. I guess it goes along with fairly widespread acceptance of conspiracy theories, and it’s been fed and built up by...

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