Solidarity 599, 30 June 2021

The strike by the workers of Iran’s oil and petrochemical industries has spread to various cities, despite 700 workers at the Tehran refinery being fired. On 23 June workers in many refineries and petrochemical industries joined the strikers who had already been on strike for two days. It is estimated that there are now around 20,000 oil and petrochemical workers on strike across 11 provinces, demanding higher wages, an increase in leave and holidays, better health and safety conditions. In response, however, the regime stepped up its repression against the workers. According to labour...

The European Union is expressing itself more forcefully than usual over the issue of LGBTQ+ rights in Hungary. 16 EU leaders have signed an open letter vowing to fight discrimination. Not content with banning material that supposedly “promotes” homosexuality, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán now conflates homosexuality with paedophilia. A bill passed by the Hungarian Parliament last week bans gays from being depicted on prime-time TV, educational programmes and much else beside. Hungary’s stance on gay rights clearly contravenes the EU constitution and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte went...

Aaron Benanav’s book Automation and the Future of Work is aimed against what he calls the automation discourse. He defines this as a belief that high levels of technological unemployment will result from the introduction of new technology and that we will soon be faced with a largely automated economy. Such ideas can be found both on the left and right. Benanav rejects both their economic analysis and the political solutions such as Universal Basic Income (UBI) most commonly proposed to deal with the fallout from automation. I welcome Benanav’s riposte to the recent flurry of predictions of a...

Protests are continuing in the Palestinian Authority (PA) area of the West Bank after PA police killed Nizar Banat. The PA is able to govern in a limited way — in practice, mostly to administer international aid money and pay police forces — in an area comprising some 165 separate patches of the West Bank, surrounded by Israeli control. Banat, an ex-member of Fatah, the party dominant in the PA, had criticised the PA for corruption and its cancellation yet again of Palestinian elections. PA police invaded the house in Hebron where Banat was staying and seized him. He died soon after. The PA...

A review of books by Elizabeth Kolbert and Holly Jean Buck. Buck will be speaking at Ideas for Freedom , 10-11 July. Elizabeth Kolbert’s new book Under a White Sky describes a pattern in the relationship between human beings and our environment that we can observe being played out at different scales and on different terrains throughout recent history. The reversing of the Chicago River to solve Chicago’s sewage problem was initially successful. A canal diverted Chicago’s waste into the Des Plaines river rather than Lake Michigan. It had the unintended consequence of connecting two of the...

For debate and discussion on Malm, see here . Andreas Malm has developed a deeply authoritarian climate politics, using Marxist phraseology to mask a thoroughgoing anti-democratic, anti-working class position. His zigzags from compulsory veganism to sabotage badly mislead the climate movement. But his most heinous error is the proposal to import the approach of Hamas-type Palestinian “resistance” into climate politics. To do so would strangle the climate movement in its infancy. Malm rarely misses the opportunity to refer to “the Palestinian resistance” in his climate change writings. His...

I don’t watch many documentaries about autism, and on the rare occasion when I sit down to watch one, I am overwhelmed with a sense of dread. So much rubbish is said on the subject, even by people who want to be on the right side. So many patronising tropes, so much pity, not enough solidarity. In preparation for watching The Reason I Jump , I speed-read the book on which it is based. In 2007, thirteen-year-old Japanese boy Naoki Higashida wrote about how he experienced the world as a non-speaking autistic person. Particularly since its translation into English in 2013, the book has enabled...

For more on the Unite General Secretary election, see here . Ballot papers for general secretary of the big trade union Unite will be sent to members from 5 July. The three candidates are Steve Turner, Sharon Graham, and Gerard Coyne. A fourth candidate, Howard Beckett, has withdrawn and is now supporting Steve Turner. The election will be run on a First Past The Post basis. Gerard Coyne, a sacked former union official who ran against outgoing general secretary Len McCluskey in 2017, stands a real chance of winning. He won 53,544 votes to McCluskey’s 59,067 in 2017. Coyne is a right winger...

What follows is an account of the anti-Jewish pogrom in Manchester in August 1947. Britain still occupied Palestine and Jewish guerrillas were at war with the colonial power. Two British army sergeants were captured and, in reprisal for Britain’s hanging of captured Jewish fighters, hanged. A great outcry followed. The Mosleyite fascists found a new resonance for their antisemitism. Pogroms against Jewish communities took place in Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester. (The picture shows Liverpool afterwards.) The text is from a book, Jerusalem Is Called Liberty , by Walter Lever. Lever had been a...

Nominations close on 13 September for the newly created Deputy General Secretary role in the National Education Union (NEU). All three candidates already have at least 15 Districts, the number they need to ensure they are on the ballot paper. Martin Powell-Davies is the Education Solidarity Network (ESN) candidate. The ESN is a rank and file organisation fighting for a more democratic, militant and industrial union. Workers’ Liberty is centrally involved with the ESN. Gawain Little is the candidate of the mis-named “NEU Left”, the group that currently control the union. Gawain is also a long...