Solidarity 613, 10 November 2021

The Alliance for Workers' Liberty has issued Corbynism: What Went Wrong?, a 60-page assessment of the collapse of the Corbyn project. At the outset, the pamphlet correctly identifies the ‘real lost promise’ of Corbynism. Rather than building an independent socialist movement in workplaces and communities which could have ousted the right in the Parliamentary Labour Party and in local government, propelled Labour to power and held the leadership to account on its promises, Corbyn kept the membership as an auxiliary social movement only to be mobilised at times of leadership or parliamentary...

“System change, not climate change”, and similar slogans, were prominent on the 6 November demonstrations for the COP26 summit. Yes, we need to change the whole economic, social and political set-up, not just reduce emissions personally. What new system should we seek? And how? “One solution, revolution”, chanted the Socialist Workers Party and Socialist Appeal on the London demonstration. That doesn’t help: who are they asking to do that? How? We are for a workers’ socialist revolution, in which the global working class replaces the power of capital with a new system based on collective...

From 6 November, comrades in Birmingham, Bristol, Sheffield, York, and Liverpool report climate turnouts relatively large for local protests. Others were smaller, but almost every city had something. The mood was generally leftish and receptive. The most common union banners were from the school workers’ union NEU (and UCU in London), but branch contingents were often small and of older members. Fair numbers of left-wing students, but organised uni contingents few or small. A relatively visible Labour Party presence in some places, more Green Party elsewhere. Not so much XR. London’s protest...

On 7 November a new wave of protests and a mass strike began in Sudan to overturn the military coup of 25 October. We hope to carry more next week. Sudanese civil society activist Hamid Khalafallah spoke to us on 2 November. What happened after the struggles of 2019? Many people feel this new coup was almost inevitable, because the arrangements created in 2019 were highly problematic. The military ousted Bashir [authoritarian ruler Omar al-Bashir] in 2019, and then they wanted to hold on to as much power as possible. In the course of the uprising, they killed a lot of people – for instance...

A shop steward from Brighton bins tells us about their victory in their recent dispute. Firstly, congratulations on winning the dispute, I wouldn’t have expected anything less! Haha, yeah, it’s a brilliant outcome, to come out of a dispute with something even better than what we were demanding in the first place is just brilliant, but it shows you our strength. So can you tell me a bit about the deal? What does it mean for the workforce? So as you know, the dispute was about round changes, changes to working patterns at very short notice and without explanation, about management unilaterally...

To judge by the coverage in the Morning Star, COP26 has been little more than a China-bashing exercise by hypocritical western governments. As a statement from the Communist Party of Britain (published in the MS of 6-7 November) put it: “Attacks at Cop26 on China by US President Joe Biden and others ignore the fact that China is a developing country whose CO2 emissions per head are half those of the US, and whose solar and wind power generations have over the last seven years outstripped those of the whole European Union.” In fact, the “attacks” on China were mild stuff. Biden claimed that...

Zack Muddle’s letter on cycling ( Solidarity 612) seems misplaced. He was responding to a report that the Stuart couriers in Sheffield (who serve JustEat) are fighting an attempt to scrap their jobs and oblige them to apply for work on a different platform, Scoober, on which they would have to work on electric bicycles, not in cars. The workers say that this would make them unsafe. Zack writes that obviously he supports the workers, but don’t they understand that cycling is good for you? Zack says that commuters who cycle are healthier and safer. These couriers aren’t using their vehicles to...

The article in Solidarity 609 is an interesting contribution to the debate going on within the CWU [Communication Workers’ Union], but it is wrong on several levels. As an activist within the union for many years I am very familiar with the positions taken by its leaders and the discussions around the union’s political strategy. In the time Labour was in office there was a lot of criticism of their approach to Royal Mail which was a publicly owned body throughout their 13 years as a government. The stance taken by Dave Ward during that period was a reflection of the anger felt by postal...

Spain has extended free fertility treatment, including IVF, to women in same sex relationships, single cis women, trans and non-binary people. This restores rights removed by the conservative Partido Popular government in 2013. The PP government changed the law to only allow straight, married couples to access fertility treatment in public hospitals free of charge, meaning unmarried and LGBT people would have to pay for private health services. This obviously left poorer people less able to access reproductive technologies. Health minister Carolina Darias (PSOE), signed the order at a ceremony...

Yorkshire County Cricket Club (YCCC) has stumbled into a self-made crisis which has been decades in the making. Azeem Rafiq (pictured), a Pakistani-born Yorkshire cricketer who played for the club in two stints from 2008 to 2018, suffered racist discrimination and bullying which left him close to suicide. YCCC reluctantly commissioned an independent report into Rafiq’s allegations but has refused to publish the final document. The club recently announced that no disciplinary action would be taken against those responsible for the bullying, which it accepts took place, adding that the regular...