Solidarity 070, 31 March 2005

Solidarity believes that the unions should have gone ahead with their strikes against pension cuts on 23 March and 26 April. The threat of strikes in the immediate run-up to a General Election made Blair and Brown retreat on pensions. If we had gone ahead, we could have made them retreat further, and kept up the momentum of our campaign. By calling off the strikes, the unions have missed an opportunity. In a letter to TUC Secretary Brendan Barber, Work and Pensions Minister Alan Johnson says the Government will “make a fresh start on discussions with the trade unions”, and “in those talks all...

The National Union of Teachers conference at the Easter weekend voted to resume the suspended pensions action after the General Election. Speaker after speaker from the left and the Executive recognised that the Government may have pulled a fast one, offering talks only to avoid a confrontation before the election. Prior to conference, most of the left had congratulated the Executive on forcing the Government to back down. They continued in the same vein in Gateshead, resulting in a rather bland debate as delegates bought into this odd unity fest. Nevertheless action after the election is...

On the Iraq demonstration on 19 March, AWL members helped Iraq Union Solidarity with a bucket collection to raise money for the new trade unions in Iraq. We also sold our new pamphlet, “Solidarity with Iraqi workers”. (which you can buy online here ). The pamphlet answers those on the left who have dismissed the Iraqi labour movement as “Vichyists” or “quislings”, taking the military (Sunni-supremacist) “resistance” and not the working class as their standard by which to measure all other forces. It also replies to those who use awareness of the reactionary nature of the “resistance” as a...

By Alan Thomas The conference of the Socialist Alliance Democracy Platform (SADP) on 12 March was bigger than I had expected: 40–50 present over the day. There were the usual SADP faces, people from the Alliance for Green Socialism, and a national mobilisation of ex-WRPers/Morenoites. Also Hillel Ticktin from Critique, John Bridge and a couple more from the CPGB, and the Red Party. The first two motions were about structure for the group to come out of the conference. The first, more “partyist” version, put forward by John Pearson, fell, albeit with a significant minority voting in favour. The...

From Kent Campaign to Defend Asylum Seekers The Kent Campaign to Defend Asylum seekers is organising a vigil on Sunday 3 April to highlight the plight of young refugees and their families who have disappeared following detention and deportation from the UK. Jon Flaig, campaign chair, said: “A general election is likely to be announced in the next week. We are calling on all candidates to reject playing politics with people’s lives by stirring up racism on the issue of asylum. By all means let us have a debate on the issue, but we must stop the dash to the bottom of the barrel we have seen....

With the introduction of top-up fees only a year away, the need for a militant, left-led National Union of Students is an urgent one. Unfortunately, as in the wider labour movement and world, much of the “left” is busy making a mess of things. On one hand, we have Kat Fletcher, elected National President last year on a united left slate — a former Workers’ Liberty supporter who still calls herself a revolutionary socialist, but in practice has moved so far to the right that Labour Students provide a left opposition to her. In her previous incarnation, Kat was co-chair of the Campaign for Free...

Earlier this month Oxfam announced that it would sever its links with Starbucks. Starbucks had agreed to contribute £100,000 to Oxfam’s rural development programme in the East Harare coffee growing region of Ethiopia. Starbucks is well known for its anti-union activities. However, the campaign to get Oxfam to break its links was not about Starbucks’ hypocritical “concern” for human welfare, but had been co-ordinated by a coalition of Islamist groups and Palestinian Solidarity campaigners, with the Islamist-backed Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) in the lead. Their principal objection to...

I think Maria Exall (Solidarity 3/68), is unduly pessimistic about the prospects for the TGWU/Amicus/GMB “super union”. Of course, mergers are not automatically progressive, and all the problems Maria describes are real ones. But I don’t think Maria gives sufficient weight to the fact that this is not simply a merger, but the creation of a new union. Of course, it’s “driven by the bureaucracy” — what else would you expect? But that fact does not automatically necessitate rank and file activists opposing it. And, equally, if the any of the three unions decides not to go ahead with the merger...

3–5pm, Saturday 23 April 2nd Floor, University of London Union, Malet Street, London WC1 (Euston tube) * Building international solidarity with workers’ struggles * Campaigning for workers’ rights on campus * Fighting student low wages and exploitation. This meeting will establish a student activist network to campaign and coordinate activity on these issues. More information: tel 07961 040618 or email Laura Schwartz . Sponsored by No Sweat ..

The market in Higher Education provision made possible by last year’s Higher Education Act, which allowed the introduction of variable top-up fees, is not taking the exact shape most student activists predicted it would, but it is definitely taking shape. The Government’s Office of Fair Access (Offa), which was created by the HE Bill, has announced that from 2006 it will allow 112 of the 120 Higher Education institutions in England and Wales to charge the full, £3,000 a year top-up fee. Eight have chosen to charge less than the maximum. Only three are fully-fledged universities, while the rest...