Solidarity 108, 15 March 2007

BY Faryal Velmi, TGWU 1/1148 branch Despite the biggest demonstration seen in Lambeth (in South London) for a decade and an attempted occupation of the council chambers, savage cuts to Adult Social Services were voted through on Wednesday 28 February. The Labour-run Lambeth Council voted to cut £736,000 from the ASS budget for frail and isolated older and disabled people, adults with learning difficulties, and people with mental ill-health and carers. Charges for homecare are to rise by 132% – from £7.55 to £17.50 an hour in May 2007 and to £20 in April 2008. Lambeth’s charges will be the...

Some other issues need to be considered in the light of the debate over the lottery system. The best predictor of a school's educational achievement is, apparently, the proportion of students getting free school dinners. It should come as no surprise that, within a class society, the most important factor in education is social class. No education system can magic this fact away until socialism abolishes class society. That is why socialists have supported an education system that mixes people from all backgrounds, a comprehensive system of schools where children of all backgrounds and...

Brighton’s schools have hit the headlines with the row over a lottery system for admissions to secondary schools. The plans for a lottery have lead to local protests and splits in the Labour group on the council. Under the new scheme that narrowly won through, those in the new catchment areas for local schools will be able to go to the schools allotted to them, but where there are two schools in the catchment area and one school is oversubscribed children will enter a ballot to decide who gets the school of their choice. In Brighton and Hove most schools are on the edges of the city, a...

50% elected? 60%? 80%? About the only thing more ridiculous than the old House of Lords is the bizarre complication of the schemes to replace it. In fact there should be no Lords. No House of Lords at all. No second chamber. No trade union would have two executive committees, one to "vet" the other. No workforce would choose to have two shop stewards' committees, one elected, and the second, stacked with elderly or appointed worthies, to restrain the first. Second houses of parliament exist, historically, only as bulwarks against democracy - as guarantees to the ruling class that, even if the...

The new US commander in Iraq, David Petraeus, said on 8 March that "the solution in Iraq would have to be a political one". "Any student of history recognises that there is no military solution to a problem like that in Iraq," he said. "Military action is necessary to help improve security ... but it is not sufficient." In fact the only viable political solution is one shaped by an upsurge of the Iraqi labour movement, the strongest democratic, secular, and non-sectarian force in the country. That is not conceivably what Petraeus had in mind. Less than two weeks earlier, on 23 February, US...

In September 2006 the TUC resolved: “Congress calls upon the Government not to replace Trident.” A few weeks later, Labour Party conference met. The report to it from the National Policy Forum — a new body set up under Tony Blair’s remodelling of the Labour Party — stated: “The question of the replacement for the Trident system is one of central importance... there should be a full debate on the issue.” In a bizarre twist typical of the Blair-Brown Labour Party, this statement that there should be a full debate then became the pretext for denying a debate. Seventeen motions from constituency...

Click here to read the articles online; click on "read more" to download pages as pdf. posted in `march 14 Page 1: Support women, students and workers in Iran. Against the Islamic Republic! No to war! Page 2: Iran. Iraq. Egypt Page 3: Open letter to Tony Woodley: why don't you back John McDonnell? Page 4: Abolish the House of Lords. Northern Ireland. Police. Slave trade Page 5: NUS conference: linking the union to the everyday. Students against Sweatshops. Oaxaca Page 6: All immigration police now? (1) Page 7: All immigration police now? (2) Page 8: Fascism, futurism and flight. Debate...