Solidarity 110, 19 April 2007

By Pete Radcliff The local elections this year, in England at least, are likely to result in further major gains for the British National Party. The BNP claim to be standing 796 council candidates in areas removed from the main centres of socialist and trade union activity — outlying suburbs, commuter belt territory and areas where local industries have declined and trade union presence diminished. In Nottinghamshire for example, they are not standing in Nottingham, instead standing 21 candidates in borough elections in the “M1 corridor” between Nottingham and Derby. The BNP are clearly...

On 3 May, when voters in Scotland, Wales and some parts of England go to the polls to elect local councillors and regional assembly members, most will face a very limited choice. In many council seats, the only choice will be between Labour, the Tories and the Lib Dems; in only a handful will there be independent working-class or socialist candidates standing. Wherever there is a broadly working-class alternative, like the Scottish Socialist Party or in the small number of English council seats which will be contested by the Socialist Party, Solidarity advocates support for it. We stress the...

By Tom Unterrainer Unions of teachers, health workers, and civil service workers are all moving towards strikes to challenge Gordon Brown’s decree for pay cuts in the public sector. On 17 April, the conference of the Royal College of Nursing voted by 95% to take nationwide industrial action for the first time since the RCN was set up in 1916. The GMB union reported that its members in the health service had voted 74% to support strike action over pay, and 91% to support industrial action short of strikes. At the conference of the National Union of Teachers, over the Easter weekend, the union...

ON Monday 16 April a 23-year old South Korean student opened fire at Virginia Tech university, killing 33 and injuring at least 29. The latest in a string of shooting sprees going back as far as 1966, the massacre at Virginia Tech begs the question; why does this keep happening, and why particularly in the USA? The killer, Cho Seung-hui, was clearly mentally ill, but there are too many common trends in mass killings, particularly school shootings, for the phenomenon to be solely the product of a series of deranged individuals. Other factors — the class background of perpetrators, the easily...

What is the Sadr movement? Moqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi Army has enforced dress codes, closed shops selling alcohol, prevented the showing of western films, terrorised prostitutes, murdered gay people. In March 2004, complaining of “moral violations”, it invaded the gypsy township of Qawliyya and levelled it with bulldozers. In the slow civil war in Baghdad since February 2006, the Mahdi Army has been the main group forcing Sunnis out of one previously-mixed district after another. Sadr’s movement has the basic characteristics of clerical fascism. It has also maintained a more populist and Iraqi...

By a London Underground worker The RMT union has called off its scheduled strike action on Metronet, the London Underground maintenance company (or Infraco). This follows what appears to be a full capitulation by management. The union had demanded that the Infraco drop its plan to transfer the employment of 49 Duty Depot Managers to Bombardier, one of the component companies of the Metronet consortium. Metronet has agreed not to go ahead with the transfer. Moreover, the various sweeteners that Metronet used to try to lure RMT into accepting the DDMs’ transfer remain part of this new deal. We...