Solidarity 111, 3 May 2007

World Flowers imports cut flowers from around the world, Spain, Morocco, especially Kenya. The company has a annual turnover of over £100 million, delivering 1.5 billion flowers a year, trading with Tesco, Sainsbury and Waitrose. This fast-growing company recently switched to employing migrant workers. Is this — or rather paying minimum wages to workers vulnerable to exploitation — the secret of their success? The company is based near Southampton, one of many other companies in the area who employ migrant workers. There are estimated to be 30,000 Polish people in Southampton. World Flowers is...

Paul Mason, author of Live working or die Fighting (Harvill Secker), spoke to Mark Osborn Question: What are you aiming to do with this book? PM: I’m trying to bring some of the great scenes of labour movement history to a new generation of readers. The readers I have in mind are not activists, are highly individualistic, have no party line or much knowledge of real history. What I’ve attempted to do is to produce a book in a way that parallels my journalism: telling the story through the stories of individuals. It brings the history to life. In the course of writing the book I found much...

By Sofie Buckland In 2003, the Republican-controlled Congress voted to outlaw “partial-birth abortion”, an entirely made-up anti-choice term for the dilation and extraction (D&X) abortion procedure. At the end of April the Supreme Court voted five to four to uphold the ban; it is the first time the Court has made a decision which intervenes into a doctor’s choice of abortion procedure, a decision which is not just about the general legality of abortion. Dilation and extraction was previously only used after 12 weeks of pregnancy and only then for medical reason. Just 0.17% of abortions in the...

By Cathy Nugent The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) voted 66 to 54 at its recent annual delegate meeting for a motion brought by the South Yorkshire branch which says, among other things, that the union should call “for a boycott of Israeli goods similar to those boycotts in the struggles against apartheid South Africa led by trade unions, and the TUC to demand sanctions be imposed on Israel by the British government and the United Nations.” The decision has been lambasted (by anti-boycott journalists) in the press. The forum page of the website Engage, (which campaigned to overturn a...

Bruce Robinson ‘Coming to terms with nature’, the 2007 edition of Socialist Register (Merlin, £14.95). Global warming, escalating waste and issues of scarce resources have brought home to socialists the need to “come to terms with nature.” The environmental crisis has posed both theoretical and practical political challenges for Marxists. The editors of the Socialist Register, Leo Panitch and Colin Leys, write that “the absence of a strong eco-socialist left is reflected in a lack of coherence in eco-socialist theory... the speed of development of globalised capitalism, epitomised by the...

Tim Row reviews the Artic Monkeys’ second album The Arctic Monkeys’ massive-selling first album Whatever People Say I Am, I’m Not established them as the biggest new thing since Oasis. Unlike Oasis, the Monkeys seemed to have a lot more about them than ripped off Beatles riffs, clichéd lyrics and cocaine habits. The album achieved the clever trick of combining smart language, witty observations and social commentary without ever being pretentious. Much of the music had a bluesy feel and the lead singer’s distinctive Sheffield accent gave the music an extra raw, almost folky edge. They was a...

Caroline Henry reviews This is England This is England is a semi-autobiographical account of growing up in Thatcher’s Britain from Nottingham based director Shane Meadows (Dead Man’s Shoes, Once Upon a Time in the Midlands). Meadows draws on his own experience of joining a skinhead gang to show the tension between the influence of the fascist National Front (a forerunner of the BNP) and the skinhead movement’s roots in the rude boy culture of the West Indies. The film’s main character, Shaun, is twelve years old, bullied at school and something of a loner. It’s the summer of 1983 and he has...

We continue our series about socialist novels. Steve Cohen introduces May Day, by John Sommerfield, published in 1936 The Communist Party in this country throughout most of its history had proportionately far greater political influence than members, and this influence was mainly felt in the trade unions, anti-colonial movement and culture. The emphasis the Party put on developing the cultural sphere was quite unlike anything today — when indeed the conceit of the Socialist Workers Party in calling itself a “Party” is shown by its complete lack of cultural output. The image we hold today of...

I have been reading your paper for the last six months and I have been finding it interesting especially the feminist section which is very good as I am able to relate to the articles as they are addressing real feminist issues. However, I feel that although the paper appeals to me, I find it is hard to read. As a dyslexic person, it is an extremely academic and a complex read. I went to university as a mature student and discovered that I was dyslexic and struggled with the academic and elitist language and the attitudes of some tutors. I find it frequently frustrating that organisations such...

The next G8 meeting takes place in Heilgendamm on 6-8 June and hosted by German chancellor Angela Merkel. What will be discussed? Investment, innovation and sustainability: The G8 will push on with free trade. The summit will also discuss protectionism, and the “free movement of investment and capital”. No doubt the G8 governments will carry on protecting their own economies while expecting everyone else to open theirs to multinational capital. Merkel met Tony Blair in February and afterwards announced that climate change would be the top item on the agenda of both her G8 and European Union...