Solidarity 143, 4 December 2008

The rail union RMT has called a workers' representation conference for 10 January 2009 at Friends House on Euston Road, London (11:00-15:00 - leaflet attached). There rumours that the PCS civil service union may also sponsor the conference. Matt Wrack, general secretary of the firefighters' union FBU, has told Solidarity that he will be asking RMT to approach FBU to co-sponsor the conference. But in any case it is an important initiative, one originating from a motion originating from AWL which got passed at the RMT's Annual General Meeting this year. Though confidence on the issue is not yet...

Alistair Darling is seeking £5 billion spending cuts in the public sector, and he seems to have the National Health Service in sight to provide the majority of these cuts. Despite saying that the bail out of the banks would not be at the cost of public services, Darling is pressing ahead with a programme of “cost savings”. That means the NHS must prepare for a substantial cut in planned funding from 2010. It means cost-cutting in clinical areas, cheaper procedures, and that will mean cutting back on the safety of patients by cutting corners. It will also mean cuts in staffing as the quickest...

New Labour Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell is redoubling his efforts to be crowned most vicious bastard in Parliament by unveiling new plans to force single parents into work once their child reaches the age of one. In the context of other New Labour welfare policies, the move reaffirms the government’s utter contempt for some of the most vulnerable and exploited people in British society. Last year, the government “reformed” incapacity benefit along similar lines to tie it much more closely to claimants’ ability (or “readiness”) to work. A government report from economist Professor...

Economists, and the governments advised by them, are pulling all they can out of the books and research papers in order to tame the current economic crisis. What have they learned, and what are its limits? This version of the article is longer than the one in the printed paper. Bail-outs, nationalisations The most spectacular bit of recent crisis policies, the huge nationalisations and bail-outs of banks and other financial firms, is the least new, and the one owing least to economic theory. It goes back to the lessons from the collapse of Overend and Gurney's bank, in 1866. The collapse...

The deal with the USA approved by the Iraqi parliament at the end of November is entitled "Agreement On the Withdrawal of United States Forces from Iraq". And that is what it is - though it cannot be relied on, and there are a dozen reasons why it may go wrong. It is a big shift. Back in June the USA, in negotiations with the Baghdad government, was demanding : - Complete freedom of movement in Iraq for the US military; - Powers to launch military operations without seeking Iraqi government permission; - Control over Iraqi air space; - Authority to arrest and detain Iraqis without reference to...

Over 100 UNISON activists attended a day conference in Birmingham on “What's going wrong in UNSON?” yesterday. Workers Liberty supporters went to the conference in the hope that it would see the launch of a campaign to change root and branch the current structures of the union and attempt to engage with the broader questions of going beyond the exiting left. Unfortunately that did not happen. Positively there were representatives of most of the left including both the SP and SWP who in recent years have been reluctant to work together inside the union. The ongoing series of witchunts against...