Solidarity 145, 29 January 2009

All the capitalist pundits, from the Financial Times to the Council of Mortgage Lenders, now agree that Britain is facing a housing crisis. Mortgage approvals in December 2008 fell to less than a fifth of what they were 18 months ago. House repossessions almost doubled in the three months to September last year, according to the Financial Services Authority — a total of 13,161 homes repossessed in the third quarter of last year. The crisis in private sector-owner-ocuppied housing will be all the more severe because it comes on the top of the 20 years of sustandard housing and shortages which...

In December 2008, Shahida Sarker, president of the National Garment Workers Federation (NGWF) and Suma Sarker, NGWF activist, visited the UK on a tour for the No Sweat campaign. They spoke to Harry Glass. Can you explain about the NGWF – its history and organisation? Shahida: The National Garment Workers Federation (NGWF) was founded in 1984. It is made up of 31 garment factory-based trade unions in Bangladesh. It now has 22,655 members. Overall there are 4,500 garment factories in Bangladesh, with a workforce of around 2.8 million. There are 104 factory-based unions in total in the garment...

While many, perhaps most, Jews globally do feel some sense of identification with the Israeli-Jewish nation (its people, at least, if not the State of Israel itself), and while many Jews are understandably a great deal more sensitive to the threat posed by Hamas’s anti-semitic project than many on the British left, it is by no means the case that world Jewry is united in support for the colonialist adventures of the Israeli government in the Occupied Territories. The “Israel solidarity rallies” organised by the Board of Deputies of British Jews (the most significant and influential communalist...

On 28 January Israel launched its heaviest attack yet on Gaza since its official ceasefire, sending in bombers in retaliation for a Hamas attack on an Israeli army patrol. Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert said that the bombing, and an earlier ground incursion, would be followed by a heavier response. On 18 January Israel declared a unilateral ceasefire, just two days before Barack Obama was inaugurated as US president. Hamas rejected that ceasefire, but later the same day declared a unilateral ceasefire of its own, conditional on Israeli troops withdrawing from the territory within a week...

St Paul's Way school; Chemilines; Tube cleaners; Amicus-Unite election. TEACHERS: On a turn out of 88 percent, 81 percent of National Union of Teachers members at St Paul’s Way Community School in Tower Hamlets, East London, have voted for discontinuous strike action to defend their sacked rep Adrian Swain. Adrian, a trade union and revolutionary militant of many years and member of the Permanent Revolution group, was sacked for failing to comply with a new dress code by wearing trainers. Although this vote is purely indicative, it is a big boost to the campaign for his reinstatement...

Members of UCU, the lecturers’ union, are due to strike on 5 February in an ongoing dispute over pay harmonisation. Eleven FE colleges nationally, including three in London, will be affected initially. The 2004 ‘Modernising Pay’ agreement was supposed to lead to all FE colleges harmonising i.e. moving from their previous 14-point pay spine to an 8-point spine. The effect of the shorter spine is to make annual increments larger and to shorten the time to reach the top of the pay spine. This would mean a £4,500 a year increase for a lecturer at mid-point of scale. Good news for those whose...

Labour movement activists may have received the draft text of a “People’s Charter” for the crisis that is currently circulating. Click here for the "People's Charter" website; here for the "workers' plan" proposed by AWL; here for John McDonnell's Guardian article. The origins of this document are slightly mysterious. It was, according to the website of the rump-Stalinist Communist Party of Britain, launched by the CPB at the Tolpuddle festival in July; but the text being sent round is not on the CPB website. Since then, the Charter has been described as sponsored by the RMT and FBU. But there...