Solidarity 146, 12 February 2009

“No nation will put up with so barefaced an exploitation of the community by a small band of bonus-mongers”

“No nation will put up with so barefaced an exploitation of the community by a small band of dividend-mongers”, wrote Frederick Engels over a hundred years ago. He was explaining why he considered full state control of the capitalist economy theoretically plausible but practically unlikely. If “all the social functions of the capitalist are now performed by salaried employees”, then “the capitalist has no further social function than than of pocketing dividends, tearing off coupons, and gambling on the Stock Exchange”. Today the capitalist class has devised many other ways of siphoning off...

As we were saying — 1968: When London dockers struck work and marched for Tory racist Enoch Powell

The recent construction workers’ strikes began under the slogan “British Jobs For British Workers”. Though the events were not at all identical, the slogan brings echoes of the strikes in 1968 and 1972 around the admission to Britain of Asians holding British passports, first from Kenya and in 1972 from Uganda. The April 1968 the Labour government revoked the right of the Kenya Asians to come to Britain; in 1972, the Tory government let the Uganda Asians in. In both cases there was uproar in the working class against the incomers. In 1968 some of the most militant workers in Britain, London...

William Morris: Ecology and the shift to socialism

The sixth part of a series by Paul Hampton Sometime in 1882, William Morris decided he was no longer a radical and began to associate himself explicitly with socialism. He stated in How I Became A Socialist (16 June 1894) that by the summer of 1882 he was ready “to join any body who distinctly called themselves Socialists.” (Edward Thompson, William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary, 1976) In January 1883 Morris joined the Democratic Federation and began his agitation for socialism — a commitment that he would maintain to his death. He continued to be a dedicated conservationist. In his...

Ken Livingstone and Robert Kennedy

There is a Radio Four programme, Great Lives, in which prominent people nominate their “hero” and then discuss the hero with an “expert” — usually the hero’s biographer — with the one-time Tory MP Matthew Parris chairing the discussion. Last week Ken Livingstone — former Mayor and future Lord Red Ken — nominated his hero. Guess who? Livingstone once contributed an introduction to a hagiography of Gerry Healy, the “Trotskyist” who sold himself and the organisation he controlled, the Workers’ Revolutionary Party, to Arab governments. Here was a chance to bring the good sides and the good...

Sex and corruption

Review of "The Girl Who Played With Fire" by Stieg Larsson (2009) This a detective story set in Sweden. But please don’t let me put you off. This is not just another detective story set in Sweden. It is the second of Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium Trilogy” and like both of the so far UK-published volumes deals with some big themes. Here it is the sexual repression of Swedish public life. Is this the “liberal” Swedes we are talking about? Yep. The “girl” of the title is super-intelligent, serially abused, and thus chronically angry, computer hacker Lisbeth Salander. In this book, helped by her...

A man for all the oppressed

Review of "Milk" This is a biographical film based on the life of Harvey Milk, a 70s gay activist and the first openly gay man to be elected to office in California, as a member of the San Francisco board of supervisors. The opening credits of the film show archive footage of police raiding gay bars in the 50s and 60s. Harvey Milk (played by Sean Penn) is seen recording his will in the opening scene. He fears assassination in the run-up to a crucial point in the recognition of gay rights in America. The emotive theme of danger and persecution runs throughout the film, showing flashbacks to...

Defend Yahya Al-Faifi

Yahya Al-Faifi was persecuted for organising a trade union at BAE Systems in Saudi Arabia, a state where all serious oppositionists are rounded up, tortured, imprisoned and denied a fair trial. Very few people have dared organise trade unions in Saudi Arabia. Yahya Al-Faifi is an exceptionally courageous man. Yahya Al-Faifi was forced to flee to Britain in 2004 with some of his family. He settled in south Wales and continued his union work with the Communications Workers Union. He has continued to highlight the oppression trade unionists face in Saudi Arabia. He now faces deportation from the...

Trade unions and neoliberalism

The 2011 public sector pensions battle , taking place not that long after this article was published, was a huge missed opportunity to build up labour movement strength Elliott Robinson reviews Trade Unions in a Neoliberal World: British Trade Unions under New Labour , Gary Daniels and John McIlroy (eds), Routledge. (See pdf version of Solidarity 3/146 , p9, for the tables of figures referred to in this article.) -- “The trade union is not a predetermined institution, i.e. it takes on a definite historical form to the extent that the strength and will of the workers who are its members impress...

SEIU: global union or “brand name”? Smoke without fire

In May 2006, readers of Voice: AIGA Journal of Design were offered an unusual glimpse into current liberal-trade union thinking. The online publication for “the professional association for design” finds an audience largely among American commercial artists, art-directors, and “brand consultants,” an ambitious crowd unlikely to humble itself anywhere near a picket-line (except perhaps when crossing one). It is therefore revealing that contributing writer David Barringer’s “New U? Unions have an Image Problem” — the title itself a giveaway — should figure so inconspicuously as just another case...

As right gains, step up solidarity with Israeli left

As we go to press, both of Israel’s main centre-right parties — Likud and Kadimah — were claiming victory in the general election. Most exit polls gave 30 seats to Kadimah and 29 to Likud. Neither have enough seats to win outright, meaning the huge gains made by Avigdor Lieberman’s Israel Beiteinu party place this grotesque far-right formation in a position of enormous influence and power when it comes to forming a government. Ehud Barak’s Labour Party — right-wing social democrats on social issues and hawkish on the national question – have been relegated to fourth place. As placards on...

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