Solidarity 178, 29 July 2010

The opening session of Ideas for Freedom 2010 was “How do we fight the Tories’ plans for schools?”. The session was chaired by Gemma Short, a first year teacher and AWL member from Sheffield. The keynote contributions are below. Jean Lane, teaching assistant and UNISON activist in Tower Hamlets Turning schools judged as “outstanding” by Ofsted into Academies is going to take money out of the central Local Education Authorities that fund all schools in their area, put that into Academies, leaving the rest of the schools in that area impoverished. It’s going to mean a massive class divide in...

One hundred and eighty people attended Ideas for Freedom (IFF), the weekend of socialist discussion hosted by the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty on 9-11 July in London. In the context of a Tory government committed to a vicious offensive against working-class living standards, rights and organisation, the school was lively, combining sharp theoretical debate with preparation for class struggle in the stormy period ahead. IFF opened on the Friday night with a showing of Kala Tara, a film which tells the story of the Asian Youth Movement (AYM) — a radical, secular, left-influenced movement of...

A statement from the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts 1. We oppose the Lib Dem-Tory coalition government’s plans for a graduate tax. At the same time, this “exercise in rebranding” fees (as lecturers’ union UCU put it) is not the only or even the worst problem with Vince Cable’s plans, which amount to a massive extension of marketisation in our university system. We demand an end to all fees, free education and living grants for all students; we want higher education to be run as a public service, funded by taxing the rich and business. 2. The graduate tax is rebranding because the...

An hourly paid ESOL teacher at Hackney College reflects on an ongoing fight to save jobs. Earlier this year 68 members of staff at Hackney Community College were threatened with redundancy. After two successful, solid strike days, negotiation and many voluntary redundancies there are now only a handful of people facing compulsory redundancy. But I am one of four hourly paid workers in English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) fighting redundancy. Many staff at the college will not realise that we are still struggling for our jobs because the management has been on a propaganda offensive...

The two Southwark secondary schools that are not yet Academies are set to become guinea-pig Gove academies. Workers and parents need your help. Trade union organisers within one of these schools have been subject to unnecessary and draconian persecution for trying to build up a genuine response from staff to this crazily rushed and ill-considered legislation. They want to intimidate workers from speaking out against conversion to new-style Academy status. Staff should not be intimidated for opposing Gove, defending our jobs and fighting to maintain community-based comprehensive education. The...

Paul Holmes, Secretary Kirklees Unison, speaking at Ideas for Freedom: "What we’ve got at the moment is union activists who need inspiring. They’re worn down. Any public sector official will tell you it’s almost impossible to win grievances. The employer always has the upper hand. The mantra for the last six months has been to say that the crisis is so monumental as to justify any cuts. But there’s no need for any cuts — there’s £160 billion of unpaid taxes. Let’s increase the number of people working at the Inland Revenue to collect those taxes. But instead, HMRC has outsourced all its own...

A hundred workers, council tenants, parents, service-users and pensioners protested outside Lambeth council’s “Children and Young People’s Scrutiny Committee”, at very short notice, on 19 July. (Children and Young People’s Services are the sharp end of the Labour council’s cuts programme, set to lose £20 million over two years.) Lambeth council is pushing through cuts, privatisation and anti-working class measures independently of the Tory cuts, and was doing so long before the election.. Some of their measures do not even pretend to save money. All the workers (but none of the senior managers...

At its June meeting the TUC General Council decided to invite David Cameron to speak to the TUC Congress in September. The Cameron invitation was announced to the General Council by TUC secretary Brendan Barber, without prior notice to most Council members. Billy Hayes of the CWU and Paul Kenny of the GMB immediately supported Barber. Apparently so did PCS left-winger Janice Godrich. Matt Wrack of the Fire Brigades Union and Tony Burke of Unite objected, but the invitation went through. Bob Crow of the RMT (which is not represented on the General Council) threatened to lead a walkout if...

The Lib/Tory government plans to make many of its cuts by chopping finance for local councils. About 60% of councils’ income comes from central government (about 25% from council tax, and the other 15% from rents, fees, charges, etc.), and the government plans to force a freeze on council tax rates in April 2011 budgets. What will Labour councils do? Some have been chopping away for years, under New Labour government, and are moving fast for bigger cuts to accommodate the new central government policies. Neath Port Talbot council in South Wales, for example, has demanded big cuts in overtime...

Northants County UNISON called a meeting against the cuts on Thursday 22 July. This meeting was one of six such countywide meetings in response to a regrading exercise conducted by Northants County Council which has resulted in hundreds of low paid council workers being downgraded and facing significant pay cuts. Northants County Council have used the Single Status Agreement, which is supposed to raise the pay of mainly women workers who have been victims of pay discrimination, to actually slash the wages of low paid workers, many of whom are women. Unison are now looking at the legalities of...