Solidarity 260, 10 October 2012

Greek workers protest against Merkel and the Memorandum

As Solidarity goes to press on 9 October, a tsunami of people has gathered in Syntagma Square in Athens. Tens of thousands of workers, unemployed, pensioners, students, small shopkeepers, peasants, neighbourhood community movement activists are arriving. They have come to protest against the visit by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The demonstration is organised by the main union federations, GSEE and ADEDY, and supported by Syriza and other left-wing organisations. Another demonstration has been organised for the same day by the KKE (diehard-Stalinist Communist Party) and PAME. Greece’s...

Lessons of the Queensland Children's Hospital strike

Construction workers recently won an eight-week strike at the Queensland Children’s Hospital in Brisbane. There’s a greater spirit of militancy in the industry now than for some years. The current Enterprise Bargaining Agreement (EBA) campaign has been met with strong employer resistance [EBAs are the main form of collective agreement in Australian industry]. The renewal of some of the four-year agreements have been met with a much stronger resistance from employers than there ever has been in the history of the EBA system. At Laing O’Rourke, workers had a 21-day protected action [legal strike...

A new fund drive for the AWL

Looking at the explosive struggles in Greece and Spain, or mass strike victories like the Chicago teachers or Queensland Children’s Hospital construction workers, or at inspiring incipient labour movements like that of the Chinese workers, you could get gloomy about the relatively low levels of struggle in Britain and the lack of strategy from the capitulatory trade union leaders. But lulls never last. We are only living through a quiet period in very noisy times, and struggles on the scale of Greece and Spain — a scale not seen in Britain since the 1980s — will return again to this country...

SAlty but sectarian

While Martin Thomas ( Solidarity 259) spells out the benefits of the “propaganda routine” doggedly pursued by the Australian group Socialist Alternative (SAlt), I think he is too soft on its downside in SAlt’s case, e.g. their overall neglect until recently of working-class struggle in the unions etc. This tendency to cut themselves off as a self-sustaining sect (or cult at times), has always been my central critique of their activity (not just their political problems in terms of communal and democratic struggles, anti-imperialism, etc). Until recently, they have not been able to maintain...

Educational achievement

One recent Wednesday, a planned lesson in which my year 9 class would have been spotting the persuasive techniques in a past editorial of Solidarity had to be postponed when I was told at very short notice that I had to attend a meeting of a group called PiXL. PiXL is a so-called not-for-profit educational consultancy organisation based around its guru-type leader, Sir John Rowling, a former headteacher with links to the Emmanuel Schools Foundation, whose academies got into trouble a few years ago for teaching creationism in science lessons. PiXL is dedicated to helping the schools in its...

Sexual abuse and racism

The English Defence League (EDL) has declared its intention to march in Rotherham on Saturday 13 October. The march (few details of which are currently unavailable) is described as a response to the failings of police and social workers/child protection agencies in a series of cases of sexual abuse of young women in the area. The EDL are exploiting this to attack the Asian community. They claim that these incidents would have received greater attention if those accused had not been Asian and Muslim. Sexual abuse is not determined by what race you are, and affects all in an equally distressing...

International news in brief

Three thousand workers at a Foxconn plant in Zhengzhou, China, struck on Friday 5 October. Foxconn is an electronics manufacturer which produces Apple iPhones and iPods. The immediate catalyst for the strike was an increase in quality control inspections and increasing demands from management for higher-quality production without any additional training. Foxconn have also been forcing workers to work through holidays. WalMart strikes Workers in WalMart stores in California struck on 4 October, marking the first shop-floor strike in the company’s 50-year history. Grievances include unilateral...

Turkish state vs Kurdish workers

The first hearing of the case against 15 women trade unionists of the Turkish Confederation of Public Employees Unions (KESK) was held in Ankara on 4 October. Nine of the 15 have been in prison, awaiting a court hearing, for eight months. Thousands of people — many KESK members — came from around Turkey to protest outside the court and show their support for the women trade-unionists. TKESK chairman Lami Özgen made a speech emphasising the hardships of being a woman, a Kurd and member of a fighting union like KESK in Turkey. Many representatives came from abroad to show their support and...

Victims of British torture win right to seek damages

The High Court has ruled that Kenyans tortured by the British empire in the 1950's can seek damages from the British government. During and after the Mau Mau uprising which began in 1952, the British empire interned, tortured and murdered many tens of thousands of activists fighting for Kenyan independence. Rape, maiming including castration, and severe beatings were common; in some cases prisoners were simply beaten to death. There is now so much evidence of what happened that the Coalition government is in no position to deny it. Instead, it argued that since the Kenyan government is the...

Iran currency crash sparks protests

Further sanctions imposed by US imperialism and its allies on Iran in December 2011 and July 2012 have aggravated the economic and social problems faced by workers and other exploited layers. After July’s “chicken crisis” the plummeting currency is now set to cause many other crises as the regime struggles to provide working families with imported food products and many other basic necessities at prices that they can afford. The sanctions are not the only cause of the plunging currency and the worsening situation in Iranian society. They are merely exacerbating deep-rooted structural problems...

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