Solidarity 265, 21 November 2012

Solidarity has to do a lot of different jobs. It’s a tool for Workers’ Liberty members to communicate our politics to people around us, to discuss and debate ideas, strategies, history and theory. In the age of smartphones and social media, very few people get their news about big current affairs from Trotskyist papers, but Solidarity has an important role in publicising working-class struggles and views that receive not much attention elsewhere. Solidarity 263 (7 November) carried a front-page feature and centre-page spread about cleaners’ struggles. News about strikes and other actions by...

At first glance, who could oppose the Palestine Solidarity Campaign? The very name implies one of the most noble human aspirations — solidarity with a people. And in particular a people like the Palestinians, whose suffering is genuine. No doubt many people who join the PSC, attend its demonstrations, donate money to it or encourage their unions to back it are expressing their support for the idea of solidarity with the Palestinians. But there’s a difference — a huge one — between showing solidarity with the Palestinians and supporting the PSC. Despite the PSC’s best efforts to convince...

The BBC’s actual mistake over the North Wales child abuse scandal, and it was a colossal one, was that they didn’t look for enough evidence or even test the evidence they had. They didn’t show abuse victim Steve Messham a picture of Lord McAlpine and nor did they attempt to contact the alleged perpetrator for a response. They didn’t examine for a minute the likelihood of McAlpine being in the area at the time of the offences. Those facts, however, were not the most important things to emerge even from the “Newsnight” interview. The hyped-up fuss about poor old Lord McAlpine has taken attention...

The South African labour war spread to agriculture last week as farm workers struck against low wages and poor living conditions. Like the Marikana miners’ strike, the farm workers’ actions have met with severe state repression. A worker was shot dead on 14 November when police opened fire on a protest in Wolseley, 70 miles northeast of Cape Town. While the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) was quick to claim leadership of the strike wave, and attempt to moderate its demands, independent unions not affiliated to COSATU have been integral to the actions. These include Sikhula...

Greece’s government is trying to pass a law to bypass the need for parliament to approve each privatisation. The government is determined to proceed with the privatisation of all public utilities. It has already abolished the rule which obliges the state to maintain a minimum 51% share of the main public utilities. Yet all experience of the privatisations of public utilities and services shows that they harm both service users and workers. The only beneficiaries are the capitalists who make quick and safe profits out of human misery. Michael Sandel, the American professor who addressed Labour...

Earlier this month, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission ruled that Palestinian-Jordanian Islamist cleric Abu Qatada could not be deported to Jordan, because he might be tried there on the basis of evidence obtained under torture. The government and the tabloid press are wild with rage about this, and Home Secretary Theresa May has said she will fight the decision. Abu Qatada (real name Omar Othman) is a fascistic reactionary, and we have no brief at all for him. Nonetheless, we oppose his deportation to Jordan. If the government is able to deport political refugees to countries that use...

The Bob Carnegie Defence Campaign continues to gather trade union support in Britain. Mike Tucker, branch secretary of Southampton District Unison (which was involved in a two-year long labour war with Southampton’s Tory council) has pledged his support, as has Neil Sheehan, the Vice Chair of Unite United Left and former Unite Executive member. Lambeth Local Government branch of Unison also voted to support Bob’s campaign, and to investigate any links Lambeth Council has to construction contracts held by Lend Lease, the parent company of Abigroup (which is bringing the charges against Bob)...

The Labour Representation Committee (LRC) conference, 10 November, established an anti-cuts councillors network. A similar plan made last year did not materialise, but, with more councillors now pledging to vote against cuts, and more likely to come forward as the attack on local government budgets deepen, there is fresh determination to get the initiative off the ground. The conference saw a debate about what left Labour councillors should do. Two councillors argued that there was no option but to implement cuts, while doing the maximum possible to help the working class within that framework...

The real significance of the reported rigging of wholesale gas prices is probably different from what has been highlighted in media comment. In mid-November a whistleblower revealed that gas wholesale prices may have been rigged on 28 September 2011, the last day of the gas-trading year. Comment has centred on the possibility that this price-rigging may have increased households’ gas bills. The reported price-rigging was to put the gas price artificially lower, and in general it’s unlikely that such price-rigging would significantly increase household gas bills. Much more important for...

Workers at Wal-Mart stores across America are planning to strike on Friday 23 November – “Black Friday”, the biggest holiday-season shopping day, falling in the week preceding Thanksgiving and a month from Christmas. Wal-Mart workers, mainly organised in union-affiliated workers’ centres such as Making Change at Wal-Mart (which runs the “OUR Walmart” campaign), have waged a long-running campaign for rights at work which has already seen strikes and other direct actions at many stores. Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest retailer, has long been seen as one of the main foes of organised labour in...