Solidarity 287, 29 May 2013

One million council homes

It is time for Trotsky’s transitional programme list of demands and the key demand is the building of one million new council houses over four years. This demand was put forward by Owen Jones in The Independent recently. Building one million new council houses over four years answers the question which many workers ask about what a workers’ government would do. A council house building programme can be achieved under capitalism but raises a whole series of questions about how such a demand can be met. One answer is to use the £24 billion a year currently paid to private landlords via housing...

Confronting Stalinism

Martin Thomas is opposed to kicking the Stalinists out of the May Day march in London. “Much better,” he says, “to deal with the Stalinists politically, by mobilisation and argument ...”( Solidarity 286). He didn’t read my article, at least not until the end. I wrote: “We begin by debating and confronting the Stalinist Left, demolishing their arguments and educating their members and periphery. We fight them on their turf and we fight them seriously. This is a fight over historical memory, over truth, and it is a fight we must win in order to cleanse and revitalise the Left.” So we agree on...

"Anti-imperialism" no excuse to back Assad

The latest campaign by the Stop the War campaign, the remnant of the group which ten years ago organised big marches against the invasion of Iraq, is to prevent Western intervention in Syria. An attempt at a major public meeting on the issue, held in London on 21 May, attracted only 50 people. This was a meeting organised by leftists (Counterfire and Socialist Action) to oppose Western intervention in Syria at which no platform speaker was willing to criticise the disgusting Syrian regime. They say: “our duty is to build a movement against Western intervention.” But, even if such an initiative...

400ppm: climate barbarism or socialism!

Earlier this month at the Maura Loa Observatory in Hawaii the global carbon dioxide concentration briefly hit 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time. This is not any old threshold at any old observatory. Maura Loa has taken consistent readings since 1958, when the carbon dioxide concentration was 315ppm. That means it has increased by a quarter in half a century. In the early 1960s the annual increase was 0.7ppm. Now it is 2.1ppm per annum – three times as fast. The IPCC’s fourth report in 2007 estimated that the global atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide increased from a pre...

Fight to save ULU is on!

On Wednesday 22 May, around 100 students marched in the middle of exam term to protest at the decision of university management to abolish the University of London Union (ULU). The demonstration was loud and visible, and was boosted by the presence of a solidarity delegation from Sussex University, where activists are involved in a militant struggle against the outsourcing of 235 jobs. Outside Senate House, the marchers heard from speakers including ULU Vice President and Workers’ Liberty member, Daniel Cooper, ULU President Michael Chessum, the incoming ULU Women’s Office, Susuana Antubam...

Thousands refuse to pay "Bedroom Tax"

Less than two months into the operation of the “Bedroom Tax”, it appears that a very large proportion of social tenants hit by it are refusing to pay, often because they are simply unable. Inside Housing magazine reports on a number of Housing Associations and Councils with a massive rate of non-payment of the rent deficits which the bedroom tax aims to compel tenants to cover. The Riverside Housing Association in Liverpool has around half of its 6,193 affected tenants not paying. Wakefield Council say 42% of its 3,000 affected tenants has not. Two-thirds of the 7,350 tenants of Glasgow and...

Aulnay car workers win concessions by four-month strike

On 17 May, workers at the PSA Aulnay car factory near Paris ended a four-month strike over plans to close the factory. They did not stop the closure, but they won many concessions. Below is the editorial of the Aulnay bulletin of the French revolutionary-socialist group L'Etincelle for 21 May 2013. The end-of-strike agreement just signed does not mean the end of our struggle, quite the contrary. This was the first round. Many new developments may occur between now and 2014. By opposing managements' closure plan for four months, we have not only raised our heads, but led a determined strike...

Syriza's revolutionary left unites

Over recent months, three revolutionary-left groups within Syriza, DEA, Kokkino, and Apo, have formed an alliance under the name "Rproject". Rproject declares: "A 'government of the Left' which would bring the reversal of austerity, the memoranda, the Troika and debt, creating the conditions for the overthrow of neoliberal strategy across Europe, is a direct and realistic goal. However such a historical development depends on important conditions relating to the policies and organizational choices of the radical Left, in constant dialectical relation with the movement and society. "Rproject...

Bad precedent

The Victoria branch of the construction section of Australia's big CFMEU union has been found guilty of contempt of court after it failed to comply with “restraining orders” issued to prevent it blockading construction sites in Melbourne in August and September 2012. The sites (the Myer Emporium site and the Footscray site) were operated by construction company Grocon. CFMEU’s grievance related to issues of health and safety on the sites. Grocon now plans to sue the CFMEU for $10.5 million in damages for money it lost during the blockades to Myer Emporium, Footscray, and two other sites. The...

Questions after Newcastle anti-EDL march

On 25 May between 500 and 700 anti-racist activists, trade unionists, anarchists, and socialists marched against the English Defence League. (Police and local press report 300, organisers claimed 1,000 and, later, 2,000.) Between 1,000 and 1,500 EDL supporters marched in opposition to an Islamic faith school. (Police report 1,500, while the EDL claim 5,000-plus.) The EDL’s march was planned before the Woolwich murder, but the racist backlash being whipped up since then will have helped the EDL swell their numbers. The anti-racist counter-demo, how it was organised in advance, and the role of...

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