Solidarity 166, 4 February 2010

Temporary and agency workers: defend and extend new rights

New legislation giving rights to Britain’s 1.8 million temporary workers should be in place by April this year, but will not be enforced until 2011. The Agency Workers Directive (AWD) gives new rights to agency staff after 12 weeks of employment. Rights include equal pay to permanent members of staff, holiday entitlement, childcare, transport facilities and further access to on-site facilities. The legislation, however, doesn’t cover further rights such as pension schemes, sick pay or notice of dismissal. Although the legislation is still seriously lacking in some areas, the labour movement...

Buckfast: Scotland's major problem?

Violence, religious conspiracy, boozy teenagers. The Buckfast Code certainly provided low-brow entertainment. Unfortunately, it also missed an opportunity to explore poverty in one of Europe’s most deprived “prosperous nations”. Buckfast remains relatively unknown to the majority of Britain, perhaps because 60% of sales are concentrated in Scotland. A low quality wine costing the same as the average supermarket red; at 15% it is also similar in alcohol volume. What separates it is the 281 micrograms of caffeine per bottle. That mixing alcohol with concentrated caffeine provokes aggression is...

Sex worker exhibition: what's shocking about this?

Created between 1983 and 1988, The Hoerengracht is a reproduction of Amsterdam’s red light district, a series of small buildings housing models of sex workers, framed by the familiar red neon lights. The viewer is invited to peer in through windows, taking on the role of voyeur. It’s a small installation, which takes maybe 15 minutes to get a reasonably detailed view of, and for an exhibition in a major gallery on the topic of sex work, it’s disappointing and devoid of content. Art does not, of course, have to be political; though any socialist feminist viewer may wish to see our politics of...

Only the Goddess and the UN...

These two recent films provide conflicting visions of the future. They are both set on mining outposts, a century or two in the future, but the conclusions of both films are rubbish. Neither film does what science fiction is supposed to do — tell a story of a possible future, whilst providing ideas that are relevant and useful to our current situation. Good science fiction is not utopian — it attempts to extrapolate current developments in human history and to speculate what might actually happen in the future. This may be through a metaphor, or through an alternate history that never occurred...

New Labour, inequality and class

Published February 2010 “Harriet Harman puts class at heart of election battle,” shouted the Guardian front page on 20 January, while the 21 January Telegraph proclaimed “Harriet Harman reopens class war with speech on inequality”. What prompted all this? Harman had given a speech to the left-Blairite pressure group Compass, in which she said: “Since 1997, we have stopped the trend of rising inequality and have made good progress on tackling inequality and improving people’s lives through focussed Government intervention. But we inherited a vast legacy of inequality which dated back to a...

Standing up for socialism in Camberwell and Peckham

Although in most constituencies, working-class socialists will vote for the Labour Party because of its structural and historic links to the trade unions, Workers’ Liberty’s election campaign in Camberwell and Peckham — where we are standing Jill Mountford — shows what might be possible at election time with a healthier left. The rotten core of nearly 15 years of New Labour government is exposed in the constituency, where people face abject poverty, lack of housing and poor services. Those lucky enough to have jobs frequently work in precarious industries for long hours and low wages. And all...

The left and the labour movement in the General Election

Faced with the prospect of a Tory government and little or no left-of-Labour presence at the polls, how should the working-class left respond to the general election and the cuts that will inevitably follow, whichever party wins? Solidarity spoke to a range of activists from across the left. We will continue the discussion in future issues. Where did it all go wrong? Dave Osler runs the Dave’s Part blog, and appeared in the Daily Telegraph’s 2007 list of the 100 most influential people on the left. Urban legend has it that George Best — by this point a rich but has-been alky rather than a...

Iran: "Huge struggles expected"

The “cold war” between the US and Iran took an icy turn on Monday 1 February when the US announced plans to station missile defences in states bordering Iran. So now Obama’s diplomatic “offensive” against Iran, ostensibly over the country’s uranium enrichment programme has ground to a halt. Just as those segments of Iran’s opposition movement that are more regime insiders were reportedly negotiating with the “hardliners”. Meanwhile the so-called “green” opposition of “moderate” Islamists continue to call for a mass demonstration on 11 February, the anniversary of the 1979 revolution. The...

Haitian workers call for solidarity

In the aftermath of the devastating earthquake that rocked Haiti, some sections of the British labour movement are stepping up to deliver the solidarity that Haiti’s workers and poor so desperately need. With aid being delivered predominantly by various US or UN military bodies, or by unaccountable NGOs, there is (as ever) no guarantee that aid can be delivered on the basis of need or without strings. For this and other reasons it’s vital for the left and the workers’ movement to organise direct material support and solidarity for our counterparts in Haiti who have experience in self...

Strikes promised to fight civil service cuts

Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) leader Mark Serwotka has promised a strike campaign in the run-up to the general election aimed at causing “the most disruption possible” to the government. PCS is balloting its entire membership on rolling action to oppose moves by the government to reduce civil servants' redundancy payments by up to a third. For some low-paid workers, this could mean losing out on up to £20,000, and the union argues that the move is the thin end of a wedge that will lead to massive job cuts. Interviewed in the Guardian , Serwotka said "We will maximise strike action...

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