Solidarity 326, 4 June 2014

The number of tenants being evicted has reached its highest level for over a decade. According to the Ministry of Justice, between January and March this year, landlords made 47,220 court claims to repossess property — and average of over 500 repossession claims a day. The rise in evictions comes from welfare cuts, housing shortages and stagnant wages. The Bedroom Tax, which docks housing benefit for those with a spare bedroom is also responsible. Some Labour councils have attempted to soften its impact by implementing it leniently, or promising to circumvent it. Nonetheless, many people who...

In a document made available in November last year, Michael Gove set out his policy towards the new English Literature GCSE, an exam he intends to be taught from September 2015. This is what the policy document says: This document sets out the full range of content for GCSE specifications in English literature. Awarding organisations may, however, use any flexibility to increase depth, breadth or context within the specified topics or to consolidate teaching of the subject content. In addition to the content in the “Detailed study”, the examination must include questions on texts that students...

On 22 May, Thailand’s military declared martial law. On 24 May, they took power in a coup. They have suspended the constitution, banned demonstrations and detained politicians including Yingluck Shinawatra who, until very recently, was prime minister. The head of the military, General Prayuth Chan-ocha, has appointed himself the new prime minister. The coup follows a court ruling early this month removing Shinawatra from her position as prime minister on the grounds that she had acted illegally by moving her national security chief to another position. For many months now Thailand’s two main...

According to the Financial Times (1 June), reporting on upcoming meetings between Barack Obama and David Cameron and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, "US officials acknowledge that one of the crucial next steps is for Ukraine to devise a more decentralised constitution that satisfies some of Russia’s concerns. That will ultimately involve coming to some sort of agreement with Moscow about Ukraine’s future..." The Russian minority in Ukraine should have minority rights. That may well mean increased autonomy for the areas in eastern Ukraine where the Russian minority is large. The hitch is that...

Although Boko Haram’s terror campaign hit the world headlines with its kidnapping of school girls, this group’s hatred of education is not new. Earlier this year, they attacked a boy’s school killing the children in their beds and burning down the school. What conditions have given rise to the Islamist group? Boko Haram are based in the northern Nigerian states of Borno, Adamawa, Kaduna, Bauchi, Yobe and Kano. They want to end all secular education, and their name roughly translates as “Western education is forbidden”. They also want to impose a stricter sharia law on the people of Nigeria. A...

Jimmy’s Hall is in many ways the sequel of director Ken Loach’s (and screen writer Paul Laverty’s) 2006 film The Wind That Shakes the Barley. In the previous film Loach depicted the Irish War of Independence (1919-21), siding with the losing republicans in the subsequent civil war (1922-1923). It was a compelling film, although Loach was criticised in this paper for oversimplifying the politics of the situation and finding no way of marrying large scale politics to a more intimate human story. Jimmy’s Hall shares its predecessor strengths and weaknesses. The film, based on real people and...

The slogan “First-time victory for the Left!”, chanted on the evening of 25 May, denoted a genuinely unprecedented event: for the first time in 180 years of the existence of the Greek state, a leftist party had come out first in nation-wide elections. In the Euro-election, Syriza got 26.6%, and the ruling conservative New Democracy party 22.8%. The results create a new post-election political landscape. In fact the election results represents a major policy reversal of quality, substance and political orientation, which overcomes the numerical rates. Now the call for a united front of the...

The European elections in Ireland saw Sinn Fein top the poll in Northern Ireland and pick up three seats in the Republic. In the North, it is cementing its position as the leading party in the nationalist community, putting yet more distance between itself and the beleaguered SDLP which continued its downward trend in the polls. The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) also dipped below its 2009 European and 2011 Assembly totals, leaving the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) as the largest unionist party, despite a strong showing for the hard-line Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV). In the Republic of...

Bit by bit, while the majority of the working class, both the young and the old people among the traditional “people of the left”, increasingly refuse to vote, the FN has made inroads among new layers of workers and the worse-off. In the first place it gains from the crisis of the UMP [the mainstream right-wing party]. The FN’s political machine is the heir of the [World War 2] collaborators and the OAS [far-right terrorists who resisted Algerian independence], but labelling its actual or potential voters “fascists “ or “Nazis”,or “dickheads” just helps the FN. The current strategy of Marine...

Hard-right and far-right parties surged forward in several countries in May’s Euro-elections. France’s Front National, which has a clear fascist lineage; Britain’s “zombie-Thatcherite” anti-immigrant Ukip; and the Ukip-like Danish People’s Party, all topped the polls in their countries. That does not mean that things are hopeless for those who value democracy, equality, and liberty. It is a loud alarm call for the left. Since the 2004 Euro-election, the last one before the world economic crisis broke in 2008, the parties of mainstream neo-liberal orthodoxy have sunk from 75.6% of the vote...