Solidarity 332, 28 July 2014

SYRIZA’s Central Committee meeting on 21-22 June was a turning point for the organisation. Although the meeting was to evaluate recent electoral results (local and European elections), the debate was primarily concerned about a new wave of radicalisation and the tactical and strategic steps that a government of the left would need. Especially one dialectically connected with a combatative working-class movement, with a “transitional” perspective on how to achieve general social liberation and socialism. SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras and other high profile members of the leadership team...

As the Commonwealth Games gets underway in Glasgow, various LGBTI rights groups have been raising awareness about the oppression of LGBTI people in the countries taking part. In 42 out of the 53 Commonwealth countries, same-sex relationships are a crime. In northern Nigeria, some states have the death penalty. The Commonwealth Charter does not mention LGBTI rights. Edwin Sesange, from the Out and Proud Diamond Group, writes in Gay Star News, 'This isn't about abstract “laws”. Legislation wrecks LGBTI people's lives, even leaving some of them dead. Millions of our [LGBTI] brothers and sisters...

Unison members employed by Glasgow Life, an “arms-length company” set up by Glasgow City Council, staged a series of protests last week to highlight their employer’s treatment of them as a second-class workforce. They should have been on strike. But Glasgow Life, aided and abetted by the Legal Department of the Labour-controlled City Council, had latched onto a technicality in the Unison strike ballot, and had threatened the union with legal action if notice of the strike was not withdrawn. At the core of the dispute is the demand for enhanced payments for the extra work generated by the...

On the 26 July London demonstration against Israel's assault on Gaza, I confronted a man who was carrying a placard which read “Research: The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion”, with an image of a Star of David, dripping blood, with “666” in the centre. The Protocols are an anti-Semitic forgery dating from Tsarist Russia, which purport to expose a Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world. They were used in their time, and have been used since, to whip up racist hatred, often violent, against Jews. I told the man that racism had no place on the demonstration, that his presence harmed the...

Public sector union Unison has confirmed it will ballot its 300,000 health sector members from 28 August to 18 September for strikes against the “1% or increment” offer from the employers (which Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt believes is already too high!). Unite, GMB, and the Royal College of Midwives have also announced they will ballot for strikes. If the ballots return a yes vote, they create the potential for a coordinated mass strike on 28 September (the date Unison has announced for its next local government strike, and in which the other public-sector unions which struck on 10 July could...

On 20 July workers at the Ritzy cinema in Brixton were on strike again as part of their Living Wage campaign. The strike had been timed to disrupt a live screening of the new Monty Python musical, the kind of screening that normally draws packed audiences and big profits. For the first time in the dispute, the bosses decided to try and keep the cinema running during industrial action, drafting in managers from elsewhere to fill in for strikers. A large, noisy crowd - perhaps fifty strikers and well over a hundred supporters - gathered at the entrances to cinema, waving flags, dancing to music...

In 2007 2.4 million Italians were living in a state of “absolute poverty”, a condition officially defined as "lacking the means to acquire the goods and services considered essential to a standard of living minimally necessary to subsist". Between 2007 and 2012 the figure doubled, underlining the collapse of the Italian economy, as the global financial crisis bit deeper. The latest report from Italy's national statistics office records further freefall last year. Meanwhile the country's new Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi blathers on about the imminent miracle round the corner when his still-to...

WAC-MAN, the Workers' Advice Centre, is an independent trade union centre organising both Israeli-Jewish and Arab workers, in both Israel and the Palestinian territories. Below is its statement on the current war on Gaza, reposted from its website here . The Independent Trade Union Centre WAC-MAAN, unionizing Arabs and Jews in Israel, calls on the Israeli government to stop the attack on Gaza. The only livable alternative is a political settlement based on a two-state solution. WAC MAAN calls on trade unions and peace supporters all over the world to initiate activities and pressure their...