Solidarity 477, 29 August 2018

Why revolutionaries organise

Why revolutionaries organise The working class has the potential to become a great power in society, but can make that potential a reality, even on the most limited scale, only by organisation. That fact follows from two facts about the working class in developed capitalist society. It is the basic productive class. It is simultaneously a wage-slave class. Its members are relegated to relative poverty, cultural and educational restrictions, insecurity, and exhausting work burdens of parcellised tasks. Individual workers, without collective organisation, are merely troops under capitalist...

How the BDS movement delegitimises Israel

In an interesting article in the Guardian (14 August) Nathan Thrall sets out the way in which many Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) activists now view the Israel-Palestinian conflict and how they pose a solution. “BDS has challenged the two-state consensus … by undermining [the] central premise: that the conflict can be resolved simply by ending Israel’s occupation of Gaza, East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank… “… transforming the Israel-Palestine debate from a negotiation over the end of the occupation and the division of territory into an argument about the conflict’s older...

Austrian government attacks migrants and Muslims

Q:How did the coalition government come about? Following the collapse of the coalition between the Social Democrats (SPÖ) and the People's Party (ÖVP) in May 2017, the People’s Party won the resulting election but were without a majority in parliament. They needed to go into coalition with the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ). For most of the Second Republic (Austria since the Second World War) there has been an informal understanding that the government should be a coalition between the SPÖ and the ÖVP as well as the Chamber of Labour and the Chamber of Economy; this move has challenged the...

What should Labour do about schools?

As in so many areas Labour's 2017 manifesto marked a welcome and significant sea change in the party’s direction and vocabulary on education. Gone was the talk of driving up standards by competition, increased observation and punishment of teachers who didn’t make the grade. Instead there were welcome commitments to establish a National Education Service (NES), ensure democratic control of schools, and restore funding cuts and genuine commitments to fund further education and Early Years provision better. However, the manifesto only appeared as radical as it did because of a context of defeats...

TGI Fridays workers strike again

Workers at TGI Fridays have struck again in a dispute over pay and tipping. Workers at Milton Keynes, Covent Garden, and Stratford City sites struck from 00.01 on Friday 23 August to 23.59 on Sunday 26 August. It was the fifth strike for workers from the Milton Keynes and Covent Garden sites, and the first for workers in Stratford. As previously reported in Solidarity, the strike started when TGI Fridays introduced a new tipping policy, at two days’ notice, which redirects 40% of tips received by waiting staff to kitchen staff. With low wages for kitchen staff causing a high turnover, TGI...

Worker activists meet to build solidarity

Activists from the Independent Workers’ union of Great Britain (IWGB), United Voices of the World (UVW), UCU, Unite, RMT, Bectu, and other unions and workers’ organisations came together for the “How To Win At Work” conference on Saturday 18 August, hosted by the left-wing think tank New Economics Foundation. The culmination of a project aimed at linking up the struggles of “precarious” workers such as cleaners, bar workers, restaurant workers, delivery couriers and others, the conference saw activists take part in workshops on the basics of workplace organising and planning workplace action...

Crucial week in DOO strikes

This week (27 August) could be a crucial in the ongoing dispute between the RMT and the South Western Railway, Northern and Merseyrail franchises. Talks under the auspices of ACAS have collapsed again at SWR, with the RMT calling further strikes on 2, 8 and 15 September and accusing the company of “making a mockery” of the talks. At Northern, previous talks collapsed and further strikes were called for 25 August and 1 and 8 September. New talks via ACAS were due to begin on Tuesday 28 August. The strike on 25 August showed no sign of a loss of resolve among the membership. At the time of...

Fleet workers strike again

Train maintenance workers at London Underground’s Ruislip depot struck again from 22-24 and 24-26 August in their dispute to demand pay parity with other grades of maintenance workers. The strike was planned in two waves to cover separate shifts, and maximise the impact on planned maintenance works over the period. A union statement said: “RMT is angry and frustrated that our efforts to reach a negotiated settlement to this dispute continue to be kicked back at every turn by London Underground and as a result we have had no choice but to escalate the action with these two 48-hour strikes...

Corbyn, anti-Zionism, and antisemitism

In video footage from a speech at a conference in 2013, Jeremy Corbyn accuses “Zionists” of failing to “understand English irony”, despite “having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives”, as well as of not “wanting to study history”. In context, it is clear his remarks refer to a specific group of Zionist activists, who tour meetings associated with the Palestine solidarity movement, often surreptitiously filming them and barracking speakers. It was undoubtedly not Corbyn’s intention for his remarks to refer to all Jews, or even, perhaps, all Zionists...

Morrison and Dutton: jackals of the ruling class

"The silent minority" - minority, yes, that's what he said - "are fed up with bodies like the Civil Liberties Council and the Refugee Action Collective, and certainly the dictatorship of the trade union movement". That was Peter Dutton in his maiden speech, who on 24 August forced Malcolm Turnbull to resign as Liberal Party leader. Dutton wanted rid of Malcolm Turnbull because Turnbull, though solidly right-wing on all the core economic issues, is a social liberal of the sort commonplace in most richer capitalist countries. In the final party room vote, Dutton failed to become the new Liberal...

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