Solidarity 338, 1 October 2014

Many children have an acute sense of injustice, will feel righteous anger when they don’t get a “fair go” at an activity or when their opinion is dismissed by an adult. A child’s sense of injustice is egocentric but reasonable and it’s probably essential if the individual is to develop a wider sense of injustice in the world. From as long as I can remember I had that wider view. The root of it is in my family history, and specifically my mother’s recollections of her childhood. My mother’s parents were both from well-off backgrounds. Her father’s family were North Yorkshire coal merchants, her...

On average workers' real wages fell 8.2% between 2008 and 2013. The median (middling) worker lost £2000 a year. But for many workers it has been much worse. For the 18-25 age range, the average drop was 14%; for 25- 29, it was 12%. Public sector wages have fallen by 15%. Overall price inflation over the last five years has been 19.0% (RPI); 16.4% (CPI). But the income required for a defined minimum living standard has risen, during the period of tiny or zero pay rises since 2008, by amounts ranging from 33% for a couple with an infant child through 28% for a single person to 17% or 18% for...

The current wave of protest has spread like wildfire from the Admiralty area, where the administration centre of the Hong Kong government is located, to Wanchai, Central and Causeway Bay areas on Hong Kong Island, and to Mongkok in the centre of Kowloon. In short, the major roads of HK's financial district and all key urban areas with the highest population density is occupied 24 hours around the clock by protestors. The escalation of protest was directly triggered by the police's use of teargas in the Admiralty area. From 6 pm to well past midnight yesterday, the police fired 87 rounds of...

Holding its conference in Doncaster, and cock-a-hoop about gaining another defecting Tory MP, UKIP says it is driving into "Labour heartlands". The sample delegates whom UKIP served up to journalists keen to get voices from the conference floor included union convenors and former longstanding Labour activists. Yet UKIP's brief speculation about starting a "luxury tax" was quickly quashed by party leader Nigel Farage. Tory chancellor George Osborne announced two plans, to allow better-off people with big pension pots to pass on the wealth untaxed after death, and to freeze benefits for the...

Several big unions will strike over public sector pay on 13-14-15 October, but as yet are discussing no follow-up. At present inter-union communication happens only between general secretaries, or not at all. There should be a joint meeting of the unions' elected executive committees to discuss further action. Widely-spaced national one day strikes, by themselves, will not win on pay. Unions should use creative tactics to maximise impact, maximise member involvement, and minimise impact on their members' pay. Selective and rolling action, financed from strike funds, can increase impact. On 27...

Solidarity 337 was right to pose a plan of consistent democracy in response to the Scottish referendum. This is far better than the wrong-headedness of much of the left’s “Cuba of the north” fantasies about Scottish independence. It is also the right riposte to the inconsistent and undemocratic response of the mainstream Westminster parties. Solidarity was, however, wrong in both its overall approach to the democratic demands raised and the detailed content. It is fair enough to outline what a new democratic settlement for the UK would look like, but it is also important to identify the agency...

In the mid 1990s, Paul Keating's Labor government in Australia decided to outsource work on defence bases to private contractors. This work was overseen by that great excuse for a conservative in hiding, the leader of the Victorian right wing of the Australian Labor Party, Senator Robert Ray. Formerly jobs which had a high degree of stability became insecure ones. Workers, nearly 4,000 of them, whose jobs were cleaning the toilets, the rooms, and the barracks of defence bases, serving up the meals and pouring the drinks in mess halls, mowing the grass, and doing the gardening, and those...

Democracy protests in Hong Kong are escalating, and the state has responded with severe police repression and brutality. The protests are against limitations on candidates for a 2017 election, by universal suffrage, for the next Hong Kong Chief Executive. All candidates will be vetted by a nominating committee composed largely of Beijing loyalists, making it impossible for genuine radicals and democrats to stand. Since 1997 when Hong Kong was returned to Chinese rule by Britain, the “one country, two systems” framework has allowed Hong Kong to have relative freedom for the press, courts and...

Tens of thousands of Syrian Kurdish refugees poured into Turkey at the end of September, fleeing an attack by ISIS on the city of Kobani. Kobani is one of Syria’s major Kurdish cities. It is close to the border, in an area which from 2012 until now has been controlled by Syrian-Kurdish forces. Al Jazeera reported a total of 138,000 refugees from Kobani up to 29 September. At least 105 villages around Kobani have already been captured by ISIS. The Iraqi Kurdish website Rudaw reports: “Large numbers of Islamic State (IS) militants withdrew from [the traditionally Yezidi] Shingal region [of Iraq]...