Solidarity 386, 2 December 2015

The media, the political establishment and probably some in the Labour right want a UKIP victory in the Oldham West by-election on Thursday 3 December in order to destabilise Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership and prove left-wing politics cannot be popular. There is a big campaign to boost UKIP and thus boost the possibility of it winning. Obviously, this campaign is not built on nothing. Socialists canvassing in Oldham confirm that right-wing and nationalist attitudes are widespread among former and current Labour voters. UKIP already had 20 per cent of the vote in May’s election, coming second...

Councils lost about a quarter of their funding during the 2010-15 Tory and Lib-Dem coalition government. Now they face the same order of attack again. Libraries, social care, and all community services beyond the minimum councils are legally compelled to do face futher chops. Either Labour finds a new approach, or Labour councils will be reduced even more to local administrators of the Tories’ demolition job on our communities. Discussions and debates in local Momentum meetings have showed majorities saying that Labour councillors should refuse to make cuts, defy the Tories’ plans, and help...

I marched with 500 women as part of Sisters Uncut’s ‘funeral march’ on 28 November. Wearing black and chanting, ‘they cut, we bleed’, we stopped traffic in central London and dyed Trafalgar Square’s fountains blood red. We commemorated the 32 domestic violence services closed by cuts between 2010 and 2014 and further closures in 2015, such as the Jagonari and the Eaves women’s centres. Most domestic violence services are funded by local authorities. George Osborne’s 25 November announcement of 56% cuts by central to local government will place even more services at risk of closure. Sisters...

Thanks to the Labour Party, tens or hundreds of thousands of families in Scotland would be worse off as a result of the Tories’ tax credit cuts. And the Labour Party’s campaign against those cuts was “disingenuous”. That was the line adopted by the SNP and its activists in response to the Tories’ plans — now abandoned — to slash the working tax credits introduced by the last Labour government! The SNP propaganda stunt was that the SNP had moved an amendment to the Scotland Bill under which power over tax credits would have been devolved to Holyrood. Because Labour voted against this they are...

On Wednesday 2 December (after we go to press) the House of Commons will vote on proposals to extend UK air strikes to Syria. As Jeremy Corbyn has given Labour MPs a free vote, Cameron is likely to have a majority for extending the bombing. The government says the renewed military campaign, now including UK, US, France, Turkey and the Gulf States, will be aimed at pushing back Daesh (Islamic State). But it is unlikely to make a decisive impact on Daesh’s position. It is more likely to perpetuate the current stalemate between all the military-political forces in Syria. That is, in fact, the...