So& Wloirkdersa’ Lirbeirtty y No 260 10 October 2012 30p/80p www.workersliberty.org For a workers’ government

Iran: sanctions Lessons from Eric bite Chicago and QCH Hobsbawm page 3 pages 6-7 page 9 George Osborne says we can’ t balance the budget on the wallets of the rich. see page YES, WE CAN! 5 2 NEWS What is the Alliance for Make Labour act on its NHS policy! Workers’ Liberty? Pat Smith, the Hull North “Winning Labour” (organ - when I denounced PFI. Today one class, the working class, lives by selling its labour power to Constituency Labour Party ised by the GMB). Even in that bureaucratised another, the capitalist class, which owns the means of delegate who moved the I heard the Vice President environment people are production. Society is shaped by the capitalists’ NHS motion at Labour relentless drive to increase their wealth. Capitalism of ASLEF, Tosh McDonald, looking for a lead. It’s not causes poverty, unemployment, the blighting of lives Party conference, spoke to say something like “Why, just about radical policies, by overwork, imperialism, the destruction of the Solidarity . when young people speak but about cutting through environment and much else. What’s your assessment at Labour Party conference, the bullshit of the policy Against the accumulated wealth and power of the of the debate on the are they always wearing a wonks to put forward so - capitalists, the working class has one weapon: solidarity. NHS? suit? Why are they always cialist ideas in clear, acces - The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty aims to build solidarity through standing as an MP some - sible language. But there’s struggle so that the working class can overthrow capitalism. We want The presence of protest - said that the next election where? Where are the relatively little of that from socialist revolution: collective ownership of industry and services, ers on the NHS Liaison would be “fought on the rebels: the kids from estates either the unions or the or - workers’ control and a democracy much fuller than the present system, Committee lobby was very economy, not the NHS”, with piercings, tattoos, and ganised left. with elected representatives recallable at any time and an end to effective, and must have and that “PFI is good be - coloured hair?” I think the lobby was a bureaucrats’ and managers’ privileges. been a factor in a majority cause it builds hospitals”. That sums it up for me. good example of what the We fight for the labour movement to break with “social partnership” of delegates prioritising the Three days later Burnham In general the left isn’t left should do a lot more of. and assert working-class interests militantly against the bosses. NHS for discussion. It also Our priority is to work in the workplaces and trade unions, said in a speech, that PFI is very effective in Labour What can we do to fight put pressure on the party “wrong” and that the next Party structures. Why? for the NHS motion, and supporting workers’ struggles, producing workplace bulletins, helping officials and right-wingers organise rank-and-file groups. election will be a referen - other left-wing policy, to who tried to water down dum on the NHS! The left is timid when it be implemented? We are also active among students and in many campaigns and the motion in compositing. comes to fighting the centre alliances. I think they didn’t want a We got everything we fight which would draw and right of the party. But a According to Labour We stand for: wanted apart from text more attention to the issue. fight is what people re - rules, the NHS policy against the internal market. spond to. When I was ag - should be in the next mani - G Independent working-class representation in politics. What was your general G A workers’ government, based on and accountable to the labour I think the leadership re - gressive in the composite, I festo [since it was passed alised they couldn’t bully assessment of confer - was afraid it would alien - by more than two thirds], movement. ence? G A workers’ charter of trade union rights — to organise, to strike, to or stonewall us completely, ate people. In fact, the other but we know it won’t be picket effectively, and to take solidarity action. given the balance of forces Much of the conference delegates unanimously unless we build pressure G Taxation of the rich to fund decent public services, homes, education and also what a sensitive was neither here nor there. suggested me to propose using every channel we can and jobs for all. issue the NHS is. Some of the fringe meet - the motion, so I think it in our unions, CLPs and G A workers’ movement that fights all forms of oppression. Full equality During the composite, ings were useful, particu - paid off. the broader labour move - for women and social provision to free women from the burden of party official Jamie Reed larly, the CLPD, LRC, and Conference erupted ment. housework. Free abortion on request. Full equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Black and white workers’ unity against racism. G Open borders. Tories’ new anti-choice offensive Unions’ anti- G Global solidarity against global capital — workers everywhere have more in common with each other than with their capitalist or Stalinist By Rosalind Robson organised religious bigots cuts stand rulers. and other anti-abortionists. By Padraig O’Brien G Democracy at every level of society, from the smallest workplace or The new Health Secretary Anti-abortion alliances community to global social organisation. Jeremy Hunt thinks the like 40 Days for Life are The three trade unions G Working-class solidarity in international politics: equal rights for all legal time limit on abor - now stepping up their so- nations, against imperialists and predators big and small. at Glasgow City Council tion should be halved to called vigils outside abor - have written to council - G Maximum left unity in action, and openness in debate. 12 weeks. tion clinics where they If you agree with us, please take some copies of Solidarity to sell — lors demanding that G intimidate women seeking and join us! Maria Miller, the so- they refuse to make any counselling and treatment. called Women’s Minister, further cuts and set a We cannot let them get thinks it should be 20 plans to change the law on “needs budget”. away with it. Contact us: weeks. Any more for any - abortion. Probably he does Defend a woman’s right not want to fight another to choose! Unions are also de - G 020 7394 8923 G [email protected] more? manding the council re - For Tory politicians to battle with the Lib-Dems, The editor (Cathy Nugent), 20e Tower Workshops, Riley or the medical establish - claim money cut from Road, London, SE1 3DG. pitch their own personal Protest against “40 Days previous budget settle - preferences for time limits ment, or even people in his for Life” G Printed by Trinity Mirror own party who favour the ments. like this is vile. They do it Unison branch secre - without reference to scien - status quo. But that is no Monday 15 October, 7pm, reason for complacency. tary Brian Smith said: tific or political argument, St James’s Church, 22 “Over 2,500 jobs have al - and without any under - The effect of Tory musing George Street, London, on abortion time limits may ready been cut since Get Solidarity every week! standing about what it is W1U 3QY 2010 ... more than 10% of like to face an unwanted be to soften up public opin - G Trial sub, 6 issues £5  ion. It may also help justify the workforce. pregnancy. Organised by Bloomsbury “Elected members have G 22 issues (six months). £18 waged  Cameron was quick to cuts in abortion services. Pro-Choice Alliance And it gives succour to the a choice — make the cuts £9 unwaged  say the government had no or demand an end to the G 44 issues (year). £35 waged  slash and burn austerity £17 unwaged policies of the ConDems  Niche or abcess? and fight for a return of G European rate: 28 euros (22 issues)  the tens of millions stolen or 50 euros (44 issues)  By Gerry Bates to redundancy pay, your CBI, said: “this is a niche from Glasgow in the last Tick as appropriate above and send your money to: right to ask for flexible idea”. Lawyer Anthony fewUnyieoanrs.”around the Throwing a sop to the hours or time off for train - Sakrouge pointed out: country should follow 20e Tower Workshops, Riley Road, London, SE1 3DG Tory right, chancellor ing, and some of your ma - “Giving up the right not to the Glasgow unions’ George Osborne has Cheques (£) to “AWL”. ternity-leave rights. be unfairly dismissed for lead and demand that said (8 October) that he Or make £ and euro payments at workersliberty.org/sub. Paul Kenny, GMB gen - £2,000 worth of shares will councillors — espe - will legislate to let eral secretary, said: “Slash - not be a very attractive cially Labour council - bosses "buy out" work - Name ...... ing people’s employment prTophoesliatiboonu...r” movement lors supported and ers' rights. rights under the guise of must make sure that a funded by unions — act ownership schemes won’t Address ...... By giving you £2000 in “niche” does not become in the interests of local create jobs and it won’t shares in the company, an abcess, poisoning workers and communi - create growth”...... your boss will be able to workers’ rights through - ties, not in the interests Even bosses were scepti - cancel your right to sue for out industry. of the Tories’ austerity I enclose £ ...... cal. John Cridland, director unfair dismissal, your right agenda. of the bosses' federation 3 INTERNATIONAL

Iran: currency crash sparks protests In brief iPhone mass strike By Morad Shirin Although Ahmadinejad media to rough up Ah - Three thousand workers at is barred from running, he madinejad and for the judi - a Foxconn plant in Further sanctions im - is trying to help someone ciary to arrest his allies. Zhengzhou, China, struck on posed by US imperialism from his faction get elected. During a TV interview on 4 Friday 5 October. Foxconn is and its allies on Iran in His faction, however, has September Ahmadinejad an electronics manufacturer December 2011 and July fallen out of favour with was asked what his gov - which produces Apple 2012 have aggravated the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ernment had done with iPhones and iPods. economic and social the “Supreme Leader of the $700 billion of oil revenue The immediate catalyst problems faced by work - Islamic Revolution”, who is during his seven years as for the strike was an ers and other exploited promoting other conserva - President. This amount has increase in quality control layers. tives. been widely publicised to inspections and increasing In April 2011 the regime’s be equal to Iran’s total rev - After July’s “chicken cri - demands from management faction fights burst into the enue since the first wells sis” the plummeting cur - for higher-quality public domain when Ah - began pumping oil! rency is now set to cause production without any madinejad sacked the Intel - The regime’s “parlia - many other crises as the additional training. Foxconn ligence Minister, Heydar ment”, dominated by con - regime struggles to provide have also been forcing Moslehi, and Khamenei servatives opposed to working families with im - workers to work through forced the “President” to Ahmadinejad, has now ported food products and holidays. protests (3 October) at they have taken to the reinstate him! voted to consider suspend - many other basic necessi - Tehran’s Grand Bazaar — streets in protests targetting ing plans for the second ties at prices that they can one of the traditional bas - Ahmadinejad and his al - ALLIES phase of food and fuel sub - afford. tions of the regime — has lies. Although the regime Since then many allies of sidy cuts. This is a clear The sanctions are not the been the massive fall in the sent in the riot police and Ahmadinejad have been blow against Ahmadine - only cause of the plunging currency. The rial lost 40 arrested many “specula - accused of or tried for jad’s faction which intro - currency and the worsen - percent of its value in a tors” and other protesters, corruption and other duced the first phase of ing situation in Iranian so - week! this can be seen as yet an - abuses of power. subsidy cuts in late 2010. ciety. They are merely On 1 October alone the other move against Ah - While the various fac - exacerbating deep-rooted The latest is Ali-Akbar Ja - regime’s currency fell by 18 madinejad and his tions of the Iranian bour - structural problems of vanfekr, the head of IRNA percent! conservative faction. geoisie are slugging it out, Iran’s stunted capitalism (the state news agency), The rial now stands at a Following the crushing the workers and their fami - dating back to the Shah’s who is also Ahmadinejad's record low against the US defeat of the “reformists” lies are getting closer to the regime. But the current dic - press adviser and unofficial dollar and, despite the offi - in 2009, the infighting of brink of starvation. tatorship has taken en - cial rate of 12,260, it has the regime has been be - spokesman. Only a resurgence in demic corruption, been exchanged for around tween two conservative Javanfekr has been jailed workers’ struggles can WalMart strikes mismanagement, nepotism 36,100 to the dollar on the factions. The battle has for six months for “insult - stop hunger and re-build Workers in WalMart stores and incompetence to a new “free market”. been building up in antici - ing Islamic and traditional the workers’ movement in California struck on 4 level. The rial’s fall has cut the pation of the June 2013 values”! for the bigger fights October, marking the first The trigger for the latest merchants’ profit rates and presidential “election”. Khamenei seems to have ahead. shop-floor strike in the given the green light to the company’s 50-year history. Grievances include unilateral shift changes and Turkish state vs. Kurdish workers management victimisation Victims of British of workers who complain about workplace conditions. By Turkish socialists Strikers attended a torture win right to conference organised by the in UID-DER UNI global union to launch the WalMart Global Union seek damages The first hearing of the Alliance. The store strikes case against 15 women follow strikes by WalMart trade-unionists of the warehouse and distribution By Sacha Ismail longer responsible. The Turkish Confederation of workers in September. government is appealing Public Employees Unions The High Court has ruled against the High Court rul - (KESK) was held in Taranto clean up that Kenyans tortured by ing. Ankara on 4 October. unionists have faced police the attack is aimed at re - On 25 September 4,000 the British empire in the In the 1950s and 60s, the Nine of the 15 have been repression and harassment pressing Kurdish people’s workers of the IlVA 1950s can seek damages UK combined a gradual in prison, awaiting a after a police operation democratic demands. steelworks in the Italian city from the British govern - and targeted withdrawal court hearing, for eight under the name of “KCK KESK members and offi - of Taranto struck against a ment. from most of its colonies months. operation” started. Koma cials are accused of “terror - court decision to close the with severe repression in Civakên Kurdistan (KCK) ism”. But the AKP During and after the Mau Thousands of people — plant due to dangerous those it maintained. The is the new umbrella organi - government also wants de - Mau uprising which began many KESK members — levels of pollution. ruling that Kenyan sur - sation of the Kurdish na - sire to crush the trade- in 1952, the British empire came from around Turkey For years the plants’s vivors can sue for damages tional liberation movement. union movement and social interned, tortured and mur - to protest outside the court present owners — the Riva is likely to spark many Since then hundreds of opposition. dered many tens of thou - and show their support for family dynasty — have other similar cases from KESK members and offi - The current detainees sands of activists fighting the women trade-unionists. avoided their legal duty to around the globe – and a cials have been taken into were questioned about for Kenyan independence. TKESK chairman Lami clean up the technologically good thing too. detention and 76 of them their involvement in Inter - Rape, maiming including Özgen made a speech em - decrepit plant. Britain no longer has a arrested, including chair - national Women’s Day castration, and severe beat - phasising the hardships of The strike — in support of colonial empire, but British man Lami Özgen (though demonstrations. Why did ings were common; in some being a woman, a Kurd and the owners — did not forces have been involved later released). Police raids they join the demonstra - cases prisoners were simply member of a fighting union involve all workers. The in similar repression on a targeting the union prem - tions? Under whose or - beaten to death. like KESK in Turkey. majority demurred or took smaller scale much more re - ises and homes of trade- ders? Participating in There is now so much ev - Many representatives other forms of protest. cently. unionists are still going on. rallies demanding peace Official statistics say 12,000 idence of what happened A decision which might came from abroad to show No union officials are al - and democracy is treated as that the Coalition govern - make British imperialism their support and demand have been killed, and tens lowed to be present during a cKriEmSeK. calls on all public ment is in no position to more cautious, in addition the trade-unionists be of thousands affected by a these raids; they break in employees, unions and deny it. Instead, it argued to bringing justice for freed. variety of malignant the offices, confiscate the democratic mass organi - that since the Kenyan gov - some of its victims, is to At 9pm we heard that cancers, over 50 years. computers etc. sations to support KESK ernment is the legitimate be welcomed. six of the nine jailed • More: That all of the trade- members. successor to the British ad - women had been released. www.workersliberty.org./ unionists arrested are node/19684 ministration, Britain is no Since 2009 many trade- Kurds clearly shows that • www.uidder.org 4 COMMENT

ANTONIO GRAMSCI: WORKING-CLASS Sexual abuse and racism

PiXL believe in a focus on C/D borderline students, via ex - REVOLUTIONARY cessive data management techniques to see the “progress” Letters students are making toward passing the exam; overworking teachers by endless lunchtime and after-school sessions tar - Antonio Gramsci was a geting a very small number of pupils (what about all the oth - The English Defence League (EDL) has declared its in - ers?); and stressing out students by re-entering them over and leader of the Italian tention to march in Rotherham on Saturday 13 October. Communist Party in its over again, at every possible opportunity, during year 10 and revolutionary days, and The march (few details of which are currently unavailable) 11 in the hope that their results will improve. This is supposed spent all of his last is described as a response to the failings of police and social to be all about the students and their best interests, but their years bar a few weeks workers/child protection agencies in a series of cases of sex - learning needs are never discussed, only the need to “diag - in Mussolini’s fascist ual abuse of young women in the area. The EDL are exploit - nose” the reason they can’t pass the exam and then offer them the “therapy” they need — not the most helpful language! jails. The Prison ing this to attack the Asian community. They claim that these incidents would have received What PiXL really represent is the pathetic if understand - Notebooks he wrote in greater attention if those accused had not been Asian and able desire in schools to carve out an extra 1% of the available jail have been quarried Muslim. “pie” of GCSE passes as individual institutions. to justify many Sexual abuse is not determined by what race you are, and At one point Rowling said that his view was that as 60% varieties of reformist or affects all in an equally distressing way. appeared to be the figure “allowed” to pass this year, we liberal politics. Quite apart from the obvious and abhorrent racism, this should be assuming that only 59% will be allowed to pass shows a complete lack of understanding of the case. The vic - next year and we should be guessing grade boundaries, etc, This booklet discusses tims were failed by the same process that currently affects all on that basis. It was both frustrating and depressing to see a major recent study vulnerable individuals in this society: savage cuts in funding ranks and ranks of qualified teachers sitting in the hall listen - on the Notebooks — and staffing which made it all too easy for them to “slip ing to this without questioning the horrendous assumptions Peter Thomas’s The Gramscian Moment — and argues through the net”. behind i: that it is OK for the government to set a quota of Other reports have cited misogynistic police attitudes to - children allowed not to fail each year and the best way we that the Notebooks were in fact a powerful wards the victims as a major contributory factor; there is a contribution to the working-out of revolutionary can deal with this is to pump money into groups like PiXL, suggestion that some officers may have seen the victims as and personally work ourselves and our students into the working-class strategy in developed capitalist willing participants, largely due to their background and ground to ensure that more of the kids at our school rather societies. class. than the school down the road get into the “not a failure” cat - The UAF and Trades Council have organised a counter egory each year. £4 from AWL, 20e Tower Workshops, Riley Road, rally, described as a “multicultural celebration” but, in many Teacher trade unions and the labour movement in general London, SE1 3DG. Order online at ways, this response is inadequate; it says nothing to working- are a long way from leading a proper public discussion of www.workersliberty.org/gramscibook class people in Rotherham about why scapegoating Asian these issues and it is vital that we fight for them to do so. I men is not the response we should have to these sexual abuse feel that an immediately winnable demand to campaign cases. Workers’ Liberty comrades will be taking part in this around would be the abolition of exams at 16; especially as Book launch event but we think more needs to be said about the politics of not all students are expected to remain in full time education the issue. until 18, writing 40% of them off as failures at 16 should be If investigations weren’t hampered by oppressive attitudes, obviously unjustifiable to almost everybody in society. Speakers: Martin Thomas in discussion with this situation would never have arisen; as it is, it represents PiXL’s slogan is “whatever it takes”; socialists in Peter Thomas, author of The Gramscian Moment. another sign of the marginalisation of the working class. A set schools should do whatever it takes to break the hold of the vile set of ideas they represent, and present an alter - 7pm, Wednesday 31 October, at University of of assumptions were formed, that the victims were consen - sual, albeit under-age, sex workers; the fact that this was not native based on caring about the development of stu - London Union, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HY seen as a cause for action is indicative of much wider prob - dents as learners and human beings. lemSesxthuanl athbeusiemopclcisutircsnthonrosuengsheooufttshoecEieDtLy,. and to formu - Jack Frost, south London late a response on the grounds of religion or ethnicity is (More contributions to the debate about exams and educa - offensive, demeaning and hopelessly inadequate. As in tion can be found on the Workers’ Liberty website: all our activity, we have a responsibility to educate http://alturl.com/2ctqb) Books from Workers’ Liberty against this, and to combat the prejudices and political failings which failed the victims in the first place. SALTY BUT SECTARIAN While Martin Thomas ( Solidarity 259) spells out the ben - What is capitalism? AWL members and teachers in South Yorkshire efits of the “propaganda routine” doggedly pursued by Can it last? EDUCATIONAL ACHIEVEMENT the Australian group Socialist Alternative (SAlt), I think he One recent Wednesday, a planned lesson in which my is too soft on its downside in SAlt’s case, e.g., their over - With articles from Leon Trotsky, year 9 class would have been spotting the persuasive all neglect until recently of working-class struggle in the unions, etc. Max Shachtman, Maziar Razi and techniques in a past editorial of Solidarity had to be post - poned when I was told at very short notice that I had to many more. Edited by Cathy This tendency to cut themselves off as a self-sustaining sect attend a meeting of a group called PiXL. (or cult at times), has always been my central critique of their Nugent. £5 — buy online from PiXL is a so-called not-for-profit educational consultancy activity (not just their political problems in terms of commu - tinyurl.com/wiccil organisation based around its guru-type leader, Sir John nal and democratic struggles, anti-imperialism, etc). Rowling, a former headteacher with links to the Emmanuel Until recently, they have not been able to maintain their Schools Foundation, whose academies got into trouble a few members when they stop being students and become work - Working-class politics years ago for teaching creationism in science lessons. PiXL is ers. For some reason they have managed that with the most dedicated to helping the schools in its “club” (members of recent cohort of students. Why? and anarchism which pay it thousands of pounds a year) improve their I don’t know, but it may be influenced by the the changing Debates between members of GCSE results. nature of university education. Perhaps they have changed Rowling opened the meeting, which was for secondary their approach to that transition period. I know that in the Workers’ Liberty and comrades school heads of maths and English, by asking us to think of past they gave very little support or recognition to their mem - from various anarchist traditions. what one thing we would want our schools to achieve if we bers who did organise in unions. This seems to have changed, were feeling really ambitious. My colleague and I came up and they are now organising fractions in a number of unions. £5 — tinyurl.com/wcpanarchism with something like “our school should be an environment It would be useful perhaps to restate our overall approach where every child can reach their potential”. This was the to revolutionary regroupment of being for building multi-ten - wrong answer, but Rowling assured the meeting that what - deAnlcsyop, atortiaersg,uoepemnodrebsattreo, netgcl.y that recent developments Treason of the Intellectuals ever percentage figure of A –C passes we had come up with, show how SAlt have shifted towards an implicitly “soft- Political verse by Sean Matgamna. it was achievable! stalinist” anti-imperialism — they can forget their old pro - The PiXL approach to improving results was revealed as grammatic differences on the basis of a shared approach £9.99 — tinyurl.com/treasonofintellectuals the meeting went on. Far from being the advised opportunity to opposing the US, etc. to share ideas, we got a long lecture-cum-rally from Rowling and one of his protégés, a young headteacher from Sutton. Riki Lane, Melbourne 5 WHAT WE SAY Yes, we can balance A new fund the budget on the drive for the AWL wallets of the rich! Looking at the explosive struggles in Greece and Spain, or mass strike victories like the Chicago teachers or Queensland Children’s Hospital con - “It’s an economic delusion to think you can balance the struction workers, or at inspiring incipient labour budget only on the wallets of the rich”, claimed Chancel - movements like that of the Chinese workers, you lor George Osborne as he spoke to the Tory party confer - could get gloomy about the relatively low levels of ence (8 October). struggle in Britain and the lack of strategy from the capitulatory trade union leaders. He was trying to justify another £10 billion cuts in benefits for the worse-off, on top of all the cuts already in train. But lulls never last. We are only living through a Yes, you can balance the budget on the wallets of the rich! quiet period in very noisy times, and struggles on the Or, rather, we could balance the budget that way. The Tories never scale of Greece and Spain — a scale not seen in Britain would, and the New Labour types never would, but a gov - since the 1980s — will return again to this country. ernment based on and accountable to the labour movement, What socialists do now, in the relative “lull”, can a workers’ government, could and would. make a huge difference to how quickly they return, and Osborne’s claim is even more contemptible because his cuts how they fare when they do. aren’t even balancing the budget. They are worsening, not We believe that our organisation, the Alliance for improving, the government budget deficit. Cuts, especially Workers’ Liberty, has an irreplaceable role to play in those that hit the worse-off and public service workers, also ensuring that struggle revives and succeeds. AWL members in mean cuts in consumer demand, shops and businesses shut, pany to spend $1.2 million on doing up his personal office. workplaces are integral reduced tax revenues — and a bigger deficit. The top 10 per cent own about half all household wealth in to catalysing and helping The Guardian reports: “Britain’s government deficit is at a Britain, or about £5,000 billion. A government could balance shape workers’ struggles record high. Public sector net borrowing excluding financial the budget by leaving their income untouched and instead on a democratic, rank- sector interventions — the government’s preferred measure taxing their wealth at just 2.4%. and-file basis. Our publi - — widened to £14.41bn [in August 2012]... and is now the If the wealth tax were restricted to just the top 1000 indi - cations combine activist largest it has been since monthly records began in 1993. viduals, whose wealth totals £414 billion, it could abolish the news, historical and the - “The official release shows that the deficit for the tax year deficit for the next three years and still leave those top thou - oretical education, and to date to £31bn. But, stripping out the transfer of Royal Mail sand with personal wealth of £54 million each. That’s with no debate and discussion between socialists with differ - pension assets, the deficit has actually widened 22% to £59bn income-tax increase at all. ent views in a way that is sadly all too rare on the con - so far this year”. Osborne will do nothing like that. At the Tory conference he temporary left. The AWL attempts to be a force for The same thing on a larger scale is happening in Greece, claimed, in vague and general terms, that he would find ways agitating, educating and organising for revolutionary- where the huge cuts imposed by the European Union, the Eu - to get more tax revenue from the rich. But he rejected even democratic socialist ideas within the labour movement. ropean Central Bank, and the IMF are plunging the Greek the mild gestures proposed by the Lib Dems, a mansion tax or To help us do this, we have redesigned our paper to government worse into debt rather than rescuing it. an annual levy on wealth. make it more readable and accessible. We must replace The aim of the cuts is not to ease the debt, but to use the crisis to He also ruled out introducing new council tax bands on the very old computers in our office. beat down workers’ standards and social provision so that profits high-value houses. Council tax hits the poor harder than the We have published three new books — What Is Cap - can be higher in an eventual recovery. rich, because it is a flat rate on every house worth above italism? Can It Last? ; Working-Class Politics and Anar - £320,000 (which in London and some other areas is not huge). DEFICIT chism ; and Antonio Gramsci: Working-Class Revolutionary He didn’t rule in anything specific, and he has already cut Look at the figures. The British government’s budget — which contain discussion, polemics, and debates to the top income tax rate from 50% to 45%. A business tax spe - deficit is around £120 billion a year. A workers’ govern - equip revolutionaries with the ideas to change the cialist quoted recently in the Financial Times reports that: “the ment would not try to reduce it to zero straight off. No world. We are organising more public activity, with a UK business tax regime [is] now ‘fully competitive’ when competent administration, capitalist or socialist, would dayschool in London on 24 November on the prospects benchmarked against other countries, as a result of a planned do that. for revolution in Europe. cut in the corporate tax rate to 22 per cent in two years’ time, To do all of this, we need funds. If you think that this a new tax break for patent income, new rules on foreign prof - Good arguments can be made for increasing the deficit in paper is a useful resource, if you think that our ideas its and tax-deductible interest costs”. That is New Labour’s the short term — through increased social spending, rather matter, if you think that any aspect of our work is valu - work as well as Osborne’s. than through Osborne’s method of depressing economic ac - able, you should support us both financially and Business profits, as well as top pay, are taxed more and tivity across the board by cuts — in order to boost output and through getting involved in our activity. then boost government revenue, and so balance the budget more lightly, at the same time as cuts multiply. We are launching a new drive to raise £15,000 by in the longer term. Because of council tax, and other taxes which hit the poor May Day 2013 to help continue and develop this But take Osborne’s challenge at face value. Gross domestic harder, like VAT, the worse-off pay a higher tax rate than the work. Please support us by donating. household disposable income (after income tax) for the UK is rich. The bottom 20% pay an average of 35.5% of their income about £1000 billion. Before tax it must total about £1200 bil - in tax, and the top 20% pay 33.7%. The middle 60% pay a You can help us by: slightly lower rate, 31.5% on average. G lion. The top 10 per cent pocket 31% of it, or about £370 bil - Taking out a monthly standing order. There is a We must teach the Tories that it is a social delusion to think lion. form at www.workersliberty.org/resources. Please that they can balance the budget on the sufferings of the poor. A 32% super-tax on that top 10 per cent would balance the post to us at the AWL address below. The rich would, of course, respond to high taxes by G budget and still leave them all very well-off indeed. Making a donation. You can send it to us at the “strikes” — by taking, or trying to take, their money out of The top 1% have about 20% of total income, or about £240 address below (cheques payable to “AWL”) or donate the country. Some forms of wealth they can move easily. Basic billion: a 50% super-tax on them would balance the budget online at www.workersliberty.org/donate productive wealth they can’t. The Communist Manifesto had G without touching the other 99%. The top 0.1% have about 7%, Organising a fundraising event. it right when it put near the top of its list of demands one bor - G so taxing them alone heavily would almost balance the Taking copies of Solidarity to sell at your work - rowed from the great French Revolution of 1789-99: “Confis - budget, even if all the other 99.9% paid no extra. place, university/college or campaign group. cation of the property of all emigrants and rebels”. G Remember that these figures understate the luxuries of the We can break the tyranny of the budget deficit, and we Get in touch to discuss joining the AWL. top-paid, because they often get paid in tricksy ways that will do it through reshaping the labour movement to fight More information: 07796 690 874 / make their loot appear as “capital gains” rather than income, for a workers’ government which takes into public own - [email protected] / AWL, 20E Tower Work - and they get much more “on expenses” and as “perks of the ership the whole of high finance and the giant capitalist shops, 58 Riley Road, London SE1 3DG. job” than others do. In early 2008, as the capitalist crisis got corporations. under way, John Thain, the boss of Merrill Lynch, got his com - 6-7 Lessons of the Chicago teachers Queensland A struggl

Children’s Hospital strike Tina Beacock is a socialist long active in Chicago, and now a retired member of the Chicago Teachers’ Union (CTU). Graham Street where we’d give a run-down of what was She spoke to Solidarity about the recent Chicago teachers’ going on, and we’d have guest speakers in, like Brian Boyd dispute. from the Trades and Labour Council in Victoria. We had Chicago teachers struck between 10 and 18 September. guys in from the Transport Workers Union and the Mar - Their union, the Chicago Teachers’ Union (CTU), reports itime Union, and other working-class organisations. It that the strike won wage rises, and in addition: “This helped the guys feel like they weren’t completely alone. fight produced many wins — from the right to appeal a We also found the international messages very helpful. A rating, to language that gives teachers control over our lot of the men and women were gobsmacked and really im - own lesson plan format. Equally important, we stopped pressed that workers in Turkey, Iran, and elsewhere had many harmful ‘reforms’. heard about and were supporting their struggle. We worked to make links with workers on other con - “The district was forced to give up on merit pay, made to struction sites. We protested against attacks on Grocon abandon a 7 hour 40 minute teacher day, and gave ground workers, and marched to the big Grocon site at Elizabeth on test-based evaluation.” By Bob Carnegie Street in Brisbane, and helped organise a community Chicago’s Mayor Rahm Emanuel (who was previously protest there which shut down the site twice. There was President Barack Obama’s chief of staff) made a concession in also action by CFMEU members on Baulderstone sites. his plan for a longer school day, which originally would have Construction workers recently won an eight-week Like Abigroup, Baulderstone is owned by Lend Lease, meant teachers working 20% extra time with no increase in strike at the Queensland Children’s Hospital in Bris - and the workers’ action got the attention of Lend Lease pay. Now, the agreement requires that laid-off teachers will bane. management. We had delegates from other sites and other be re-hired to cover the extra time. There’s a greater spirit of militancy in the industry now workplaces coming to us and offering their solidarity. “When CORE was elected to office in 2010”, Tina said, “it than for some years. The current Enterprise Bargaining We found it more difficult to get delegations from our inherited a top-heavy organisation. From being a small ac - Agreement (EBA) campaign has been met with strong em - site out to other workplaces. That was another weakness, tivist group of teachers and allies which could call marches of ployer resistance [EBAs are the main form of collective partly due to obstructions, and partly because around week hundreds, it was now faced with running the largest union agreement in Australian industry]. seven of the dispute, poverty had become a real issue and local in the state — some 26,000 members”. The renewal of some of the four-year agreements have people were finding it difficult to keep petrol in cars. CORE, a rank and file caucus within the CTU formed in 2008, had won control of the union, but as a result many of its been met with a much stronger resistance from employers CONFIDENCE than there ever has been in the history of the EBA system. leading activists had become full-time union elected officers Since the return to work, the workers are feeling strong At Laing O’Rourke, workers had a 21-day protected ac - and staff. and they’re determined that things will work better tion [legal strike] to get a result. Thiess was an 18-day pro - Like many other US unions, the CTU has a higher ratio of than they did before. tected action dispute. Lend Lease was two weeks. So in full-time officials to members than unions in other countries: response to the strong resistance from employers there’s There are some divisions, for example, between workers about 50 full-time staff for a membership of 26,000 teachers been a lot of worker determination to secure agreements, who stuck out the dispute 100% and some who went and and support staff, serving 400,000 students. Most support particularly ones which include a subcontractor clause and found work elsewhere, but all in all things are going OK staff are in the CTU, but some are in other unions, such as the job security benefits. there. SEIU, which had settled before the CTU struck. [In England, the National Union of Teachers has about 240 full-time staff, ORGANISATION There is an ongoing political campaign we have to organ - ise. I’m facing a major contempt of court charge because I and 120 members on full facility time, for 325,000 members]. At QCH, after the union officials had been injuncted was injuncted during the dispute but continued to visit the “Decisions in the union are made by monthly meetings of and prevented from accessing the site, and I got in - site anyway. I defied that injunction quite deliberately; bad delegates from the 600 schools in the system. volved in the dispute, we had to go through the process laws have to be disobeyed. “Unlike previous CTU caucuses, the CORE leadership of trying to develop organisation that hadn’t existed We have to build a political campaign around the court pulled in people from other caucuses into campaigns, com - previously. case, because it represents a big corporation attacking an The more we increased the democracy of the organisa - individual in order to deter other people from helping tion, the more determined the workers became. It was an workers to organise and fight back. The court case is a interesting study in the importance of democracy in a dis - threat to all socialists and union activists. pute. There’s been a definite politicisation of many workers in We had full site meetings at least once a week in the Ser - this dispute. Before, they certainly knew which side the bian Hall in South Brisbane. We ran those meetings as dem - bosses were on and which side the workers were on, but ocratically as possible and made sure everyone was given now there’s a bigger political understanding. a say. It created the feeling that people were actually part of The word “socialism” was raised by myself and other something, instead of being hectored, which is what can comrades on numerous occasions, and it was never howled happen at certain union meetings. doCwonn,satnrducotfitoen awpoprlkauerdsedc.an be pretty tough, cynical One of the weaker points was around keeping other people, but once they saw the work that people from workers and the wider labour movement informed. The the socialist movement were doing they became more work that Workers’ Liberty did in raising awareness of the open to the idea that society should be organised in a dispute, and producing leaflets to inform people about different way. what going on, was very important. No leaflets were coming out of the dispute until Workers’ G Liberty produced some, so that was hugely important. Bob Carnegie is a former Builders Labourers Feder - We made sure the dispute didn’t become static by keep - ation organiser, invited in to help organise the dispute by ing everyone informed about what was going on. We’d the Queensland Children’s Hospital strikers after courts have at least one meeting every day on the protest line at handed down injunctions banning all union officials from the site. More: workersliberty.org/qch CLASS STRUGGLE le that could turn the tide

mittee leaderships and union staff jobs. They ran workshops black-box bargaining — don’t tell the members anything — on how to organise a contract campaign. They used PD and accepted the lie that parents and the public couldn’t be [teachers’ training courses] to invite speakers like Diane Rav - won to support the teachers. The old guard regained control itch, a critic of high-stakes testing. of the CTU in 2004”. “The CTU leadership carried out a plan to educate and mo - But CORE had a different approach. “CORE organised lots bilise the ranks of the union. It made sure that every school of demonstrations against school closures — demonstrations had union delegates, and they also organised mobilisation of maybe 500 or 1,000 people. Its meetings drew in commu - committees in every school in addition to the delegates. nity members and union activists interested in schools as well “To do this, they set up an organising department, to in - as teachers, creating some interesting combinations. volve the broadest number of members. They organised ac - “CORE was started by Jackson Potter, who lost his job tions with community organisations, other unions, and when his school was closed. When he and Al Ramirez made Occupy Chicago against TIFs (tax give-aways to corporations a video about school closings, they reached out to other class- by the city). conscious activists in the CTU and started organising against “They used a more democratic kind of organising. They school closures. This group included newer teachers who’d used tools from the Labor Notes toolbox, launching a a con - been hired to give their all to teaching, quickly disillusioned tract campaign which included tactics like red t-shirt days”. by their treatment at the hands of Chicago Public Schools federal funds, based on how thoroughly they implement var - [Labor Notes is a cross-union rank-and-file newsletter pub - [CPS],as well as more senior teachers, some with experience ious measures including ‘teacher accountability’, paving the lished in the USA, which also organises conferences and pub - in PACT. way for merit pay. The introduction of standardised testing lishes pamphlets. It has long been supported by the socialist “CORE includes activists with a class-struggle perspective. of students, like statistical control in manufacturing, gives a group Solidarity.] The CTU’s actions have been energetically backed by sup - criterion for whom to fire. STRIKE VOTE “The Chicago Board of Education has been closing schools porters of the socialist group Solidarity, and of the ISO [Inter - national Socialist Organisation, a group previously linked to In the face of anti-union laws requiring a vote of 75% of for low test scores longer than in other cities, and Chicago has the SWP in Britain but excluded by the SWP from its interna - all members to be able to strike, and 90-day waiting pe - more charter schools [like Michael Gove’s free schools] than tional network in 2001]. riods, the CTU called a strike authorisation vote in May — any other city except New Orleans [where after Hurricane Ka - “You have to do 34 and a half years as a teacher to get a full and got a resounding 98% yes (90% of eligible voters). trina, teachers at 75% of the city’s schools were terminated, and now the majority of students are in charter schools]. pension, but half of starting teachers quit after five years in A May 23 rally and march, a week after NATO demonstra - “This has resulted in the shrinking of union membership the classroom. Teaching can be wonderfully rewarding — tions in the city, mobilized over 6,000, almost one union mem - from 35,000 in 2002 to 26,000 today. Schools can vary in size and, without the necessary support, incredibly stressful. It’s ber in four. Mayor Rahm Emanuel was stunned. When a up to 4200 at Lane Tech, but most are smaller, with an average telling that one significant gain of this strike was, a provision mediator came back with recommendations the teachers get of 1500 students in high schools and 200-500 in elementary to stop bullying of teachers by administrators. a 15% raise, he ignored the mediator. schools. Now schools are getting smaller partly because of the “The CTU victory will have a far-ranging effect, first of all “During the strike, there were bulletins and rallies every insane testing. by throwing a wrench into the wheels of the bipartisan neo- day. This level of mobilisation had a major impact, raising “If you don’t pass the tests in 8th grade [age 13-14], you just liberal educational ‘reform’ agenda. Both Mitt Romney and morale and getting people to work with each other. don’t get to high school. Every school has an incentive to re - Paul Ryan were quick to voice support to Emanuel against “Students mobilised in support of the teachers at the Board ject students, in order to keep up its test averages and avoid the greedy teachers’ strike. of Education, and there were students and parents on all the turnaround. Now you have student push-outs, not drop-outs. “Rahm Emanuel’s attack on teachers, and the appearance of picket lines. There was visible support for the CTU every - “Since 2002 the city has been closing down schools for bad union-busting Michelle Rhee at the Charlotte Democratic con - where in the city. CTU members initiated actions, like picket - performance, firing all the staff, making them re-apply for vention, could not make clearer the bipartisan nature of these ing aldermen who’d opposed the strike; hundreds of their jobs. attacks. While a majority of teachers in Chicago, as elsewhere, members converged on the Hyde Park site where Penny “After I was terminated when the city closed the school I are politically mostly Democrats, the clash with Rahm Pritzker’s Hyatt just took a giant TIF grant and robbed our was working at, I had two and a half years working as a sub - Emanuel has produced some rethinking about labour’s polit - schools of millions of dollars. stitute teacher. I was never placed in a new regular job. That’s ical choices. “The strike bulletins documented the flowering of solidar - not atypical for many veteran teachers. “At the Saturday rally, the chant ‘Karen for Mayor’ was ity all over the city; a google-map on the union’s website heard [Karen Lewis is CTU president]. And others carried showed the national and international support. Travelling RACISM signs that said ‘Democratic Party, where are you?’ and “The racist character of this assault is clear, too. around the city in CTU red, you were saluted as part of a pop - ‘Obama, where are you?’ Statements from the White House ular army. “As schools with low scores, schools where it is most chal - affirmed that Obama was neutral on this strike in his home “For members, the union has become something they do, lenging to teach, have been closed and teachers dismissed, town.” not someone they call. the number of Black teachers has declined from 45% of the The strike by itself did not resolve all the issues it raised. “School restructuring, privatisation, and closures are one of workforce in the 90s to 19% today. This occurs in a system First and foremost, the Mayor and CPS CEO Jean-Paul the big issues behind the dispute. In the name of ‘reform’, where 92% of the students are children of colour. Some dis - Brizard have continued to declare their intentions to close 100 Chicago has been leading the national attack on teachers and placed teachers became CORE activists”. schools this year. Demands for smaller class-sizes, social serv - public education since the 1995 law which curtailed basic The previous time the old guard leadership of the Chicago ices and other supports in the schools, and art, music, and li - union rights and handed Mayor Daley control to appoint the Teachers’ Union was ousted by a militant opposition didn’t braries for all, have raised hopes without yet winning School Board. turn out so well. That was PACT, a militant reform movement concessions. “One part of this pincer movement was the federal No but not a class-conscious one. It campaigned for union “Still, the CTU made a dramatic change in the balance of Child Left Behind law, passed in 2002, which mandated that democracy and to be equal partners in reform, not its target. forces in this city — through mobilisation and education. Peo - schools and whole cities lose funding if they did not turn “Debbie Lynch of PACT won the union presidency in 2001, ple have been comparing the Chicago struggle with Wiscon - around schools, and reach the goal that all students in each partly because PACT organised against the 1995 Amendatory sin [where a Republican governor slashing union bargaining school would test at or above average. [Democrats and Re - Act, which prohibited negotiating over everything from class rig“hTthsefodrisffteatre nwcoerkisertshlaetditnoCmhoicnathgso-lowneghmaavsesniv’tebperoetnesdtse ]-. publicans cosponsoring this law were not tested on their size to teacher discipline, and eliminated seniority. In 2002 the feated. This might be the struggle that begins to turn the knowledge of the word ‘average’.] Board of Education led by CEO Arne Duncan started closing tide, that sets the stage for a new momentum of strug - “The new law passed under Obama’s aegis, Race to the schools for bad performance, not just for falling rolls. Debbie gle.” Top, is if anything worse — it compels states to compete for Lynch negotiated a bad contract in 2003. She agreed to classic 8 FEATURE Greek workers protest against Merkel and the memorandum

By Theodora Polenta the streets and squares so that the austerity measures are can - ernment is under pressure to sell off public infrastructure, celled, the politics of the memorandum are overthrown, and public lands, and the natural wealth of the country. Merkel is As Solidarity goes to press on 9 October, a tsunami of this disastrous government is overthrown.” accompanied by representatives of German business groups people has gathered in Syntagma Square in Athens. KKE secretary Aleka Papariga declares that “the purpose interested in investing in Greece, using the new anti-labour of this visit is to assist the Government to exercise the great - Tens of thousands of workers, unemployed, pensioners, framework and starvation wages imposed under the memo - est possible blackmail and intimidation against the people”. students, small shopkeepers, peasants, neighbourhood com - randum. The government decided to shut down in the centre of munity movement activists are arriving. Merkel’s visit to Greece is also connected with a dispute Athens for the whole day of Merkel’s visit, and to halt buses They have come to protest against the visit by Germany with the IMF and USA. The IMF insists that it cannot carry and trams from 11am to 4pm. Chancellor Angela Merkel. The demonstration is organised on bailing out Greece unless the Greek debt is restructured From 9am to 10pm, every public outdoor gathering or by the main union federations, GSEE and ADEDY, and sup - again, i.e. a new “haircut” is imposed on banks and other in - march in Athens, apart from those planned by PAME, GSEE ported by Syriza and other left-wing organisations. Another stitutions which hold Greek government bonds. The German and ADEDY, is banned. Police will make every effort to block demonstration has been organised for the same day by the government is opposed to any new haircut of the Greek debt, any route towards the German embassy. KKE (diehard-Stalinist Communist Party) and PAME. especially before the German elections. The MAT riot police entered the courtyard of the Henry Greece’s right-wing prime minister, Antonis Samaras, has The USA denounces the continuing extreme austerity in Dunant hospital in order to stop unpaid workers joining the Greece and the eurozone as destructive to the euro and to stated that Merkel is welcomed by the whole of Greece. Syntagma Square protests. Five squads of riot police, using If Merkel were welcomed by the whole of the Greek popu - transatlantic economic stability. chemicals, blocked the hospital entrance. Workers com - The cry “Merkel out” is filling the streets of Greece with a lation, it would certainly not be necessary to deploy more plained that the police used gas inside the hospital building. than 6,000 police officers for her security. The conservative multitude of protesters of different ideological origins and po - Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , which reflects the business cir - EUROZONE litical believes. cles of Germany, told the world on 8 October: “Merkel will Why did Merkel come to Athens? First, to offer EU sup - Among these protesters will be hiding the fascists who promise the Greeks nothing.” port to the crumbling three-party coalition government would never confront the capitalists and the powerful, but “The troika report is expected in November at the earliest. of Samaras so that it can survive and pass its new 13.5 who on the contrary constitute the dark forces and the capi - Police prepare for riots”, stressed the subtitles of the German billion euro cuts package. talist class’s last resort if things get out of control. newspaper. FAZ boasts that only for Clinton’s visit in Athens Only a struggle with working-class, anti-capitalist, anti-im - in 1999 have such large numbers of police been allocated. Second, to make clear her wish for Greece to stay within the perialist, internationalist, and revolutionary politics can in - A cordon will be constructed around the chancellor in order eurozone. spire and lead to victory. The 9 October demonstrations are to prevent her from meeting any ordinary Greek citizens. Po - She is expected to express her sympathy with the Greek giving a new impetus to the struggle to overthrow the coali - lice snipers will be on alert to spot and “deal with” anyone people and acknowledge that they have suffered badly be - tion government and dismantle the memorandum. suspected of threatening the safety of the chancellor. Police cause of the austerity policies. She will say that there is no al - helicopters will be deployed to spy on the protesters. ternative; but the chancellor has already decided that it is ALTERNATIVE The left alliance Antarsya says that “Merkel represents a extremely dangerous to drive Greece out of the eurozone. The alternative to the Merkel-Samaras alliance and to the Europe united against the workers... The visit is to symbolise Although German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble bul - fascists can only be a workers’ government, based on the alliance of Greek capital with banks and capitalists of Eu - lies the Greek government with the prospect of exit from the workers’ democracy, workers’ and social control, self-or - rope within the EU.” eurozone, Berlin will make sure the Troika’s report is drafted ganisation and management, and workers’ militias. The Syriza state that “they strongly support the mobilisations in such a way as to allow the release of the next and long- main axis of struggle should be the following: of working class ‘welcoming’ Merkel” and invites “all the overdue 31.5 billion euro “bail-out” instalment. 1. Fight for the development and escalation of industrial people affected by the unpopular, anti-working-class and dis - Third, Merkel is representing German capital’s interest in astrous policies of the government and the Troika to take to getting its claws on Greek public wealth. The coalition gov - and social struggles, with rolling strikes, occupations, stop - pages, demonstrations, and re-invigoration of the neighbour - hood and community movements. 2. Fight for the overthrow of the coalition government. 3. Anti-fascist committees in every square, neighbourhood, My City Is A Hard Femme and workplace. In every neighbourhood the trade unions, alongside the neighbourhood committees, should form pop - a radical renewal and liberation that shatters boundaries. ular defence squads and solidarity squads aiming at solving Songs of Liberty The Ruby Kid social problems via solidarity and cooperation. 4. Fight for a united front and cooperation of the left in the & Rebellion when I left Worcester, I took the cracked sidewalks’ smirk industrial and in the political sphere. with me, 5. Fight for a government of the left, and a workers’ gov - Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a Toronto- the sexy guts of the girl gang of wild weed trees ernment. based writer and activist. that would bust through all the vacant lots like a bank 6. Fight to alert and prepare the working class for the robbery, prospect and the consequences of a Greece which rejects the Much of both her writing and activist work focuses on kicking the door down with guns and grin of getting memorandum being forced out of the eurozone. the struggles of LGBTQ people, particularly queer and trans everything for free. 7. Fight for a programme of transitional demands based on people of colour. I’m as hard-assed as every lovely broken thing in this workers’ self-management and control and social planning of This piece explores both gender and sexual identities, and town, the economy, nationalisation of the banks and the main pillars their intersection with identities of place (particularly, in as every donut shop that’ll tell you off in a heartbeat, of the economy without compensation to the capitalists, and this case, urban space). The poem itself is “hard”, with the every Economy Fruits bursting with alliterations (“guts of the girl gang”) landing like little day-old sweet juice, every pretty dress with just one under workers’ control. punches. It’s a poem of collision and contrast, of “broken fucked-up thing 8. Fight alongside the European working class for the things” which are still “lovely”, in spite of (or because of?) dug out of the Auburn TJ Maxxx quadruple markdown United Socialist States of Europe. No serious anti-cuts or so - their “brokenness”. clearance rack. cialist programme in Greece is possible without mobilisation Human sexual identities are not homogenous or straight - My city is a lovely tough girl ofTtheiswdooreksinngoctlamsseaacnrotshsethGereeuerkozwoonrekaindg EcUla.ss waiting. forward; they are complex and sometimes contradictory, asking you what the fuck you’re looking at, a boarded up No cross-Europe mobilisation will happen unless one na - and here Piepzna-Samarasinha uses the urban space — it - warehouse tional working class or another dares to go first. It does self hard, contradictory, often difficult to deal with — to hoarding secrets like homeless fire roaring inside, mean that the issues are those of class — the working mirror that complexity. The poem contains images of urban her redbrick and vinyl siding nailed up all over me class across Europe against the eurozone and EU lead - decay (“a boarded up warehouse”), but its concluding protecting all that explodes from something so long aban - ers — and not of national conflict (Greece vs eurozone, or image — “protecting all that explodes from something so doned. G Greece vs EU, or Greece vs Germany). long abandoned” — suggests tenderness and care, but also Website: brownstargirl.org 9 FEATURE Continuing and renewing the tradition

In Solidarity 242 (18 April 2012), we began series of rec - on Stalinism that had appeared in New Politics . The other was ollections and reflections from activists who had been Autocracy and Insurgency in Organized Labor , edited by Burton involved with the “third camp” left in the USA — those Hall, a collection of the articles on the labour movement and “unorthodox” Trotskyists who broke from the SWP USA union dissidence that had appeared in New Politics . in 1939/40 to form the Workers Party, and the tradition Clearly, New Politics was not a “line” publication in any they built (the Independent Socialist League, and later sense, but rather one in which various left tendencies could the Independent Socialists and International Socialists). and did confront one another. Despite that, despite the fact Here, we reprint an extract from a speech by Phyllis Jacob - that our pages were always open to those who were the ob - son given at the “Oral History of the American Left Confer - ject of political criticism, there were several sorry episodes ence”, organised by the Tamiment Library in New York from over the years resulting in the resignation of groups of spon - May 6-7, 1983. The conference brought together many of the sors. People might talk about their adherence to democracy surviving leading activists of the third camp left to discuss and democratic practices, about a multi-tendency journal, but and reflect on their experiences. they could not function in a democratic atmosphere. They Phyllis was a veteran of the US Trotskyist movement. She demanded immunity from political criticism. was a founding member of the Workers Party/ISL, and New Politics published 45 issues from the end of 1961 to founded the third-camp journal Anvil in 1952 along with 1973. It started in a period of reawakened consciousness that Julius Jacobson, who she met in the Workers Party and who saw the beginning of the civil rights and the peace move - became her partner. In this speech, she discusses her reasons ments. We grew along with those movements. The war in for launching New Politics , a broadly third camp socialist jour - Vietnam radicalised an entire generation. For a while it ap - nal, in 1961, and her views on the important of democracy peared that the anti-war movement might develop beyond and debate for socialist publications. Phyllis was co-editor of its single-issue approach and become a broad radical move - New Politics from 1961 until its first series ended in 1976, and ment. It never did. The war’s end signalled the end of organ - then again from its relaunch in 1986 until her death in 2010. ised opposition and introduced an era characterised by Phyllis embodied the determination of the best third camp political frustration and apathy. socialists “orphaned” by Max Shachtman’s collapse into Cold Despite the success of the New Left in toppling a president War lesser-evilism to continue the anti-Stalinist, democratic- and helping to end the most unpopular war in American his - tory, it remained anti-ideological, never developing the revolutionary socialist tradition as a living political force Phyllis and other third camp socialists founded New Politics to broader political understanding essential for the creation of within the working class. give the anti-Stalinist left a space to debate ideas and strategy, a new radical, socialist force in the United States. Because it The text of the speech is reproduced from the New York and intervene politically in the growing radicalisation around was anti-ideological, it never understood much about the his - University Libraries’ transcriptions of the 1983 conference. It things such as opposition to the Vietnam War. has been abridged slightly, and spellings have been altered to tory of socialism or the destructive role of Stalinism. To be match UK style, but it is otherwise unedited. sure, there was no socialist movement to help educate it. Fi - Daniel Randall Michael Harrington, Sid Lens, A.J. Muste, and Norman nally, it was reduced to warring sects, a few of which became Thomas — to name a few. enamoured of violence and terror. While most of us who remained left-wingers were op - New Politics went on to become the kind of publication we FRUSTRATION posed to Shachtman’s “realignment” politics, we were in had envisaged. The editorial board was composed of leftists It was the political frustration and apathy that dealt the favour of joining the Socialist Party. We wanted a broad and social democrats, some affiliated with the SP, others not. final blow to New Politics . Never an academic publica - socialist organisation, a Debsian party in which all ten - The magazine explored controversial questions through de - tion, although many academics wrote for us, we de - dencies could function, be represented, speak, and bates and symposia. We developed international contacts, pended on writers who were committed, often write. who wrote on general, theoretical subjects, and also took part participants in the political struggles. in discussions on the labour and socialist movements of their Since we retained the anti-Stalinist and anti-capitalist views own countries. The fact that they grew apathetic meant a loss of articles, fi - of the Workers Party/ISL, we were well aware that we were We concentrated heavily on various aspects of Stalinism, nancial support, and general interest, all of which are essen - a minority, that in a sense we had become political orphans. exploring the subject in debate and broad discussion. It was, tial ingredients for the maintenance of a lively and We had not, after all, deserted our political tendency; it had and remains, an area of central concern for socialists raising meaningful publication. Had there been an organisation to deserted us. the central question of the relationship between socialism and sustain us during the bad times, we would no doubt have It was for that reason that shortly after we joined the SP, democracy. New Politics was the first socialist publication to continued publication and then would have found ourselves we began to work toward producing a broad socialist publi - publish a translation of the historic “Open Letter to the caught up in the political reawakening that occurred just a cation in which our views — along with those of all other so - Party” by Jacek Kuron and Karol Modzelewski. We covered few years later and continues today. cialist tendencies — would be presented. We met with the uprising in Poland and the Prague Spring in depth. The New Left did leave a positive legacy. Out of it came like-minded comrades and after a good deal of discussion There was extensive coverage of both the labour and the the feminist and environmental movements, both responsible produced a memorandum, a consensus of views, in which civil rights movements. In areas where there were disagree - for enormous changes in American life, both enjoying wide we said that there was a vacuum so far as any meaningful ments, the material was presented in the form of a debate. support. The reaction that set in with the rise of Reaganism socialist literature was concerned, that we felt most keenly Herbert Hill’s long article accusing the ILGWU [International has been short lived. the lack of a journal we could read and to which we could Ladies’ Garment Workers Union] of racism was answered by Today, too, there is greater interest in socialism, its history, contribute articles on such subjects as: an equally long article by Gus Tyler, defending the union. roots and relevance to contemporary life than there has been • the changes in American capitalism Over the years, we carried a great deal of material on rank- in years. For that reason, Julie [Jacobson] and I have edited • the evolution of the American movements, its history and-file revolts inside the unions, articles often written by he what we hope will be the first volume of an annual publica - problems and prospects dissidents themselves. tion called Socialist Perspectives which will be out this sum - • the nature of Russian society, the extent and limits of re - As socialists, a majority of our editors supported the strug - mer. It contains articles on the anti-nuclear movement, the form the ability of the American working class to emancipate gle of these dissidents to democratise their unions. We had current economic crisis, the state of the feminist movement, itself articles by and about rank-and-file reformers in the Mine a provocative piece on why black Americans are not social - • the relationship between socialism and democracy Workers [UMW], National Maritime Union, the Painters ists, on the New York intellectuals in retreat, a discussion on We wanted a publication with an international flavour Union, International Longshoremen’s Union, to name just a whether America is modern, on socialist freedom, reflections which would carry articles of general interest by European few. In all cases, we opened our pages to the union leaders on fascism and communism, Poland, a comparison between labour and socialist movements. Most important, so far as we under attack, inviting their replies. the Prague Spring and the Polish Summer, and a piece on were concerned, was that the publication had to be broad in Latin America received a great deal of attention. We car - currents within Soviet dissidence. Among the authors are character, not thought of as the political organ of any single ried articles as politically disparate as those of Robert Alexan - Melvyn Dubofsky, Manning Marable, Alan Wolfe, Julius Ja - political tendency in the socialist movement. der and James Petras. Nor were Marxism and general coIbts’sona,nDeawnibeleSgiinngneirn,ganadndJirai Pceolniktainnu. ation. We went on to meet with socialists and radicals outside of theoretical problems neglected. One of the most sought-after the ISL and the SP and, after open and frank discussions, pro - articles for reprint was Lewis Feuer’s “Alienation: the Career duced a draft statement which was sent out with a covering of a Concept.” The war in Vietnam was a central concern and • The rest of the symposium is available online at letter to a large number of people — radicals, socialists, trade was discussed from every point of view most often in debates tinyurl.com/thirdcampsymposium unionists, activists and intellectuals, left wingers and social and symposia. • New Politics is still active and produces two journals a year. democrats — urging then to become sponsors of the publica - Two collections of New Politics articles were published by Its website is newpol.org tion. The response was most gratifying. We developed a list Transaction Books. One was Soviet Communinsm and the So - • For a 2010 tribute to Phyllis Jacobson by New Politics edito - of sponsors that covered a wide diversity of views. It in - cialist Vision , edited by Julius Jacobson, who also wrote an in - rial board member Barry Finger, see cluded Robert Alexander, Bert Cochran, Erich Fromm, troduction. The book consisted of the most important articles tinyurl.com/phyllistribute 10 FEATURE The paradox of Hobsbawm’s legacy

By Liam McNulty Marxism after 1930, noting that the “more unconvincing our own beliefs were, the less we could afford dialogue... How The Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm died on 1 October could we discuss, say, the history of the Soviet Union, if we at the age of 95. left Trotsky out of it, or thought of him as a foreign agent?” Moreover, he denied that “correct Marxism” could be “insti - I will personally remember how, when I was a new under - tutionally defined”, especially given that some of the most graduate history student, Hobsbawm kindly replied to my prominent Marxist historians in Britain, such as Thompson, precocious letter about the world financial crisis in 2008. That found themselves outside the CPGB. said, Hobsbawm was a political figure and deserves to be ap - There is a noticeable tension between Hobsbawm the his - praised politically. torian and Hobsbawm the Stalinist. This is most evident in As an historian, Hobsbawm was part of a generation which the omissions and emphases in Hobsbawm’s narratives. As revolutionised historical writing. He was much influenced Ian Burchill has noted, Hobsbawm does not dwell on the by the pioneering journal Annales d’histoire économique et so - Paris Commune in The Age of Capital , even though it marked ciale , co-founded in 1929 by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, the high-point of nineteenth-century working-class revolu - which opened up hitherto unexplored areas of human expe - tion. rience to historical enquiry. Hobsbawm dismissed movements outside the Stalinist Along with E P Thompson and Christopher Hill, also part parties, such as Trotskyism. “It became clear”, we are told, of the Communist Party Historians’ Group, Hobsbawm pro - “that separation from the communist party, whether by ex - duced a series of works which exemplified “history from pulsion or secession, meant an end to effective revolutionary below”. This approach to history is embodied in the journal activity.” Past and Present; set up in 1952, it has established itself as one Central to Hobsbawm was identification with the Soviet of most lively vehicles for social history. state and its satellite parties rather than with the revolution - Arguably lacking Thompson’s empathy, Hobsbawm’s ac - ary potential of the working-class. This view was put to the counts of “primitive” (pre-capitalist) rebellion were unflinch - test when the Soviet Union invaded Hungary in 1956. Unlike ingly unsentimental. One study, Primitive Rebels , launched a lingering hopes of resuscitating the pre-1914 belle époque , Thompson, Hobsbawm failed the test, choosing to remain in - whole new line of historical research into “social bandits” — many bourgeois intellectuals turned towards the now Stal - side the CPGB. figures on the margins of rural societies, deemed to be out - inised Soviet Union as a model for the future. As Trotsky The sum total of Hobsbawm’s protest against the murder - laws by authority yet held up as figures of liberation by peas - wrote in 1938: “A whole generation of the ‘left’ intelligentsia ous crushing of the working-class revolution in Hungary was ant communities. This interest in popular protest and has... turned its eyes eastward and has tied... its fate not so a letter of protest. He even recalled the letter with an almost resistance is also seen in his collaboration with George Rudé much to the revolutionary working-class as to a victorious embarrassing sense of pride as “a flagrant breach of Party on the 1830s English “Swing Riots” ( Captain Swing ), and his revolution, which is not the same.” discipline”. It allowed him a few years later “on an emotional short masterpiece on political shoemakers in Uncommon His - Hobsbawm saw the Soviet Union as a gatekeeper of En - evening in an Austrian pub, to checkmate a very drunken tory . lightenment values; its demise had “enormous and still not and ill-tempered Arthur Koestler who wanted to know Hobsbawm also distinguished himself tackling the grand fully calculable, but mainly negative, consequences”. In whether people like me had ever opposed the Russians over sweep of historical development over the course of centuries. short, although nominally a Marxist, Hobsbawm was less the Hungarian Revolution.” His Age of... tetralogy is a dazzling historical materialist sur - committed to the class struggle, or even the working class, vey of the world from 1789 to 1991. It is far less likely that than to the existence of the so-called “socialist sixth of the CURRENT such an ambitious feat of historical explanation would world”. But Hobsbawm admits to having “little direct political ac - emerge from today’s highly specialised discipline, suspicious For Hobsbawm, growing up in Berlin in the early 1930s, it tivity ... in my life after 1956.” He did not even actively as it is of “grand narratives” and materialist explanations. was by no means irrational to see the Stalinised German com - support the Eurocommunist current within the CPGB. Yet it is in Hobsbawm’s sweeping surveys that fundamen - munists as a key force for the possibility of defeating fascism. tal problems with his political perspectives are revealed. To his credit, Hobsbawm wrote later of the “lunacies of Com - Nevertheless, Hobsbawm’s lectures and articles did have a Many of these problems can be encapsulated in his formula intern policy during the notorious so-called ‘Third Period’”, political impact. Intellectually he did contribute to Eurocom - of the “short twentieth century”, which provides the analyt - which encouraged “wilful blindness not only to the rise but munism, not least by over-stating the extent of dissent ical framework for The Age of Extremes: 1914-1991 . also to the triumph of Hitler”. But rather than drawing the against Stalinism in Palmiro Togliatti’s Italian Communist conclusion that the “Third Period” was one of a series of Party. USSR shifts motivated by the needs of the Soviet bureaucracy He also wrote for the CPGB’s Marxism Today journal. His Few would quibble with Hobsbawm’s view that the col - rather than the requirements of the revolutionary movement, 1978 article The Forward March of Labour Halted? argued that lapse of the USSR in 1991 meant that “an era in world Hobsbawm embraced the next opportunistic zig-zag — the the decline of the industrial working class and the growth of history ended and a new one began”. Popular Front. a technical and white-collar “labour aristocracy” meant that the working-class was no longer was predisposed towards The problem is with Hobsbawm’s understanding of what Under the Popular Front Communist Parties embraced socialism; he dismissed the the wave of strikes in Britain in this passing era represented; and with his failure to under - bourgeois forces opposed to fascism in the interests of main - the 1970s as “economistic”, with no necessary socialist corol - stand that the hopeful era inaugurated by the Russian work - taining an alliance between the Soviet Union and the “demo - lary. ers in 1917 was terminated in the 1930s and later 1920s, by cratic powers” of France and Britain for reasons of The argument was a symptom of Hobsbawm’s increasing Stalin, not in 1991. self-preservation. political pessimism and a drift rightwards. It was seized During an interview on Radio 4 in 1995, Hobsbawm ex - In The Age of Extremes Hobsbawm says, “this period of cap - upon by Neil Kinnock in his struggle against the Bennite left plained: “I still believe in the old values of the 18th Century italist-communist alliance against fascism — essentially the and was used to move the Labour Party away from anything Enlightenment; in Reason, in education, in the improvement, 1930s and 1940s — forms the hinge of twentieth-century his - which could be described as class politics. if not the perfectibility, of human beings, and in the attempts, tory and its decisive moment.” Here the Soviet Union played In his autobiography, Hobsbawm wrote: “Whatever his at any rate, to establish ‘liberty, equality, fraternity’, or ‘life, the role of the saviour of democracy and the bulwark of anti- limitations, Neil Kinnock, whose candidature I strongly sup - liberty, the pursuit of happiness’ or any of these other marvel - fascism. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939 is sum - ported, was the leader who saved the Labour Party from the lous slogans which we owe to the late 18th Century.” marily dealt with in a few sentences as a justified tactical sectarians. After 1985, when he secured the expulsion of the Hobsbawm’s beliefs are understandable. Born to a middle- manoeuvre by Stalin, “since 1934 the unswerving champion Trotskyite Militant Tendency from the party, its future was class Jewish family in British-occupied Alexandria 1917, the of an alliance with the west against [Hitler].” safe.” year of the October Revolution, Hobsbawm grew up first in In practice the Popular Front meant the suppression of the Whatever the problems with the Militant Tendency (and post-Habsburg Vienna, and then in Berlin. The young Eric’s real, living struggles of the working-class, most notably dur - there were many), the expulsion move was part of a general Europe was one in which bourgeois liberalism had crumbled ing the Spanish Civil War. This is the historical reality behind attack on the Labour left which paved the way for Blairism. during an imperialist epoch, amidst the catastrophic wreck - Hobsbawm’s claim that the “communists ...turned them - Hobsbawm’s pre-occupation with party over class, which led age of the First World War. Locked in antagonism were the selves into the most systematic and, as usual, the most effi - him to back Kinnock over the left, contributed to the triumph forces of extreme nationalism and fascism on the one hand, cient, champions of anti-fascist unity.” The Stalinist of New Labour. and world Stalinism on the other. suppression of the anarchists and Trotskyists in Spain was Hobsbawm was, despite everything, an excellent historian In his 1993 Creighton Lecture, Hobsbawm explained the nothing if not systematic and efficient, although Hobsbawm, who made a lasting contribution to human knowledge. His impact of his formative years: “Every historian has his or her as recently as 2007, was dismissing these debates as argu - historical writings were often artful, creative and intellectu - lifetime, a private perch from which to survey the world. My ments “among the losers”. ally stimulating. But Hobsbawm’s Stalinist politics often in - own perch is constructed, among other materials, of a child - It would be a travesty to dismiss him as merely a Stalinist truded into his historical work, almost always to the hood in the Vienna of the 1920s, the years of Hitler’s rise in propagandist. He was certainly not an “in-house” CPGB his - detriment of his judgements and analyses. Berlin, which determined my politics and my interest in his - torian, and was harshly critical of those who were, such as His political contribution, both in the form of commit - tory, and the England, and especially the Cambridge, of the James Klugmann, who wrote the History of the Communist ted Stalinism, and later, pessimistic reformism, was uni - 1930s, which confirmed both.” Party of Great Britain . formly negative. The paradox defines his legacy. When the Wall Street Crash of October 1929 put paid to any In 1966 he bemoaned the atrophying of debate within 11 REPORTS Teachers’ action escalates to strike Fighting low pay By a teacher £35,000 (a teacher’s annual strike vote gives a model salary). Which would you for how teachers in other Teachers at Bishop Chal - rather have? schools around the country loner school in East Lon - The strike vote has not can use the framework of in retail don have voted to strike come out of the blue. Mem - the existing against increasing in - bers have been experienc - NUT/NASUWT joint ac - By Padraig O’Brien spections and observa - ing continual management tion to escalate to strikes tions, after their attacks for the last year, against the over-inspection The GMB union has headteacher threatened with frequent abusive com - and observation culture. been conducting a to hold a mock OFSTED ments about their commit - Members at Bishop Chal - campaign of demon - inspection. ment to the students’ loner are also discussing strations outside Next educational development what other action short of stores to highlight the NUT and NASUWT and their own professional strike action they want to issue of low pay at the members already voted Ros Asquith capacity launched in whole take, and what other point - high-street clothing re - unanimously not to cooper - school staff meetings and less activities like the mock tailer. ate with any mock inspec - mock inspection. Workers tains all the usual discom - in menacing “quiet little OFSTED can be done away tion, as part of their unions’ were not satisfied by this fort of an OFSTED — in - chats”. Staff turnover has with. And what will teach - The union is demand - industrial action against ex - guarantee, however, and spectors with questionable increased. Workload, SLT ers do instead? Their job: ing a pay increase for all cessive workload. voted by 50-4 to escalate to judgement, reams of lesson drop-ins, and stress have teaching. staff, who are currently The headteacher per - Who knows… some of strike action in the event of plans, stressed teachers and rocketed in an atmosphere paid at the national mini - formed a limited climb - them might also use the any inspection going wasted hours better spent of fear where members felt mum wage of £6.19 (for down, saying that although time they would’ve spent ahead. The strike could on teaching and learning — isolated and powerless. workers aged 21 and extra lesson observations in this pointless inspec - begin on Monday 15 Octo - with the added obscenity With this vote, the culture over). GMB wants work - would take place, they tion to develop a more ber. of costing the school some - seems to be changing. ers to be paid at least would not constitute a full even work-life balance. A mock inspection con - where in the region of The Bishop Challoner £7.20 an hour, the “living wage” for workers out - side London. A recent trading state - Chelsea cleaners in strike vote Blow to democracy ment from Next showed that they expected a By Ira Berkovic workers working for con - profit increase of be - tractors in London Bor - tween £10 and £15 mil - Street cleaners in the oughs; street sweepers in in journalists’ union lion, taking profits for richest borough in Lon - the City of London earn the year to January 2013 don will vote on whether up to £620 million. Next £8.30 an hour. By an NUJ conference but would also give officers to strike, with action makes profits of 17.5p According to GMB, the more time to achieve things likely to take place on 29 delegate for every £1 spent in the union which represents the passed at conference. He October if the strike vote store, while average staff workers, the average also said it would allow wins a majority. Delegates at the National wages are less than weekly wage in the bor - more events to take place Union of Journalists’ £10,000 per year. that even Boris Johnson ough is £1,305 — more during the interim year. The workers, who are (NUJ) annual delegate The GMB has recently admits is the minimum than three times what the Other speakers, including employed by contractor meeting in Newcastle (4-7 conducted a survey into amount necessary to live a STIhTeAircsletarinkeersbeaallront. opens a Workers’ Liberty member, SITA in the Royal Borough October) voted to move low pay in the retail sec - decent life in the capital. on 9 October, and will opposed the move, arguing of Kensington and to biennial policy-making tor, showing that some Their pay is also signifi - conclude on 19 October. that the union should not Chelsea, are paid £7.85 an conferences. companies – such as hour — less than the £8.30 cantly lower than other puTthaepdriecceiosniodnewmeonctratcoy.a They were asked to sup - Matalan, Oasis, and Mc - counted vote and was port the proposal by the Coll – pay an average of only passed extremely National Executive Council less than £9,000 per narrowly, with 82 dele - Sparks fight union busting to only meet biennially as it worker per year. gates voting for and 79 would help save the union GMB North West Re - against. money at a time when it is gional Secretary Paul But it’s going on right here, in financial difficulties. McCarthy said: “It is a scandal that Next should right now. So as well as the Outgoing president Don - • Latest issue of the AWL’s be paying minimum daily pickets we have had nacha DeLong said it was ‘Mediaworker’ bulletin - wages and that some ap - some great protests over not just about the money, bit.ly/VPQMEi blacklisting and sackings prentices are paid £2.60 with our comrades in the per hour when they are Blacklist Support Group. making such huge prof - BAM, the main contrac - More industrial news online its. There is no excuse for tor at Westbourne Park, are this absolute greed.” one of the biggest blacklis - GMB’s campaign of ters going. There has been G London Overground workers’ strike ballot demonstrations and plenty of coverage in the — bit.ly/SXTH9f awareness-raising sur - press lately on blacklisting. veys is positive, but it When employers break must be a complement the law our response has European Court of Human Rights approves — not an alternative — Pic: Kelvin Williams to be civil disobedience G UK anti-strike laws hearing — bit.ly/RqdUpe to a campaign of indus - all the way. trial organising within From the Siteworker the picket any time be - stores, warehouses and bulletin tween 7am and 1pm. The Newsquest journalists strike — distribution centres. nearest tube is Westbourne • 28 electricians were G Only strong, confi - sacked from the West - dent union organisa - Since the sacking of 28 Park, and the site is oppo - bit.ly/Rqgagc bourne Park Crossrail site, tion on shop floors will electrical construction site the station. Four or five including elected union make retail bosses suf - workers three weeks ago, pickets can cause havoc at stewards and health and ficiently scared of there have been daily the Crossrail site; just imag - G Three more Rem - safety reps. Since the sack - workers’ action to pickets at the West - ine what 40 or 400 could ings, a major accident has ploy sites to be sold plough a greater slice bourne Park Crossrail do! occurred on the site (a off — bit.ly/VQLvwq of their profits into site. Remarkably, there are those that still say blacklist - gantry collapsed onto the workers’ wages. Activists should arrive at ing is a thing of the past. track). Protests grow in Spain and Italy

S&oWlorikdersa’ Libreirtty y By Ruben Lomas and largest and most militant Hugh Edwards protest for nearly a year. From Turin and Milan in Anti-austerity protests in the north to Naples and Spain are continuing to Palermo in the south, grow, with many cities university and high school witnessing near-daily students defiantly out - protests. faced the ferocious thug squads of the state as they There were marches in tried to prevent the stu - 56 different cities on Sun - dents getting near to local day 7 October, mobilising or national government tens of thousands of peo - buildings. ple. Around 60,000 people “Away with the Castes”, marched in Madrid. protesters roared, referring Spain’s unions are now to the putridly bloated, threatening a general corrupt fabric of everyday strike unless Prime Minis - life — political ,economic, ter Rajoy holds a referen - social and cultural — that dum on his deeply is contemporary bourgeois unpopular austerity Italy, whose survival de - budget. The budget, which pends on the immiseration involves €13 billion of ad - of millions of its youth. ditional cuts, was passed The naked brutality of on Tuesday 25 September the cops’ reaction against despite enormous protests defenceless children once in Madrid on which 35 more underlies the icy de - people were arrested and termination of those in 64 people injured. A sur - power to meet every mani - vey in the El Pais newspa - festation of dissent with per showed that nearly evBerugtrofuwrtinhgerremparerscshioens . 80% of people support the are planned this month. Organise to rescue the NHS! protests, with 90% expect - ing them to become more frequent. By Jill Mountford save the NHS. It was the gether the many hospital lion of cuts. Services and Ignacio Toxo, the leader last Labour government and health campaigns - whole hospitals are closing, of the CCOO union At the start of October, that promoted the Private uniting in action, sharing jobs are being lost, patients (Spain’s largest), said that on the initiative of the Finance Initiative (PFI) in ideas, information, tactics are receiving poorer care. it was “up to the govern - NHS Liaison Network, the NHS, that same PFI and strategies; building a There are already many ment” whether a general Labour Party conference that is now choking the life solidarity network that can hundreds of people across strike went ahead, and that voted to prioritise the out of the NHS as hospitals support and mobilise and the country campaigning to Rajoy could avert it by NHS for debate and then are forced to pay private fight to win. defend hospitals, services holding a referendum. passed a resolution call - contractors interest and We need to raise the ar - and jobs. In order to defeat In Italy, tens of thou - ing for the repeal of the maintenance charges to - gument, loud and clear, the Tories we need to mo - sands of students in every Health and Social Care talling £122 billion over the that the rich and big busi - bilise hundreds of thou - major city marched on Fri - Act, opposing the cuts, coming years. ness can and should pay sands of workers and their day 6 October in the and demanding the re - Our job is to convince for the NHS through higher families. building of the NHS, paid workers everywhere that taxes. Millions of people sup - for by taxing the rich. we can win if we rely on We need to take the bat - port the NHS and believe Is revolution possible ourselves, organise across tle to defend and rebuild in in the founding principle. Within hours of confer - the rank and file, work out the NHS into the unions, As yet far fewer have the in Europe? A Workers’ ence passing the resolution, our demands for ourselves, all the unions, not just Uni - confidence, experience and Labour leader Ed Miliband Liberty dayschool and fight for them in the son and Unite. know-how to win back and told Channel 4 news he labour movement, that is, rebuild the NHS. could not promise not Saturday 24 November, in the unions and the RANK-AND-FILE Socialists need to take the make cuts in the NHS. Labour Party, in the work - We need rank-and-file or - initiative for local cam - 12:00 - 18:00, London Few believe we can rely place and on the streets. ganisation in the unions paigns, to help build them on the Labour leaders to (venue tbc) We need to bring to - to take up the fight when or where necessary to set the union leaders shy them up, with the support Join us, and speakers from across Europe, to discuss how we away from it and tell us to of trade unions, trades can develop European working-class unity and a Europe-wide March on 20 October wait for a Labour govern - councils and Constituent fightback, and what Marxist ideas can contribute to that ment, as they will do, Labour Parties. fight. Discussions will include: The TUC’s “A future that content-free platitudes of more and more, the We need to organise pub - works” demonstration the TUC. Workers’ Liberty nearer we get to a gen - lic meetings, inviting local G What is a revolutionary situation? Is there now one in on Saturday 20 October members will be attending eral election. doctors, nurses and other Greece? (assembling at Embank - the march to argue for health workers to speak G Who are Syriza? ment at 11am) will be an The battle will not be working-class political al - and support the cam - G How Leon Trotsky's ideas can help us understand the important opportunity to won overnight. At the mo - crisis ternative to austerity, and a ment, despite having no paigns. send a message of defi - G Should we want the EU to break up? fight to transform the popular support for their We need to organise reg - ance to the government. G Facing and beating the threat from Golden Dawn labour movement to make attacks on the NHS, the To - ular stalls explaining the G Solidarity without borders: migrants' struggles The bigger and more it fLitotookruoluet. for our ban - ries and their Lib-Dem bag- case for the defence of the G Women across Europe fight back belligerent the demonstra - ners and stalls, and our carriers have the NHS. We have to under - tion, the more galvanised newspaper! To meet up stand the facts and statis - upper-hand. Tickets bought in advance: £12 waged, £8 low-waged/uni and emboldened people with Workers’ Liberty tics, the detail of what is The NHS is being students, £5 unwaged/FE/school students will feel going into the members on the day, chopped up and hived off haWppeeneinegd. to organise to fights ahead. ring Daniel on 07961 to the private sector. An es - transform people’s belief Free creche and accommodation available. Followed by a But a simple A to B 040618. timated 20% of the NHS in the NHS into a belief “Beats, Rhymes and Picket Lines IV: musical and poetic march, no matter how will be in the hands of pri - that they can fight and dispatches from the frontlines of industrial unrest” @ The large, can only achieve so vate business within the win. Star of Kings, York Way, N1 0AX, Kings Cross; doors at 8pm. much, particularly if its • Demo website: next few years ( Financial More: www.workersliberty.org/24nov headline message is the afuturethatworks.org Times ). The Tories plan £50 bil -