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No 300 16 October 2013 30p/80p www.workersliberty.org For a workers’ government

Exploiting Open Europe’s Fighting casual migrants borders work in 1972 in Russia page 2 pages 6-7 page 9

Tories and Labour are competing with each other over who can be “tougher” on benefit claimants. Socialists, trade unionists, and community activists can force them to retreat. See page 5 Who speaks for the worst off? 2 NEWS

What is the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty? Drawbacks in press row

Today one class, the working class, lives by selling its labour power to By Colin Foster The Privy Council has al - Both have the drawback go to court large protection another, the capitalist class, which owns the means of production. ready rejected a full-scale for the dissident and mi - from criticism. But we also Society is shaped by the capitalists’ relentless drive to On 30 October the Privy alternative drafted by the nority press — like Solidar - increase their wealth. Capitalism causes poverty, support legal entitlements unemployment, the blighting of lives by overwork, Council — an appointed newspaper bosses. ity — that publications to replies and corrections. imperialism, the destruction of the environment and committee of medieval The differences between outside the scope of the Real freedom of the much else. origins — is due to an - the newspaper bosses’ new commission would be press will be won only by Against the accumulated wealth and power of the nounce a decision on scheme and the govern - subject to exemplary puni - establishing social con - capitalists, the working class has one weapon: solidarity. press regulation. ment’s are relatively slight. tive damages in libel cases. trol over the essential The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty aims to build solidarity through Both would established a Socialists prefer even means of production — struggle so that the working class can overthrow capitalism. We want The big political parties souped-up version of the bourgeois freedom of the have agreed a scheme be - printing presses, distribu - socialist revolution: collective ownership of industry and services, present Press Complaints press to government con - tion systems, and so on workers’ control and a democracy much fuller than the present system, tween them but are re - Commission, and a panel trol, and we are for a dras - — and guarantees of ac - with elected representatives recallable at any time and an end to working it to try to make it to check up on how the tic reform of Britain's cess to those means by bureaucrats’ and managers’ privileges. acceptable to the press souped-up commission is current libel laws, which We fight for the labour movement to break with “social partnership” lords. operating. offer people rich enough to all schools of thought. and assert working-class interests militantly against the bosses. Our priority is to work in the workplaces and trade unions, supporting workers’ struggles, producing workplace bulletins, helping Police protect EDL in Bradford Hand-out for mail share-buyers organise rank-and-file groups. We are also active among students and in many campaigns and By Gerry Bates Well-off people who bought Royal Mail shares in the alliances. government’s sell-off were able to reap an instant On Saturday 12 October profit of more than £300 as soon as the shares We stand for: around 250 people started trading on 15 October and the shares rose Independent working-class representation in politics. ● demonstrated with the from the 330p sell-off price to 490p. ● A workers’ government, based on and accountable to the labour English Defence League movement. in Bradford. Big banks who bought larger slabs of shares have made ● A workers’ charter of trade union rights — to organise, to strike, to bigger gains. picket effectively, and to take solidarity action. Heavy policing ensured large parts of the city were The hand-out here to the rich and the well-off is not a ● Taxation of the rich to fund decent public services, homes, education mistake or misjudgement by the government. All the big and jobs for all. shut down. privatisations by the Thatcher government had the same ● A workers’ movement that fights all forms of oppression. Full The EDL had previously appointing. equality for women and social provision to free women from the burden targeted the city in 2010. Leeds Anti Fascist Net - thing: share prices rose as soon as the shares began trad - of housework. Free abortion on request. Full equality for lesbian, gay, That was one of the few oc - work and Bradford Anti ing, and those who had bought in got immediate gains. bisexual and transgender people. Black and white workers’ unity casions when they were Fascists leafletting and or - This government and the Thatcher government, keen against racism. clearly routed by the anti- ganised for local people to to cut social spending, are also keen to spend taxpayers' ● Open borders. fascist opposition. come to the city centre and money to provide those gains for the share-traders. ● Global solidarity against global capital — workers everywhere have On 12 October up to 200 oppose the EDL directly Doing so ensures that the sell-off is a "success" — the more in common with each other than with their capitalist or Stalinist anti-fascists and locals and on the day leafletting demand for shares is bigger than the supply. It avoids the rulers. turned out against the to build a Bradford Anti risk of the government being embarrassed by some ● Democracy at every level of society, from the smallest workplace or racists of the EDL. Al - Fascist Network. community to global social organisation. The left and trade union shares remaining unsold. And it consolidates enthusiasm though the poor weather for the government among a significant layer of its habit - ● Working-class solidarity in international politics: equal rights for all and a union-backed anti movement must do much nations, against imperialists and predators big and small. better at co-ordinating ual supporters. fascist march in Liverpool Remember that next time the government says that ● Maximum left unity in action, and openness in debate. at the same time probably and mobilising against If you agree with us, please take some copies of Solidarity to sell — social cuts are necessary. ● had an effect, this was dis - the racists and fascists. and join us! Contact us: US shutdown hurts the poor ● 020 7394 8923 ● [email protected] The editor (Cathy Nugent), 20e Tower Workshops, Riley As Solidarity went to press, But at the Department of ers, but he was left with 40 Road, London, SE1 3DG. negotiations over the US Homeland Security, Immi - people determined to be ● Printed by Trinity Mirror government shutdown gration and Customs En - “essential.” The CDC even - were ongoing. This article, forcement (ICE) employees tually got 30 more people by Nicole Colson, is from and Customs and Border deemed “essential,” but Socialist Worker, the paper Protection agents are only 10 of them went to Get Solidarity every week! of the International Social- “still...around to enforce work in Braden’s division, ● Trial sub, 6 issues £5 o ist Organization. immigration law because and not all of them were the operations are ‘neces - working on the PulseNet ● 22 issues (six months). £18 waged o As the federal govern - sary for safety of life and program that investigates £9 unwaged o ment shutdown enters a protection of foodborne illnesses. third week, cutting off property,’” according to It wasn’t until after 278 ● 44 issues (year). £35 waged o funds for so-called “non- £17 unwaged o Alternet ‘s Esther Yu-Hsi Unaffected by shut-down people across 18 states had essential” government Lee. ICE agents are still ar - been sickened by an antibi - ● European rate: 28 euros (22 issues) o services, it’s more and resting and deporting some otic-resistant outbreak of or 50 euros (44 issues) o more clear that what 1,120 immigrants per day. The shutdown has af - salmonella that the CDC’s those in power consider fected public health — per - Tick as appropriate above and send your money to: So the federal shutdown outbreak-tracking team “non-essential” is very won’t stop the Obama ad - haps most obviously in a was finally re-designated 20e Tower Workshops, Riley Road, London, SE1 3DG different from what we ministration from passing a multi-state salmonella out - as an “essential” service. Cheques (£) to “AWL”. do. terrible milestone in the break in chicken that This salmonella out - caused hundreds to fall ill break didn’t become a Or make £ and euro payments at workersliberty.org/sub. Educational programs next few weeks: two mil - like Head Start, nutrition lion immigrants deported and dozens to be hospi - massive public health cri - talised. sis, but it’s obvious that Name ...... assistance to women and in the five years since children, national parks, Barack Obama took office Dr Chris Braden, director already understaffed and of the Centers for Disease underfunded U.S. public Address ...... some medical services at — more than any other the National Institutes of president. Control and Prevention’s health agencies are being (CDC) division of food - stretched to their limits ...... Health — all are among the This contrast shows the many services closed down twisted priorities of the borne, waterborne and en - — with the potential for a I enclose £ ...... outright or facing the threat federal government, evi - vironmental diseases, told worse crisis down the of their funding running dent even when that gov - Wired.com’s Maryn road. out during the shutdown. ernment is shut down. McKenna that his division • Full article: bit.ly/iso-gs normally totals 300 work - 3 NEWS 2018 World Cup built on exploitation Bob Carnegie

By Anne Field ing and stigmatising of for - labour are also scrapped by most will be foreign work - eigners by the Russian FZ-108, as too is the re - ers. And should any of the facing The International Trade media and politicians. quirement to make social migrant workers die at Union Confederation, All this will be made security and national insur - work – as many of them with 315 national affili - even worse by new laws – ance deductions from undoubtedly will – then court ates, representing 175 popularly known as the salaries paid to foreigners the chances of any penalty million workers, an - “2018 World Cup Law” or employed on World Cup being imposed on an em - nounced its support last “FZ-108” (Federal Law work. ployer are effectively zero. again week for campaigning by Number 108 of 2013) – Migrant workers them - As a result of FZ-108, there Russian trade unions passed by the Russian Par - selves do not need to ob - will be no record that they against new laws attack - liament in June but not tain work permits if their even existed. By Martin Thomas ing workers’ rights in the fully publicised until Sep - work falls within the defi - Foreign and stateless run-up to the 2018 World tember. nition contained in article workers already in Russia Australian trade union - Cup. The law came into imme - nine. Nor do they need to are the first victims of FZ- ist and Workers’ Lib - Five construction work - diate effect and will remain register with the authori - 108. erty activist Bob ers employed on building in force until the end of ties. A sharp crackdown by Carnegie is likely to be new football stadiums in 2018. It makes special pro - At first sight, such meas - police on illegal migrant hauled into court again vision for anyone em - ures might appear to make Kazan and St. Petersburg labourers in recent months on 21 October, for a ployed in connection with life easier for foreign have been killed in recent has seen mass round-ups of 20-day hearing of a months as a direct result of the 2018 World Cup. It tar - labour, at least temporarily: migrants and their impris - civil-law claim for dam - inadequate health and gets the rights of workers no restriction on the num - onment in special camps in safety protection. in general, and of foreign bers who can be employed; ages over the QCH dis - of the working day which and around Moscow, St. An inspection of the workers in particular. no requirement to register pute against the unions employers can impose are Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Kazan construction site Article nine of FZ-108 with the authorities; and, if on the QCH site — scrapped. The various re - Volgograd, Samara, Ros - found that half of the sub- concerns “foreign citizens they obtain World Cup CFMEU, the CEPU, and quirements of the Russian tov-on-Don and Kalin - contractors working on and stateless individuals work, regularisation of the BLF. Labour Code concerning ingrad. building the stadium had on the territory of the Russ - those currently in the coun - rates of pay for night work, But to secure at least a A mediation hearing failed to provide proper ian Federation” whose try illegally. temporary legal status, and weekend working and between union and com - health and safety equip - “work activities are con - thereby their release from working on public holidays pany lawyers produced ment and training for their nected to measures” which CONTEXT the camps, the imprisoned But the picture changes are likewise scrapped. employees. relate to the “preparation migrant workers need only no result. Abigroup is radically once such provi - In further breaches of the Most workers employed and staging” of the 2018 sign up for work connected pursuing the case ag - sions are placed within Russian Labour Code over - on building projects for the World Cup. to the 2018 World Cup. The gressively, claiming the context of article 11 time payments are 2018 World Cup are mi - Where foreigners and prison camps are therefore many millions of dollars of the law, which applies scrapped and replaced by grant labourers from Cen - stateless persons are em - a guaranteed source of de - in damages. ployed on World Cup to anyone — Russian and time off in lieu, and when tral Asia and the Caucasus. fenceless labour for em - It is possible that a work, their employers do non-Russian alike — em - workers take paid annual They face a host of other ployers. legal move by the CEPU problems in addition to a not need to obtain permis - ployed in the preparation leave is to be unilaterally may result in the hearing lack of health and safety sion to employ them, in - and staging of the World determined by the em - PRISON CAMPS Cup. ployer. being postponed, and in protection. form the authorities of the Hardly by chance, all of Although article 11 refers that case the postpone - Outside of the workplace start and termination of Article 11 scraps a suc - the migrant prison camps their contracts, nor inform to the possibility of such these migrant workers are cession of legally guaran - listed above are located ment will be for some the authorities of the dates terms and conditions of confronted by racism, in - teed workers’ rights from in the immediate vicinity months. of their arrival in and de - employment being subject cluding police brutality the time of the passing of of cities which will be As of now, though, we parture from Russia. to collective agreement, it and physical attacks by the law until the end of hosting games in the have to reckon on the Quotas for the number of also allows employers to right-wing extremists, en - 2018. World Cup. hearing coming soon. visas and work permits to unilaterally include them couraged by the scapegoat - Restrictions on the length Earlier this year Bob be issued for such foreign in contracts of employ - Campaigners are already ment, just as it allows local demanding that FIFA faced contempt-of-court authorities to impose them should ensure that the 2018 charges over the dispute, through regulations. World Cup is free from in which, as a commu - In other articles of FZ- systematic labour abuses. nity activist, he helped 108, the list of employers Although FIFA is a legiti - workers on the Queens - who will benefit from this mate target for such cam - land Children’s Hospital abolition of workers’ rights paigning, little or no construction site win is drawn particularly reliance should be placed their demand for a widely. upon it to take effective ac - union-negotiated site It includes not just FIFA tion. agreement after a nine- itself, national football as - Speaking at a World Cup sociations and the Russia symposium in April of this week stoppage in Au - 2018 Organising Commit - year, FIFA General Secre - gust-October 2012. tee, but also FIFA’s com - tary Jerome Valcke said: He was acquitted on mercial and business “Less democracy is some - the contempt charges. partners and licensees, plus times better for organising But in the civil case the all subsidiaries of these a World Cup. When you test of evidence is “bal - bodies, and all contractors have a strong head of state ance of probability”, not and sub-contractors en - who can decide, as maybe “beyond reasonable gaged by these organisa - Putin can do in 2018, that is doubt”. tions. easier for us organisers.” Unless we organise a RMT Executive member and AWL activist Janine Booth Trade union activists – Anyone working for strong campaign to and politically aware addresses a demonstration outside the Qatari embassy in these employers on work alert the labour move - football fans – should connected, however tenu - ment and public opin - London on Saturday 12 October. The demonstration was ously, with the preparation focus their efforts on supporting the Russian ion to the issues, Bob called by Nepalese activists to highlight the struggles of and staging of the 2018 could face crushing World Cup will be denied trade unions and NGOs fines and damages. Nepalese migrant workers employed on World Cup 2022 the rights otherwise guar - who are organising on anteed by the Russian the ground against the construction projects in Qatar. draconian consequences Labour Code. • bobcarnegiedefence. of FZ-108 for World Cup And the workers who wordpress.com will suffer first and fore - labour. 4 COMMENT Clash in the Socialist Party

Peter Taaffe; on 25 September Wallace, on an oppositional USSR was state-capitalist and for his aversion to party-build - blog which he has run since March 2013, published a re - ing than on his statistical analysis. The Left sponse co-signed by a number of others. Kliman is a member of the Marxist-Humanist Initiative. Wallace draws on the writings of the US writer Andrew The MHI was formed by a split in 2009 from the News and Letters group, which upholds the ideas of the late As the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) moves towards its Kliman. Kliman, in contrast to most other Marxist analysts Raya Dunayevskaya. December conference with hot dispute between its Cen - of the statistics (including us), argues that the rate of profit tral Committee and a large opposition faction, the So - has been falling in the USA consistently since 1947; that the cialist Party (SP) is also immersed in conflict. real wages of the US working class have been rising; and that • AWL comment on the “tendency of the rate of profit to the rate of exploitation has not been rising. fall”: bit.ly/ltrpf The SWP dispute originates with discontent over the han - The debate over his claims involves complicated argu - dling by the leadership of charges by SWP women members ments about statistical classification and adjustments. of sexual harassment and rape. The main idea Wallace draws from Kliman is that the cur - SWP crisis continues The opposition has moved on to broader questions of SWP rent crisis originates from large and constant trends of capi - regime, but not yet to SWP public politics. A new article by talism, and that a political answer can be nothing less than SWP leaders Alex Callinicos and Charlie Kimber responds Alex Callinicos and Charlie Kimber have written a long the full nationalisation of all the main means of production. by claiming that the roots of the dispute lie in the opposi - defence of the SWP’s recent past in the latest issue of Inter- He criticises the SP leadership for having its prominent tion’s lack of confidence in the working class and trend to - national Socialism (The Politics of the SWP Crisis, trade-union activists, in the PCS, endorse weak Keynesian wards “movementism”. bit.ly/cal-kimb). economics, and for itself proposing more limited demands, We must hope this spurs the opposition to widen its sights It starts with the following “[The deep division in the such as the nationalisation of the banks. further to the public political questions. party] has not stopped us acting as a revolutionary organ- Actually, week to week, the SP today scarcely even men - The SP generally has an even more controlled regime than isation. We have had successes and recruited hundreds of tions nationalising the banks, but focuses instead on the neg - the SWP. Concerns over the SP’s response to charges of sex - new members.” And goes on in the same delusional way. ative claim “no cuts” and, to add militancy, the call for a 24 ist bullying made against one of its prominent trade union - Dave Renton has produced a forensic analysis of the ar- hour general strike. ists have not spread far. ticle and the sorry sequence of events inside the SWP over Wallace, according to his blog, joined the Militant tendency The opposition in the SP is different. Bruce Wallace, an the last year. bit.ly/renton-swp. (forerunner of SP) in 1974. He was out of activity between SPer in Scotland, has challenged the SP’s economic analyses; But Renton’s article does not deal with the latest testi- 2003 and 2012 and spent time studying Marxist economics. the debate seems more factionalised than you might expect mony and allegation of a rape and botched internal inves- The reply by Walsh and Taaffe attacks Kliman more than on such theoretical issues. On 24 September the SP website tigation inside the SWP. You can read about that on Wallace, and Kliman more for his view that the Stalinist highlighted a full-dress reply by SP leaders Lynn Walsh and internationalsocialistnetwork.org Socialists and Debating the Israel-Palestine conflict press advertising By Tom Harris tion of ending the occupation, she said, but the defeat of the movement had closed off the opportunity. On Sunday 13 October, Independent Jewish Voices held I asked a question from the floor: If such a movement were a conference in London on the ongoing impasse in the to spring up again, what bearing would that have on the Letter Israel-Palestine conflict. British left and its flirtation with the idea of boycotting Israeli IJV was set up in 2007 as an organisation of left-wing academic institutions and trade unions? Would a boycott not Solidarity 299 reprinted an interesting article from 1917 in British Jews opposed to the occupation and oppression of the cordon us off from a dialogue with those people? Wein - which Lenin argued for public control over advertising in Palestinians. It conceives of itself as a “counter-balance” to garten, who is in favour of the boycott, said that it might, but the press as a main means to win a “freedom of the the official communal leadership of the conservative and added (rather elusively) that “this is a matter for British press” accessible to the working class and not just to staunchly Zionist Board of Deputies. unions.” the rich. The conference was held in Birkbeck, University of Lon - Another interesting contribution came from Jayyab don, and attracted around a hundred people. The keynote Abusafia, a Palestinian from Gaza now working as a journal - Another classic text of Marxism argues against public con - speaker was Dr Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian physician ist in the UK. He stressed that life in Gaza was not only being trol over press advertising. Eduard Bernstein’s Ferdinand and politician from the relatively secular and left-wing Pales - made hellish by the Israeli occupation, but by the day-to-day Lassalle as Social Reformer was written under the direct tinian National Initiative. He spoke on the future prospects oppression of the Islamist Hamas government. Women, he guidance of Frederick Engels, while Bernstein was still a rev - for peace and Palestinian self-determination, twenty years on said, were constantly forced into covering their head, though olutionary Marxist. It was a key text in making the German from the Oslo accords to which he was a signatory. many were now beginning to rebel. Social-Democratic Party in its great days “Marxist” rather Barghouti is highly critical of both the cronyism and cor - I asked what British activists could do to make solidarity than “Lassallean”. ruption of Fatah and the fascistic Islamism of Hamas. He is with Palestinians against oppression from both Israel and In it Bernstein dissects a demand made by Lassalle that also scathing about the complicity of the US and UK in the Hamas. He said that the first thing to do was to speak out newspapers be banned from printing advertisements. “Then ongoing occupation and annexation of Palestinian territory against human rights abuses by Hamas, and not to turn a the press would cease to be a lucrative business speculation, by the Israeli state. blind eye, because “to be oppressed by your own govern - and only such men [and women] would write for the news - ment is just as bad as being oppressed by a foreign one.” While his politics are a long distance from the revolution - The British left should take this lesson on board. papers as were fighting for the well-being and intellectual in - ary socialism of Workers’ Liberty, he is at least a fairly sincere terests of the people”. social-democrat, and his secular, critical analysis was far Bernstein retorts that “the absence of advertisements” in more lucid and humane than a lot of the rhetoric that charac - the French press (because of special taxes) made it easier for terises the debate around Israel-Palestine. The left and women’s rights: why the case of the authoritarian government of the Second Empire (1852- Before Barghouti’s address, there was a panel discussion Steve Hedley is as serious as the case of 70) “to corrupt the press to its own ends”, whereas the wider on “forms of intervention”. The panel, which featured a mix - Martin Smith range of newspaper revenues through advertising in Britain ture of British, Palestinian and Israeli human rights activists had allowed the British press to become more critical. and journalists, discussed a wide range of issues from boy - The SWP’s handling of charges of sexual harassment and Lassalle’s botched half-measure towards democratic social cotts, to International Courts of Justice, to Oxford scholar - rape made against Martin Smith has caused massive con- control over the means of communication would make things ships for Gazan students. troversy inside and outside the organisation. Less well worse, not better. Two panellists stood out as having particularly interesting known, but equally significant in terms of the left’s attitude Was Lenin wrong? Or Bernstein? Neither, I think. Lenin things to say. The first was Miri Weingarten, an Israeli peace to women’s rights and democratic accountability, is the was talking about control over press advertising by a gov - activist now living in the UK. She said that she feared that case of Steve Hedley, Assistant General Secretary of the ernment based on workers’ councils (soviets). Lassalle’s agi - co-operation and solidarity between Palestinian and Israeli RMT union, who until recently was a member of the So- tation referred to control over press advertising and income activists was entering a tragic decline. She argued that this cialist Party. by a German government which was a monarchical despot - was largely due to increasing Palestinian frustration with the Hedley has been accused of domestic violence and of ism with only thin democratic coverings. inconsistency of the Israeli left, and the rightward turn in Is - In evaluating any slogan as Marxists, we have to look more general sexist behaviour. raeli popular opinion. The popular protests that erupted in not only to the literal content, but at who is being called • An AWL briefing on the case can be found here: Israel against the decline in living standards had the oppor - on to carry out the slogan, and how. womensfightback.wordpress.com/2013/10/13/hedley/ tunity to link the working-class mass of Israelis to the ques - Martin Thomas, Islington 5 WHAT WE SAY Who will speak for Organise the worst-off? against

inequality which, on another day, the Labour leaders piously evictions! deplore. Labour’s leaders want to reverse, or at least limit, that in - equality spiral? But at the same time be “tougher than the To - ries” in pushing major policies which increase inequality? The campaign to commit the Labour Party to abolish Against the “tougher-than-thou” consensus among main - the bedroom tax has succeeded! Under pressure from stream politicians, who will speak up for the worst-off? a campaign by tenants, community, trade union and Who will dispute the myths about “scroungers”? Who will Labour left activists, Ed Miliband has said he “wants tell the truth about the escalating increase in child poverty, to be known as the Prime Minister who abolishes the which goes on despite legislation in March 2010, supported Bedroom Tax”. even by the Tories, which theoretically commits the govern - However this is not much relief for hundreds of thou - ment to reduce child poverty to low percentages by 2020-1? sands of tenants who have been deemed to have vacant Who will stop people forgetting the findings of a study by bedrooms, have had their benefit cuts and now have rent the conservative Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) in May this arrears. year: “Tax and benefit reforms introduced since April 2010 The majority of Labour-led councils, along with other can account for almost all of the increase in child poverty pro - councils that still control their own council housing and jected over the next few years”? Housing Associations, are implementing the bedroom tax. Who will help the low-waged, the insecurely-employed, Some are already threatening tenants in arrears with evic - and jobless organise and fight back? tion. Their expressions of sympathy look hollow to ten - In the first place, the socialists must do that. If ever we ants facing eviction. think that “it’s all hopeless” or “nothing we do makes a dif - Councils and housing associations should follow Ren - ference”, we should remember that the first step in every frewshire council’s lead and adopt a firm no-eviction pol - great movement of change is the action of those who tell icy. things as they really are, who denounce the crimes and Councillors Against the Cuts has put out a statement abuses which others gloss over or dismiss. for Labour councillors to sign calling for no evictions In the second place, we must transform and mobilise our Another foul coalition policy, which could also force trade unions, the fallback organisations of the working class, New Shadow Cabinet members Rachel Reeves, left, and hundreds of thousands of people into rent arrears and to speak up for the worst off and help them organise. Tristram Hunt, right, have rushed to assure the world that they into the courts, is the cut in council tax benefit. There has Too often trade unions get hunkered down in defending would be just as tough as the Tories on the unemployed (if not been a 10% cut in central government funding for council the terms and conditions only of the (usually slightly better- tougher!), and almost as supportive of free schools. The labour tax benefit. Councils have been left to decide for them - paid, slightly more securely-employed) workers where their movement must help the worst-off members of our class fight selves how they chose to “manage” this. With few excep - organisation is strongest. for themselves. tions councils have chosen to pass these cuts on to That is wrong, and anyway short-sighted. Trade unions households. must be made to speak up for and organise the whole work - Labour Party-commissioned research estimates around ing class. If we do that, we can win. We can win some gains 450,000 individuals have been summoned to court over Just don’t get any ideas! That is the message from even now. council tax arrears. Some anti-bedroom tax activists — Labour’s new people appointed to front-bench positions. At the Labour conference at the end of September, Labour “Hands Off Our Homes” in Leeds for instance — have leaders promised to abolish the bedroom tax, to repeal the Rachel Reeves, the new work and pensions front-bencher, been campaigning around this issue as well. Health and Social Care Act, to freeze energy prices, to give who in another life spouted about “challenging neo-liberal - As we get nearer a general election it is increasingly un - councils power to take building land left idle by developers, ism”, told the Observer that on welfare benefits: likely that the government will change tack on these two to create job offers for all those unemployed a long time, and “We would be tougher [than the Conservatives]. If they policies. The Tories’ electoral strategy is going to rely to do something (they wouldn’t quite say what) to promote [unemployed people] don’t take it [the offer of a job] they heavily on stoking up hatred and fear against benefit the Living Wage. will forfeit their benefit”. claimants and the poor. Disgracefully, Labour, apart from She claimed that “there will also be the opportunities there BALANCE on the issue of the bedroom tax, has chosen to compete under a Labour government”, and Labour would “get tough with Tory for “being tough” on the poor. The Tory press responded with volleys denouncing Ed on the causes of unemployment and rising benefit bills: low Action by the Scottish and Welsh governments, by Miliband as “red”, “Bolshevik”, and set on pursuing the pay, lack of economic opportunity, shortage of affordable councils, by housing associations, in support of the vic - Marxist vision of his father, “the man who hated Britain”. housing”, but all that was vague. tims of the bedroom tax and council tax changes, could Tristram Hunt, the new shadow education secretary, who That has made the Labour leaders so nervous that they are make them a dead letter. We need to keep up the pres - wearing another hat wrote a sympathetic biography of Fred - anxious to “balance” things with promises to be “tough” sure. erick Engels, started by apologising for his previous criti - about benefits and “on the side” of Tory-style “free schools”. Socialists, activists, trade unionists, and tenants need to cisms of the Tories’ “free schools” and saying: The Labour leaders are also, no doubt, worried that if they organise now to defend people from the threat of eviction. “If you are a group of parents, social entrepreneurs and promise anything much, then working-class people will “get In Manchester, Renfrewshire, Birmingham, and teachers interested in setting up a school in areas where you ideas” and start demanding more. The promises made at elsewhere evictions have been stopped by militant need new school places, then the Labour government will be Labour conference, feeble though they were, were the first campaigns — sometimes even stopping bailiffs at the on your side”. time since 1996-7 that mainstream politicians had offered garden gate or on the doorstep. Remember the facts. anything noticeably to the left of the government of the day. School spending is squeezed, and regular community In 1996-7 it was Tony Blair promising things like the min - schools are losing out because money is transferred to Acad - imum wage. He was anxious at the time to balance that by in - emies and free schools. Teachers’ and other school workers’ sisting that he would rid Labour of any taint of not being wages are being cut in real terms. entirely “pro-business” and that he would keep “the most re - By 2014-5 the average household will have lost £760 a year strictive [laws] on trade unions in the western world”. through the Tories’ benefit cuts. The cuts are not about a Nevertheless, even the minimal promises of things differ - mythical army of “scroungers” who choose to luxuriate on ent from the Tories created a new wave of hope and a some - the dole even though they could get jobs. what higher level of confidence in the working class. Blair The majority of those who lose through the benefit cuts are had made quite sure he could stamp on it, but it was there. working, but on low pay. The unemployed are unemployed Campaigning by socialists and unions has forced the because there aren’t jobs, and the government is furiously Labour leaders to shift on issues like the bedroom tax. axing even more jobs in the public sector. We do not rely on their promises, but we do fight to hold The benefit cuts hit the worse-off harder, and the disabled them to account. More campaigning can force more hardest of all. They are a major engine of the spiralling social shifts. The duty of socialists is to lead the way. 6-7 MIGRANTS The boat people of the 1940s Open Europe’s borders! By Dale Street the quota it had asked for would be approved in 1936. As a result, immigration slumped from over 65,000 in By Anne Field What the Somali and other refugees drowned in the 1935 to less than 30,000 in 1936. Mediterranean are now, Jews were in the 1940s. In 1937 a government statement proposed that Jewish im - “The risk of illegal border-crossing across the Central A British government White Paper published in May of migration be limited to 8,000 for the period August 1937 to Mediterranean area was assessed as amongst the high - 1939 restricted Jewish immigration into Palestine to 75,000 March 1938 “provided that the economic absorptive capac - est, due to the continued volatile situation in countries for the following five years. It would then cease completely ity of the country is not exceeded.” of departure in North Africa.” unless the Arabs in the independent Palestine envisaged by And two months after the publication of the 1939 White That’s how the latest annual report by Frontex — the Eu - the White Paper agreed to further Jewish immigration. Paper the British government announced a complete sus - ropean Union’s border agency — assessed the risk of at - The figure of 75,000 was broken down into: 10,000 per pension of Jewish immigration into Palestine until July of tempting to enter the European Union by sailing from North year (but “subject to the criterion of economic absorptive 1940, on the basis that there had been an increase in the Africa to Italian territories. capacity”), plus another 25,000 over the entire five years for level of illegal immigration. But when Frontex talked about “risk”, it did not mean the “refugee emergencies” (but “subject to adequate provision The number of Jewish immigrants fell to around 10,500 in risk to migrants themselves. It meant the “risk” to the secu - for their maintenance”). 1940, and to just over 4,500 in 1941. rity of the borders of the European Union. By this time Hitler had been in power for six years, the By the end of 1942, when the Nazis’ “Final Solution” was The recent deaths of over 300 people, when a boat carrying Second World War would begin in less than six months, already known to the Allies, 34,000 of the 75,000 immigra - refugees from Libya to the Italian island of Lampedusa cap - and the “Final Solution” would commence in less than two tion certificates allowed for by the 1939 White Paper were sized, has highlighted not only the desperate conditions from years. still available. By the end of the war there were still 3,000 which the refugees were fleeing but also the ‘reception’ The Guardian described the White Paper as “a death sen - certificates left. which awaits them in the European Union. tence on tens of thousands of European Jews.” Hundreds of Jews died at sea during the war years as Libya is now the main point of departure on the North But there was nothing new about the imposition of such they fled Nazi persecution and attempted to reach Pales - African coast for refugees fleeing to EU countries. This is a restrictions. tine with the assistance of Zionist organisations. result of the collapse of central state authority as competing On 1 September, the first day of World War Two, a ves - factions vie for control of the country, or at least for control RESTRICTED sel carrying a thousand immigrants was fired on by a Royal of their own patch of territory. The first British High Commissioner of Palestine had Navy destroyer as it tried to sail into Tel Aviv, albeit with - (One of Qaddafi’s complaints about the unfairness of West - restricted Jewish immigration “in the interests of the out causing casualties. ern support for the rebels who eventually overthrew him was present population” and the “absorptive capacity of the Over 200 died when the “Salvador” sank in the Sea of that he had effectively eliminated the use of Libyan ports as country.” Marmara in 1940. Nearly 300 died when the paramilitary departure points for migrants crossing the Mediterranean to The Churchill White Paper of 1922 and a 1925 govern - Haganah organisation planted a bomb on the “Patria” in EU countries.) ment report to the League of Nations both emphasised that Haifa harbour to prevent it being towed away by the In the first nine of months of this year the main nationali - immigration was regulated by “the economic capacity of British. They miscalculated the effect of the explosion and ties of refugees who set sail from Libya in an attempt to reach the country to absorb new settlers.” the ship sank in sixteen minutes. Italian territories — the island of Lampedusa is closer to In 1930 the Simpson Report and the Passfield White Nearly 800 people on the “Struma” were killed in 1942 North Africa than it is to the Italian mainland — were Somali Paper (subsequently abandoned) recommended sharp re - when a Soviet submarine torpedoed it after it had been (3,000), Eritrean (7,500) and Syrian (7,500). ductions in the level of Jewish immigration, on the basis of towed out of Istanbul by the Turkish authorities and cast According to Italian authorities and refugee agencies, this a lack of cultivatable land and the high levels of Palestin - adrift. Some 300 died when a Soviet submarine sank the was also the composition of passengers on the ship which ian unemployment. “Mefkure” in 1944. sank on 2 October. After a jump in the number of Jewish immigrants in 1935, HOLOCAUST due to the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany, the British RISKS Even after the horrors of the Holocaust the British gov - authorities informed the Jewish Agency (which had as - Despite the risks of the Central Mediterranean crossing ernment continued with its policy of restricting Jewish sisted many of the immigrants) that less than one third of — since 1988 over 19,000 people are estimated to have immigration, using diplomatic pressure and naval died attempting it — it is easy to understand the desper - blockades to prevent Holocaust survivors from reach - ate circumstances which drives people to run such a ing Palestine. risk. According to the British Chief of General Staff in Septem - According to the latest Human Rights Watch report on So - ber of 1945: “First and foremost ships must be stopped from malia: sailing from various ports. At the same time, the coast of “Somalia’s long-running armed conflict continued to leave Palestine must be guarded more vigilantly.” civilians dead, wounded and displaced in large numbers.” Zionist organisations continued to challenge the British “Both the Islamist armed group al-Shabaab and the gov - blockade. But many who set out on such voyages did not ernment-affiliated forces committed abuses, including indis - reach their destination, or reached it only years later. criminate attacks harming civilians and arbitrary arrests and Between August 1945 and May 1948 around 120 vessels detentions.” made nearly 150 voyages to bring Jewish refugees to Pales - “Targeted killings of civilians, notably journalists, in - tine, over half of which were intercepted by British vessels. creased in areas controlled by the Somali authorities. Al- An estimated 1,600 Jews drowned at sea. Others were Shabaab committed serious abuses, such as targeted killings, killed when the British military boarded their ships. Some beheadings and executions, and forcibly recruited adults and 50,000 Jews ended up in British detention camps in Cyprus, children.” Mauritius and Atlit (in Palestine). 28,000 of them were still The organisation’s report on Eritrea makes for similar read - imprisoned by the time Israel declared independence. ing: In 1947 the “Exodus”, carrying 4,515 Holocaust survivors, “Torture, arbitrary detention, and severe restrictions on was commandeered by the British off the coast of Palestine. freedom of expression, association, and religious freedom re - Its passengers were transferred to three other ships — and main routine in Eritrea. Elections have not been held since taken to Hamburg in Germany, where they were forcibly Eritrea gained independence in 1993. Political parties are not removed from the ships and held in detention camps. allowed.” Only with the declaration of the state of Israel in May of “The constitution has never been implemented, and polit - 1948 did the British government finally abandon attempts ical parties are not allowed. Forced labour and indefinite mil - Britain consistently blocked the immigration of Jewish to block Jewish immigration. itary service prompt thousands of Eritreans to flee the refugees from Nazism to Palestine. The Exodus, above, was But by that time the policy had already directly cost country every year.” commandered by British troops in 1947 and the Holocaust the lives of thousands of would-be immigrants and, in - In Syria more than 100,000 people have been killed since survivors aboard were removed and sent to detention camps. directly, the lives of many more. the uprising against President Assad began in March 2011, 6-7 MIGRANTS Lampedusa’s Open Europe’s borders! racist horror By Hugh Edwards

The indescribable horror of what happened off the is - land of Lampedusa on 6 October, and the subsequent grotesquely cynic parade of public grief by a political class wholly culpable for the conditions that led to it, speak eloquently of the morally putrid fabric of bour - geois Italy. As the bodies of the 50 or so other migrants drowned within a week of those at Lampedusa are still being searched for, no one should fool themselves that the decla - rations of “never again” from President Napoletano and the coalition government of Letta/Alfano, or the back - ground chorus of other European states, signal any funda - mental change to the criminally racist and repressive regimes that have been responsible for so many deaths. Notwithstanding some shifts in opinion polls towards ending the criminalising Bossi/Fini law at the heart of the murderous expulsion of migrants, there is little evidence that bedrock racist assumptions among Italians about mi - grants have modified over the last 20 years. In conditions of mounting economic despair and suffering, they have worsened! The proof of it has come not only from the predictably forked tongue of the Italian”“right” in government and the Demonstration for migrants’ right by Chadians in Paris poisonous filth of the Northern League. It has also come from the leaders of the Five Star movement of Beppe Grillo all parties to the conflict have committed atrocities and war Local authorities in Switzerland have introduced what and Gianroberto Casaleggio. crimes to one degree or another, over five million Syrians are amounts to a system of apartheid under which asylum-seek - Taken by surprise by a move (by two Five Star parlia - internally displaced, and over two million have fled the ers are banned from libraries, swimming pools, playing fields mentarians) to force through an amendment to abolish the country. and the vicinity of schools. Curfews have also been imposed Bossi/Fini law in the Justice Commission of the Senate, When Somalis, Eritreans, and Syrians flee to neighbouring on asylum-seekers, banning them from going out after 5pm. these self-proclaimed avatars of the “new politics” first countries, Western politicians and media unhesitatingly de - Conditions for asylum-seekers in Greece — which arrested condemned the initiative as “not in the movement's pro - scribe them as refugees in need of support. 8,000 Syrian asylum-seekers in 2012 but granted asylum to gram”. They later admitted the real reason, was no less But if they get to the European Union, they become eco - just two of them — are so bad that some European countries than squalid opportunism of the “old” politics — such a nomic migrants, a problem that needs to be controlled, have a policy of not returning asylum-seekers there as it position would have been a kiss of death in future elec - preferably by preventing them from even reaching the shores would be a breach of their human rights to do so. tions. of the European Union in the first place. In Italy most asylum-seekers end up living on the streets or Despite wide support from their colleagues the two par - In August of this year, for example, a boatload of refugees in abandoned railway yards and condemned houses after the liamentarians were summarily expelled. The issue remains which had set sail from Libya was stranded off the coast of temporary accommodation they receive from the authorities, unresolved, threatening to blow wide open the evermore Malta while the Maltese and Italian authorities argued about which may be nothing more than a tent, comes to an end. tenuous unity of the outfit. whose responsibility they were. Eventually, the Italian au - And even survivors from the capsizing earlier this month Grillo is undoubtedly right when he points to the reality thorities backed down. were provided with nothing better than accommodation in of widespread racism, especially in the north where a lot of the “migrant holding centre” on Lampedusa, where entire his support has come from people moving away from the REFUSED families found themselves living in the open in the rain for League of Bossi and Maroni. “We vote the League to pro - But in March of 2011 authorities refused to come to the three days in a row. tect us from the immigrant, we are trade unionists to pro - assistance of a boat which had been spotted drifting in While EU governments implement policies designed to tect us from the boss”, was the refrain among militants of the Mediterranean. deter asylum-seekers from coming to the territory of the EU the metalworkers’ union FIOM. The silence, inactivity, and impotence of the bulk of the It was carrying over 70 refugees from the fighting in Libya. in general and to their country in particular, they simultane - Italian trade union movement (and it should be said, un - 61 passengers died as the boat drifted back to Libya, where ously all claim that they are taking more than their “fair derneath the rhetoric, the radical left) is a failure of princi - the survivors were promptly arrested and detained by share” of asylum-seekers. ple. Gaddafi’s forces. Italy claims it is overloaded because it is the initial country Right now, in Reggio Calabria, where three years ago To the west, a similar approach has been adopted by other of entry into the EU for many asylum-seekers. Germany thousands of migrant orange picking workers rebelled EU states: Spain has constructed six-meter-high walls around claims it is overloaded because of the total number of appli - against the subhuman condi - the towns of Ceuta and Melilla, located on Moroccan soil but cations it receives. Switzerland claims it is overloaded be - tions imposed upon them, Spanish territory in terms of international law. Refugees at - cause of the ratio of asylum-seekers to the total population. the same illegal conditions tempting to scale the walls have been killed by the use of live Greece claims it is overloaded in the light of its financial flourish even more transpar - ammunition. crisis. Austria claims it is overloaded because of its small size. ently and widely! To the east, it is the same story: Despite being in the grip of And the UK claims it is overloaded because the rest of the When will the left begin an economic crisis, Greece spent €5.5 million last year on EU allow ‘their’ failed asylum-seekers to travel on to the UK. to challenge this state of building a 12.6 kilometres-long fence, topped with razor- Despite the growing death toll in the Mediterranean, EU affairs? Until it does the wire, along its border with Turkey. The government claimed governments are intent on continuing as before. They con - prospects for building a that the fence had “practical and symbolic value.” demn the death toll as a tragedy. But they maintain the poli - serious working class led Refugees who manage to overcome such hurdles and reach cies which produced that tragedy. At both a national and an EU level, their policies are movement of opposition to EU territory face, at best, a bureaucratic, inefficient, unjust not about opening their borders to refugees but about a society mired in contin - and slow-moving system for processing their asylum claims. continuing to focus on steps which would confine ual crisis is, sadly, more Barred from working and denied adequate accommodation, refugees to countries which immediately neighbour the and more distant. their everyday experiences are ones of physical and emo - country from which they have fled. Bodies of refugees tional hardship. 8 FEATURE Greek uni workers’ five-week strike

By Theodora Polenta The attitude of the rectors and the university authorities is hypocritical; they are issuing vague statements of support for After closing the state broadcaster ERT, laying off thou - the admin workers’ struggle while declaring that the univer - sands of workers, putting the padlock in hospitals and sity’s duty “is to remain open and running.” other public services, the Greek government now plans The striking workers and the student movement must rely to sack about 1,700 university administrators. on their own strength, putting every possible pressure on The government faces a budget gap in higher education. senates of universities to support their struggle. On the other They want to find a 33% cut and have decided workers must hand, the student movement is not in the best condition. De - pay. The workers will all be sacked if they cannot first be re - spite some of the student assemblies’ decisions for occupa - deployed (which, given the extent of the cuts, looks unlikely). tions and attempts to coordinate struggles with the admin Administrative workers at eight Greek universities in all workers, the majority of assemblies and demonstrations are the main cities have been on strike for five consecutive relatively small. weeks. The government plans are part of broader attacks on Greek teachers and public sector workers have taken ac - the Greek public sector, which aim at redeploying or sacking tion but have now retreated. In this situation it is vital univer - 25,000 public sector workers by the end of December. By the sity admin workers maintain their forces. The strike must be end of 2014, the government wants to have eliminated directed politically and demand the overthrow of the gov - 150,000 jobs in the public sector. ernment and its politics. A decisive answer can be given only These measures will render Greece’s universities effec - by the coordination of struggle by the admin workers, lec - tively dysfunctional. According to the newspaper Eleft - turers, university students — throughout the university com - herotypia , layoffs at the University of Athens the layoffs will munity. But it is essential for the high school teachers and the amount to 37.2% of non-teaching staff, making the number of primary school teachers as well as the council workers and students per non-teaching staff member more than six times the health workers to review the suspension of their recent higher than that of an equivalent British university. strikes and add their valuable forces to avoid losing public The last four weeks have also seen university senates vot - services altogether. ing to shut down operations. In response, the Minister of Ed - The resurgence of a combative working-class movement in ucation filed a suit with Greece’s Supreme Court, charging both the public and private sector could initiate a general the rectors of those universities with misconduct. The Min - lasting strike in opposition to the inertia of the unions. After istry has also filed suits with local prosecutors to force uni - dozens of general strikes and militant sectorial struggles from versity authorities to comply with government policy by the beginning of the crisis, a large chunk of workers have submitting the lists of staff that are to go into redeployment. The University of Athens, in quieter times. reached the correct conclusion that under the conditions of So far, university authorities have refused to do so, and rec - deep crisis of capitalism, where the living conditions of the tors have launched a legal challenge. working class are challenged hard, sectoral strikes (no mat - Cuts will also mean hikes in undergraduate tuition fees. ter how militant or heroic) are unlikely to have significant ef - CONTINUOUS The business-orientated university, where the right to study fects. Any gains will be fragile, and there is no guarantee that The strike shows that, in principle, continuous and is directly linked to the parent’s income, will be a reality. they will last even for months. lengthy strikes can be done. This strike was in fact the The Education Minister announced this week that he will only way to prevent the announcement of the staff lined provide interest-free loans to students! LASTING VICTORIES up to be sacked. Without that list the government cannot During the memorandum years, funding for higher edu - Lasting victories can only be won in the political field. proceed. cation has been reduced by 52.5 % which is more than twice The slogan for a general political strike has recently won significant support in the labour movement. In response to a government request to identify surplus the shrinking of the Greek economy (25%). The crisis is push - staff, university authorities identified a lack of human re - ing through the disappearance of public education. But the impact of successive defeats makes it extremely un - sources (even with today’s degraded operation of universi - The “symbolic” shutdown of the universities by the rectors likely workers will spontaneously start a general strike. The ties and based on the criteria proposed by the Ministry). The was really a way to apply pressure on the government to dis - left and the rank-and-file trade unions have an even more government then proceeded to “re- establish an evaluation tribute already-approved resources from the EU Funds for important role to play. commission”, which, unsurprisingly, identified the need for Cohesion (EPSA), money they wanted to spend on restruc - The vast majority of workers and the unemployed are thousands of redundancies from all universities. turing the universities. €1 million for the Panteion and €1.5 looking to Syriza as their political leadership, and expect an Hence the admin workers in the universities of Athens, Pa - million for the University of Crete had been allocated. This action plan and a program of workers’ power. The leader - tras, Thessaloniki, Ioannina, Crete, Thessaly and the National would enable the state to withdraw from its obligation to ship of Syriza should openly acknowledge the need for a con - Technical University of Athens, with the support of the ma - fund universities and public education, reduce budgets by tinuous general political strike and organise for it, starting jority of lecturers and students, continue to protect public, up to 40%, make irrelevant Article 16 of the constitution with the federations and unions where the left has the ma - free higher education. Rectors have had to suspend the oper - (which prohibits private universities) and impose tuition jority. The members and supporters of Syriza should put res - ation of these universities, as it is obvious that they will not fees. In effect the privatised, entrepreneurial university is al - olutions to their workplaces, calling for a serious preparation be able to function without the administrative and support ready here! of such mobilisation. In each neighbourhood, a committee of staff. For example, the National Technical University of By the end of the year the government will reveal new struggle should be formed in order to rally youth and the un - Athens is set to lose 45 % of its admin staff. structures for the 36 universities and polytechnics which will employed. The sacking of admin staff will pave the way for the pri - involve merging or closing down whole university depart - At the same time there needs to be the necessary criticism vatisation of university education, further orientation to busi - ments. Former Education Minister Anna Diamantopoulou of the Syriza leadership . Their passive support of the ness, and commercialisation. has said there should be one university per region and a re - protests has proven hopeless; Syriza should now be deter - Whole sectors are to be dismantled, with the abolition of duction in student admissions by 30% by 2015. mined to launch a truly “uncompromised” struggle both in all positions in every university. For example, all night This is connected with high school reforms and the impo - the political and in the trade union community field until the guards and caretakers are to be pushed out. This will open sition of further exams and greater competition to get to uni - fall of this hated government. the door to private security companies. This follows the sub - versity. New barriers to working-class youth, fewer students, One image of the future of higher education in Greece contracting of university cleaning services during the last few less lecturers and administrative staff — this is the memo - comes from the School of Fine Arts in Florina, where no stu - years, leading to dramatic reductions in wages and worsen - randum vision of education. An undereducated workforce dent has been able to enrol this semester. Not because of mo - ing conditions for cleaners, an increase in the cleaning budget which will be compliant and prepared to oscillate between bilisations and a university shutdown, but because there is a of the universities, and a substandard service. unemployment and absolute destitution and zero contracts shortage of university lecturers and therefore courses cannot Libraries have been hard hit at two major universities — with zero rights jobs — that is what they want. be run. The militancy of the mobilizations of the administra - University of Athens and Aristotle of Thessaloniki. Private In most universities, striking admin workers have coordi - tive university workers provide us with a golden opportu - companies are ready to take over the running of libraries but nated well with the rest of the university community (stu - nity: to link the struggles of all the affected areas of the public will cherry-pick those where they can make a profit. dents and lecturers’ unions) as well as rank-and-file trade and the private sector. Then we will have a serious chance of Neither the use of private companies nor subcontracting unions from the wider public sector. They have elected a success. are “news” for the higher education sector. They have both strike committee to take charge of the organisation of the The realities that concern us — that define the lives of the been invading universities establishments since 1997. But strike, its defence, and transmitting information. many, the working class, the poor popular strata, the youth, In the last meeting of the admin workers in the University the migrants — are constantly getting worse. now we will see the transfer of almost all the work and serv - The political leaders of the left need to prepare to - ices of universities to private companies and outsourcing. of Athens it was decided to create a strike fund, to issue an in - vitation for coordination of the struggle to all public sector gether with the militant rank and file unions a well-or - Sacked university admin workers will try to be re-hired by ganised general strike to overthrow the government and the private, subsidised sub-contractors. Their salary will not workers, organise the closing of roads, organise a welcome and information event at students’ fresher fairs, organise an establish a government of the left with a clear socialist exceed €500, their jobs will be non-unionised their rights non- program. existent. anti-fascist demo, a rally, and a concert. 9 FEATURE 40 years ago: the “Shrewsbury 24”

By Tom Harris readers “...in what other industry can any person boast of such a wide and diverse circle of acquaintances? None.” 1972 saw a major wave of industrial action in Britain. 24 pickets were accused of a long and varied list of crimes. There were more work days lost to strike action in that Most charges were dropped for lack of evidence as the pros - year than in any since the General Strike of 1926. ecution developed its line of attack. At the first trial at Mold Big strikes by dockers, car workers, steel workers and min - Crown Court, all but the most insubstantial charges resulted ers won major concessions from the bosses and rocked the in conviction, and only relatively small fines were imposed. Tory government. Key to the success of working-class strug - A second trial took place at Mold in July 1973, and all three gle was the high level of union organisation in big industries, defendants were found not guilty. and a militant, democratic culture of solidarity that had de - An important part of the defence at Mold had been the use veloped in the rank-and-file. An important tool had been of pre-emptive challenges to jury members. Time and time “secondary” picketing and solidarity action, where one again, the defence was able to weed out candidates for the group of workers would come to the aid of another. When jury who were building contractors, construction business - striking miners tried to close the gates of the Saltley coke men or those who had some reason to be sympathetic with depot in Birmingham, thousands of local engineering work - the bosses. However, at later trials, this was no longer an op - ers came out to support them, and the gates were success - tion — the Tory Lord Chancellor, Lord Hailsham, removed fully shut. the right to challenge jurors on the basis of occupation only Panicked by this industrial revolt, the Conservative gov - weeks before pickets went on trial again at Shrewsbury. ernment tried to use the law to break the unions’ strength. The prosecution had learnt from their mistakes at Mold. States of Emergency were declared during both the miners’ Des Warren (left), Ricky Tomlinson (right) and supporters They abandoned many of their earlier charges, and dropped and the dockers’ strikes, and the Tories tried to use the In - any pretence that the picketers had been guilty of assault or dustrial Relations Act of 1971 to undermine the position of Pickets arrived in the area on 6 September 1972. They met intimidation. The pickets were brought to trial in separate trade unions. However, since most of the unions disregarded groups. Nine pickets were charged with unlawful assembly the Act, this legal challenge was largely unsuccessful. Frus - up with local trade unionists and set out to visit building sites and affray — general offences which had the advantage of trated, the government set its mind to picking a legal battle not yet on strike. The pickets would arrive at each site, ask the prosecution of not requiring evidence of damage to indi - it thought it might win. It found such a battle in the construc - the manager if they could have a meeting with the workers vidual pieces of property or assault on individual people. tion industry. about the dispute, and make speeches in support of the Another six were charged with “conspiracy to intimidate”, a Traditionally, construction workers had been far worse or - strike. Police officers were present throughout, and no arrests ganised than others. The nature of the building industry or even cautions or complaints were brought against the legal relic from an 1875 conspiracy law, and one which, per - made it more difficult for workers to organise collectively trade unionists by the police. It was regarded by those who versely, carried a greater potential sentence than intimida - than it was for workers in large, stationary factories or of - took part as fairly routine picketing in the course of a national tion itself. fices. The workplace would shift from one building site to dispute. After an extremely lengthy and expensive legal process, another as each job was completed, and many construction Indeed, the nearest to anything that could be construed as Des Warren, then a Communist Party member, got three workers were only contracted for the duration of one job. violence or intimidation on the day seems to have come from years in jail, and Ricky Tomlinson, now a famous actor, got This meant that a new group of workers might be thrown to - management itself! At the Kingswood site, the son of the con - two. gether randomly every few months, and new negotiations tractor, presumably swept up in the excitement of the times, over pay and conditions would start all over again. met the pickets brandishing a shotgun and threatening to use AFTERMATH The situation was not helped by the narrow, “craft” orien - it. Miraculously, a picket was able to grab the gun off of him Throughout the trials, and in the aftermath of the sen - tation of the existing construction unions. Any given build - and put it out of use before anyone was hurt. The pickets re - tencing, many construction workers took part in protests ing site might have different workers in all sorts of different, ported the incident to the police — one of the few incidents and demonstrations for the release of the jailed pickets small-scale unions, representing them as painters, as electri - to be reported all day. and exoneration for the others convicted of crimes. Though the picketing took place peacefully and with little cians, as scaffolders, or as some other specialism. Rather than This was not just a tokenistic gesture — in 1972, tens of being faced with a solid, united workforce, the employers incident, this was small consolation for the bosses. The pick - eting may have been peaceful, but it was also effective — mo - thousands had taken marched and taken industrial action for had been able to make different deals with different trades the release “Pentonville Five”, a group of dockers who had and balance one group of workers off against the others. bile militants were succeeding in spreading the dispute far beyond the metropolitan centres. Towards the end of the been imprisoned under the Industrial Relations Act. The strike, the federation of construction bosses, the NFBTE, sent campaign had been a success! If a similar mass campaign WEAKNESS could have been launched for the Shrewsbury pickets, a sim - As a consequence of the workers’ organisational weak - round a letter to its members asking for information on inci - ilar victory might have been won. ness, conditions in construction were dangerous and un - dences of “intimidation” and “violence” which could then be However, despite all the militancy and determination of pleasant. Toilets, washbasins and canteens were often compiled and sent to the Home Secretary, the Conservative the period, and despite the great political and organisational not provided on site, and injuries and deaths at work Robert Carr. were very high. A document was cobbled together and sent off to Carr. The strides forward by building workers, the movement to de - “intimidation dossier”, as it was called, was met with smirks fend the pickets was held back and undermined by the lead - In a bid to cut corners and squeeze out extra profits, the and raised eyebrows even by some thoroughly Establish - ership of the labour movement. It had long been the bosses would often ignore health and safety regulations. ment bodies. The Financial Times dismissed it as a “politi - government’s strategy to divide support for workers in Only coal mines were a more dangerous British workplace! cally motivated” document that alleged “a sinister plot” struggle by introducing the issue of illegality, making the But all this was beginning to change. A merger of smaller while only being able to give evidence of “the ordinary spon - cautious and conservative trade union apparatus reluctant to unions created the new Union of Construction, Allied Trades taneous angry behaviour that might be expected on a build - support radical action by breaking the law. and Technicians (UCATT) which, together with large indus - ing site at any time.” The leadership of UCATT withdrew official support for the trial unions like the TGWU and the NUMGW, created a far Nevertheless, the Tory government was determined to use pickets on 10 March. Though many construction workers more unified and powerful union force in the industry. By the law to smash the unions as best it could. The Home Sec - took it upon themselves to fight to defend the pickets, this 1972, there were 262,610 members of UCATT alone. retary announced an investigation into picketing at a was opposed rather than facilitated by the union leadership. The newly strengthened building unions formed a Na - McAlpine site in Shrewsbury, and a team of detectives were In a letter to a branch secretary, UCATT general secretary tional Joint Council to better co-ordinate their activity. They dispatched to a hotel in North Wales from which they would George Smith stated that due to the “lengthy nature of the agreed to make a demand for £30 a week, and shorter week conduct their investigation. They collected 800 statements (of charges”, it would be doing the trade union movement “a of 35 hours. The construction employers’ federation refused. which the vast majority were subsequently discarded) and great disservice to demonstrate or call a national stoppage in In response, the unions called a strike. began to piece together a case against the pickets. The strength of construction unions, though greatly in - regard to these matters.” The idea of a team of detectives roaming the quiet, autumn The conservative impulse of the trade union bureaucracy creased, was very uneven. In big cities like London, Liver - countryside of Shropshire in order to investigate the events pool and Birmingham, the workers were well organised and was strengthened when the Labour Party took power in 1974. of a fairly uneventful day might seem a surreal one. Why go Reluctant to cause an irritation to their friends in the Labour the strike held up well. The workplaces there were large and to so much bother over a picket line in Shrewsbury? One fac - government, the union leaderships became even more hostile the unions had established deep roots. More difficult was the tor will have been the great influence and power of the big to the prospect of direct action in defence of the pickets. situation in small, isolated towns in more remote parts of the capitalists of the construction industry. The McAlpine family To this day, there has been no exoneration for the Shrews - country. When a strike committee met in Chester, they re - which ran the site in question was very well-connected on bury pickets. They bravely faced imprisonment, fines and ceived a request from union members in Shrewsbury, Telford both a local and national scale. In Denbighshire, North Wales, and Shropshire for support. The strike had been slow off the the last nine High Sheriffs (responsible for local law and stigmatisation, punishment hurled at them by a panicked ground in these relatively isolated areas — many workers and vengeful ruling class. order) had all been McAlpine family members. When Sir That their cause was stymied and betrayed by cow - weren’t familiar with the union and knew little about the dis - Robert McAlpine hosted a private Christmas dinner in 1970, ardly bureaucrats in the upper reaches of the labour pute. A decision was taken by the strike committee to send so many Government politicians were in attendance that the “flying pickets” to the area, groups of strikers to visit the local movement should not detract from their example, nor industry press claimed it was “virtually impossible to get a from the relevance of the militant, collective tactics of building sites, bolster the picket lines and argue the case for cabinet quorum.” The Construction News proudly asked its striking. solidarity that they practiced. 10 FEATURE Ralph Miliband and Israel-Palestine

By Martin Thomas practical result of the liquidation of the state”. “I posit the existence of the Israeli state, not out of Zionism Ed Miliband’s father Ralph Miliband, a Marxist writer de - etc. (all that is very much out of date now that the state of Is - nounced by the Daily Mail as “the man who hated rael exists, which makes what the great thinkers of the Sec - Britain”, left behind him two well-known books, Parlia - ond International said [about Zionism] of little relevance), mentary Socialism and The State In Capitalist Society. but simply out of recognition of a reality whose disappear - Less-known, but also valuable today, is a thin volume of ance would be a terrible catastrophe, given the only current letters in 1967 about Israel-Palestine between Ralph Miliband conditions in which it could disappear”. and his friend Marcel Liebman, who was then a contributor Miliband criticises the equivocation in “the unctuous state - to the semi-Trotskyist Belgian weekly La Gauche . ments in [the French Communist Party press] that a settle - The letters were translated from French by Peter Drucker ment ‘should not put in question [Israel’s existence]... How and published in 2006 with an introduction by the Lebanese- can anyone support the Arab leaders’ avowed positions French Marxist writer Gilbert Achcar. without accepting their desire to liquidate Israel?” The Com - Partly the letters are valuable in the same way that a view munist Parties backed the Arab states for reasons of Russian on any issue from a divergent and unfamiliar angle can be. In foreign policy, while still formally recognising Israel’s right 1967, many assumptions on Israel-Palestine which currently to exist. go almost unquestioned on the left (in Britain, at least) were After 1969 the PLO came out with the formula of a “secu - not assumed at all. And partly the letters are valuable be - lar democratic state” (covering all pre-1948 Palestine) in place cause in them Miliband is exceptionally lucid. of the old line of “driving the Jews into the sea”. For a long The correspondence spans a few weeks around the June while the forerunners of the AWL, like much of the left, ac - 1967 war between Israel and the Arab states. cepted that formula. Miliband never accepted it, and Lieb - The temper of the left on the Israel-Palestine question then man only for a short time. was different from now. No-one on the left advocated wiping Achcar’s afterword quotes informatively from an article by Israel off the map. Arab governments, and the leaders at the Palestinian writer Elias Sanbar: the “secular democratic state” time of the PLO (then an annexe of the Egyptian government, formula was concocted, on the PLO leaders’ request, by without the autonomy it gained after 1968-9), openly advo - Ralph Miliband argued that the Hebrew-speaking Jews and Palestinian professors at the American University of Beirut, cate wiping Israel off the map, and everyone on the left dis - Palestinian Arabs represent two distinct nations, both of which and published in English and then in French ... but not in Ara - should have self-determination. bic! sented. It was a diplomatic formula, not a guide to action. From IS/SWP 1973 Palestinian leftists began to develop the “two ans... are granted the right to self-determination; it is just as states” idea, which Miliband and Liebman came to sup - Inside IS (forerunner of the SWP), a small but substantial indispensable for the Arabs to accept Israel’s right to exist”. port, and which the AWL advocates today. minority opposed SWP leader Tony Cliff’s line in June Even in 1967, Liebman emphatically affirms the right to 1967 of backing the Arab states. There was a debate in - exist of the Israeli-Jewish nation. But in 1967 he says it would • The Israeli dilemma: letters between Ralph Miliband and conceivable today in the SWP or the SWP diaspora. (For be wrong to demand of the Arab states that they immediately Marcel Liebman , edited by Gilbert Achcar. Merlin Press 2006. the record: the forerunners of AWL backed Cliff’s line in recognise the right of the Israeli state to exist. That recogni - 1967. We have learned since). tion can come only after time and after Israeli concessions. At the beginning of the debate recorded in the volume, Why? Because, so Liebman expounds at length, Israel is Liebman is about as anti-Israeli as any socialist got those “in the imperialist camp”, is a serious enemy for Arab revo - BOOKS FROM days. He expresses disgust that “the whole French left is ba - lutions which are underway, and is founded on crimes sically for Israel... from [Jean-Paul] Sartre to [Socialist Party against Arabs. leader] Guy Mollet”, and says he wants to move to England WORKERS’ LIBERTY where anti-Israeli sentiment is stronger. PARADOX In the first letter he denounces Miliband as “pro-Israeli” In his introduction to the volume, Achcar writes that “the Antonio Gramsci: and “reacting as a European and a Jew rather than as a social - paradox”, and “a rather common one”, was that Lieb - ist”. man’s anti-Israelism was rooted in him being more im - working-class revolutionary Miliband actually has a slightly rose-tinted picture of Is - mersed in Jewishness, and having lost closer family raeli policy. He considers it “nonsense” to suppose there are members in the Holocaust, than Miliband. This booklet discusses a major recent “serious Israeli plans to conquer and subjugate Arab people That intense Jewish feeling generated in Liebman a revul - outside its territory”. study on the Notebooks — Peter sion against the Jewish state which turned out to be a com - Thomas’s The Gramscian Moment — Miliband is remonstrating with an indignant Liebman who monplace bourgeois state, as mean-spirited, as chauvinistic, suggests that Israel is about to invade and conquer Syria. He and as cynical in its alliances as any other. Miliband, who and argues that the Notebooks were in is right to do so: but in fact Israel would “conquer and sub - wore his Jewishness more lightly, was more detached. fact a powerful contribution to the jugate Arab people outside its territory” in the West Bank Another influence on Liebman was his hope, common at working-out of revolutionary working-class and Gaza in 1967. the time, of “the Arab revolution”. Liebman concedes to Miliband is critical of Israel’s foreign policy, of its attitude strategy in developed capitalist societies. Miliband that he had over-enthused about the claimed left - £4. Buy online at http://bit.ly/gramsci to the Palestinians who fled or were driven out in 1948, and ism of early 1960s Algeria, but claims that Syria’s “leftward of its bad treatment of Arabs within Israel itself. The criticism shift” is “more convincing”. That was the Syrian regime of needed calibration. According to Achcar’s afterword, today in its early days, when the current dictator’s father was Working-class politics Miliband’s hostility to Israeli policy did indeed become coming to the fore. steadily sharper (and rightly so, in line with events) after Miliband accepts Liebman’s term, “the imperialist camp”. and anarchism 1967. Miliband was a “Deutscherite” on the USSR, seeing the USSR But on basics, through the debate, Liebman moves closer to Debates between members of Workers’ and its allies as more progressive and “imperialism” as Liberty and comrades from various anarchist the axis of Miliband’s position: two nations, two states. meaning only the USA and its allies. In his afterword, Achcar cites Miliband from 1973: “the But, Miliband says, nothing else can be expected from a traditions. idea I’ve always subscribed to [is of] creating a Palestinian small bourgeois state like Israel surrounded by hostile neigh - £5. tinyurl.com/wcpanarchism state alongside Israel... a state, an institutional foundation on bours than that it should seek allies where it can. Israel nei - the basis of which more could be built in time to come, hypo - ther is, nor can be, a serious threat to what (little) “Arab thetically with federalism, etc.... revolution” is actually happening in 1967, or to future more Marxist Ideas to Turn the Tide “[The] secular democratic state [combining all pre-1948 serious Arab revolutions. Palestinian territory, Jewish and Arab, which the PLO had Readings and reflections on revolutionary socialist Miliband shows that all Liebman’s arguments evade a cen - strategy. Articles on the history of the advocated from 1969]... never was a solution, at the present tral point. “Although I would have preferred the creation of time and for a long time to come; whereas my solution is pos - a Jewish-Arab or Arab-Jewish state at the time [of the forma - Communist International, the United sible, puts the Palestinians back in the historical and geo - tion of Israel, 1948], I’ve been forced to realise that everything Front, Workers’ Government, graphical swing of things and opens up new vistas”. — the history and evolution of the peoples in question, pol - revolutionary organisation and Liebman eventually concurred. In 1983 he commented on itics, sociology, etc. — made this solution entirely impossi - the murder of a Palestinian diplomat by Palestinian “ultras”. programme. ble and unacceptable for the forces on the ground. £5. bit.ly/m-ideas “Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians will find the way to “We can certainly discuss Israel’s borders, the refugees, compromise and reconciliation if the world continues to close anything you like, but... the existence of this state... can only its ears to the undeniable truths that [Issam] Sartawi never be changed by force, that is by the liquidation of the nation tired of repeating: peace is impossible unless the Palestini - (in one way or another, expulsion and/or liquidation) as the 11 REPORTS Grangemouth workers set for strike FBU By Dale Street ing that Grangemouth lost dispute in UK history. Five back in £150 millions over the past days after the end of the Workers at the Ineos oil four years, the company’s strike, Grangemouth still refinery and petrochemi - own accounts show that was not back at full capac - action cal plant in Grangemouth Ineos Grangemouth Chem - ity. will be staging a 48-hour icals made a profit of £31 And given the back - strike on 20-21 October million in 2011, and £49 ground to this strike, it will By Darren Bedford in defence of site con - million in 2012. also have a major political venor Stevie Deans. Perhaps this explains significance. Firefighters in England A work-to-rule and a ban why Ineos has rejected a Had it not been for the and Wales will take fur - on overtime have already proposal from Unite for an Labour Party’s witch-hunt ther strike action for been underway since the independent financial sur - of Stevie Deans, Ineos five hours on Saturday to launch their own victim - said that unless it can se - beginning of October, fol - vey of the site, paid for by would not have had a pre - 19 October, in the on - isation of Stevie. cure increased investments lowing an 81% vote for Unite itself. text for launching its own going FBU dispute over In a statement the plant’s and reduced running costs, strikes and a 91% vote for witch-hunt. Scottish pensions. shop stewards committee it will shut down the plant action short of strikes in a CUTS Labour Party MSPs and denounced management’s by 2017 at the latest. The action takes place ballot with an 86% turnout. Ineos is also demanding MPs should therefore be attack on Stevie as part of a Ineos’ threat to close the after firefighters in Scot - The workers are members cuts in labour costs in visible on the picket lines. strategy of union-busting at plant is being used to put land voted not to strike of Unite. the form of: scrapping Unite in the West of Scot - Grangemouth: pressure on the Scottish for the time being, after The strike action is the the final salary pension land is already staging var - “We believe Jim Ratcliffe and UK governments to the Scottish government latest stage in the defence scheme, job cuts, worse ious actions targeted at is motivated by wanting to cough up £150 millions in offered some conces - of Stevie, who has faced a pay and conditions for other companies which break the union and strike grants and loans. This de - sions. The ballot result is sustained campaign of ha - new employees, and a re - deal with Ineos, as part of a fear into the workforce. The mand by Ineos for a mas - a blow to united action rassment by senior Ineos duced scope for collec - “leverage” strategy. And at victimising of Stevie Deans sive public subsidy is in the face of a common management since the tive bargaining. a recent local Area Ac - is, we believe, part of a nothing short of shameless. attack and a significant summer of this year. tivists meeting, Unite offi - plan to go to ‘war’ with the There is no available evi - Unless the company fault line for future nego - Stevie, who is also chair cials promised transport to union — whatever the dence to show that Ineos backs down, the strike will tiations on other matters. of the local Labour Party, take Unite members from cost.” has paid any tax in the UK have a major impact in The Scotland result was suspended by party of - Glasgow to support picket The attacks on Stevie co - since 2008. Ineos moved its terms of lost production at will be used by the SNP ficials in July on the basis lines in the event of strike incide with an offensive global headquarters from the plant and its broader to promote its line of of what are now known to action. against the Grangemouth the UK to Switzerland in knock-on economic effect. To make sure the union partnership working be totally unfounded alle - workforce’s terms and con - 2010 to save £100 million in A two-day strike at wins in Grangemouth, with unions in an inde - gations of bogus member - ditions of employment. tax. And Ineos now oper - Grangemouth in 2008 shut Unite should be mobilis - pendent Scotland — a ship recruitment in an Earlier this month Ineos ates in five tax havens: down the North Sea Forties ing support for the dis - deliberate attempt to cut attempt to rig the parlia - wrote down the value of its Switzerland, Luxemburg, pipeline and cost the UK pute throughout across class lines. mentary selection ballot. petrochemical assets at Jersey, Bermuda and Singa - economy up to £600 mil - Scotland. The FBU has organised Ineos bosses used the Grangemouth from £400 pore. lion. In terms of costs per a demonstration in cen - Falkirk Labour “scandal” • Abridged from million to nothing. It has Although Ineos is claim - hour it was the costliest tral London on Wednes - bit.ly/grangemouth day 16 October on pensions and against the Relaunch teachers’ workload fight ongoing cuts to the fire Uni workers’ strike and rescue service. The The teachers’ dispute on tees in every school schools. FBU says 3,600 jobs have workload, currently • Publicise every dis - • Co-ordinate action By a UCU activist sional and been cuts since this gov - being run jointly with a pute and pour resources across schools where the technical ernment came to power campaign on pay and into winning issue is the same, espe - University staff are staff, gen - and with more cuts on pensions, needs re - • Highlight every vic - cially where the local au - preparing for strike ac - erally seen the way, the service faces launching on a wholly tory in national publica - thority or academy chain tion over pay this autumn as a well- devastation. new basis. tions, school bulletins and is refusing to agree a com - after the three biggest paid As well as 10 fire sta - If NUT and NASUWT circulars pliant pay policy. campus unions backed group, 39% earn less than tions in the capital due are serious about using • Move to strike action None of this guarantees campaigns to force up £31,020 a year. The marketi - for closure next year, school-based action to in any school where the success but the difference the employers’ offer of sation of education is mak - there are other threats. In frustrate Gove's reforms, union reps are threatened is that it is serious and am - just 1%. ing the university a less Derby, all three fire sta - win real gains for teachers with any form of victimi - bitious. Lecturers’ union UCU and less equal place to tions are threatened, That approach can en - across the board and build sation, intimidation or voted for strikes by 61.5 to work. which would leave a city thuse people, engage strength and confidence pressure after the escala - 38.5% and action short Students have a vital role of a quarter of a million the new activists emerg - for the national strike ac - tion of action (generally seen as a more to play in building solidar - people with only thread - ing from the recent tion then some basics • Build combine com - effective tactic in the sector) ity with this struggles. Not bare fire cover. strikes, and shake up would need to be put in mittees across the major by 77 to 33%. 64% of Unite just to support the fight for The FBU has to fight the caution and timidity place: academy chains to co-or - members backed strikes, pay, but because universi - on the cuts front. It at the top. • Encourage the build - dinate action in those and Unison members also ties are bound to try and needs to work for soli - ing of joint action commit - did so by a slim margin. play off the interests of stu - darity with the rest of Pay has slumped by 13% dents and workers. We the labour movement in real terms since 2009. should be clear from the and forge public sup - The higher education sector start: decent pay for staff port through local ac - has an operating surplus of must not mean higher tu - tivist groups and over £1 billion and can well ition fees for students. socialists, who are will - afford to pay up. As a per - These strikes are impor - ing and able to defend centage of university budg - tant not just in universities fire stations with direct ets pay has fallen from 58% and colleges but because of action if necessary. in 2001-2 to 55.5% in 2011- their potential to revive Win for Tyne and Wear Metro cleaners 12, but at the same time for struggles across the public Cleaners on the Tyne and Wear Metro have ended their long-running dispute over low pay. those at the top salaries sector and beyond. The The dispute began nearly two years ago, and has seen workers strike 19 times, most recently have risen. Over 2,500 peo - confidence of many work - for two weeks in July 2013. ple working in higher edu - ers has been shaken by the The RMT’s Executive has agreed a deal which will secure a 5% pay rise over four years, with cation earn more than failures of leadership in the fight over pensions. an extra day’s leave per year from January 2014. £100,000 a year, but almost A victory in this dispute The settlement falls short of the strike’s initial demands for living wages and travel pass two-thirds of manual work - will demonstrate the equality between directly-employed and contracted stuff, but is still a significant concession ers in the sector are paid power of industrial ac - won from intransigent bosses after months of hard fighting. less than £17,329. Even tion. among managerial, profes - Brazilian teachers face S&o Wlorikdersa’ Lirbeirtty y state repression

By Charlotte Zeleus paid to states for oil ex - Support the traction should be put The ongoing struggle of into education. teachers in Brazil faces Whilst in 2012 one of increasing state repres - the strike demands was sion. for 10% of GDP to be Teachers have been in - spent on education, cur - teachers’ strike! volved in continuing rently it is about 6%. struggle over the past few In addition to lack of funding, teachers claim union-agreed calendars. years. In 2010 teachers in that the government is The best it can achieve, Sao Paulo were involved pursuing increasing pri - however, is to manage and in strikes over pay, vatisation of education as mitigate the effects of anti- demonstrations every Fri - well as high stakes test - teacher “reforms” in a few day were repressed by schools. police. ing. And if they are not rolled Starting in 2012, the An academic who is back at a national level, union called strikes to supporting the strike, Pro - then even in those strong make the government im - fessor Adilson Filho, schools the unlimited pres - plement a minimum wage said: “We would like so - sures and powers of heads for teachers that had been ciety to understand that will eventually come to voted through the parlia - our struggle is not just dominate. Members can see ment five years ago. salary… But against this this and, worse still, so can This was to involve policy that has trans - Gove. rolling action across re - formed classrooms into NATIONAL STRIKE gions of Brazil but the production lines, dehu - After 17 October, the na - union pulled the action. manizes education and tional strike should be Teachers in Sao Paulo promotes a climate of called as soon as possi - were unhappy with the competition that only strike being pulled with - harms the young stu - ble and the National Ex - 1 ecutives of both NUT and out its demands being dents.” NASUWT should meet in met and protested against STORMED full to agree the pro - their union leadership. The current strike ac - In mid-October teachers gramme of action for in Rio stormed the City next term. tion has been going on since mid August and has Hall to demand an end By Patrick Mu rphy, planned in November. If is very likely. The failure to seen impressive support to the repression of the previous strikes in the respond to the final pen - Another two years of oc - from union members, the their protests. NUT Executive (pc) North West on 27 and sions offer in December casional one-day strikes, wider labour movement Yorkshire, the Midlands, 2011 for more than a year, with no indication of the Some 300 gained entry On 17 October teachers and the public. and the East on 1 October the decision to withdraw next steps and no opportu - and occupied the hall in London, the South nity for members to influ - The strike is partly to are anything to go by, then Wales from the current re - whilst thousands East, and South West will ence the direction, will not demand a 19% pay rise, as 17 October will be well- gional action, and the re - protested outside. strike as part of a cam - only fail to shift Gove but opposed to the govern - supported, will feature fusal to name the date for Protests have been at - paign of opposition to a will exhaust and demor - ment offer of 15%. How - whole series of attacks large marches and rallies, national action later this tacked by police using and will help build union term all reflect the same alise members. Turning ever, members of the on our pay and condi - one-day strikes into two union are saying that the tear gas and rubber bul - tions. organisation in schools. uncertain, directionless lets. The Rio administra - But if the joint NUT-NA - tone. The action short of day-strikes is only a action is about more than slightly more disguised that. tion has been threatening This is the third and final SUWT dispute is to force strikes at school level has version of the same strat - Teachers in Rio de to have the strike made il - part of a calendar of re - Michael Gove to shift, then led to some important suc - egy. Continuing this action Janeiro are typically hired legal, docking pay of gional strikes, each one it needs significant escala - cesses in some individual has to mean deciding on a on temporary contracts striking teachers or sack - covering a bigger area than tion. The leadership of the schools — fewer observa - clear and intense pro - and the union is demand - ing probationary teachers the last. A national strike is campaign from both unions tions, less punitive ap - who take part in the ac - so far does not suggest that praisal policies, gramme of action over a ing an end to this practice. 2 relatively short period of However a running tion . In one video of the ac - timTeh.e re is no reason why thread through the strug - Israeli military refuser tion in Rio a teacher says it should not combine na - gles of the last few years tional with regional, local, in Brazil, as in so many that she considers that she Noam Gur tours and other selective ac - cases across the world, is is not only fighting for her tion as long as it is part that teachers are fighting own rights but setting an Britain from 12-24 of a planned, coherent against neo-liberal reform example to her students programme which in - of education. of Ttheea cimhepresr aatcivreo stos dLoa tsion . volves and engages Teachers say that edu - America have been en - November members, reaches out cation in Brazil has not gaged in similar strug - consistently to parents been funded properly gles and one common and makes the link be - funded for years but that slogan has been: For more information, tween these attacks on the state has been able to “Teachers in struggle teachers and the system - find money to fund proj - are also teaching!” including a regularly updated ects like the World Cup atic break-up of state ed - 1 and Olympic games, . bit.ly/1ghCvgx tour schedule, see ucation. 2 evicting whole communi - . bit.ly/19PelXf workersliberty.org/ • More on NUT-NASUWT ties in the process. • Please send messages of noamgurtour strike: page 11 Teachers in Sao Paulo solidarity to Rio teachers • Local Associations Na - raised the demand that at teachersriodejaneiro@ tional Action Campaign 100% of the compensation outlook.com (LANAC): nutlan.org.uk