& Workers’ Liberty

SolFor siociadl ownershaip of the branks aind intdustry y No 464 14 March 2018 50p/£1 Inside: Trump threatens trade war

On Monday 12 March Universities UK and the University and Colleges Union (UCU) announced they had reached an ″agreement″ at ACAS in the ongoing dispute over REVOthe USS pensionL scheme. T IN As details of the ″deal″ came to light, UCU members across the country were at first con - fused as to why the UCU would have agreed such a deal, and then angry. Ten days of strikes had forced employers first into negotiations, then into making an offer. But the offer was a bad one.

More page 5 Trump’s new tariffs are a boost not to jobs, but to barriers between nations THE See page 5 Tories welcome DEGREE Saudi prince

The government has rolled out the red carpet for the Saudi Crown Prince. FACTORIES See page 7 Black Panther: behind the utopian vision

Sameem Rahimi reviews ‘Black Pan - ther’ and examines the politics in the film. See page 9 Join Labour! Debate over General Secretary post

Pic: twitter.com/EdiSolidarity See page 10 2 NEWS More online at www.workersliberty.org Italian election shows impasse of left bourgeoisie can cudgel out of the and sustains our view that the or - Bernstein put it, “the means are ev - By Hugh Edwards present impasse. dinary citizen ought to become erything, the end nothing”. Italy’s election (4 March) resulted Two graphic examples sum up more independent from politics, to The rulers of the country now in hung parliament, with no party the depth of the danger. Following stand closer to our unions and find themselves in a new stage of a getting enough votes to form a the attempted murder of eight members in disputes and strug - crisis that has its origins in the government. It will take weeks young West Africans by a neo-fas - gles.” demise of the First Republic and and maybe months for a govern - cist thug in Macerata, a magnificent Camusso openly supported the the social, economic and political ment to emerge. march of 20,000 anti-racists defied former PD dissidents huddled to - events that brought it crashing ig - The election highlighted in the a ban by the government. The gether in the pathetic “Free and nominiously to the ground. most dramatic way the politically town’s first citizen, elected in 2015 Equal” outfit of Grasso, D’Alema The Second Republic of the cen - disastrous state of the country’s with nearly 60% of the vote, was a and Bersani. Like her, they were tre-left and centre-right began to trade-union movement. progressive reformer whose ad - complicit in sustaining the Renzi fall apart with the onset of the 2008 The crisis of the reactionary cen - ministration had welcomed mi - government and its austerity mea - financial crash, and fell at last three tre-left government and the ruling grants. sures, which probably accounts for years later with the recession in Matteo Renzi-led Democratic Party The tenor of the anti-fascist their outfit’s disastrous perfor - Italy. Foreground Di Maio, background (PD) has been consummated in an march had seemed to indicate mance: it polled 3.3%. The supersession of Renzi beck - Salvini historic rejection by the mass of the something of that. But in the elec - ons a Third Republic, according to tions the tub-thumping ethnic Salvini and Di Maio, but the politi - Italian people; in a triumph for the POTERE AL POPOLO to the Labour Party/Momentum cleanser Salvini got 22%, cynically The newly-formed Potere al cal pillars on which it might stand two most virulent “anti-system” axis exists beyond the archipelago exploiting the opportunity the ar - Popolo (power to the people) are not yet in place, populist forces, rivals united in of far-left groups. rest of two young Africans re the constituted by an aggregate of a lacking the forces of the right their anti-working class, anti-trade Furthermore, despite the cruel murder of a young women in the Neapolitan Social Centre, Com - around Salvini to form a govern - union and racist beliefs and actions. experience of decades of failure of town a few days before. munist Refoundation, PCI, Eu - ment that could undertake the aus - Matteo Salvini (Northern) Lega similar projects (involving many of The second example is the state - rostop and others had generated terity measures that Italian and (a coalition partner of Berlusconi’s the same people and groups), the ment from the leader of the coun - growing radical enthusiasm in European capital demand. Forza Italia) dominates almost all intent of the new force was, as be - try’s largest trade union, CGIL, large assemblies across the What is obvious is that there of the north, while Di Maio and fore, to create a movement of Susanna Camusso. country. will be no solution to this crisis Grillo’s 5 Star Movement hege - protest, around the most immedi - In a recent interview, she was They said they were modelled on without the re-emergence of monises the south and the islands. ate, minimum demands of the day, asked if the tsunami of support the lessons and experience of Mo - working-class-led struggle with The Italian left occupies a posi - a method summed up by “we don’t from her members for Salvini and mentum. as its cardinal principle the goal tion of political and institutional have to say what we are, we have Di Maio was a vote against trade But the hoped-for electoral of socialism as the means of marginalisation on every front, ex - to do it; we have to stop evoking unionism. She replied, “No, I don’t breakthrough didn’t materialise, putting an end to the nightmare posing the working class and ideals, we have to produce them, see it that way — in fact, it confirms with a dismal 1.12 % score, indicat - of Italian capitalist decline and every progressive cause to the mer - the distinction between reform and our ability to protect our members ing that in Italy no real mass organ - decay. cies of whatever governmental con - revolution happens in practice.” As traption the representatives of the regardless of political alignment … ised social-political terrain similar Will the counter-revolution be tweeted? Bad pay deal for NHS By Martin Thomas Bourgeois newspapers and TV channels falsify mostly by omis - By a health worker been squeezed into crisis. Any False news spreads on Twitter sion, selection, slanting, and twist - pay increase (which this deal much faster than truth. Re - ing, rather than by direct falsehood. doesn’t seem to include), must be Concerned, to some extent or an - Recent press reports have indi - fully funded by the government. searchers at MIT have published cated a possible very bad pay the results of research into other, for reputations which have to Any unfunded increase in pay survive over years, and open to deal arising from talks between will be followed by greater work - 126,000 fact-checkable stories NHS employers and the health tweeted or retweeted between criticism by competitors available load, less support for staff and in the same outlets (sometimes in - unions: a 3% pay rise for this service cuts. 2006 and 2017 (bit.ly/false-t). year, followed by two years of True stories rarely reached more cluding the socialist press), they The shortage of workers, made cannot lie as recklessly as the mali - 1-2%, and losing a day’s annual words by Brexit, is a fundamental than 1000 people through retweet - leave. ing; the top 1% of false-news tweet- cious or easily-swayed tweeter. part of the current NHS crisis. 49% of Republicans reckon it ei - With inflation running at 3% cascades got to 10,000 or more. The decline in newspaper-read - Health Education England figures ther definitely or probably true that we face three years of falling True reports took six times as ing, and the rise in the number of show that the number of staff “leaked email from some of Hillary pay. And the GMB estimates long as falsehoods to reach 15,000 people who get news only or leaving the NHS reached 16% last Clinton’s campaign staffers con - health workers have already had people. Falsehoods were 70% more mainly through social media, cre - year. The NHS is short of tained code words for paedophilia, a real terms pay cut of £2,000 in likely to be retweeted than truths. ates obstacles for democrats and so - 42,000 nurses, midwives, physio - human trafficking and satanic rit - last seven years. The initial reac - This was not because false-news cialists. therapists and occupational ther - ual abuse”. tion from many NHS workers to tweeters were generally more ac - It is not a product of technology apists. 15% of nursing posts in Readers of Solidarity will recog - these reports has been complete tive than truth-tweeters. On the alone. Technology also brings the London and a third of paramedic nise the equivalents, within the ac - disdain. contrary, they were less active, had fact-checking websites used by the posts across the country are va - tivist left, of the malign rumours The deal may also include abo - been on Twitter for less time, and MIT researchers, which enable us cant. there used in competition between lition of Band One (the lowest had fewer followers. to check dubious stories much Health unions may promote bourgeois parties. band on the pay scale). This is The best guess is that falsehoods more readily than people could in this deal as better than we’ve had. Some of this is not new. “False - necessary, but in reality, with a spread faster because they were Swift’s word-of-mouth days. It Workers are already organising hood flies, and the Truth comes vast increase in numbers of ap - more “novel” and stirred up more brings the availability on the web online, with a petition against the limping after it”, wrote Jonathan prentices, outsourcing and a rush aggressive emotions — surprise of a range of serious bourgeois cut to annual leave reaching Swift in 1710, and other versions of of NHS Trusts setting up sub - and disgust — while the truths newspapers from across the world, 10,000 signatures in two days. the adage have been famously sidiary companies to employ an - elicited sadness, joy, or anticipation. such as previously only a few cus - We need to take this organising (though apparently wrongly) at - cillary workers, NHS employers Politics is the bulkiest subject- tomers of a few special newspaper into our union branches. tributed to Mark Twain. are finding new ways to institu - area for false news, and false-news shops in a few cities could read. Last year the health unions said Socialists frequently talk of “the tionalise low pay. tweets have increased in number If we want to pass on scuttlebutt to NHS employers that they lies of the bourgeois media”, and A couple of better points may quicker than true tweets. uncritically or even eagerly, these wanted their members to receive with good cause. Paradoxically, be a reduction of increments in Thus the drenching of political days we can do that quicker. If we a 3.9% pay rise in 2018-19 plus a though, the rise of mass-circulation bands and a one-off payment for life, especially in the USA, with want to check, we can do that further £800-a-head payment, to newspapers, radio, and TV proba - some, but the detail isn’t clear. false claims half-believed or quar - quicker too. help make up for the fall in the bly (at least in bourgeois-demo - It may well be the counter-rev - Whether this will be enough for ter-believed, but in any case widely real value of salaries since 2010. cratic countries) diminished the olution, rather than the revolu - unions to sell the deal to health spread. Around 30 to 40% of regis - Any deal should be measured speed-advantages of falsehood tion, that primarily gets tweeted. workers remains to be seen. tered Republicans in the USA still against that, with no accep - over truth, compared both to The revolution will prevail when Last year the government said say that Barack Obama was born tance of eroding our much- Swift’s time when rumour spread socialists can convince a suffi - they would be prepared to fund outside the USA, and became pres - needed leave. Any campaign mostly by word of mouth and cient body of labour-movement an end to the pay freeze for health ident only thanks to a conspiracy to on pay must be tied into the today when it spreads by social people to think, to check, to read workers if further “efficiencies” ignore the US law which says pres - growing fight for the future of media. critically. were found. The NHS has already idents must be born in the country. the NHS. Workers’ Liberty @workersliberty NEWS 3 Revolt in the degree factory proposed deal being announced, By a UCU member branches were already mobilising On Monday 12 March Universi - against it on social media. The in - ties UK and the University and clusion of a clause that UCU should Colleges Union (UCU) an - encourage members to reschedule nounced they had reached an teaching without any guarantee of ″agreement″ at ACAS in the on - no deductions attracted particular going dispute over the USS pen - anger. It was clear that the employ - sion scheme. ers are on the back foot and that As details of the ″deal″ came to settling now would waste the dis - light UCU members across the pute’s momentum and disillusion country were at first confused as to new activists and thousands of new why the UCU would have agreed members. such a deal, and then angry. Overnight #NoCapitulation Ten days of strikes had forced trended on Twitter as UCU mem - employers first into negotiations, bers and students took to social then into making an offer. But the media to discuss the deal with each offer was a bad one. Pension contri - other and to call on the UCU′s butions would go up to 8.7% from Higher Education Committee to re - 8%; the accrual rate would go ject it. On Tuesday morning mass Left: London UCU demonstration, 28 February. Right: Aberdeen students in occupation. meetings were held on picket lines down to 1/85 salary a year from out of 64 universities on strike had dispute. Targeted campaigns have up and down the country, and one 1/75, and pensions would only be held votes which rejected the agree - forced a number of hard-line Vice- More reports of occupations after one votes came in of members guaranteed on salaries up to ment. The branch representatives’ Chancellors to back down on puni - rejecting the deal. Several hundred and student-worker £42,000 (about the third point on meeting voted unanimously to re - tive pay deductions for action short UCU members and supporters the main lecturer scale) instead of ject the deal and reopen negotia - of strikes, and to promise that strike solidarity gathered outside UCU′s headquar - the current £55,000 (roughly the top tions and the Higher Education deductions will be spread over sev - ters in London to protest outside bit.ly/2Im4RXT of the senior lecturer scale). Committee quickly followed with a eral months. These need to con - Worse, the deal was a ″transi - the Higher Education Committee vote to reject the agreement and tinue. Teaching Assistants. The rejected tional″ one for three years, with a meeting. keep the strikes on. The strikes have been highly re - settlement included only a dangerous prospect that after that That the strike was not called off vealing of university manage - weaselly promise from employers the whole basis of defined benefit on Monday evening is significant. ment’s real attitude towards MORE ACTION to consider not penalising GTAs. pensions could be lost. It stuck It meant UCU members were on workers. The Vice-Chancellor of St UCU has already authorised a That was nowhere near good within highly conservative costings picket lines on Tuesday morning, Andrew’s University sent round an further fourteen days of action to enough. that have been widely challenged discussing the agreement rather email saying that paying higher hit exams and assessment after The rejection of the deal is posi - as ″recklessly prudent″ by pensions than isolated at home or in small pensions would put equality and Easter if the dispute is not set - tive, but it is not the end. It is not a experts. The agreement also talked groups at work. diversity initiatives under threat. tled. given that UUK won′t double of lecturers rescheduling classes By the time the UCU′s Higher After a social media storm she is - Planning for those now takes pri - down: the fight could get harder in that had not happened during Education Committee met with sued an apology. At Oxford Uni - ority. Thousands of staff have the next few weeks. With the Easter strikes. branch representatives mid-morn - versity management used a joined UCU over the course of the break coming up there is a danger Within a couple of hours of the ing on Tuesday, approximately 46 procedural motion to prevent aca - that the current momentum could demics voting on a pensions mo - become demobilised. Discussions tion, only for staff to walk out of the about what should happen next, meeting and hold the vote outside and what strategy to take after the building. The VC later accepted There is a world beyond the campus Easter are urgent. Up until this the result of the unofficial vote. point the strike has benefited from third of UK universities have di - Sheffield, Keele, Sussex, Southamp - Sahaya James, from the being a national strike, with all uni - vested from fossil fuels so far, but ton and Glasgow have all retreated National Campaign for Fees versities being on strike at the same we know that our movement has under public pressure. Revelations and Cuts, on why she is time. The strategy after Easter will the power to make all universities in the press about the enormous campaigning to be President have to take into account different divest, if we organise. I want to pay packages and perks VCs enjoy of the National Union of assessment timetables at different provide resources for divestment by comparison to their counter - Students. universities, and some of the profile campaigns on every campus and parts in the NHS and local author - of national strikes could be lost. give meaningful support to the ac - ities have further put them in the The UCU has been in a poor state Students don’t live in hermeti - tivists on the ground running cam - spotlight. for many years, and this strike has cally sealed containers, undis - paigns. When 80% of known fossil Many staff are now saying they rightly broken from a years-long turbed by the oppression and As over one hundred women fuel reserves need to stay in the no longer feel any goodwill to - pattern of one-day strikes where lit - exploitation around the world. are on hunger strike in Yarl’s ground to avoid further environ - wards their institutions and will tle is won. The mobilisation which Yet too often student unions be - Wood detention centre for basic mental disaster, we can’t afford to not be working unpaid overtime in was able to turn around the UCU′s have as if they do. rights and dignity, it’s more vital sit back and ignore the issue. future. A 2016 report by UCU position on the agreement in less We constantly hear the rhetoric than ever that the NUS shows real Our goal to win a free, accessible found that academic staff worked than 24 hours is the basis of a po - of the “average student” con - and practical solidarity to the and liberated education system for an average of 50.9 hours a week tential wider rank-and-file shake cerned only with the costs of print - movement to shut down all deten - all can’t be separated from a world (contracts typically give a guideline up of the union more generally. ing and nights out, as if campuses tion centres. I will not pay lip ser - in which everyone can live, no of 35 to 37.5). Two-thirds of staff re - The strike has had a huge impact aren’t implicated in the injustices vice to these causes, I will join in matter where they are. ported unmanageable workloads at on the consciousness of UCU mem - which define our society. the demonstrations, as I have done There is no issue of justice least half the time, and 28.8% said bers. Three and a half weeks have When institutions like Oxford as an activist. that is not a student issue. This workloads were unmanageable all been spent organising picket lines, and Cambridge invest millions in Moreover, we need to fight principle must be embedded or most of the time. If the strike holding teach-outs, responding to offshore funds to develop deep sea against the implementation of fur - into everything we do in the makes staff more confident about management threats, organising drilling, climate justice is an issue ther restrictions on immigration at NUS. refusing work that would take with students, and engaging in for our student unions. When in - every turn. Borders necessitate vi - them over their basic hours, that endless discussions about the dis - stitutions act as border guards, olence: the violence of being de - Support these candidates! will be a very good thing. pute, its direction, and wider issues monitoring the attendance of in - nied free healthcare, the violence • We are also calling for support Casualisation has also been a about Higher Education. Many ternational students and facilitat - of an immigration raid, the vio - for Ana Oppenheim (National theme of discussion during the have commented that this strike ing deportations, borders are an lence of deportation. Immigration Campaign Against Fees and strike. Many strikers have no idea has been their first opportunity to issue for our student unions. We controls have transformed every - Cuts) for VP Higher Education, whether they will be able to stay in talk to colleagues about things have a duty to recognise how our where from hospitals to homeless Zamzam Ibrahim for VP Society university jobs long enough for other than the mundane bureau - institutions perpetuate global sys - charities into functioning as bor - and Citizenship, Ali Milani for VP pensions to be relevant but have cracy of university life. Teach-outs tems of exploitation and force der guards, leaving many mi - Union Development, Eva joined the picket lines in solidarity have provided a glimpse of how them to enact change. grants with nowhere to turn. Our Crossan Jory for VP Welfare, and because they know the out - universities could look different. As NUS President, I want to be fellow students have been harmed and NCAFC candidates Justine come of this strike matters for by these measures. Canady, Monty Shield and Stu - During this dispute university part of a student movement that working conditions across HE. At workers and students have transforms society, not just our It’s also time to be serious about art McMilan for the “block of the University of Kent manage - climate justice activism. Over one 15”. shown that they are the univer - campuses. ment have agreed not to deduct sity. any pay from striking Graduate 4 COMMENT Email your letters to [email protected] Football versus fat-cat developers

to save the club was rejected by Meadow. By Phil Grimm With the new threat of eviction, the contin - A dispute between Dulwich Hamlet Foot - ued existence of the club is in serious ques - ball Club and the owners of their stadium tion. in south London sharply escalated in the This has all happened despite Dulwich week beginning 5 March. being, in many ways, a model of how football can be done in a better way. In recent years, Property developer Meadow Residential non-league Hamlet has seen a huge rise in at - has evicted the club from their Champion tendance and publicity. Once mostly known Hill ground. A subsidiary of the company as a little-known curiosity with a pink kit and also wrote claiming to have trademarked a distinguished pre-war history, Dulwich “Dulwich Hamlet”, demanding the club no now attracts much press attention, and longer use the name. crowds routinely reach the thousands. Five years ago, US property developers This popularity has been built on a Meadow Residential bought the Champion friendly, ebullient, self-mocking fan culture. Hill ground for £5.6 million. They promised Many supporters get involved in local that their plans to redevelop the land would causes, collecting for food banks, supporting include a decent provision of social housing, striking workers and making a determined as well as facilitating a new home for the effort to make the terraces welcoming for team nearby. While Meadow eyed the lucra - women and LGBT people. Even the smallest tive development of an inner London loca - football clubs draw on the passionate in - tion, they treated the club relatively benignly. volvement of many people, but Dulwich Hamlet has gradually expanded into being a FUNDS real community club and a beloved social re - This changed sharply when Southwark source for thousands of people. Council turned down the development ap - Encouragingly, there’s been a massive re - plication after the plans failed require - sponse to the threat to the club. ments for affordable or social housing. London Mayor Sadiq Khan and several Meadow began throwing their toys out of local MPs have called on Meadow to sell the the pram and lashing out at the club to put ground on. Southwark Council is considering pressure on the council to let them build un - a proposal to buy Champion Hill. Bigger affordable homes on the site. clubs and celebrities like Gary Lineker and campaign has been launched, and a demon - sick with our current system. Funds for the football team became re - Peter Reid have expressed their disgust at stration planned for 17 March. A system in which the rich are able to stricted as the developers claimed more of Meadow’s actions. Arch-rival club Tooting Of course, there are far worse problems spitefully trash something that brings the match-day revenue and refused to cough- and Mitcham have kindly agreed to share under capitalism than the mismanagement of warmth and joy to a community, all in pur - suit of a grubby profit. up for the running of the club. Even a £10 their ground with Dulwich for the remainder small football clubs. But in its way, Dulwich’s million bid by Peckham local Rio Ferdinand of the season. A “Save Dulwich Hamlet” predicament is a vivid illustration of what is Pseudo-political Disneyland Corbyn’s international friends

these anti-fascist heroes, the finest of their Michael Elms’ article (‘Corbyn and the LETTERS generation, should be lumped together with Czech spy scandal’, 28 February) makes Stalin and his Hungarian acolytes such as reasonable points (the right-wing press I really enjoyed reading Dan Katz’s article the repulsive Matyás Rákosi (whose bald are out to get Corbyn, and they are not on pulling down statues. He makes a pate earned him the nickname — “arse above twisting facts). number of valid points. head”). The statue park is really just a stupid It is an article any self-respecting Cor - Maybe I can add a few details. After it was pseudo-political Disneyland. There is no so - bynista would approve of. pulled down, Stalin’s statue in Budapest cial or political context for the statues, and Except there’s one problem Michael fails to was smashed up and one part of it was used everything is treated as if it was part and mention: what was Corbyn doing meeting a as an improvised public urinal. Pretty soon parcel of Stalinist Hungary, including a Czech embassy official? Yes, I know Corbyn after, all parts of the statue disappeared in - statue to the revolutionaries of 1919 — a full wasn’t spying for the Czechs — but that cluding the boots which initially remained 29 years before Hungary succumbed to Stal - doesn’t completely resolve the matter. stuck on their plinth. Rumour has it that ev - inism in the post-war period. The boots Czechoslovakia was a police state and its erything was melted down. have miraculously re-appeared but they are embassy officials were agents of that state There is a vivid reconstructed scene de - replicas. and, consequently, bitter enemies of picting the toppling of the Stalin statue in There is no accounting of the past, no at - ours. Around the same time that Corbyn was Marta Mészáros’ film ‘Diary for my Father tempt at understanding what happened, meeting the Czech secret agent (who did Cor - and Mother’ which mirrors the toppling of just one more tourist attraction to add to the byn think he would be meeting?) I was rais - the Tsar’s statue in the opening of Sergei list. And of course, there are the usual T- ing money for the Czech workers’ Eisenstein’s ‘October’. shirts, mugs and other touristy nick-nacks. opposition; others were protesting outside Unfortunately, the history of statues in In the meantime, under the right wing gov - the embassy for workers’ rights, or demand - Milne and Corbyn Hungary and their treatment gets messy. ernment of Viktor Orbán monuments to fas - ing rights for the Roma people, or Jewish When I worked in Budapest in 1992 I often cists and nationalists go up all over the people (the Czech Stalinists had demolished announced last weekend that — following took my lunch break in a small park sitting place. many synagogues and spied on Jews). the attempted murder of Sergei and Yulia on a bench, eating my salami, next to a Just for the record: 965 Hungarians fought Now Corbyn is not a Stalinist. But he does Skripal — Labour MPs would no longer ap - statue dedicated to the memory of the Hun - for the Spanish Republic. Of these 260 never seem to make regular mistakes when choos - pear on RT, the Russian state’s television pro - garian volunteers who fought in the Spanish made it home. Most of these fell at the battle ing his international friends. paganda outlet. McDonnell stated, “We have Civil War on behalf of the Republic. I grew of Huesca. When the Civil War ended those It is a real scandal, for example, that Cor - treated it like every other television station.” to love that statue despite the fact that it was who made it across the border into France byn appeared on the Iranian state’s Press TV Minimally John McDonnell has not been bloody ugly — the Hungarian volunteers were interned. In 1945-6 most of the surviv - — and did so even after the station had been paying attention. RT and Press TV are ab - were rendered as “Michelin men”, not what ing volunteers were able to get back to Hun - banned in the UK for filming the “confes - solutely unlike CNN or the BBC. RT and I would have chosen. gary, only to find that they were under sion” of a journalist which had been ex - Press TV are the outward-facing propa - I returned a few years later to find the suspicion by the Stalinist authorities. tracted under torture. ganda fronts for aggressive, authoritarian statue gone. It had been moved to a so- 30-35 were imprisoned and at least one Or, closer to home, Corbyn has chosen key states. called Statue Park just outside Budapest, in (László Rajk) was executed. aides who are unreconstructed Stalinists fact it is the first statue you see on entering. (Seamus Milne and Andrew Murray). Dan Katz, South London I have always thought it a disgrace that John Cunningham And on a similar theme John McDonnell Workers’ Liberty @workersliberty WHAT WE SAY 5 Trump threatens trade war

On 1 March Donald Trump announced tar - man government’s protective tariffs, so much iffs of 25% on steel imports, 10% on alu - so that when Lenin in his pamphlet What Is minium imports. To Be Done? wanted to cite an easily-grasped Other governments are alarmed by this example of how socialists should conduct a shift towards trade war. The OECD, a consor - political campaign, he chose a German social - tium of the world’s 35 strongest capitalist ist anti-tariff effort. economies, has criticised the move. Further Free trade first spread in the mid-19th cen - argument will come at the meeting of the fi - tury. Tariff protection became more popular nance ministers and central bank govern - with governments later in the 19th century, ments of the G20 (20 strongest countries) in but on the whole tariffs of the leading capi - Buenos Aires on 19-20 March. talist countries remained fairly low until Socialists should be alarmed too, for our about 1930, with the USA as the main excep - own distinct reasons. tion. Socialists do not endorse capitalist free A spiral of beggar-my-neighbour tariffs in trade. We are not for the unfettered rule of the 1930s crashed world trade and worsened markets. We are for fettering market forces the economic slump then. through social-provision and worker-protec - Since World War Two it has been bourgeois tion policies, as international as possible. As orthodoxy to favour making trade barriers the working class gains political strength, we low, with argument only about the scale and aim to make democratically-decided social type of the exceptions to that rule. From the solidarity the chief regulator of economic af - 1960s the running-into-a-wall of “develop - fairs. mentalist” trade barrier regimes in second- We are not necessarily opposed, even, to all tier capitalist countries from Ireland to bourgeois protectionist policies. “Nursery Argentina has broadened the hold of that or - tariffs”, allowing new industries to make a thodoxy. start in weaker countries, are not our way of After the crash of 2008, the chief, in fact doing things, but they have a rationale, and only clear-cut, decision of the emergency G20 we would not condemn them in favour of summit of November 2008 was to demand of undiluted free trade. all governments that they avoid building trade barriers in response. On the whole, that TARIFFS decision held. In general, however, our approach is as Trump’s move spurred the Director of his Marx outlined in 1847: National Economic Council, Gary Cohn, to “Do not imagine, gentlemen, that in criti - resign. cising freedom of trade we have the least in - Cohn had already been at odds with tention of defending the system of protection. Trump since, last August, he criticised One may declare oneself an enemy of the Trump’s response to the white-supremacist constitutional regime without declaring one - demonstration then in Charlottesville, Vir - self a friend of the ancient [i.e. autocratic or ginia. aristocratic] regime... Research into the proposed tariffs sug - gested that they may save 33,000 jobs in the A spiral of beggar-my-neighbour tariffs in the 1930s crashed world trade and worsened the “In general, the protective system of our economic slump then. day is conservative, while the free trade sys - steel and aluminium industries, but lose 179,000 jobs in other industries dependent on tem is destructive. It breaks up old national - Trump has sacked Tillerson. Mnuchin and lation of tariffs among the 163 non-US mem - ities and pushes the antagonism of the affordable imported steel and aluminium (bit.ly/146-000). Mattis remain in post. There is talk of Cohn bers of the WTO is unlikely, even if trade bar - proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme being replaced by Larry Kudlow, a commen - riers between those 163 and the USA point. In a word, the free trade system has - According to the Financial Times , the new tariffs were opposed within Trump’s inner tator who has publicly criticised the tariffs. increase. tens the social revolution. It is in this revolu - Trump has hinted that the tariffs may make Probably so, for now. Even the hardest- tionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in circle by Rex Tillerson, his secretary of state; Steven Mnuchin, his Treasury secretary; and exceptions for Canada and Mexico. Ronald Brexiters among the Tories want some trade favour of free trade”. Reagan, US president from 1981 to 1989, also deal with the EU, and want more trade deals The German Marxist movement, in its hey - Jim Mattis, his defence secretary, as well as by Cohn. imposed tariffs early in his presidency. with non-EU states. Nationalist-populist par - day before 1914, campaigned against the Ger - The Economist magazine, shrewdly from its ties in Europe like France’s Front National point of view, identifies the most alarming (now trying to rename itself Rassemblement novelty of Trump’s tariffs as the pretext National) and Italy’s Five Star Movement Trump gives in terms of the rules of the have, as they have looked like nearing gov - World Trade Organisation, the overseer of ernment office, become more hesitant and va - world trade procedures for its 164 countries guer about policies which might reverse and successor to GATT, set up by the USA in European economic integration. 1947. But that is now, when the faltering eco - nomic recovery after 2008 is at about the DUMPING strongest (or least weak) it has been since The WTO allows for tariffs to be put on to then. fend off “dumping” (the sale of excess ca - What in the next crisis? The crisis for which pacity at artificially low or subsidised so much explosive material is accumulating prices) or destructive surges of imports. in the financial markets? Will bourgeois pa - Trump, however, says that the tariffs are tience and restraint hold the line then? Quite justified by “national security”. The USA, he likely not. says, needs those tariffs to keep enough steel The response of the labour movement can - and aluminium capacity to serve its military. not be to endorse the more far-sighted and That “national security” pretext has rarely rational elements of established bourgeois been invoked before. It is difficult to contest opinion. through WTO panels. It leaves other states But it must include vigorous rejection of with the options only of shrugging — which, the drift towards trade war, and of all sug - they may reasonably conclude, will encour - gestions that there is something socially- age Trump to go further — or of finding their desirable or pro-working-class about the own pretexts to retaliate. As the EU economic drift. think-tank Bruegel puts it, Trump’s move is “a challenge to the world trading system as we know it”. Solidarity 465 will be published on The Economist reckons that a general esca - Wednesday 28 March More online at www.workersliberty.org Workers’ Liberty @workersliberty US teachers declare victory Tories we

On Tuesday 6 March teachers in West Virginia, USA, were celebrating winning all five of their demands after a nine-day By Ralph Peters statewide strike and included an occu - pation of the Capitol. This month’s visit to the UK of Crown Teachers defeated an expansion of Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MbS), at charter schools (similar to academy the head of a large delegation of Saudi schools in the UK), a proposal to elimi - military and business leaders, marks a nate seniority, and a ″paycheck-protec - new low for the Tory government. tion″ bill which would have ended union It also indicates a major strategic economic dues being collected from pay. They won priority for the Tory government, as Emily a significant pay rise and a mechanism Thornberry put it, “to plug the hole that will to change unfair health-insurance prac - be left in Britain’s trade and growth prospects tices. … after Brexit”. Lois Weiner, writing for New Politics The frequent appearances of Tory Trade just before the strike won, explains how Secretary and arch-Brexite, Liam Fox in de - teachers organised. fending deals with Saudi Arabia was not co - incidental. Thornberry might have added that the Tories in their deals with Saudi were ditching even the pretence of abiding by EU This was a strike and movement organ - law. EU regulations bar selling arm to states ised outside the union apparatus where there is a risk of they may be used in a (bit.ly/2tEOlia). “serious violation of international humanitar - County representatives were more in Teachers occupy the State Capitol during the strike ian law”. touch with activists but they were not in con - In the case of Saudi Arabia that would be trol (read an interview with strikers here: an understatement. bit.ly/2DnK2aG). control their movement. generally must feel very strongly to “defy” This strike took shape as it did because the The other lesson of this awesome move - authority. existing unions had neither the credibility ment is that an individual union or even a However, in my experience, when elemen - YEMEN nor legal authority to represent the workers. social movement of workers in one sector tary teachers feel they must become “politi - The casualties of the Saudi war on Yemen West Virginia teachers and school workers likely cannot win significant improvements cal,” they show a breathtaking are now approaching the horrendous lev - have no collective bargaining, nor the right on benefits (health care and pensions) that determination and solidarity in their union els seen in Syria. to strike. The three unions to which teachers should be provided by the government. work. There has been a military enforced block - and school employees belong have very few We’re too weak now to gain those in con - At school they care for “their kids,” and ade, only partly now lifted on all goods, in - members. Individual officers are well-inten - tract campaigns. This is especially true of that nurturing carries into union work once cluding food, medicine, fuel, which has tioned but the organisations they head are public employees whose boss is the state. their fire is lit. This is a #MeToo moment and created a major crisis. Save the Children re - tired, out of touch, and viewed as irrele - The demand to “Fix PEIA,” the public em - movement although the strikers might not ports 130 children die every day. 50,000 chil - vant. ployee health care system, probably requires identify it that way. dren died in 2017. a more sustained struggle than even this Most of the deaths have been from pre - STRIKE powerfully solid movement can muster on SUPPORT ventable diseases such as diarrhoea, malnu - Workers have not organised a “wildcat” its own. Neither AFT or NEA, the two national trition and cholera. Deaths have also resulted strike because they are not violating the To revamp its broken health care system, teachers unions, both with state organi - from the many thousands of bombs dropped “no strike” provision of the contract, nor West Virginia teachers and school workers zations in West Virginia, have given this on Yemen, which, by the Saudis’ own admis - are they “defying” the union officers, need to join with activists to win a single- movement the support it deserves. sion, have targeted civilians. There are no whom they have never elected to speak payer system. They can and should give a hefty dona - current casualty figures available for this. But for them, when union officers say the That’s a tall order for a movement that tion to the strike fund to compensate for 14 months ago, the civilian death toll from strike has been settled. mushroomed over a period of months, and their lack of support so far. This movement bombings was reported as being more than The union officialdom doesn’t speak for we should not be disappointed if it doesn’t has taught all of labour and the Left enough 10,000. It will be far higher now. the movement. The workers speak for them - do so – yet. The real leaders of this strike are for us to subsidize the instruction. The Saudi visit would undoubtedly have selves. Confusion on nomenclature reflects teachers and school workers, not union offi - West Virginia’s teachers and school work - been used to update Tory commitments to how remarkable this phenomenon is: we cials. ers have shown unions what a mass work - support the war on Yemen through supply - don’t know how to name a movement of One reason this strike has had such stay - ers’ movement looks like (bit.ly/2DnI3Ty). ing the regime with training, ammunition workers that is self-organised, not confined ing power is that teachers and other school They have inspired teachers all over the and servicing of their existing Tornado and by the strictures of collective bargaining. workers are supporting one another – it’s a country, who are feeling frustration, even Typhoon warplanes. The visit ended with the Almost all workers are affected by state movement of workers organised across job rage, at the loss of professional autonomy, announcement of the imminent completion and federal law to some extent, but teachers’ categories as well as competing organisa - overwork, and the lack of respect. of a contract with BAE Systems to supply a work is enormously influenced by state tions. That’s the tinder for strikes. It’s a move - further 48 Typhoon fighter planes. laws, from the credentials they need to get They have deep support from their com - ment in search of leadership. Oklahoma Britain currently supplies 23% of the arma - their job and keep it, to their benefits and munities, resonating with memories of teachers are now organising a state-wide ments used by Saudi Arabia, 61% coming pension. struggles in the coal mines. But another key walkout (bit.ly/2pat7TO). from the US, the remainder from the rest of When teachers want deep change, they factor is the gendered nature of teachers’ The walkout is being discussed on a Europe. come up against state power. Because of the work and the people who do it. Teachers do closed Facebook page and one suggestion way schools are funded in West Virginia, “women’s work” – caring for children — gaining support is to hold it for the REPRESSION teachers had to make their economic de - even if they’re male. Most teachers are week when the state’s standardized tests are Within Saudi Arabia itself about nine mil - mands heard in the state legislature. women. given. lion migrant workers live without legal The government that denied their right to Teachers’ unions often have leaders who It’s still too early to know whether or - rights and often in near slave dependence have a union that could bargain over salary come from high schools, men who are “po - ganised labour is learning what it should on their employer. and benefits was faced by an uprising that litical.” Female elementary school teachers from West Virginia, but teachers certainly In the very week before MbS’s visit two union officials struggled to control. generally choose to become teachers because are. prominent Saudis, Issa al-Nukheifi and As one activist has explained to me, they they love kids, and their schools are gener - Essam Koshak, were sentenced to long terms are negotiating with, that is, fighting both ally smaller than high schools or middle • Abridged. Originally published in New of imprisonment (six and four years respec - union honchos and the state, trying to use schools, so they know one another better. Politics on 4 March at bit.ly/np-lw tively) for criticising Saudi Arabia’s interven - the union apparatus while not allowing it to Teachers as a group are very law-abiding, tion in Yemen, insulting the government and and elementary teachers even more so. They objecting to its decisions, criminal proceed - HISTORY 6-7 elcome “modernising” Saudi Prince

ings and security procedures. They join probably hundreds of democrats in prison, many imprisoned as a result of post Arab Spring activism. Thousands more are in prison for various other forms of dis - sent. In November 2017 a law was brought in, by which any Saudi can be jailed as a “terror - ist” for five to 10 years if they portray the Saudi rulers “in a manner that brings religion or justice into disrepute.” Executions in Saudi Arabia, traditionally by beheadings and stonings, continue at a rate that is the second or third highest on the plane, after China and Iran. In the week the Saudi delegation were in Britain, Amnesty made an appeal for 14 men whose execution was considered imminent. The offences in - cluded “high treason”, “supporting protests”and “spreading the Shi’a faith”; Shi’a Muslims are Saudi Arabia’s main reli - gious minority. Both Saudi internal repression and external wars have intensified under MbS.

TYRANT MbS is only 32. He and his faction of the Saudi ruling class have grown up watch - ing enviously as Al Qaeda and then Daesh each established a major international women would join the labour market, mak - off the dissent of all its 33 million people. strong as ever. presence. ing women 30% of the workforce. Some estimate that up to 35% of the Saudi By last September, War Child UK had esti - Both of these jihadist outfits had exploited For the new Saudi rulers “modernisation” population live on or below the poverty line. mated that the British armaments industry the conditions created by Saudi Arabia’s fun - means becoming a major actor on the world As subsidies for fuel and water have disap - had £6 billion of trade and made £600,000 damentalist Wahhabist doctrine being prop - stage, particularly the Middle East. It means peared, and prices risen by as much as 50% profit and from supplying Saudi for its war agated across the world by the Saudi state. using Wahhabist religious sectarianism more in the past three years, many poorer Saudis on Yemen alone! This obscene trade in death Since becoming close to power MbS has aggressively across the region. It involves de - are feeling the brunt of the regime’s austerity must be ended. The arms industry must be also seen Saudi oil revenues dramatically re - veloping a international Sunni “coalition”, and privatisations,. recognised as the force it is and confronted. duced as prices fell. now nominally responsible for the Yemen Saudi “modernisation” has increased the Labour should not just threaten action MbS’s predecessors had been happy to war. risk to MbS of greater dissent both amongst against supplying arms to regimes commit - squander their oil money whilst stomping on They want to become the most important the elite and the poor. And he has met such ting war crimes like Saudi, it needs to pub - any democracy at home and using their regional super-power, through the defeat of possible dissent with greater repression. licly campaign on this. money to finance pro-Saudi movements in their main competitor, the sectarian Shi’ite Whilst there is little history of organised It needs to prevent the well-connected the Muslim world. But MbS’s faction took state of Iran. working class protests in Saudi, the post- arms lobbies from generating fear for jobs power with the aim of “modernising” Saudi “Modernisation” also means developing a Arab Spring in 2011-12 saw significant lost as any arms contracts are cancelled. It Arabia. more diverse capitalist economy that might protests from the Shia minority but also from needs to act on the TUC policy to create a However, “modernising” does not mean thrive in the markets of the Middle East as oil secularists yearning for democratic rights. trade union and Labour Defence Diversifica - “democracy”. revenues continue to diminish. Part of the The road ahead could be rocky. tion Agency to plan the redeployment of the The recent lifting of the ban on women aim of the Saudi visit to Britain would have skilled workforce from the armaments indus - driving has been portrayed by the govern - been to look for UK business partners in their LABOUR try into environmentally useful public works. ment and Saudi apologists as a democratic imminent privatization of Aramco oil and be - During MbS’s visit, Emily Thornberry cor - It needs to take the arms industry into demo - concession by the Saudi tyrants. yond. rectly called for a ban on arms sales to cratically accountable public ownership. Foolishly Labour MP Naz Shah has lauded Saudi Arabia. But Labour needs to think But it also needs to be consistent in its treat - the Crown Prince and his “return to moder - CLASS through the consequences of a ban on the ment of those states who abuse human ate Islam”. Going further she called for Up until now the Saudi regime maintained arms trade to tyrants like the Saudis. rights. Britain to “be a candid friend to him” in the unity within its ruling class by allowing The British arms industry, despite only Emily Thornberry rightly drew attention to hope that the Crown Prince’s “steps… will huge bribery and corruption in its busi - contributing 1% to GDP, is very powerful po - the Tories’ double standards by asking why become strides”. ness dealings. But such corruption did not litically. As the Campaign Against Arms Saudi was treated different to Iran with its Fortunately, Emily Thornberry’s take on help develop the economy that MbS and Trade describes it, there is a “revolving door” “similar record of domestic human rights the Crown Prince and his visit was not so his brothers-in-arms want. between the Ministry of Defence and the abuses, regional intervention and alleged fawning: “Theresa May tells us it is about our To both consolidate his “anti-corruption” arms trade through such agencies as the De - support for terror organisations”. mutual security and strategic interests... message and centralise his control, last fence Suppliers Forum and Defence Growth But the Labour Party too needs to be con - about Prince Mohammed’s moves to “liber - November MbS arrested hundreds of Saudi’s Partnership. They are extensively involved in sistent. Although Britain may not now sup - alise” women’s rights… It is all nonsense.” most wealthy businessmen, including eleven formulating policy. ply arms to Iran, the labour movement could Indeed. The actual reason behind giving “princes”. O ne, Miteb bin Abdullah, fa - Furthermore the British state cossets the influence events there and in countries that women the right to drive was revealed by a mously bought his freedom with a cheque of private arms industry by underwriting their support the Iranian regime. member of Saudi Arabia’s Shura Council and $1 billion. In total the regime claimed $106 research costs. It sends ministers and royalty Labour should give solidarity to those one of the most senior women in Saudi pub - billion had been recovered. Others remain overseas to gain contracts for them. Not sur - struggling for democratic rights as well as lic life. Dr Hoda al-Helaissi, said that with the tagged to this day. prisingly whilst most heavy and light manu - condemn governments like Russia that arm falling real values of wages, “Saudi house - Unlike some other oil states such as UAE, facturing industry have been allowed to Iran and its proxy state in Syria. holds can no longer live comfortably on one Qatar and Kuwait, whose populations are contract massively over the last 35 years, the The labour movement should give soli - salary”. She predicted a further 1.3 million tiny, Saudi’s oil wealth is insufficient to buy arms industry here and its profits are as darity to all people fighting tyranny. 8 FEATURE More online at www.workersliberty.org TV fictions and AWL reality classify us as right-wing, even for the sake of tural and intel - REASON IN REVOLT argument, but Bindel’s underlying thought lectual reaction. was just. All religions An open letter to Ashok Kumar The difference between us and, say, you, is are logically in - not a difference between right and left, but tolerant. For It’s been said before, and it will bear say - between people who try to be consistent and those who take a ing again. If everything published by the principled Marxists, and eclectics like your - religion seri - Alliance for Workers’ Liberty in the last self letting themselves be blown by the polit - ously, it is the five decades were to disappear, and if fu - ical winds. one and only ture historians of socialism had to rely on Opinion, even grossly mistaken opinion, is truth. Today, in what our political opponents said about one thing; hard facts another. Which “wars” much of the us, then the historians would find it im - have we supported? When? We opposed and world, Islam is possible to make political sense of the marched against the invasions of the most vigor - story. Afghanistan and Iraq. As between your “left” ous, and often On the one hand we are people who do, and ours, the shoe is on the other foot. The the most politi - and have always done, everything we can to ostensible left which you identify with backs cised religion. help workers in their struggle against em - war against Israel. Thus many ployers and governments. We throw every - We have not backed war or wars, other Muslims can be United in anti-AWLism: George Galloway and Nigel Farage. Now joined by The thing we have into that. than wars of national liberation like those of and have been Daily Express and Ashok Kumar We preach working-class revolutionary so - the Kurds against Daesh and against Turkey. mobilised to de - cialism, and work to educate those we can in Chauvinists? What sort of chauvinists? mand that their religious standards and sen - shifts in world politics and world alignments. the politics of Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, British chauvinists? European chauvinists? sibilities be imposed on people and on Those who advocate it use lamentations for Rosa Luxemburg, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trot - White chauvinists? Cultural chauvinists? Re - societies which do not accept them, and, the Palestinians as part of their political pat - sky, James Connolly, Antonio Gramsci, and ligious chauvinists? some, frequently, to threaten violence unless ter. But they are not true friends of the Pales - the other socialists of their school. Now and Our active record against racism will stand they get their way. tinians. “Smash Israel” politics imply an always, we oppose and fight all shades of scrutiny better than that of some of our os - Such demands from Catholics, for instance, endless purgatory for the Palestinians — and race, national, or gender discrimination, ex - tensible-left critics, better than the SWP’s, for should be rejected, and the influence of those it is significant that the majority of Palestini - clusion, and inequality. instance. We have advocated and taken part making the demands resisted and stigma - ans do not now support those politics. Against today’s populist-chauvinists, we in initiatives for black self-defence against tised. The left has done that where Catholi - The only possible program that can help advocate free movement of people. We are police and freelance racists. cism has been strong in politics, and even the Palestinians — the living Palestinians, not for freedom of religion, within the laws that Or do you mean that we are anti-Islamic where many of the Catholics mobilised for re - the cipher in the hands of Arab and Islamic protect children. We are for freedom of athe - chauvinists? We have taken part in action to actionary demands have been socially-disad - chauvinists and their would-be “anti-imperi - ist propaganda. defend Muslim populations in Britain against vantaged people. For instance the left should alist” supporters — is to have their own state In the socialist archipelago, we advocate marching fascists, as has, I guess, everyone mobilise against Catholic groups who intim - alongside Israel. unity of socialists in action and democratic on the left. We opposed the vile colonial war idate women outside abortion clinics. Israel was made viable by people fleeing dialogue about our differences. which Russia waged against the Muslims of The same should go for Muslims. Other - from Nazi murder in Europe and from the In national and similar conflicts we advo - Afghanistan through the 1980s. The SWP did wise we betray the best values of bourgeois Displaced Persons’ camps after World War cate — after Lenin — consistent democracy. that then too, but much of the ostensible left civilisation, and what should be the govern - Two. Certainly, Israel is not solely responsible That means that we are against all denial of did not. ing principles of socialists or even consistent for the plight of the Palestinian refugees: so self-determination to nations. Where there liberals. too are the Arab states that refused to let are intractable national and communal con - BOSNIA The socialist who confuses resistance to them rebuild their lives, or, sometimes, even flicts, we advocate working-class unity across We backed the Muslim victims of Serbian racism, discrimination, and exclusion with a to work. the communal and national divides, and, ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. So did many supposed duty to “defend” political-Muslim In 1948 there were 750,000 Palestinian democratic arrangements on disputed terri - others on the left (but not the SWP). activists on reactionary causes have lost the refugees. The claim now, when most of the 1948 people will in the nature of things have tory. We backed the ethnic-Albanian Muslims, political plot. died, that there are six million Palestinian That is the approach we take to the Israeli- the 93% majority in Kosova, against the Ser - Finally, the charge that we support colo - refugees, is an ideological lie. It embodies the Arab conflict, for example. Our basic princi - bian state murdering them or driving them nial-settler states. claim that the grandchildren and great- ples were set out in a resolution which Lenin out. So did some others on the left, but most As it happens, a large part of the globe is grandchildren of the 1948 refugees have, by wrote for the Bolshevik Party in 1913: of the ostensible left, and in the first place the made of colonial-settler states, from the USA virtue of their ancestry, more right in the ter - ‘’Insofar as national peace is in any way SWP, organised a “Stop the War” campaign to Argentina to Australia. You mean, of ritory of Israel than those who have grown possible in a capitalist society based on ex - that backed Serbia and made lying propa - course, Israel. Yes, we support Israel’s right up there. ploitation, profit-making and strife. it is at - ganda on behalf of the genocidal Serbian to exist and to defend itself. So too, by the Define Israel as a colonial-settler state if tainable only under a consistently and state. way, does the Palestinian Authority accept Is - you like, but for truth to reality you have to thoroughly democratic republican system of I saw on the internet a comment by one en - rael’s right to exist. add the things that make it different from government which guarantees full equality lightened citizen, a youngster I think, that the The only alternative is to support Arab and other colonial-settler states, and the fact that of all nations and languages, which recog - “AWL are potential fascists”. To make sense Islamic chauvinists in a war to conquer Israel there was a longstanding Jewish minority in nises no compulsory official language... and of that, I had to stop and think. What could — and then what? To drive out or slaughter Palestine (or what was until 1918 part of the the constitution of which contains a funda - he possibly mean? the Israeli Jews? What else? 600,000 Jews Turkish province of Syria), a majority in mental law that prohibits any privileges I concluded that he had in mind our hostil - were driven out of Arab countries over the Jerusalem in 1900, for example, a nucleus to - whatsoever to any one nation and any en - ity to political Islam — as to political Catholi - years following the establishment of Israel in wards which the refugees from Europe of the croachment whatsoever upon the rights of a cism, etc. 1948. 1920s and 1930s fled. national minority. This particularly calls for A number of things have to be examined The basic socialist value of consistent The history has been a tragic one for both wide regional autonomy and fully demo - separately here. Let me first repeat: we have democracy provides the only solution to the Jews and Arabs. The tragedies can be miti - cratic local self-government, with the bound - been and are defenders of Muslims as of oth - conflict: two states. An independent Pales - gated, and begin to cease, only by way of a aries of the self-governing and autonomous ers against discrimination, exclusion, and vi - tinian state in contiguous territory, side by two-states settlement. regions determined by the local population”. olence. We have a long record to prove we side with Israel. AWL’s adverse reputation in the ostensible And yet we are vilified, reviled, denounced take that seriously. There are two versions of a “one-state” so - left arises from the fact that we try to be con - in much of the ostensible left. We are We are of course against all religious lution, that of the Israeli right and that of sistent democrats and socialists on questions “racists”, “imperialist agents”. schools. The state should take responsibility Arab and Islamic chauvinists. Either version such as Israel-Palestine; from the politically The latest notable example of that ap - for properly educating all children. Religion offers horrendous prospects for both Pales - decomposed state the left is in; from the proach was yourself on Sky News, 4 March. should be outside of that. tinian Arabs and Israeli Jews: endless prevalent unreason and displaced emotion Asked to comment on the press, you took an Secular education is a fundamental princi - decades of national-communal conflict, with on the left on such questions; and from the article from The Daily Express denouncing the ple not only of socialism but of consistent lib - either a big Arab minority in an Israeli state, incomprehension and malice of people who AWL as left subversives in Labour and said eralism. There should be no Muslim religious or an Arab majority with a big Jewish minor - are often at the end of their tether in grasping of AWL that we are a “chauvinist organisa - schools. Or Catholic or Jewish or Church of ity, and the discrimination and conflict that what is happening in the world. tion”,that we are “right-wing”, that we sup - England schools will go with either. Not we, but those who, to put it at its ported “wars” and “ colonial settler states”. Most Muslims in Britain are poor, but they We do not think that Israel should be sub - weakest, have sympathised and sided Julie Bindel countered that with the Labour are part of a world religion that includes peo - jugated and destroyed, and its Jewish people with religio-political reaction, are the peo - Party run by “posh Stalinists”, it is difficult ple and states of vast riches. The outlook and put at the mercy of the conquerors. But what - ple who have lost the plot. not to be “right-wing”. culture of many religious Muslims, tied into ever anyone thinks, that is not calculably You have to stand realities on their head to the worldwide nexus, lines them up with cul - going to happen. It presupposes tremendous Yours, Sean Matgamna Workers’ Liberty @workersliberty FEATURE 9 Behind Wakanda’s utopian vision

Sameem Rahimi reviews ‘Black vanced African nation powered by the mys - Panther’ terious element “vibranium”, and now tasked with defending his kingdom from outside powers. Firstly, I like Black Panther as a character. His first task is the apprehension of the My first introduction him was in the highly Augmented criminal/thief, Ulysses Klaue acclaimed (and short lived) ‘Avengers: (Andy Serkis), responsible for stealing vibra - Earth’s Mightiest Heroes’ TV series from nium and killing several Wakandans in the 2010. process. The brilliant Michael B. Jordan also The portrayal of this character was that of appears as the ruthless Killmonger, an ally of a stoic, no nonsense, quiet member of the Klaue’s with links to Wakanda. team, who relied on his instincts and intellect Maybe it’s because I’m fatigued from lots to overcome more powerful enemies. of superhero movies. The SFX, the super ad - I then decided to read up on him and en - vanced aircrafts, the futuristic cities, have countered him in the Fantastic Four comics been done before, and weren’t anything new. taking on the ‘Silver Surfer’, again using his superior intellect to take on the all-powerful herald of Galactus, and defeat him. In my SPIRIT eyes, Black Panther was effectively the closest The action was formulaic, and consider - marvel had to Batman, a rich dude who ing this was a film about a man imbued with the spirit of the panther god, I felt the made up for his lack of powers with his cun - Audiences in Africa (pictured, a Senegalese audience) have flocked to see ‘Black Panther’. ning and intellect. Black Panther’s portrayal was disappoint - ing. There was no attempt to illustrate his From a representation point of view it’s By far the most interesting character, an vailing order, the archaic and oppressive genius or cunning. great this movie was produced, and even bet - African American (of Wakandan blood and practices of the Wakandan elite. This isn’t a What about the story, though? The story ter it was so well received. Comics have a va - T’challas cousin), he experiences first hand revolution. does have political themes, in my opinion riety of heroes from different ethnic/national the discrimination and prejudice in White Overall, what can I say about the movie? bad politics. Let me explain. backgrounds and although black characters America that his countrymen haven’t. It’s certainly colourful and vibrant. You can Wakandan society, despite its advances, is have appeared in comic book movies before This breeds within him solidarity towards see what the writers and the directors of the a tribal society ruled by a monarch, the Black (Blade, Spawn), never has one been made not just his fellow African Americans but movie are going for.Wakanda is presented as Panther. Despite Wakanda’s wealth and about an African superhero. Black people oppressed across the world. It the near-ideal African nation, a techno-utopia power, it actively pursued an isolationist pol - In this regard, we should praise this film leads him to pursue the Wakandan throne, in that thrived as it was untouched by colonial - icy (not letting anyone in or out of the coun - and hope it will allow more blockbuster an attempt to emancipate his people across ism, and T’challa as Plato’s Philosopher King. try), at the request of its ruling elite. movies to be made about cultures and soci - the world by using the kingdom as a means However this film isn’t progressive, and its It hid itself throughout the ages, aware of eties that aren’t based in North America and to provide them with arms to defend them - important to mention this. Look across the the colonisation and pillaging of the rest of Europe. selves. I wouldn’t call him a revolutionary. liberal media outlets hailing this as a progres - the continent. This is not solidarity. This is ad - That being said, I’ll be frank and say I He doesn’t pursue power via revolutionary sive breakthrough. In reality all it does is per - dressed by the introduction of the character didn’t enjoy the film. This movie takes place means but by the formal means (trial by com - petuate certain regressive ideas. Killmonger. Michael B. Jordan’s character be - after ‘Captain America: Civil War’. T’challa bat) of the Wakandan elite. Particularly the way an undemocrati - comes the primary antagonist. Why is he sig - (Chadwick Boseman) is the new king of He accepts the throne and the title of Black cally appointed ruling elite can be allowed nificant? Wakanda, an isolated technologically ad - Panther, and in doing so embraces the pre - to have tyranny over a large population. When Labour councils resisted Tory housing policy

Rosalind Robson continues with the £5.14p per week. The rents in Clay Cross then be issued with a default notice and the coun - Labour leadership (Labour was led by averaged £1.50. cil then had one month to prepare a defence. Harold Wilson at the time) and wound up story of the 1972 resistance to the Those who could not afford the “fair rent” Thirdly, a default notice was issued which merely proposing a deputation to the Tory Housing Finance Act by Clay Cross would be eligible for means-tested rebates. might or might not be accompanied with a Prime Minister. There was no campaign for council in Derbyshire The idea was that better off tenants would public enquiry. non-implementation, despite a lot of uncoor - subsidise the rent of less well-off tenants and Finally a variety of sanctions could be im - dinated feeling in favour of non-implemen - also ensure the state could save money on posed, including the council being taken over tation. That the Labour council of the small Der - housing benefits. by a Housing Commissioner, a withdrawal of At the 1972 Labour conference, later in the byshire town of Clay Cross fought a Tory This was in fact an attack on better off subsidies for housing programmes, personal year, vague support was given to the cam - government over its policy of raising rents working-class people, and Labour’s electoral financial penalties on councillors (to recoup paign against the now passed Act, and the by an act of Parliament — the 1972 Hous - base. At the time Labour was very strongly the loss in rent receipts). In extreme cases the National Executive Committee was in - ing Finance Act — is well known. represented in local councils. Also, apart councillors could be compelled to obey the structed to back up any councillors that de - What is less well known is that Clay Cross from in places like Clay Cross, rents had been law on pain of being found in contempt of faulted on implementing the Act. Many was not the only council or set of councillors creeping up. court (and then jailed). Labour-controlled local authorities dodged to initially opposed the Act. In fact hundreds In Clay Cross soon after the publication of the confrontation by part-raising rents, but by of Labour councillors initially refused to im - the White Paper a series of public meetings so doing that had set in train the mechanics plement the Act. Eventually all but a few, in - were held to discuss the proposals, inviting PENALTIES of the legislation. It is worth saying that these penalties, cluding eleven Clay Cross councillors, gave the view of both private and council tenants. In the end there were three groups of coun - particularly the ones that can be imposed in, partly because of the intervention of the There had a been a tradition of holding such cils that refused to implement to one degree on individual councillors, are less punitive Labour leadership, partly out of fear of pun - meetings, to allow for public consultation on or another. today than in 1972. ishment by the state, and partly because the the council’s business. Those who never implemented were Clay opposition was not co-ordinated. A letter was written to the Tory Housing Councillors can still be disqualified, but it Cross and Bedwas and Machen in south A later installment will also tell a lesser Minister Julian Amery telling him that the is much harder; and they can no longer be Wales (although this council co-operated known story of how many tenants refused to council would refuse to operate the policy. At jailed or heavily fined and bankrupted. with the Housing Commissioner running it’s pay raised rents, often in opposition to this stage, it seemed that there were many Early in 1972 Clay Cross was getting some housing from December 1972). Labour councillors who had implemented other councils set on a course of defiance and national attention — it was one of two coun - A large group of around a dozen councils, the Act. it was unlikely that the Government would cils to feature in TV programmes about the many in Scotland, held out until sometime In July 1971 Ted Heath’s Tory government attempt action against them. legislation. The councillors upped the ante on into 1973. introduced a White Paper, A Fair Deal for But the government did have a potential this fight by calling the Act an “abattoir for 32 others held out between October Housing. The intention was to raise the rents escalating programme of punitive measures the slaughter of council house tenants.” 1972 and January 1973. Of those, Cam - of both local authority and private tenants by at its disposal. On 10 June 1972 233 councillors from 87 den, Merthyr and Clydebank had state in - setting high so-called “fair rents”. Labour Firstly, the Secretary of State for the Envi - groups of Labour councillors met in Sheffield tervention applied. Weekly later leaked the Housing Ministry’s ronment could initiate a formal enquiry into to co-ordinate opposition to the Act. A Work - estimate of fair rents. The figure for the East the conduct of a local council. ing Party was set up. Unfortunately this • Next issue: the fight heats up in Clay Midlands area in which Clay Cross falls, was Secondly, the a notice that a council would Working Party came under pressure from the Cross Where we stand More online at www.workersliberty.org Workers’ Liberty @workersliberty Today one class, the working class, lives by selling its labour power to another, the capitalist class, which owns General Secretary: debate the issues! the means of production. The capitalists’ control over the economy and their relentless having a choice of contender. drive to increase their wealth causes poverty, unemployment, LABOUR Formby has the support of the the blighting of lives by overwork, imperialism, the destruction majority of the National Executive of the environment and much else. By Keith Road Committee’s “‘left caucus”. 17 MPs Against the accumulated wealth and power of the capitalists, as well as the Labour Representa - tion Committee and the Campaign the working class must unite to struggle against capitalist The withdrawal of Jon Lansman from the contest to replace Iain for Labour Party Democracy power in the workplace and in wider society. McNicol as the next Labour (CLPD) have also stated their sup - The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty wants socialist revolution: Party General Secretary makes port. collective ownership of industry and services, workers’ control, almost certain that Jennie But the appointment to this and a democracy much fuller than the present system, with Formby will get the job. highly important and influential position should be made by a elected representatives recallable at any time and an end to The contest should have been an opportunity to talk about what a proper democratic process. The bureaucrats’ and managers’ privileges. left-led Labour Party should be like rules state that in the event of a va - We fight for trade unions and the Labour Party to break with in its culture and structures. It be - cancy for General Secretary the Na - “social partnership” with the bosses and to militantly assert came an opaque fight where any tional Executive Committee can working-class interests. differences between candidates select the new secretary subject to were unclear and impossible for or - the approval of Party Conference. In workplaces, trade unions, and Labour organisations; dinary Labour members to decode. In practice this will mean a rubber Jennie Formby For that reason it was absolutely stamping of their decision. This po - among students; in local campaigns; on the left and in The “siege mentality”, which has right — if you take his stated rea - sition should be elected at Confer - in some quarters, created a destruc - wider political alliances we stand for: sons for standing on face value — ence, with regional hustings tive factional mood, and distaste ¥ Independent working-class representation in politics. for Jon Lansman to stand. organised in the run up. for debate on the left has to end. ¥ A workers’ government, based on and accountable to the He was right against the leader - The desire to rush the appoint - Now is the time for the left to ship of the Labour Party who ment reflects, as, the New Socialist labour movement. change gear and begin to talk about wanted Unite official Jennie website puts it, a “siege mentality” ¥ A workers’ charter of trade union rights — to organise, to key differences in strategy and pol - Formby to get the job and who among the established sections of strike, to picket effectively, and to take solidarity action. itics. This contest could still help us rushed to endorse her. the Labour left. begin that. ¥ Taxation of the rich to fund decent public services, homes, As it stands the only other de - Since 2015, Corbyn has survived While the issues are still to be education and jobs for all. clared candidate is Paul Hilder, a a leadership challenge, a General explained, we do not share the digital entrepreneur, a director of Election, and fought to win left con - ¥ A workers’ movement that fights all forms of oppression. view that the entire Labour left Crowdpac and one of the founders trol of the NEC, and the Disputes Full equality for women, and social provision to free women must unite around a particular of OpenDemocracy; he is a Mo - Committee chair. The left has just from domestic labour. For reproductive justice: free abortion on candidate. mentum member. started to gain control in local demand; the right to choose when and whether to have But it is more than a matter of branches and local Labour Parties. children. Full equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Black and white workers’ unity against racism. ¥ Open borders. Trans women: the scaremongering must stop ¥ Global solidarity against global capital — workers Munroe Bergdorf from Labour′s some women don’t look or act everywhere have more in common with each other than with By Gemma Short LGBT advisory committee (on the enough like women and should be their capitalist or Stalinist rulers. According to reports on social basis that as a trans woman she asked for “proof”. ¥ Democracy at every level of society, from the smallest media over 200 women are plan - should not be in the role). Obtaining a Gender Recognition workplace or community to global social ning a ″mass resignation″ from It is expected that the Labour Certificates is a bureaucratic, often organisation. the Labour Party over the party′s Party will endorse the party′s cur - personally difficult, and costly pro - rent status-quo of all self-identified cess. Many transwomen will not ¥ Equal rights for all nations, against stance on including trans women on all-women shortlists. women being allowed on All- have one, or not have one yet, or do imperialists and predators big and small. Women Shortlists. That will be the not want one. We should not be de - ¥ A group calling itself ″May - Maximum left unity in action, and day4Women″ says they ″have over right decision. manding they get it in order to openness in debate. 200 women (100-plus happy to be Self-identification has been the recognise and include them. named, 100-plus anonymous) who norm in large sections of the labour Why is there scaremongering intend to collectively resign should movement for a while. A large over men entering All-Women If you agree with us, please take some number of other organisations also Shortlists? There is not a queue of copies of Solidarity to sell — and join us! the next National Executive Com - mittee meeting pass self-identifica - allow it without detriment to men who are going to identify as tion for All-Women shortlists″. women, including those who work women to enter all-women short - On their Facebook page the with women who are survivors of lists. Why would they when life in group repeatedly refer to the issue sexual violence. politics (and in general) is much as being one of ″men self-identify - Most women are not asked to easier as a man? Events This is scaremongering and it ing onto All-Women Shortlists″. “prove” their gender. We should must stop. The mass resignation was origi - not be in the business of saying Tuesday 20 March Saturday 14 April nally timed for International Bring Carillion staff at British Leeds March for the NHS Women′s Day. It didn′t materialise. Museum back in-house 11.30am, Leeds Art Gallery, The One person who was suspended 12.30pm, British Museum, Great Headrow, Leeds LS1 3AA pending investigation by the Russell Street, London WC1B bit.ly/2p8mDpf Labour Party has resigned before 3DG the outcome of that investigation. bit.ly/2p9vuHv Saturday 28 April This ″mass resignation″ is the lat - Sheffield March for the NHS est in what has been a horrible cam - Saturday 24 March 1.30pm, Barker’s Pool, Sheffield paign by some in the Party against Reimagining Local Government S1 2JA trans people, mostly trans women. 11am, Institute of Education, 20 bit.ly/2IqM5P6 Some, at least initially, couched this Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL in terms of ″legitimate concerns or bit.ly/2oumcWe Saturday 5 May questions″ about the proposed ‘We are the lions, Mr Manager’ amendments to the Gender Recog - Saturday 24 March — play about the Grunwick nition Act, or of the in-practice im - Surround YarlsWood demo strike plications of the use of 1pm, Yarl’s Wood Immigration 7.30pm, Mechanics Institute, 103 self-identification for All-Women Removal Centre, Bedford MK44 Princess St, Manchester M1 6DD Shortlists. 1RF bit.ly/2FHsS9N However that mask slipped very bit.ly/2GqCnLG quickly. People involved in the campaign routinely and deliber - Have an event you want listing? Email: ately call trans women men. They [email protected] have celebrated the resignation of REPORTS 10-11 International Women’s Day strike More DOO strikes paying Merseyrail any losses in - By Charlotte Zalens curred from the strike. The RMT By Gemma Short Guards on Southern Rail struck said in a press release: “RMT has again on Monday 12 March in learned that the vast majority of Workers at four Picturehouse Labour councillors have not been cinemas in London struck on In - the ongoing dispute about Driver Only Operation (DOO). told by the senior council leaders ternational Women′s Day, Thurs - that their local authorities are day 8 March. This strike was the 40th day of strikes for guards on Southern. bankrolling this private, cash rich Workers and supporters picketed train company. It is an absolute Picturehouse Central in Soho, and Guards on Northern and Merseyrail also struck on 3 March. scandal that just as councillors are the picket line was addressed by agonising over budget cuts; all six TUC General Secretary Frances 13 March marks the year anniver - sary of the Merseyrail strike. On local authorities are exposed to an O′Grady. The picket line was later unknown amount of liability sim - joined by about 500 people from the anniversary of the strike guards′ union, RMT, is lobbying ply in order to write the the Women′s March event, which Merseyrail bosses a blank for a period of time created such an the Merseyside Labour Metro Mayor. Due to the contract that cheque.″ effective picket line that no cus - More strikes have been con - Merseyrail has with the City tomers were able to get through the firmed on Northern for 26-29 Council the council has been re - crowd to go into the cinema. March. Writing for the Clarion magazine in advance of the strike, sacked Ritzy Cinema rep Kelly Rogers said: Same job? Same pay! ″In the context of the abusive his - sourced to Arriva between 2013 tories of Harvey Weinstein, Kevin By Peggy Carter and 2016. Arriva employed work - Spacey, Gary Oldman and others, ers on inferior terms and condi - the world is – rightly – talking Unison members in the non- ible’ zero-hours contract jobs are house’s parent company tions, and these have remained in about the problems of powerful, emergency patient transport ser - more likely to be occupied by Cineworld made over £90 million place after the service was trans - entitled men, sexism and sexual vice in Greater Manchester have women working around caring and in profit last year: why are they not ferred to back to the NHS. This re - abuse that are rampant in the film voted to strike over low pay and other responsibilities. taxed more? Why is the Minimum sulted in some workers being on industry. But it doesn’t end at the disparity of terms and conditions Wage so low? Why are companies inferior terms and conditions for big names. Thousands of women between workers doing the not legally obliged to pay proper doing the exact same job. workers at the lower-paid end of HARASSMENT same job. ″The service industry has a maternity and paternity pay? Workers recruited on the Ar - the industry, cinema workers in - Workers voted unanimously for problem with sexual harass - “The labour movement has not riva contract earn £2.40 less an cluded, not only experience strikes, on an 86% turn out. The ment. always been good at organising hour, and have fewer breaks and widespread harassment from cus - workers are employed by the “In Unite’s ‘Not on the Menu’ and fighting for the rights of pre - less sick pay than those re - tomers and managers, but also an North West Ambulance Service survey of hospitality workers, 89% carious workers, or women work - cruited by the NHS. economic exploitation that is very NHS Trust, but the service was out - of respondents said they had expe - ers, and the feminist movement has much gendered. Low pay, precari - rienced one or more incidents of often neglected working-class ous contracts and poor conditions sexual harassment in their working women′s struggles.″ are all things predominantly expe - life. 56.3% said they had been tar - As Solidarity went to press work - DLR workers to strike again rienced by women workers, espe - ers from the Ritzy cinema were geted by a member of the public. for London. cially migrant women. striking to coincide with the em - 22.7% said they had been harassed By Ollie Moore Although the disputes are sepa - ″The feminist aspects of the Pic - ployment tribunal for three of their by a manager. rate, both involve employers failing turehouse strike go beyond just the union reps who were sacked. Outsourced cleaners and secu - ″Strikes are about, but not just to honour commitments around demand for maternity pay. Jobs Workers are now discussing rity staff employed by ISS on about, defending our rights at work rostering and shift patterns. seen as ‘women’s work’, such as the next steps in the campaign, London’s Docklands Light Rail - in an immediate way. Workers This will be the fifth strike of cleaning, nursing and caring, the including how to get more cine - way will strike on 21 March. withdrawing our labour is a politi - ISS workers on the DLR, but the service industry, secretarial work, mas involved. They will be joined by colleagues cal act, it is a rejection of the idea first which will involve parallel have historically been underpaid as directly employed by Keolis Amey that our bosses should control our action from KAD staff. KAD well as precarious, for both women Docklands (KAD), the consortium lives. We should be discussing the • Read the full article by Kelly workers will additionally strike and men n them. Supposedly ‘flex - which runs the DLR for Transport wider political issues too. Picture - Rogers online at: bit.ly/2p8oBWG from 20-24 April. Victory for Southwark teachers over box-ticking culture

fate of four teachers on “support observer. for the MAT. union committee is urgent. By a Southwark teacher plans” which, the union said, were Placards on the picket lines said Negotiations in the dispute were So is the consolidation of Teachers at the City of London imposed unfairly and were puni - “Kids don’t belong on spread - increasingly run from the manage - union organisation at Southwark, Academy Southwark have won tive rather than supportive. sheets” and “Not everything that ment side by the MAT CEO, by - where, despite the dispute vic - significant improvements after After insisting that the “support can be counted, counts. Not every - passing the Head of School. tory, many teachers had already three days of strikes by the Na - plans” must stay, and that ap - thing that counts, can be counted”. Other schools in the MAT, except decided to leave the school, and tional Education Union, 1 March praisal policy had been decided at This was also a broader rebellion maybe Highbury Grove, remain next year will see a big turnover and 7-8 March. academy-chain (MAT) level and against the box-ticking, punitive less strongly-unionised than South - of staff. A union group meeting on Mon - was immovable, management approach increasingly imposed on wark. Talks are underway for a day 12 March voted to suspend fur - agreed to rewrite policy and said the school since the construction of MAT-wide recognition agreement. • More: nutcola.wordpress.com ther strikes, scheduled for 13-15 that the “support plans” conse - a full-scale management structure The creation of a MAT-wide lay March while management carries quently “no longer existed”. Even before the strikes, manage - band and teachers demanded an through its promises to redraft ap - Strikes over pay and academisation additional £1,000 on top of their praisal and support-plan policies in ment had conceded that the “failed” verdicts passed on 17 existing salary for the next two consultation with the union. years, and to have their wages in - The strikes drew over 40 teachers teachers in the last performance an academy. Avenue strikers have management cycle were flawed, By Gemma Short been had support from parents creased to meet the inner London to the picket lines on each day, de - pay rate by 2020. spite snow and winds on the first and had reversed almost all of Workers at Connaught school in and the local labour movement. them. This has included lobbies of the The difference between outer day. Walthamstow, London, and Av - London and inner London pay Management kept the school The dispute saw teachers not enue school in Newham, Lon - Labour council, including by previously at all active in the union Labour members, over the coun - scales has not matched the re - open for Years 10-11, and for Years don, were both on strike on ality of living costs in London for 12-13 to do mock exams, but sup - becoming vocal. One teacher pro - Tuesday 13 March. cil′s support for academies. duced a leaflet citing research that a long time, and a small number port staff inside the school report School workers at Avenue Workers at Connaught school an “inadequate” verdict from a les - of schools in the outer London that very little teaching was done school have been fighting the pro - are striking after their demands for son observation is 90% likely not to a pay increase were rejected. The area voluntarily pay the inner on those days. posed conversion of their school to London rate. The final sticking point was the be corroborated by an independent school is in the outer London pay SolidaFor a workers’ giovertnment y No 464 14 March 2018 50p/£1 Turkey out of Afrin!

conducting a siege, surrounding Army, which Turkey has long sup - aims of Operation Olive Branch is, oil-rich territories they now con - By Simon Nelson Afrin, “neutralising” almost 4,000 ported, is now facing off against “to give Afrin back to its rightful trol. The gains the Kurds made Lively and disruptive protests combatants, and shelling positions the Kurdish YPG. Turkey is also al - owners”! with the backing of the USA, par - took place on Sunday 11 March of the Kurdish militia, the YPG. lied with Syrian regime backed Some sources say Kurdish civil - ticularly at the expense of the Is - at Kings Cross and Manchester 35,000 people lived in Afrin prior troops and militias which plan to ians in Afrin are being treated as lamist groups, will only have Piccadilly rail stations, blocking to Turkey’s operation, and they are go from Afrin right through to human shields by the YPG and are exacerbated the FSA’s determina - the track in Manchester and likely to suffer a similar fate to the Manbij on the Iraqi border. unlikely to leave for fear of being tion to crush them. closing King’s Cross. population of Eastern Ghouta. killed as they flee by Turkish Turkish forces have some lim - They have pushed the Turkish Hundreds more will die unless the ERDOGAN troops. The YPG deny that they ited experience of fighting the military assault on Kurdish-held combatants there manage to beat Turkish President Erdogan plan to anyone as human shields. PKK, the YPG’s parent organisa - Afrin in Syria back into the head - back Turkey. The Syrian Demo - wants to do as much damage as At the same time the Kurdish tion in the streets of South Eastern lines. cratic Forces (SDF), the US-backed possible to the YPG and to end media reports that “volunteers” Turkey in 2015 and 2016. In all While a siege on the enclave of YPG-led group, has now called the possibility of any Kurdish- are heading to Afrin to do just that. these encounters there was huge Eastern Ghouta has dominated more of its forces back from fight - controlled contiguous territory, Turkey’s partners in the FSA are loss of civilian life. Kurds will continue to be much press coverage, what has ing the remnants of Daesh to de - particularly by the Turkish bor - made up of Arab-chauvinists, and slaughtered unless Turkey is happened in Afrin has been just as fend Afrin. der. Islamists who spent much of the pushed out of Afrin. brutal. But Turkey is also not fighting Erdogan has said Afrin is a ma - early years of the conflict in Syria Turkey, a NATO member, is also alone. Sections of the Free Syrian jority Arab area and that one of the trying to drive the Kurds out of the

Or subscribe with a standing order Contact us Subscribe to Solidarity Pay £5 a month to subscribe to Solidarity or pay us more to make an ongoing contribution to our work 020 7394 8923 Trial sub (6 issues) £7 o To: ...... (your bank) ...... (address) Six months (22 issues) £22 waged o, £11 unwaged o solidarity@ One year (44 issues) £44 waged o, £22 unwaged o Account name ...... (your name) workersliberty.org European rate: 6 months €30 o One year €55 o Account number ...... Sort code ...... Write to us: The editor Please make payments as follows to the debit of my account: (Cathy Nugent), 20E Tower Name ...... Payee: Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, account no. 20047674 at the Unity Trust Bank, 9 Brindley Place, Birmingham, B1 2HB (60-83-01) Workshops, Riley Road, London, Address ...... SE1 3DG Amount: £...... Solidarity editorial: Michael Elms, To be paid on the ...... day of ...... (month) 20.... (year) and thereafter I enclose £ ...... monthly until this order is cancelled by me in writing. Simon Nelson, Cathy Nugent This order cancels any previous orders to the same payee. (editor) , Gemma Short, and Cheques (£) to “AWL” or make £ and Euro payments at workersliberty.org/sub Martin Thomas Return to 20e Tower Workshops, Riley Road, London, SE1 3DG. Date ...... Signature ...... Printed by Trinity Mirror