& Workers’ Liberty

SolFor siociadl ownershaip of the branks aind intdustry y No 462 14 February 2018 50p/£1 Corbyn pledges more public ownership Inside: A year of strikes NATIONALISE in Iran

Morad Shirin reports on workers organising in Iran. See page 3 UTILITIES Why you should be a socialist

SApeaking at a LNabour Party evDent on 10 Febru ary, JeBremy Corbyn rAeaffirmed LabNour’s 2017 manKifesto pledge “Sto bring energ! y, rail, water, and mail into public ownership and to put democratic management at the heart of how those industries are run”. “By taking our public services back into public hands”, he said, “we will not only put a stop to rip-off monopoly pricing, we will put our shared values and collective goals at the heart of how those public services are run”. We publish an extract from our new He promised “a society which puts its most valuable resources, the creations of our collective endeavour, in the hands of everyone who is part book, Socialism Makes Sense of that society”. More page 5 See pages 6-7 The story of Votes for Women

Jill Mountford begins a series on the story of the women’s suffrage movement. See page 9 Join Labour! Fighting council cuts

A protest by Fuel Poverty Action See page 10 2 NEWS More online at www.workersliberty.org Share-price wobble gives warning

By Rhodri Evans lower than their recent highs on 29 higher than the average over the But wobbles can turn into selling shares again at a higher January, 23 January, and 26 January last 14 years, which is 12.6. crashes. Sooner or later, they surely price. As Solidarity goes to press on 13 respectively. The wealthy have believed that will. Once the wealthy see profits “A cataclysm is bound to happen. February, the Dow Jones and So far, the early-February down - profits will rise, and so bought sagging, they sell off shares, and the The combination of overpricing and S&P 500 share-price indices in turn looks like a limited wobble in shares, and bid up share prices, on price-earnings ratio crashes down high leverage [debt] cannot lead to New York have been recovering a pattern of rising share prices since that assumption. Government to its norm, or below. anything other than a lot of de - 2009. The S&P 500 has risen from an bonds have been paying low re - The effect is quicker and more since 8 February, though they are faults... It is quite amazing that still at a lower level than when index value of 683 in 2009 to 2873 in turns, so more of the wealthy have drastic in particular sectors. We re - late January 2018: if you had shares preferred to buy shares instead. cently reported in Solidarity on an there is no collective memory that they suddenly dipped on 1 Febru - goes beyond five years, or that the ary. worth $1000 in 2009, by late January A trigger for the recent wobble Oxford finance professor’s take on 2018 you could sell them for $4204. has been that the US Federal Re - the “private equity” industry, world is organised in such a way The FTSE 100 index in London, that history keeps on repeating”. The “price-earnings ratio” for serve pushing up its interest rates which works by borrowing money No public control over high fi - the DAX index in Frankfurt, and the FTSE 100 shares, that is, the average and making it clear that it will push cheap, buying up firms’ shares, re - nance has been established CAC 40 index in Paris, have all been share price per £1 annual corporate up those rates further, thus promis - modelling the firms by slash-and- recovering since 9 February, but are profits, is currently around 29, way ing better returns on bonds. burn to boost profits, and then since 2008 to stop that repetition. Tesco equal pay fight South Africa needs a workers’ party By Charlotte By Luke Hardy Zalens As Solidarity goes to press on 13 Tesco faces an February, the ANC, the ruling equal pay party, has officially asked Jacob claim over pay Zuma to step down as President gaps between of South Africa. its mainly fe - Zuma has been under increasing male shop pressure to resign since December, floor staff and when deputy President Cyril its mainly male Ramaphosa was narrowly elected warehouse leader of the ANC at its conference. and distribu - The ANC has been the ruling Ramaphosa: nothing to offer working-class people tion staff. party in South Africa since the end of apartheid in 1994. Yet in the Law firm ship, played a role defusing the Ramaphosa re-entered politics by Leigh Day has same period deep disillusion has have historically been underpaid, tribal violence incited by Zulu roy - becoming deputy president in elec - submitted claims through Acas on set in. with men in these roles also tend - alty in the KwaZulu Natal region. tions in 2014. behalf of 100 shop workers, This is The country has one of the most ing to be underpaid. Cases involv - Once in power the ANC leader - In 2016, the ANC lost some key likely to be followed by a submis - unequal income distributions in the ing council-employed cleaners ship wanted to open the country up cities in municipal elections for the sion to an employment tribunal. world. About 60% of the popula - and school lunchtime supervisors to big business. They set up quotas first-time, including Johannesburg Similar cases are currently in the tion earn less than R42,000 per who were paid less than refuse for black representative on com - and Pretoria. employment tribunal process annum (about US$7,000), whereas workers or street cleaners were pany boards. Often the people who At the ANC December congress, against Asda and Sainsbury′s. In 2.2% get over R360,000 per annum settled by several councils. took these lucrative roles were Ramaphosa narrowly won the the Asda case the latest ruling (about US$50,000). Employers across all industries leaders of the ANC or their rela - leader election against Nkosazana from the employment tribunal was South Africa has well-regarded are watching these cases, fearful tives. Dlamini-Zuma, Jacob Zuma’s ex- that shop workers have the right universities; but elementary educa - that a precedent is being set for Ramaphosa lost the battle in 1997 wife and ongoing ally. to compare their jobs to workers in tion for the poor is worse than in cases elsewhere. to succeed Mandela as ANC leader, Zuma retains support in some distribution centres. some much poorer countries. The Financial Times carried an ar - and went into business instead, be - sections of the ANC and loyal ap - The legal case has argued that There is a growing black middle ticle on Thursday 8 February dis - coming one of South Africa’s rich - pointees in the state security serv - the jobs contain a lot of similar class; but many people are still liv - cussing how companies might est capitalists and a member of the ices and judiciary, and is said to be tasks, with shop workers also ing in shanty housing in the town - respond. ships, and 27% are unemployed. board of Lonmin, a mining com - holding out for a promise of immu - doing a large amount of lifting and Tesco’s best option, the FT pany founded by the arch-imperi - nity or presidential pardon before carrying. Shop workers actually commented dryly, might be to Amidst the pauperisation, vio - lence has escalated. Rape Crisis alist Cecil Rhodes. stepping down. carry out a wider range of tasks outsource both operations, so A Ramaphosa presidency holds such as dealing with customers that a pay gap becomes just a South Africa reports that twelve MARIKANA times more women are raped and little promise for the working and handling money. gap between different firms. In 2012 miners striking against then murdered in South Africa masses. His idea of economic re - Jobs seen as ″women′s work″ Lonmin at Marikana were ma - every year than in the USA, which form seems to mean making South chine-gunned by the police. has a much larger population and Africa even more open to big busi - Ramaphosa condemned the is much more violent than Euro - ness. His ideas on rebuilding public miners, not the police. pean countries. services seem similar to Tony Trans women arrested in Aceh It also reports that every six Zuma became deputy leader of Blair’s marketisation of these serv - months in South Africa a woman is the ANC under Mbeki until ices. At best Ramaphosa promises a By Peggy Carter The attacks on LGBT+ people are killed by an intimate partner. charged with corrupt involvement more competent and even-handed not confined to Aceh. There has Both Zuma and Ramaphosa were with an arms deal in 2005. Later administration of neoliberalism. On 27 January 12 trans women been an ongoing campaign against heroes of the anti apartheid strug - that year he was also charged with Despite their histories both were arrested in Aceh province LGBT+ people all over Indonesia. gle. Zuma was sentenced to 10 rape. Eventually the cases against Zuma and Ramaphosa are now key in Indonesia and made to un - In April and May last year 150 gay years on Robben Island for his po - him were dismissed, but with seri - figures in the South African ruling dergo a “re-education program”. and bisexual men were arrested litical activities as a ANC leader ous questions still to answer. class. South African workers need and Ramaphosa was jailed as a stu - On the strength of populist calls a party of their own committed to They were subjected to beatings, and two young men publicly dent activist. for greater black power, he was working-class power and genuine had their hair forcibly cut, were flogged. The Indonesian parliament is Both were seen to be somewhat elected leader of the ANC in 2007, racial equality. stripped and forced to wear men′s In the recent rank and file currently considering proposals on the left, Zuma a long-term mem - and won the presidency in 2009. clothes, and otherwise humiliated. struggles in the unions breaking to criminalise gay sex, and all ex - ber of the Communist Party There have been a series of splits Trans women are reportedly flee - away from the COSATU leader - tramarital sex. (SACP) and Ramaphosa the from the ANC. The most notable is ing the province, an area with an ship, in the struggles in the founder and leader of the militant the left-populist Economic Free - autonomous status meaning it can townships, in the women’s • Indonesian LGBT+ organisa - National Union of Mineworkers dom Fighters. have some of its own laws, includ - protests against rape culture, tion G.A.Y.a Nusantara is (NUM) and a big figure in found - Meanwhile Zuma has faced more ing on homosexuality. and even among some of the fundraising. Their website is ing the then-radical COSATU corruption allegations, such as Many run beauty salons which rank and file of the ANC, lie the gayanusantara.or.id (not in Eng - union federation in 1985. about the cost of his lavish personal have been shut fearing a wave of building blocks for a workers’ lish). You can donate to the In the transition to democracy, country home, which has been attacks after far-right and Islamist party that can fulfil the true fundraiser at: Ramaphosa was a negotiator for charged to the state, or his relation - organisations put out calls for reg - promise of the long struggle www.youcaring.com/gaya-nusan - the ANC, and Zuma, as the most ship with the wealthy Gupta fam - ular Friday protests to ″cleanse the against apartheid. tara-549353/donate/general#pp prominent Zulu in the ANC leader - ily. province″. Workers’ Liberty @workersliberty NEWS 3 Iran sugar workers demand control

By Morad Shirin mand? Pay is a big problem for Iranian Recent events have shown that workers. On the surface strikes and Iran’s working class is willing protests demanding unpaid wages and able to fight consistently — or even higher pay — might against the capitalist class, the look like purely economic strug - regime and the state. gles. However, given the explosive By the end of the current Iranian situation in Iran any such demand, year (on 20 March) the number of no matter how meek or defensive it Mary Lou McDonald is the new President of Sinn Féin, workers’ strikes and protests in the might appear, leads to direct con - course of the year could reach the frontation with the repressive 1,000 mark. forces of the capitalist state. Recent struggles or issues in - In addition, the state sector and Going coalition-ready clude: Esfahan Kashi (tiles) where what many call the quasi-state sec - production has come to a halt and tor (e.g., the Pasdaran and religious Haft Tappeh strikers By Clive Larkin told Sky that Foster is someone her workers are threatened with unem - foundations), control the over - whelming majority of the Iranian party can “do business” with, and ployment; Iran Chooka (wood and Dublin Central TD Mary Lou Mc - that “the issues are clear, the issues paper) where jobs are under threat; prevented any sugar from being economy. So when workers take ac - tion against their employer for very Donald has been elected unop - are resolvable”. Palood Dairy, five months’ unpaid taken out of the complex. They posed as President of Sinn Féin, One of McDonald’s major chal - wages; Tabriz Combine Sazi, where emptied the lorry that had already basic demands they are effectively taking action against the regime replacing Gerry Adams who held lenges in the coming months will be workers prevented plant equip - been loaded with sugar. A few days the job for almost 35 years. to determine Sinn Féin’s policy on ment from being removed; in - into the strike over 30 Tappeh and the capitalist state. We have seen how the Haft McDonald joined Fianna Fáil in the upcoming referendum on ap - creased workloads for nurses; workers were arrested (but re - pealing the 8th amendment of the Foolad Shafagh (steel) where 100 leased quite quickly). Tappeh workers have raised the the late 1990s, before switching to issue of taking over production and Sinn Féin. She was elected as the Irish constitution. Sinn Féin is cur - workers were on strike for over Those arrested included Esmail rently committed to repeal but has four days; oil workers demanding Bakhshi, a representative of the have prevented the distribution of party’s first MEP in 2004, before sugar. They are talking about work - gaining a seat in the Dáil in 2011. not, as yet, endorsed the recommen - the removal of the new cap on their Haft Tappeh workers, who said in dation of the Citizens’ Assembly to end of service bonus; Jahan Electric, a speech on 15 January the follow - ers’ control of production and dis - Along with the election of Sinn tribution while also issuing a joint Féin’s northern leader Michelle allow abortion on demand up to the five months’ unpaid wages; Sad ing: “They [the management] claim first 12 weeks. Siazakh (water network), nine that they don’t have any money. statement with the Vahed Bus O’Neill as the party’s vice presi - Company workers and retired dent, McDonald’s elevation signals Instead it currently supports months’ pay; Vahed Bus Company Neither have we! But we differ abortion only on the condition that workers protesting about a housing from them in that we have the ex - workers about the minimum wage a handover to a “post-conflict” gen - that will be set for next year (the eration. Both are long-time Adams a woman was been raped, is suici - co-operative that should have de - pertise to produce sugar, so we’ll dal or has a fatal foetal abnormality livered their flats five years ago! manage it ourselves.” regime decides what is the poverty allies but Sinn Féin hopes that pass - line, the minimum wages and so ing the leadership to figures with no — clearly not a pro-choice position. The two most important strikes There was also the very welcome Meanwhile, the Socialist Workers were firstly the workers of HEPCO news of Reza Shahabi, a member of on)! IRA background will help it The Haft Tappeh workers don’t broaden its base of support in the Party (SWP) in Ireland has an - (Heavy Equipment Production the Executive Committee of the nounced it is dissolving itself into Company), a company producing Trade Union of the Tehran and Sub - see these as separate struggles, es - Republic of Ireland. pecially in today’s Iran. its front People Before Profit (PBP). road construction equipment, went urbs Vahed Bus Company, being Workers’ control of production Recent years have also seen sig - nificant strategic changes in Sinn The SWP will now be called the So - on strike and gathered in a big released on medical leave earlier of and distribution should be cou - cialist Workers Network (SWN), or - square in Arak demanding eight five days on 8 February. Earlier 32 pled with opening the books so Féin’s approach. After losing the Dublin South-West by-election in ganised around “a major new months’ wage arrears. lawyers had demanded his release. that workers can see why their website”. And secondly, a new strike by It is vital that he now stays out of bosses and the regime are not October 2014 to the Anti-Austerity Haft Tappeh Sugar Cane complex’s prison. He has served his sentence paying them on time, how much Alliance (Socialist Party of Ireland) GNOMIC workers. On 6 February, the sev - and his latest stretch in jail led to profit is being made, and so on. candidate Paul Murphy, Sinn Féin In a statement, the SWN said that enth day of their strike, the workers two strokes! attempted to tap in to growing anti- the change “reflects a decision to closed the sugar warehouse and Is pay a purely economic de - austerity sentiment and anger focus on building People Before against water charges by posing as Profit, and within that to win and the “Irish Syriza.” educate as many members as As was pointed out by political possible in revolutionary socialist opponents, this stance sat uneasily politics. Italian fascism feeds on xenophobia with its leading role in the govern - ment in Stormont, where the “Fresh “To that end, the Socialist Work - By Michael Elms of solidarity with him; fascist kind of policy needed to head off Start Agreement” with the DUP in ers Network will be operating as a Roman football ultras unfurled a violence like Traini’s. Former Pre - late 2015 paved the way to welfare component part of People Before On Saturday 3 February, exactly banner in his honour; Matteo mier Matteo Renzi remarked that cuts and a planned cut to corpora - Profit and, more occasionally, as an one month before Italy’s 3 Salvini, leader of the Northern “Italians should be defended by tion tax to bring it in line with the independent external force.” March general election, an League, placed the blame for the the police, not mad gunmen” — 12.5% rate in the Republic. It promises, gnomically, “to pro - armed rampage took place in attack on “an organised, deter - implicitly agreeing with Traini that In January 2017, McDonald sig - duce high-quality Marxist literature the Italian town of Macerata. mined and financed invasion” of his shooting spree was an attempt nalled that the party would drop its that is written in the language of the Eight people, African migrants immigrants into Italy. to defend Italians against Africans. existing policy not to enter into gov - 21st century and attractive to a new to Italy, were shot by a white The Northern League, now Berlusconi has issued a promise ernment unless Sinn Féin was the generation of anti-capitalists.” Italian — Luca Traini. restyling itself simply “Lega”, in to deport six hundred thousand largest party — opening out the Whether or not this reflects a an effort to move from Northern- people: an attempt to outbid possibility of a coalition govern - USFI-style advocacy of a “new Traini, 28, is a fascist; his moti - ment with one of the main estab - epoch, new programme, new vations were political. Following Italian regional chauvinism into a Lega’s policy of deporting 100,000 broader far right project, is one of — a repeat of the kind of grim auc - lishment parties. party”, leading to the effective dis - the attack, he draped himself in an This was formalised in Novem - avowal of the need to build an ex - Italian flag, and headed straight a number of far-right parties con - tion conducted between right- testing the general election in al - wing and far-right parties that saw ber 2017 at the party’s Ard Fheis plicitly revolutionary party, is as yet for a fascist-era war memorial, (conference), with McDonald an - unclear. where he gave a fascist salute. liance with former Premier Silvio France’s Front National extract a Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party. series of xenophobic policies from nouncing that “this isn’t about us However, PBP released a state - On the way, he visited the spot saying we are signed up to be a jun - ment on 11 February congratulating where the remains of a young Berlusconi himself, a friend of President Nicolas Sarkozy, ulti - Tony Blair, is barred from standing mately to the FN’s political bene - ior partner. This is us saying we are Mary Lou McDonald “for assuming white Italian woman, Pamela Mas - willing and able to be part of gov - the leadership of Sinn Fein”, and tropietro, had been found a few for public office until 2019 due to fit. his criminal record. But he is Across Europe, the labour ernment,” adding that Sinn Féin is praising her as “an articulate voice days previously. A Nigerian man willing to talk to “everybody”. against austerity”. had been arrested in connection widely seen as the public face and movement should unite in a bold architect of the coalition which campaign against xenophobia and Since taking office, McDonald has The statement criticised Sinn with her death. also signalled a willingness to re - Féin’s position on abortion and ex - An unsuccessful candidate for could bring Lega and other far anti-migrant prejudice, before it right forces into the cabinet. strangles our movement and solve the impasse in Stormont, pressed concern that it may enter the far-right Northern League which has left the North without an government with Fianna Fail or party, he is also an associate of The Italian far right has agitated brings thugs like Traini to state so effectively around the issue of power. Executive since early 2017. All but Fine Gael. more straightforwardly fascist Xenophobia is not a vote-win - But the tone, the advice of a immigration that more-main - dropping its stipulation that DUP outfits like CasaPound and Forza ner for us, or a political toy that friendly critic, will not reassure stream politicians are swimming leader Arlene Foster should not be Nuova. And the far right did not the labour movement should those concerned that the disso - in the same current. Interior min - First Minister until her role in the lution of the SWP signals a move abandon Traini after his crime: play with — it is a mortal danger. Renewable Heating Incentive (RHI) Forza Nuova made a declaration ister Marco Minniti has said that to the right. his anti-migrant crackdown is the scandal is investigated, McDonald 4 COMMENT Email your letters to [email protected] The People of the Book

By Martin Thomas

Books have been a great factor in human culture. The Qur’an says: “Do not argue with the People of the Book except only by the best manner, except the unjust among them. Tell them, ‘We believe in what is revealed to us and to you. Our Lord and your Lord is one. We have submitted ourselves to His will’.” By “People of the Book” it meant princi - pally Jews and Christians. These book-based religions were an intellectual innovation. The book-basis gave Christianity and Islam an ex - pansive power and a cultural breadth that earlier religions had not had. Through books, at least for a minority, reli - gious doctrine, which to many people then was substantially the total of abstract and theoretical thought, became something which could be glossed, analysed, and ar - gued over in a way requiring detailed study. From the late 10th century, in Europe, it be - came standard to write manuscript books with spaces between the words. Before then, with materials to write on expensive and rare, texts had been written with the words run together. To read them demanded excep - tional skill and training, and was most done transformation and propagation... The book In 1886 Engels described Marx’s Capital as more than a small fraction of the literature in aloud, to an audience. created new habits of thought not only “the Bible of the working class”. His thought its subject. So lecturers go for the easily avail - It appears that silent individual reading within the small circle of the learned, but far was not at all that it was a “religious” text, able, the quick summary, the overview, the was known in earlier epochs. But the new beyond, in the intellectual life of all who used above criticism. Rather, that it was a text extract, the digest. way of writing made it easier and more wide - their minds”. through which the processes of silent indi - Most students read few books. The skill of spread. From about the 13th century in Eu - The printed book transmitted ideas from vidual reading, careful comparison of pas - quickly skimming a range of material, ab - rope, with the rise of universities, the process ancient Greece and Rome; it became a factor sages and analysis of arguments, and sorbing a suitable fraction of it, and rehash - of reproducing books by writing them out in the spread of new thinking in the Renais - acquisition of a common framework of refer - ing it fluently in an essay or assignment, is again by hand became more systematic and sance and Humanism; it enabled religious ences, could develop in the workers’ move - encouraged. That’s enough for the student larger-scale. Then, from the middle of the disputation on a wide scale, notably in the ment. It developed more in some countries, who will go from a humanities degree to a 15th century, printed books appeared. Reformation; it led to increasing numbers of less in others. Antonio Gramsci considered it job in accountancy or finance or PR or such. religious people wanting and being able to a fundamental flaw of the pre-1914 socialist The system works positively to deter peo - TRANSFORMATION study the Bible themselves, to evaluate and movement in Italy that its culture had been ple from systematic study of substantive As Lucien Febvre puts in his classic his - compare passages according their own rea - based on speeches and short agitational arti - texts, rather than processed rehashes, and to tory: “The printed book was... one of the son, rather than being limited to follow the cles rather than books. A stronger movement train them in the idea that deep study is too most potent agents at the disposal of priests’ digests; it was the precondition for required “an unyielding struggle against difficult. Then, if the student comes into the western civilisation in bringing together the development of natural science; it was the habits of dilettantism, of improvisation, of socialist movement, the way to seem on top the scattered ideas of representative precondition, in general, for thought becom - ‘rhetorical’ solutions or those proposed for ef - of current debates is to skim blogs and Face - thinkers. ing more reflective, critical, and analytic. fect...” It was necessary “to combat the habits book, not to read books. Euclid’s Elements had been transmitted in formed in public speaking — prolixity, dem - Skill in skim-reading is enough for those “It rendered vital service to research by im - manuscript for hundreds of years. It became agogy...” who want to go with the flow and make a ca - mediately transmitting results from one re - the second mathematical book ever to be Books or even pamphlets have come to reer. It cannot be enough for those who want searcher to another; and speedily and printed (the first, a few years earlier, being a have less weight in the British left in recent to question and challenge the prevailing conveniently, without laborious effort or un - practical guide for commercial arithmetic). decades. It has become not unusual to find order of society. supportable cost, it assembled permanently We need to make the left again “People The printed book then became the basis of long-active people who have studied few or the works of the most sublime creative spirits of the Book”. all mathematical education for hundreds of none of the basic Marxist texts and rely for in all fields… years, and was at first, in the early 20th cen - their “education” on tweets, Facebook sta - “By so doing, it gave their ideas a new tury, superseded only by textbooks like tuses, memes, and such. • Paul Saenger: Space between Words: The lease of life and endowed them with unpar - Durell’s heavily based on it and giving a di - Paradoxically, one of the drivers here is Origins of Silent Reading . alleled strength and vigour. They came to gest of it. Only since the 1960s have mathe - that more left activists have had higher edu - • Lucien Febvre and H-J Martin: The Com - have a new kind of coherence and, by the maticians ceased to be “People of the Book”, cation. With the huge expansion in academic ing of the Book. The Impact of Printing 1450- same token, an incomparable power for both with the book being Euclid. publishing, no university degree can cover 1800 Momentum dominates left slate for NEC election

LABOUR However, not everyone is happy. The depar - ing up to antisemitism within and outside the cedure, in effect a job application, was cer - ture of Rhea Wolfson and Christine Shaw - party, and more recently for her stance in de - tainly inadequate, as were the telephone in - croft, possibly to help them secure fence of the rights of trans women to be al - terviews given to those who got through this By Simon Nelson parliamentary seats is regrettable. lowed to stand on All-Women-Shortlists. first stage. But the problem cannot be solved Christine Shawcroft is a long-standing ac - But the headline news about the slate was by an OMOV vote of Momentum members. Momentum has proposed a slate for the tivist on the Labour left, has regularly re - that Ann Black will no longer be supported And the principle of the constituent parts of elections to the constituency section of ported on National Executive meetings and by the CLGA. This has led one of the affiliate the CLGA meeting together to decide candi - Labour’s National Executive, to be held has undertaken some of the work of trying to organisations, Open Labour, to split away dates is not the problem here. this summer. prevent the Labour Party excluding and ex - and declare they will back Black standing With fuller democracy, Momentum could As we understand it, this slate has also pelling left-wing members, including sup - against the slate and to look at supporting have thrown open the process, sought nomi - been (narrowly) approved by the Centre Left porters of Workers’ Liberty. other candidates. nations from local groups, and chosen the Rhea Wolfson deserved our solidarity for Some Momentum members, supporters of nominees at a democratic conference. Grassroots Alliance. Those candidates could then be put for - the abuse she experienced on social media, the LRC, and others, have demanded that a The first-time additions of Ann Henderson, ward to the CLGA, discussed and voted far worse than any of the other left candi - vote is taken of all Momentum members to Huda Elmi and Nav Mishra to the slate do on by CLGA members. make it the most diverse it has ever been. dates. That was for being Jewish and stand - decide on the candidates. The selection pro - Workers’ Liberty @workersliberty WHAT WE SAY 5 Corbyn pledges more public ownership Nationalise utilities and banks!

Speaking at a Labour Party event on 10 February, Jeremy Corbyn reaffirmed Labour’s 2017 manifesto pledge “to bring energy, rail, water, and mail into public ownership and to put democratic man - agement at the heart of how those indus - tries are run”. “By taking our public services back into public hands”, he said, “we will not only put a stop to rip-off monopoly pricing, we will put our shared values and collective goals at the heart of how those public services are run”. He promised “a society which puts its most valuable resources, the creations of our col - lective endeavour, in the hands of everyone who is part of that society”. He argued that the energy industry must be remodelled to abate carbon emissions, and declared that “in public hands, under demo - cratic control, workforces and their unions will be the managers of this change, not its casualties. “The growth of green energy and green tech offers huge opportunities for job cre - ation. Our publicly owned energy system will ensure a smooth transition and protect workers and communities, seizing those op - portunities for the many, not the few... “The next Labour Government will guar - antee that all energy workers are offered re - outsourcing to private contractors, has been those few. The banks are not just one big economic training, a new job on equivalent terms and strengthened since then by the Carillion scan - It means wages are held down, and that we sector alongside others. They are hubs of the conditions, covered by collective agreements dal. Carillion bosses siphoned off huge sums are bossed around and controlled, in jobs economy. They determine where investment and fully supported in their housing and in - in salaries and bonuses for themselves, and which are made ever more draining and goes in times of prosperity, and they are cen - come needs through transition”. dividend payouts to shareholders, and let the stressful, for the sake of those few. tral to crashes and slumps. Speaking to BBC Radio 4 the same day, services they were supposed to operate run Since the 2008 crash, profit rates have re - The TUC has never campaigned for that shadow chancellor John McDonnell refuted into a wall. vived nicely. Top pay has zoomed again. The 2012 policy. Despite a series of big scandals claims that the nationalisations would be un - At present, in Britain, 60% of all financial High Pay Centre’s report in August 2016 about the banks coming out since 2008 — affordable. He said that shareholders in pri - wealth — stocks, shares, bonds, and such, as found that average pay for a top company mis-selling of pension protections, rigging of vatised utilities, which include pension well as cash — is owned by the top 10%. (FTSE 100) CEO was 33% up on the 2010 av - key interest rates, and more — public sup - funds, could be given newly-issued govern - That financial wealth represents the accu - erage of £4.1 million. The ratio of FTSE 100 port for public ownership of the banks has ment bonds in return for their shares. mulated proceeds of the profits and other CEO pay to the median full-time worker been allowed to fall to 28% for (53% against). A survey by YouGov around the time of surplus value extracted from workers’ labour across the whole UK economy had risen to Even more fundamentally, the labour the 2017 election showed that these policies over years, decades, and centuries. It is not 183:1 in 2014 from 160:1 in 2010. movement needs to build up the ideological, are popular. something that the rich have generously Real wages rose a bit in 2015 and 2016, for political, and organisational strength to push It showed an 84% to 5% majority for the brought to the economy from a stash of their the first time since the crash, but since then through such pledges. NHS being in the public sector; a 65% to 21% own creation. have been falling again. In 1981 the French Socialist Party took of - majority for Royal Mail; a 60% to 25% major - Ownership and control of corporate wealth The worst-hit have been the lower-paid - fice with a pledge to public ownership. The ity for rail; 53% to 31% for energy; 59% to 25% by the rich few means that all our labour, all often suffering also from big cuts in working- government took over the major industrial for water; and 81% to 6% for schools. our productive efforts, are geared to and age state benefits — and younger workers. groups CGE, Péchiney, Rhône-Poulenc, Saint The case for public ownership, and against shaped by the drive to get bigger profits for Since 2008, young people’s wages have fallen Gobain, and Thomson; arms manufacturers 16 per cent, taking their pay to below 1997 Dassault-Bréguet and Matra; steel companies action. At the same time we will be respect - levels. Usinor and Sacilor; computer firms Bull and ing the author’s current wish to not take the The gearing of economic life to the compet - ITT-France; the pharmaceutical firm Roussel- A note to readers matter further. itive profit drives of a few also brings market UCLAF; and the country’s thirty-six biggest We have set up a Working Group to do chaos in crashes like 2008’s, and short- banks. A recent anonymous blog said that the sighted spoliation of the environment. Then, faced with a flight of capital in 1983, author, an ex-member of the AWL, was this work and it will be reporting in a few weeks’ time. Corbyn and McDonnell are right to put the Socialist Party government did a u-turn sexually assaulted by another ex-mem - public ownership back on the agenda. and started privatising. ber in 2005. We are determined to make this an open process which will be helped by outside ex - Labour activists should take up two partic - Syriza in Greece was long committed to The incident has never been made the pertise and scrutinised by people outside ular questions. wide public ownership. By the time it took subject of a complaint to the AWL. We have the AWL. Corbyn’s pledges of “democratic manage - office in 2015 it had sidelined those commit - responded to the blog with an initial assess - We are entirely willing to be held to ac - ment” and “democratic control” of a re - ments. In office, it has privatised rather than ment which says: “It is our understanding count on the process and the findings of the newed public sector are welcome. They taken sectors into public ownership. that, at the time, the [few] individuals to Working Group. However, where comment should be amplified. The commercial books Necessary to push through public owner - whom the writer disclosed these events felt is knitted into preconceived hostility to the of these public utilities should be open to in - ship and win real democratic control, in cur - they were acting not only in accordance AWL we will respond on the politics as nec - spection. Managers should be elected by the rent conditions, is a labour movement which with the writer’s wishes [to keep disclosures essary, while doing our best to keep the po - workforce, and serve on workers’ wages, is strongly organised and which, through confidential] but also appropriately. That litical response and the Working Group rather than remaining the same sort of people open debate and education, has made its ac - was a serious mistake. He was a sixteen- process separate. Two political responses are as under private ownership, with similar tivists aware and mobilised on the funda - year old and the incidents should have been published at bit.ly/2BWrFNE and privileges and similar lack of accountability. mental issue of socialism (public ownership, reported to appropriate bodies inside or out - bit.ly/2sqNxwN And the banks should be added to the list democratic control, social solidarity as the side the AWL, as an issue of safety.” No such As regards process, we have set up a to nationalise. guideline) versus capitalism. To play our part in this, Solidarity sup - report was brought to those bodies. page with links to the original blog, our In 2012 the TUC voted for nationalising the porters are canvassing activists with, and We are taking this matter seriously by fur - response, and updates on our work on banks and creating a “publicly-owned bank - seeking discussions on, our new book So - ther investigating our own actions at the this matter, which can be found at ing service, democratically and accountably cialism Makes Sense . time and subsequently, so we can find out bit.ly/awlresponse. managed... [to] play a central role in building more, learn the lessons and take appropriate a sustainable economy”. More online at www.workersliberty.org Workers’ Liberty @workersliberty Hugh Masekela 1939-2018

By Bruce Robinson Hope and fight:

South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela By Sean Matgamna do anything about it in practice by spreading died aged 79 on 23 January following a understanding to the people at large, specif - recurrence of prostate cancer. He was “Why waste your life on this foolish ically to the working class, and helping them famous internationally for his playing quest?”, we are asked by anti-socialists organise to fight for it? and singing; for blending South African and sceptics. “Why invite us to do the Will you be a nurse? A doctor? You’ll see musical styles with jazz and pop; and as same? Why fight for a cause that may suf - the heartbreak of a National Health Service fer nothing but defeat, in your lifetime, or a prominent anti-apartheid activist. in chaos, with desperately needed medical forever?” Born in Witbank, a mining town near Jo - care “rationed” by way of waiting times and hannesburg, Masekela started his musical Our new book Socialism Makes Sense increasingly by markets, and the enormous career in a school run by the British anti- replies: and crippling amounts of money paid out to apartheid priest Trevor Huddleston. After Are we nothing higher than a commer - the pharmaceutical companies. trumpet over a catchy African riff. His con - seeing a biopic about jazz trumpeter Bix cially-conducted and regulated edition of an - Will you become a chemist working for a tinued allegiance to both African and Amer - Beiderbecke, he agreed to stop getting into imals, amongst them primitive humankind, pharmaceutical company? You might help in - ican musical genres was later well captured trouble at school in exchange for learning spending an entire lifetime browsing and vent a great medical step forward — and see on his 1988 album ‘Uptownship’, which the trumpet. He then became part of the grubbing for food? That is the “shop until it used as an expensive commodity, available consisted of his jazz covers of Motown hits “Father Huddleston Band”, which made you drop” ethos which this society glorifies only to those who can pay or have the wel - alongside African tunes. several recordings in 1956. Huddleston fa - and depends on for economic dynamism. fare state pay, in order to make profit for the Masekela moved to Africa in 1972, partly mously convinced Louis Armstrong to give Leavened maybe with a bit of religious uplift, bosses and shareholders of the company. to escape conditions that fed addictions, Masekela one of his trumpets. a half-tongue-in-cheek consultation with a Will you go to a poorer country and make playing with local musicians in a number of This was a period when the style labelled horoscope to see what “the stars” are going life a little better for people who, in a rich and countries including Fela Kuti. He was in - “Township Jazz” was thriving in areas of to do to you? Maybe the small and tame bac - supposedly civilised world, are dying for volved with organising a music festival on South Africa’s big cities. It combined Amer - chanalia of a pop festival once a year or so? lack of money to buy food and even compar - the occasion of Ali’s “Rumble in the Jungle” ican swing with a range of local styles, If you are a worker, are you content to atively cheap medicines? Will you be a social in Zaire in 1974. In 1980, he settled in ranging from close harmony singing via the spend most of your life doing work you don’t worker? You will be providing inadequate Botswana, close to South Africa, setting up penny whistle jive known as kwela to care about — or do care about, but are forced help to the victims of poverty, poor educa - a recording studio where he made several marabi, the equivalent to the blues. In 1958 to do in a way you can’t find fulfilling — for tion, unemployment, and migration far from albums. He returned to South Africa imme - Masekela formed the Jazz Epistles with an employer whose only concern is to coin home. diately after Mandela’s release and worked some other key figures, particularly pianist profit out of you and the work you do? Will At best you’ll help them organise their with young musicians, while also recording Dollar Brand (later Abdullah Ibrahim), you settle into being a docile wage-slave, lives a bit better, with inadequate means and albums such as ‘Sixty’ which were more trombonist Jonas Gwangwa and “South breeding and rearing children to be the next devastatingly arid prospects. rooted in the crossover sounds he had pio - Africa’s Charlie Parker”, saxophonist Kip - generation of wage-slaves? Will you be an immigration official? Help neered. pie Moeketsi. They made the first LP by Or will you rebel? Will you be content with regiment migrant workers and their families; From the 60s onwards Masekela was a black jazz musicians, drawing on modern the story the bourgeoisie and their media tell sort out the “legals” from the “illegals”; be public face of opposition to apartheid, com - American jazz styles in a fusion with South of themselves, and of you, or will you inquire part of a system which demonises, hunts bining his music with what was often a di - African elements. for yourself, and study the literature of the down, imprisons, and deports the “illegals”? rectly political message: ‘Stimela’, the story rebels against capitalism, the Marxists? Will Be a journalist? You won’t be a privileged of migrant workers forced to work in the APARTHEID you join the labour movement, help build it columnist, with some right to express a per - mines of South Africa, which featured his By this time it was getting more and up, fight for it against the masters of capitalist sonal opinion (within the limits regulated by voice telling their story and imitating the more difficult for black musicians to society? the choice of the newspaper and TV owners train bringing them; ‘Soweto Blues’ written work and survive apartheid. If you are a student, what are you going to who can grant you that privilege). There are about the 1976 uprising; ‘Bring Him Back do when you leave university? If you are a very few such jobs. As a run-of-the-mill Inner city areas such as Sophiatown Home’ for Nelson Mandela; ‘Blues for one-time left-wing student, now working, newspaper or TV journalist, you can’t help which had served as cultural centres were Huey’ for the Black Panther leader Huey what do you do? but contribute in some degree to the selec - demolished to make way for whites only Newton; and others. He appeared at the tion, slanting, and “balancing” of the million - housing, and the black population trans - concert for Mandela’s 70th birthday at LIVE aire-owned opinion-forming machine in ported to townships outside the cities. The Wembley in 1988. Of course, you have to live, and you live in which you will be a voice in a chorus singing state broadcaster banned any music other But Masekela was not just a mouthpiece this society, not in the sort of society you what the others sing, what you are told to than “Bantu” folk music, anything that for the orthodoxy of the ANC or broader might choose. You will have to get a job. sing from the bourgeois hymn-book. might show black people to be capable of anti-apartheid movement. Together with If not an ideal one, you may still get a bet - You can’t help but participate in a biased sophisticated and modern musical creation. his ex-wife Miriam Makeba, he appeared ter job than you would have without your selection of what is “newsworthy”, in pre - Repression grew following the Sharpeville with Paul Simon on his 1986 Graceland tour studies. senting capitalism and “all its works and massacre in 1960 and Masekela has said he despite it being subject to pickets for break - Maybe one where (as some people say) pomps” as something immutable and fixed; was already known as an underground ac - ing the UN cultural boycott of South Africa you “love your work but hate your job”. But in suppressing discussion of the socialist al - tivist. — by giving prominence to black South can you, should you, put your best energies ternatives that the crisis of capitalism has Many musicians who had the opportu - African musicians who would otherwise into “making a career”? given a relevance which they seemed not to nity left. Masekela ended up in New York have remained little known outside their Will you teach? In a school in a low-income have in the days of the long capitalist boom via London with help from John country. Also, after 1994, he was critical of area, where you will participate in the heart- before 2007-8. Dankworth, Yehudi Menuhin and Harry aspects of the new political settlement, in - breaking reality of kids going through school Will you become a professional politician? Belafonte. He was faced with a musical cluding the widespread xenophobia to - and emerging semi-literate? When you know Go from school and university, perhaps dilemma hinted at in the title of his 1965 wards migrant workers. His last album was that only changes in society, not just the ef - through office in a student union, on to be a album ‘The Americanisation of Ooga titled ‘No Borders’. forts of individual teachers, will change that? “researcher” and maybe then a parliamen - Booga’. “I just wanted to play bebop”, he Masekela’s trumpet or flugelhorn playing And where you will have to use more energy tary candidate? That is, mould and shape said, inspired by seeing many of his US he - could be strong and angry or soft and ca - on complying with the box-ticking, exam-ob - yourself to fit into the political machinery roes in the flesh. It was perhaps a safer ressing. It was also joyful. I saw him a num - sessed, impositions of school management that runs the system? The modern main - choice when there was little awareness of ber of times in the last few years and and exam boards than on responding to the stream politician is a rancid mix of actor, what came to be known as World Music. He remember how he would not be happy needs of your pupils? reciting prescribed lines, and lawyer, arguing recounted being convinced by Louis Arm - until he had got the audience dancing. So Will you become a university teacher, re - a brief from whichever side of the issue is in - strong and Dizzy Gillespie to retain the successful was he that I remember the tailing second and third hand opinion and re - dicated, without real conviction or real con - South African sound, finding sympathetic Hackney Empire almost literally rocking. American musicians to play with, particu - He was not merely a virtuoso jazz ceived capitalist wisdom, with a bit of cern for what is true or best for society. larly pianist Larry Willis with whom he trumpeter or a political activist, but also academic-Marxist criticism, perhaps, for Will you become a trade-union official? worked intermittently for the rest of his life. a key creator of a musical form that con - leaven and for the sake of your conscience? You will be in the labour movement, but In 1968, he had a number one hit in the pop tinues to inspire South African musicians If you get an academic job with more scope, “professionally” barred from being able to charts with ‘Grazing in the Grass’ with and provide enjoyment for listeners. will you be a left-wing academic consumer of tell workers openly what you think about the “revolutionary” anti-capitalist theory, but not issues that arise and about the union leader - FEATURE 6-7 why you should be a socialist

forced by it. The morality for which, as some - one well said, everything has a price but nothing an intrinsic or transcendent value. We should not peacefully exist in and with a society in which the precondition for workers to live is that they submit to being wage slaves, and accept that their productive ener - gies are owned and controlled by employers who take a large part of the new wealth the workers create. We should not settle into accepting fatalis - tically that a large part of humanity, includ - ing many in whose midst we live, suffer in hunger, ignorance, and needless disease. We should not live without trying to do some - thing about the slaughter of millions of chil - dren in worse-off countries on the altar of capitalist necessity. We should not be passive consumers only, but also try to create some - thing better, or contribute to its creation. All that aside, the root argument why you should join us is that you know that hu - mankind under capitalism lives in a world of savage exploitations, inequalities, and pro - found injustice. Needless, shameful, damnable injustice. At stake here is the future of democracy, of equality, of all that is good in the society humankind has so far created, and of humankind itself. Have the courage to hope and to fight to realise your best hopes and desires. Slough off and break your paralysing sense of irony, unworthiness, ab - surdity, and, as James Connolly used to put it, dare to hope and dare to fight. Entrench yourself in the attitude expressed by one of A print by Association of Members of Hornsey College of Art during an occupation in 1968 Connolly’s comrades of the 1916 Rising: “Did ye think to conquer the people, ship and its policies. Will you limit yourself of capitalism — and maybe develop it — and say is that what the world really needs is a Or that law is stronger than life, to helping workers get a little more wages in be active, in your workplace, in your every - real feeling of kinship. Everybody, stars, And than our desire to be free? the labour market — some of the time! — but day life, on the streets, to prepare the work - labourers, Negroes, Jews, Arabs: we are all We will try it out with you, also inadvertently helping the union machin - ing class to rise and make a better society, a brothers. Please don’t make me a joke. End Ye that have harried and held, ery and the top leaders regiment and limit far better society, one free from the evils that the interview with what I believe”. Ye that have bullied and bribed. working-class responses to their own ex - make capitalism an abomination, and all the We should concern ourselves with the Tyrants... hypocrites... liars!” ploitation, bamboozlement and degradation? more abominable because something better moral climate around us, if only in the inter - As the early socialists said: “A full, free, Will you become a civil servant and keep is possible now. ests of our children and their children, and happy life — for all or for none! your head down? Become some other sort of Individual life should not be clad in nar - do something to counter the mind-rotting Hope, and fight. official, functioning as a cog in a bureaucratic rowly personal and familial asbestos-skinned morality bred in us by capitalism and rein - machine, serving capitalism? egotism — “I’m all right, Jack, fuck the oth - ers” — conscience-salved perhaps with a do - ENERGIES nation here and there to charitable You have to get a job. But to put your best institutions such as War on Want or Oxfam. energies into any of those jobs, or similar Socialism makes sense Anyway, “society” may not leave you alone. ones, is self-serving in the narrowest fi - An awful lot of people hypnotised by the val - nancial and consumerist sense. It would ues of commercialism have had to wake up Socialism is again on the agenda be, for you, self-submerging and self-de - from that sleep to the fact that they have been — a society based on human stroying in the sense of destroying your like the legendary St Brendan, the Dark-Ages solidarity, social ownership of critical overview of what is right and Irish monk who made his camp on a solid is - industry and banks, and on wrong. It would, I put it to you, be deeply land in the sea, lit his fire to cook, and found political, economic, and social irresponsible. it moving under him: it wasn’t an island, it democracy. Most students — most rebellious students was a whale. I put it to you that a better philosophy of too — go on as they get older to excise parts This book confronts head-on the life than the prevailing one is to face the fact of themselves so that they can fit in to a career strongest arguments against like those I’ve just surveyed. D on’t you think that we are, each of us, part of a broader so - socialism now in circulation, inside that we socialist militants have a better idea? cial entity, and that we should concern our - You have to live in society as it is, but you selves with its well-being as a necessary way the Labour Party and beyond. don’t have to fool yourself and, as you get of securing our own and our children’s and older, mutilate and repudiate your better, grandchildren’s wellbeing. I recently came Order your copy for £6.20 younger self. You don’t have to prostitute across the following words, said to a journal - including postage. yourself. ist by the actress Marilyn Monroe, a woman You can be better than that. You are better of the left who had had to fight her way www.workersliberty.org/sms than that! You can be an enemy of capitalism through the sewers of capitalist society. and of its political machine and its opinion- She summed up much of what socialists industries. You can study the Marxist critique seek in simple words that might have come Bulk rates available. from William Morris: “What I really want to 8 FEATURE More online at www.workersliberty.org Let’s call it a day on the “Cambridge Five”

By John Cunningham only two of the Five were homosexual: Blunt was caught. and Burgess. There are no indications that None of the Yet another book on the “Cambridge Five” Moscow ever used homosexuality as a tool Cambridge rolls off the press ( Enemies Within: Trai - against any of the Five. It was a very different Five were tors, Spies and the Making of Modern story when visiting British diplomats got ever charged Britain by Richard Davenport-Hines), and themselves caught in compromising situa - with any of - it’s time to stifle yet another yawn as this tions on secret cameras. fence or put mini-industry and apparent national ob - In fact one biographer has suggested, prob - on trial. An - session with posh spies. ably rightly, that Burgess and Blunt’s homo - thony Blunt I don’t want to review Davenport-Hines’ sexuality was seen by Moscow as an even received book. In my opinion, most of the writing on advantage. The English upper class homo - a (very dis - the Cambridge Five is bog standard when it sexual community had an extremely well-de - creet) pardon is not dreadful, and I want to discuss is why veloped contact network which Blunt and for his activi - this is so. Burgess exploited and the British establish - ties. The Cambridge Five were: Kim Philby, ment tolerated homosexuality as long as it Myth Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt, John Cairn - was discreet and hidden from view. It was Number 4: cross and Donald Maclean. From the early only when Burgess’s outrageous drunken be - The Five did 1930s, despite being members of the British haviour led to him openly flaunt his homo - what they did elite, they spied for Soviet intelligence. In the sexuality that it became potentially because: they 1950s/1960s Burgess, Maclean and Philby de - compromising (particularly when he was in were alien - Kim Philby at the press conference in his home fected to the Soviet Union and the other two America). ated from so - became “inactive”. Myth Number 2: The Cambridge Five were ciety /they young and naive. This doesn’t stand up to had overbearing, authoritarian mothers /fa - he attend Cambridge as an undergraduate The Five were classic “moles”, burrowing (His father was an ironmonger in Scotland). deep into British Intelligence and state appa - critical examination. All five carried on their thers /they were isolated and felt a need to activities way past their youth and Philby, belong/they loved secrecy/they loved the Myth Number 7: The Five were “tragic” ratus, revealing so many secrets to Moscow figures. For the commentariat the Five’s Centre that, at times, the Russians simply Burgess and Maclean were all unrepentant to idea of power that being a spy brought the grave. More importantly, all the Five were (delete as you see fit). tragedy was that they sacrificed their lives to could not keep pace. a belief that ultimately was shown to be erro - Previous books on The Five include: An - intelligent, resourceful in the extreme and What all writers on the Five ignore is that well-versed in their various special fields in they actually believed in what they were neous and the system built on that belief ig - thony Blunt: His Lives (Miranda Carter); nominiously collapsed. Whether or not any Stalin’s Englishman (Andrew Lownie); A Spy “civilian life”. Blunt, for example was a well- doing. Although there is much in that belief known art expert and Cairncross published a that can and should be criticised — it was of the Five saw things this way is open to Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Be - question. The real tragedy about the Cam - trayal (Ben Macintyre); The Great Betrayal: The number of highly praised works on French after all, ultimately a belief in Stalinism — literature. Burgess was extremely well-read they held to their beliefs doggedly, over bridge Five is that in supporting the Soviet Untold Story of Kim Philby’s Greatest Coup Union they, in reality, supported Stalinism. (Nicholas Bethell); The Master Spy: The Story in Marxist theory and when working on the many years in often stressful and demanding MI6 China Desk developed an analysis of the circumstances. Possibly what helped them There is little to suggest that they ever seri - of Kim Philby (Phillip Knightley); Guy Burgess: ously questioned that. A Portrait With Background (Tom Driberg) and revolution there which opposed the simplis - tough it out is that they were isolated. tic attitudes of the CIA who simply saw the All those who were members of the Com - Myth Number 8: British Intelligence is now Donald and Melinda Maclean: Idealism and Es - a reformed body and no longer run by the in - pionage (Michael Holzman). There are at least Chinese revolution as the Bolshevik revolu - munist Party resigned when they “signed tion mark two. up” for Moscow Centre. This was part of the competent former public schoolboys of yore. six PhD theses on the Five, at least two fea - Reading Stella Rimington’s monumentally ture films (‘Another Country’ and ‘An Eng - overall deception involved. They therefore SUSPECT did not participate in Party debates and per - tedious memoirs of her time as head of MI5 lishman Abroad’), numerous TV Myth Number 3: The Five were not sus - does not inspire one with confidence. She documentaries, a couple of stage plays and a haps this rendered them somewhat immune pected of being Soviet spies and were to the disillusionment associated with the seems to seriously believe that the British number of fictional spy stories which feed off very good at deception. Communist Party’s policy statement, The the Cambridge Five legends in various ways Hitler-Ribbentrop Pact, revelations about the Gulag, the repression of Hungary in 1956 etc. British Road to Socialism is a revolutionary such as John Le Carré’s Tinker Tailor, Soldier, In fact there were many suspicions about document. Has she ever read it? Spy . Here I must confess that I once added to the Five. It’s just that nobody did much about If your only serious political contact is your “minder”, then it is not likely you will de - Rimington also probably had a hand in this dreary roll-call by giving a presentation it. Burgess, who was rarely sober for more Roger Windsor’s visit to Libya during the on “British Spy Films” at a conference in Bu - than a day at a time, even bragged about velop a critical view of the Soviet Union and Comrade Stalin. Miners’ Strike of 1984-5. Windsor, who was dapest in 1998. I belatedly offer my apologies being a Soviet sympathiser, while staff at an executive officer for the NUM, was almost to those who sat through it. Buckingham palace where Blunt worked as Myth Number 5: The Five were “traitors”. This answers nothing and merely panders to certainly an MI5 agent of some description. Because of the Cambridge Five’s activities, an art adviser to the Queen (!) were heard to The Libya visit was a set-up which caused a it is probably true to say that for decades openly refer to him as “our Soviet spy”. It a kind of weak “shock, horror” about their supposed lack of patriotism. All of them orig - scandal at the time, and it certainly caused there was very little that Moscow did not was no secret that all Five had, at various some problems for the NUM, precisely what know about the operations of MI6 around the times, been associated with the British Com - inally aligned with the Communist Party in Britain because of their hatred of fascism and it was aimed to do. However, this sting oper - world. Kim Philby, single-handedly, was re - munist Party. ation is hardly an advertisement for the im - sponsible for sabotaging one of the Cold Burgess, while at University, had openly it appeared to many of that generation (and not just those at Cambridge) that it was the partiality and openness of the “new” British War’s earliest anti-USSR operations. Just after (to his credit) campaigned in support of strik - Intelligence service. the war he organised three successive opera - ing Cambridge bus drivers. Blunt had pub - Communist Party who were the only ones ac - tually doing something about the growing There’s much more that could be said. But tions to send trained and armed Albanian ex - lished articles on the Marxist interpretation why do we still have to rely on the guess- iles back to their country of origin to fight the of art. Kim Philby even went so far as to hold threat of fascism in Germany and elsewhere. Their second hate object was the United work of ill-informed journalists passing regime of arch-Stalinist Enver Hoxha. With a press conference in his London flat to themselves off as historians, or the supposed just two exceptions who managed to escape demonstrate he wasn’t a spy. On the orders States. At least in their early days the Five ap - pear to have done little that would have “confessions” of delusional nonentities who to Greece, every one of these insurgents was of Conservative Prime Minister Harold might once have passed Guy Burgess in the captured and executed within two days of Macmillan charges against him were damaged British interests. Philby, Burgess and Maclean all loved England and it was a corridors of Trinity College or once joined the landing in Albania. Philby, of course, had no - dropped. Communist Party for three weeks after at - tified Moscow who then alerted the Albanian A number of quite powerful people did wrench when they had to flee to the Soviet Union. To call them traitors answers nothing tending a meeting in Saffron Walden in 1936? security forces who were waiting for them. suspect one or all of the Cambridge Five of It should be the right of the citizens of this Cairncross, when working at the British de- being spies including the director of the FBI, and merely appeals to a tribal Daily Mail ed - itorial mentality, clouding a proper under - country to have access to the historical coding centre, Bletchley Park, was able to J. Edgar Hoover, and Dick White, the Direc - records of British Intelligence so we can make send full details of the positions and tor General of MI5 in the 50s (who later be - standing of what they did and why. Myth Number 6: The repressive Public a reasoned and informed judgement about strengths of German army units to Moscow came Director of MI6). the things done in our name. However, even just before the key battle of Kursk on the The Five had powerful and influential School system, with its brutality, rigid hierar - chies, and excessive discipline, produced a today, years and years after the events some Eastern Front. friends and connections. Either they didn’t archives are still closed or have been myste - There are some myths about the Five that believe that the Five could have done what resentment and revulsion within the Five that encouraged them to turn to the Soviet Union. riously “lost”. What we are forced to turn to need to be dealt with. I would suggest that it they did or, they kept quiet about it so as not is a mountain of largely regurgitated dross. is the failure of those who have written about to embarrass the establishment (which in - This is the theme of the film ‘Another Coun - Let’s get a Freedom of Information Act them to deal with these myths that have con - cluded themselves). Spies who were caught try’. with teeth and then, to use the words of tributed to the poor quality and tedium of but were not part of the old boys’ network It is a neat formula. However, none of the the competent and serious Neal Acherson their output . were not treated in such a lenient fashion. Five appears to have been all that upset or back in 1983 when also reviewing the lit - Myth Number 1: The Cambridge Five were George Blake, who did not attend Eton or traumatised by their school experience. erature on the Cambridge Five, “Let’s get exploited by Soviet intelligence because their Harrow or graduate from Cambridge and — Burgess proudly wore his Old Etonian tie the blanket over this parrot and enjoy a homosexuality made them vulnerable to heaven forbid — wasn’t even British, re - even when living in Moscow. Cairncross spell of peace.” blackmail, pressure and extortion. In fact ceived a prison sentence of 30 years when he never even went to a public school, nor did Workers’ Liberty @workersliberty FEATURE 9 The story of Votes for Women

By Jill Mountford right to vote was of interest to them. Women such as Selina Cooper, an early member of The first leaflet in Britain to “insist” on the ILP and a seasoned trade unionist who woman’s suffrage was written in 1847 by had campaigned against sexual harassment a prominent woman Chartist, Anne in the workplace and for women’s equality Knight. Seventy years later women over in her union, became key figures in organis - 30, with certain property qualifications, ing working-class women around the fight were granted the right to vote as part of for women’s suffrage. the Representation of the Peoples Act in In 1897 seventeen women’s suffrage February 1918. groups from around the country joined to - The fight for women’s suffrage is best gether to form the National Union of known for the militant campaign waged by Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). the Women’s Social and Political Union Millicent Fawcett was the president from (WSPU) and conducted for almost a decade 1907 to 1919. NUWSS had 50,000 members at from 1905 to 1914. However, the history of its peak and organised thousands of work - the fight for women’s suffrage goes way be - ing-class women, particularly mill workers in yond those militant nine years and the activ - Lancashire and Yorkshire. As a “constitution - ities of the WSPU. alist” campaign, the NUWSS was a cross- From the very beginning there were party organisation that lobbied, petitioned, women who argued clearly and specifically and evangelised all over the country about a for votes for women but did so from a belief woman’s right to vote. in universal suffrage. Anne Knight argued The history of women’s suffrage has been the Chartists should campaign for “true uni - a bit too dismissive of the NUWSS and the versal suffrage”, asking “can man be free, if working-class women involved with it, in - a woman is a slave?” stead focusing on the militant campaign of In that first women’s suffrage leaflet she the WSPU. wrote, “Never will the nations of the earth be Many prominent women in the labour well governed, until both sexes, as well as all movement, around different socialist groups, parties, are fully represented and have an in - were not persuaded that women’s suffrage fluence, a voice, and a hand in the enactment was the priority campaign above that of and administration of the laws”. Anne’s de - Selina Cooper (seated centre) speaking in Hyde Park in 1913 workers’ rights and particularly women mands for “true universal suffrage” came just workers’ rights. Women such as Margret McMillan, Kather - before the decline of the Chartist movement years before he met and married Emmeline middle-class and well-heeled women. Bodi - ine Bruce Glasier and Enid Stacey all became from 1848. Goulden. chon mixed with socialists, radicals and more active in socialist politics as a direct re - It was Anne Knight and Anne Kent, Richard Pankhurst, a radical barrister and artists; she was insatiably curious, thoughtful sult of the industrial militancy of 1888-89. founders of the Sheffield Female Political As - advisor to Lydia Becker (who was now the and open minded. Along with other middle- Stacey thought women’s rights to be a “mid - sociation in 1851, who published the first pe - Secretary of the MNSWS), drafted a success - class feminists they challenged the status dle-class fad”. It was not until 1898 that Julia tition demanding women’s suffrage in ful amendment to the Municipal Franchise quo, broke the norms imposed on women Dawson, creator of the Clarion Vans*, said England. It was presented to the House of Act, giving the vote to women rate payers in and, as Mary Foster , an Independent Labour she was “converted to women’s suffrage”. Lords and defeated. local elections and granted women the right Party (ILP) member from Leeds wrote “the However from the 1900s she focused on the A year later, in the 1852 General Election, to stand in elections as Poor Law Guardians. bourgeois women’s movement in all lands fight for adult suffrage. Anne Knight wrote, “...forbidden to vote for As an active member of the MNSWS, has tended to open up the minds of women Others such as Mary Gawthorpe, Ethel An - a man who inflicts the laws I am compelled Pankhurst drafted the first women’s enfran - generally to an examination of the questions nakin (later Snowden) and Teresa Billington to obey — the taxes I am compelled to pay... chisement bill to go to Parliament in 1870. He which especially affect their sex”. She went (Grieg), were all involved in socialist politics taxation without representation is tyranny”. also worked with Wolstenhome-Elmy to onto say but “it cannot be compared in im - in the 1880s and 90s before women’s suffrage More than fifty years later Dora Montefiore, draft the Married Women’s Property Bill. portance and significance with the organisa - became a central political issue. All then socialist feminist, adult suffragist and mem - Elmy was secretary of the Married Women’s tions for working women ... to advance the placed their full-time focus on the fight for ber of the Social Democratic Federation or - Property Committee. The Bill became the cause of labour and political freedom.” votes for women. ganises a “tax resistance siege” demanding, Married Women’s Property Act in the same From 1867 to the 1884 women’s suffrage Dora Montefiore started out as a cam - “Women should vote for the laws they obey year. was debated almost every year in Parliament. paigner for women’s suffrage in Australia. and the taxes they pay”. Supported by radical Liberal MPs, under When she returned to Britain in 1892 she con - Seventeen years after Anne Knight’s leaflet MARRIAGE pressure and persuasion from a variety of tinued this work with the NUWSS. But not a group of women suffragists, including Dr Barbara Bodichon had been infuriated by women’s suffrage societies armed with peti - until 1898 did she get involved in socialist Elizabeth Garrett (later Anderson and sister women’s non-existence in marriage tions and always prepared to lobby, Bills and politics, firstly with the Clarion Van. As her of Millicent Garrett, later Fawcett), Barbara decades early and in 1854 she researched amendments were drafted, argued and de - politics evolved she joined the Social Demo - Bodichon and Dorothea Beale from the Kens - and wrote a pamphlet, A Brief Summary, feated time and again. cratic Federation (SDF), did a short stint in ington Society launched a new petition for in Plain Language, of the Most Important The 1884 Reform Act increased the num - the WSPU, and then campaigned for adult votes for women. For some women. Estab - Laws concerning Women , listing all the ber of men who could vote in Parliamentary suffrage. lished in 1865, their group was made up of laws that negatively impacted on elections by around six million. It gave the Isabella Ford, Selina Cooper and Ada Neild women of “above average thoughtfulness women’s lives and opportunities. counties the same voting rights as the bor - Chew all managed to maintain their work as and intelligence who are interested in com - oughs, that is, to male householders and £10 In 1856 she wrote another, more radical socialist propagandists while travelling all mon subjects”. This was admirable aim, but lodgers. Around 60% of men now had the pamphlet entitled Women and Work . In it she over the country campaigning for votes for theirs was, inevitably, an exclusive club of ed - right to vote. argued “No human being has the right to be all women. ucated middle-class women with independ - Despite petitioning and lobbying from 100 idle... Women must ... be trained to do some Five years after the launch of the National ent means and time to think. women of “liberal opinion” led by Millicent work in the world”. She argued that existing Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies With three radical MPs supporting their Garrett Fawcett, and 79 Liberal MPs support - laws were degrading to women, that a lack (NUWSS) a growing group of women were demands — the recently elected John Stuart ing votes for women on the same grounds as of women’s rights within marriage made getting frustrated by all the “fiddle faddling” Mill, Henry Fawcett and Peter Alfred Taylor, men, the Liberal prime minister, Gladstone, marriage little more than “legal prostitution”. and lack of progress, as Elizabeth Wolsten - — an amendment was put forward to the refused to include women in the Bill. He In that same year Bodichon set up a small home Elmy, at the age of 70, complained. 1867 Reform Act to grant women the same claimed that doing so would lead to the committee to petition for women’s rights Sylvia Pankhurst recalls how on, “the 10 political rights as men. The amendment was whole Bill being defeated. within marriage and gathered 26,000 signa - October [1903], at 62 Nelson St a few women defeated by 196 votes to 73. Towards the end of the nineteenth century tures calling for a change in the law. Self-con - members of the ILP [met and] the Women’s After this defeat the Kensington Society the movement for women’s suffrage started scious of the size of the petition bundle, she Social and Political Union was formed.” formed the London Society for Women’s Suf - asked an apple seller outside Parliament to to gather pace. This coincided with a huge And so began a new phase of struggle frage. Similar groups were being set up else - keep it under her stall until she was able to wave of industrial militancy around the for women’s suffrage. where in the country, one of the more meet John Stuart Mill who was receiving it. “new unions” and the beginnings of organ - prominent being the Manchester National The apple seller asked what it was about and ised labour developing its own political rep - • Part two of this article will be appear in Society for Women’s Suffrage. Previously it insisted she added her name to the petition. resentation. the next issue of . had been the Manchester Committee for the Solidarity It is crude and short sighted to dismiss the The movement for women’s suffrage was, * Horse-drawn carriages which toured small Enfranchisement of Women. It was estab - work of middle class or bourgeois feminists inevitably, dominated by middle-class towns and villages in England and Scotland lished by Elizabeth Wolstenholme-Elmy with as only being concerned about the lives of women but for the first time working-class spreading socialist ideas. Richard Pankhurst being an early member, 14 women found a voice and articulated that the 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 Northamptonshire council goes bust the means of production. The capitalists’ control over the economy and their relentless drive to increase their wealth causes poverty, unemployment, LABOUR the blighting of lives by overwork, imperialism, the destruction of the environment and much else. By a Northampton Labour Against the accumulated wealth and power of the capitalists, the working class must unite to struggle against capitalist Party member power in the workplace and in wider society. The Tories who run the Cabinet The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty wants socialist revolution: of Northants Council County collective ownership of industry and services, workers’ control, have been condemned — by and a democracy much fuller than the present system, with local Tory MPs and Tory council elected representatives recallable at any time and an end to backbenchers — as the “worst- run local authority in the coun - bureaucrats’ and managers’ privileges. try”, “not up to the job”. We fight for trade unions and the Labour Party to break with The condemnation came in re - “social partnership” with the bosses and to militantly assert sponse to the imposition of a sec - A protest against library closures in January working-class interests. tion 114 notice on the council, which means that no new expendi - In workplaces, trade unions, and Labour organisations; ture is permitted, “with the excep - Local anti-cuts activists in Save demands: All Tory County Coun - among students; in local campaigns; on the left and in tion of safeguarding vulnerable Northants Services are organising a cillors to resign as they are all re - wider political alliances we stand for: people and statutory services” (sic). protest in Northampton town cen - sponsible for this debacle; The • Independent working-class representation in politics. The notice comes as the council ap - tre from 12 noon on Saturday 17 restoration of funding to a level February. Councillors have 21 days which enables the County Council • A workers’ government, based on and accountable to the pears not to be able to set a bal - anced budget despite already to discuss the implications of the to provide services on the basis of labour movement. imposing millions of pounds of section 114 notice and this is due to what is necessary and desirable; An • A workers’ charter of trade union rights — to organise, to cuts in recent years. be addressed at the Full Council end to austerity and PFI; To prepare strike, to picket effectively, and to take solidarity action. Of course, the local Tories’ con - meeting on 22 February. to put to the people of Northants an • Taxation of the rich to fund decent public services, homes, demnation is laughable. These are Tory MPs have called for govern - alternative that will safeguard all the same people who for years ment commissioners to take con - jobs and services, based on what is education and jobs for all. trol, something unfortunately necessary and desirable rather than • have consistently supported savage A workers’ movement that fights all forms of oppression. cuts by central and local govern - echoed by recently-elected Labour based on the artificial constraints of Full equality for women, and social provision to free women Prospective Parliamentary Candi - austerity politics. ment. They are shameless hyp - To support and mobilise for the dates in Northants. from domestic labour. For reproductive justice: free abortion on ocrites who don’t give a damn protest in Northampton on Sat - I have submitted an emergency demand; the right to choose when and whether to have about working-class people, but urday 17 Feb, organised by Save motion to Northampton Labour children. Full equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and now are concerned about distanc - Northants Services. ing themselves from the mess the Party which meets on Thursday 15 transgender people. Black and white workers’ unity against council is in. Feb. The motion has the following racism. • Open borders. • Global solidarity against global capital — workers Haringey Labour members discuss manifesto everywhere have more in common with each other than with their capitalist or Stalinist rulers. • By Micheál MacEoin and Hornsey and Wood Green promises to do if, and it is very Democracy at every level of society, from the smallest CLPs made something different likely, it remains the largest party workplace or community to global social On 4 February, over 200 Labour possible in Haringey. on Haringey Council after May. organisation. Party members gathered for the Labour Party branches, the In future, we should investigate • Equal rights for all nations, against Haringey Labour local govern - Women’s Forum, Young Labour, a national-level rule change to ce - imperialists and predators big and small. ment conference. etc. met to discuss motions to send ment democratic members’ control • The conference passed all the to the conference. The trade unions over the manifesto process. Maximum left unity in action, and had a separate event on 6 February The organisers of the Haringey openness in debate. motions submitted to shape the Labour manifesto for the next to feed in their proposals. conference should be congratulated council elections. Those included: The manifesto will still be written for a well-organised event, and for If you agree with us, please take some • setting up a wholly-owned de - by the Labour Group and, in the - setting down an important prece - copies of Solidarity to sell — and join us! velopment vehicle to replace the ory, all the proposals from mem - dent, which the left in other bor - bers could be ignored. Not only oughs should take up in future. discredited Haringey Development Ahead of the next local elec - would this be an affront to democ - Vehicle (HDV) tions, a sign that the democrati - racy, but it would be extremely • campaigning for the restoration sation of the party is moving short-sighted and politically dam - of the local government funding forward would be to see Labour aging to the local Labour election cut by central government since local government conferences Events campaign. 2010 across the country, with demo - The decisions of the conference • reinstating council tax support cratic discussion and voting. 17-18 February Wednesday 7 March and ending the use of bailiffs should set the tone for what Labour Student Feminist Conference Saudi Prince Not Welcome — • bringing waste management 10am, Institute of Education protest Mohammad bin Salman back in-house 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H visit • initiating an empty homes 0AL 5pm, Downing Street, London audit and deploying compulsory bit.ly/2FDYkpT SW1A 2AA purchase powers to buy properties bit.ly/2o3cc57 to rent as required Wednesday 21 February • resisting academisation On New Terrain: With Kim Saturday 17 March • keeping all libraries open, with Moody March Against Racism — UN the same opening hours, for the 6.30pm, Bookmarks bookshop. 1 Anti Racism Day next four years. Bloomsbury Street, WC1B 3QE Noon, Portland Place, London The event, perhaps the first of its bit.ly/2GVfC2i W1B 1LY kind in recent years, deserves to be bit.ly/2GbepCR more widely known about and im - Wednesday 28 February itated in the Labour Party. Defend Education — march for Saturday 17 March All too often, Labour Party local pensions and pay Marxists and national government manifestos have been Noon, Malet Street, London questions: AWL day school written by a clique around the WC1E 7HY Noon, Institute of Education Council leader, with little or no bit.ly/2C0VyI9 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H consultation with the rest of the party or the trade unions. Have an event you want listing? Email: 0AL bit.ly/mx-nq The victories of the left in recent [email protected] months and years in Tottenham REPORTS 10-11 Royal Mail deal: demand more! Cinema workers strike for seven days By Gemma Short By Gemma Short workers in the Ritzy cinema, and As previously reported in Soli - threatening workers at all cinemas darity (461, 7 February), the Workers at Picturehouse cine - that they would be deducted a Communication Workers′ Union mas will strike for seven full whole shift′s pay if strikes started Postal Executive has endorsed days starting Saturday 17 Feb - part way through a shift. the agreement reached between ruary. Faced with these threats, CWU negotiators and Royal Mail, strikes from 22-27 January were which will now be put to a vote Workers at the Ritzy cinema in called off, but workers still of the membership. Brixton, Picturehouse central in struck on 20-21 January. Soho, and Hackney, East Dulwich, The outline of the deal is: the cre - and Crouch End Picturehouses ation of a new single pension • Bectu strike fund: Account will strike from 5am Saturday 17 scheme for all workers; extension number 33045388, Sort code 60- February until 5am Saturday 24 of all current agreements and pro - 83-01. When donating send an February. tections until 2022; two one-hour email to The strikes coincide with the reductions in the working week (in [email protected] copying Bafta awards ceremony, which October 2018 and October 2019) in [email protected] happens at the Royal Albert Hall without loss of pay; a later last de - stating that the donation is for on Sunday 18 February. livery, but not as late as Royal Mail to take workers marginally above ″wage″ will be. the Picturehouse strike fund Picturehouse managers reacted wanted; a three year pay deal inflation over the three years of the Such schemes are not currently and asking for confirmation of to a period of 13 strikes an - which the CWU claims equates to deal. legislated for in the UK. Implemen - receipt. nounced in January by announc - 12.33% (with two basic pay rises to - The creation of a single pension tation requires secondary legisla - • Donate online at ing an effective ″lock-out″ of talling 7% plus the reduction of the scheme is a significant victory for tion to be added to the Pensions bit.ly/2dFl9KL working week without loss of pay). workers currently on an inferior Schemes Act 2015 before the pension scheme. Royal Mail bosses scheme can be launched. While this agreement represents If this much was got from have also stepped back from intro - a significant step back for Royal Royal Mail with the threat of ducing a defined contribution pen - Mail from the company′s position strikes, more can be obtained by School workers meet sion scheme which would have left prior to the strike ballot, the poten - rejecting the deal, returning to tial to push for more should not be workers′ pension pots at the mercy negotiations but scheduling By a teacher tion system we want. given up so soon. of the stock market. However the strikes to keep them on the mind The meeting spent much time on On pay, the company has been proposed ″collective defined bene - of Royal Mail negotiators. Workers’ Liberty members who the practical preparation for the forced into a higher pay offer, but fit″ scheme while meaning a ″wage work in schools met to discuss National Education Union’s (NEU) the actual deal means some years in retirement″ like currently, would our political and union work on 3 conference at Easter. At conference will see a below-inflation pay deal. have only ″targets″ rather than a • The deal can be read in full February. we will focus on pushing to make The whole pay offer is likely only guarantee for how much this here: bit.ly/2E7sP6q The meeting started with a useful the NEU a genuine school workers’ discussion about Labour’s educa - union for all school workers, on tion proposals. We welcomed a getting the union to boycott testing more positive tone in the 2017 man - in primary schools, on the fight No academy at Childeric! against academies and free schools, ifesto than in previous elections but recognised it was light on specifics on the union’s relationship with and detail. It did not commit to Labour and stopping the union spending money on sending mem - By a teacher proached the leadership of their views had shifted against stop any new academies let alone bers for jollies in Stalinist Cuba Childeric Primary School wanting academisation. bring all schools under local au - amongst other issues. Around 50 people attending a the school to join. The leadership Lewisham has managed to keep thority control. Finally, we discussed with com - public meeting about the pro - and some of the teachers at the the vast majority of the schools The meeting also discussed revi - rades in Unison about how to or - posed academisation of school feel Lewisham Local Au - under local authority control talising critical discussion about ed - ganise school support workers. Childeric School in Lewisham on thority has poorly served them. thanks to campaigns by unions and ucation on the left. We agreed that There was agreement that Tuesday 30 January. This is based on a mixture of the the labour movement. The council UCAS should be abolished and to there needs to be one school continue our fight against testing, The audience comprised around problems all schools face due to now say it isn’t interested in push - workers’ union, and that the NEU which blights every part of educa - 20 workers from the school, a cou - cuts and some genuine failures on ing academisation as a solution. represents a step in this direc - tion. We are going to draft a longer ple of parents, and labour move - part of Lewisham education. Parents from Childeric, sup - tion that needs to be built on. article discussing the sort of educa - ment and anti-academy activists. At the meeting, people argued ported by the local councillors, are We heard from GMB and NEU ac - that the solution was not joining a now urgently seeking a meeting tivists as well as from local council - MAT but joining together to im - with the school governors to dis - lor Joe Dromey, and received a prove education in Lewisham. It cuss their concerns. The unions Union fighting derecognition statement from Vicky Foxcroft MP. was also pointed out that there was have written to the head and chair All were clearly and vehemently no more money for the school join - of governors asking for clarification ing a MAT. The only way the MAT over the consultation process. By Charlotte Zalens for the school remaining a local au - A petition calling on the gover - The derecognition announce - would deal with the pupils requir - thority school. nors not to academise has been ment coincides with the company ing more resources was to remove Unite is balloting workers at A Multi-Academy Trust (MAT) launched and is rapidly gaining planning to make 20 workers re - them from the school. At the end of Fortem, which undertakes main - based in Southwark has ap - signatures. dundant. Fortem derecognised the the meeting several people said tenance and repair work on union without any warning after Rotherham′s council housing Unite sought negotiations over the stock. The company had an - redundancies. nounced it had derecognised the Fortem had previously volun - union. tarily recognised Unite and Unite South Western Railway guards strike reps.

By a train driver from RMT press releases More DLR strikes planned which parts of their jobs they RMT Guards at South Western will be refusing to do. By Peggy Carter from 5-10 February, in the form of a Railway (formerly South West RMT also says that SWR work-to-rule around risk assess - Trains) are taking action short of has been writing to its mem - Cleaners, security workers, and ments. strike for four days on 16-19 Feb - bers threatening unlawful de - travel safe officers on Docklands Workers involved in the dis - ruary. ductions from wages if they Light Railway (DLR) in London pute are contracted by ISS to participate in the action. work on the DLR. ISS has re - Their members have been in - The action is being taken will strike again on 22-24 Febru - ary. fused to negotiate over the structed not to undertake any rest over Driver Only Operation, RMT′s pay claim and over Anglia and Merseyrail. However, day working during that period also the subject of RMT disputes Workers previously struck on 1- changes to working practices at this action is confined to SWR. and to refuse to carry out “key” as - with Arriva Rail North (Northern), 3 February and the RMT union has work. pects of their jobs — it is not clear GTR Southern, Abellio Greater also called action-short-of-strike SolidaFor a workers’ giovertnment y No 462 14 February 2018 50p/£1 DEFEND MIGRANTS, DEFEND FREE MOVEMENT, FIGHT FOR SOCIALISM!

By Vicki Morris war population have been forced skin drives that point home. Such from their homes and now live in movements of people are nothing Look around the world. camps in Syria or neighbouring to fear. They are part of the human Look at EU migrants who have countries, or have migrated to Eu - condition. made the UK their home now rope. Germany has taken 600,000 In the era of nation states people wondering how long they can stay of them; the UK fewer than 10,000. have moved, with their move - and on what terms, all under the On the dangerous journey to ments monitored and regulated by threat of Brexit. safety and a better life that many states. If they want to stay, they will Syrians embark on, they meet In recent times, migrants have have to apply for “settled status”. many more desperate people flee - come from other EU countries to 1.2 million UK citizens living in ing unstable political situations, the UK to plug gaps in the work - other EU member states face simi - wars and poverty in countries such force; they make up 5.6% of NHS lar anxieties. as Afghanistan, Nigeria, Guinea, staff, for example. There are 3.7 million non-UK EU Ivory Coast, Morocco, Bangladesh, There is no evidence that this mi - citizens in the UK; about 6% of the Gambia, Algeria, Eritrea and Mali. gratory wave has driven down the population and 7% of the working Many of these people are fleeing wages of the “native” workers, and population. areas controlled by ISIS and similar it has helped boost the UK econ - Look just across the Channel — groups. omy. at Calais, which has long been a These refugees make hazardous Brexit puts this at risk, disrupt - focus for migrants trying to reach overland journeys or, worse, risk ing the lives of the workers af - the UK. Now that the French au - their lives on unsafe boats crossing fected, harming the economy, and thorities have cleared out the mi - the Mediterranean. Along the destroying the opportunity for grant camps, the 1,000 migrants route they are preyed on by crimi - British and other European work - still at Calais live a life worse than nals, people traffickers or even, in ers to understand each other better that of a stray dog. Libya now, people who want to and build stronger links. sell them into slavery. What is the answer to all of this? HARASSED While the number of people try - port undocumented foreign-born are now living in squalid camps in For countries to raise borders, to They are harassed by the police, ing to cross the Mediterranean has working-class people but not only Bangladesh, itself one of the poor - keep people out? For people to and struggle to meet their basic fallen dramatically since its peak of them — he also wants to deport est countries in the world. Now stay put and put up with what needs of shelter, sanitation, one million in 2015, already in 2018 their children who were born in Bangladesh has negotiated with they are given? For mistrust to warm clothing, safe food and 7,865 have made this journey. Esti - the US, the so-called “Dreamers”. the Burmese authorities to return reign between fellow humans, par - drinking water, and healthcare. mated numbers of people This is a spiteful, politically mo - the Rohingya. ticularly between workers from drowned or missing in the attempt tivated measure, designed to shore These examples show a wide different countries? The situation is similar for this year alone are 368 [UNHCR up support for Trump among his spread of migrant situations and No! The alternative is to fight for around 500 people in Brussels; and figures]. base, but is unpopular with most experiences. these principles: 1,500 people in Paris, according to Look further afield. In the US, US voters. But such movements have al - • the right of all humans to the charity Care4Calais. President Trump advocates drastic Around the world, there are ways happened across territories travel where they want or need to, Look at Syria. A seven-year on - measures to reduce migration from other peoples suffering forced during the aeons of human exis - freedom of movement; going war that began as a popular Mexico and countries to the south. mass migration. tence where national boundaries • human equality; uprising against the dictator He wants to move ahead with his This includes Rohingya Mus - did not exist. The recent discovery • solidarity between all people; Assad, part of the Arab Spring, has plan to build a wall between the lims, 700,000 of whom have fled that Cheddar Man, one of the ear - • the development of society created six million internal dis - US and Mexico and has asked the their homes in Burma following liest inhabitants in the UK, from and the economy everywhere. The alternative is to fight for placed persons, and more than five US Treasury (not Mexico) for $25 genocidal violence assisted by the whom 10% of Britons of “white” socialism! million external refugees. billion to build it. He wants to de - Burmese state itself. Most of them ancestry are descended, had black Over half of the 22 million pre- 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 ...... 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