& Workers’ Liberty SolFor siociadl ownershaip of the branks aind intdustry y No 513 17 July 2019 50p/£1 FIGHT THE TORIES’ Labour and BREXIT COUP PLOT antisemitism Page 16 Automated luxury? Bruce Robinson reviews Aaron Bastani’s book Fully Automated Luxury Communism Pages 8-9 Climate action debate The relation between workplace and campus action, and large-scale political If Boris Johnson prorogues (suspends) called Parliament for a debate. folly” to rule out suspending Parliament so mobilisation Parliament to force through his no-deal As we go to press on 15 July, all reports that he can push through a “no deal” Brexit Pages 6-7 Brexit, then, says Tory maverick Rory have Boris Johnson well ahead of Jeremy over the heads of the MPs. Stewart, “I would work with colleagues Hunt in the race to become Tory leader and If it seems improbable that he will attempt simply to organise another parliament prime minister on 23-24 July. that, it is only because of the angry response Renew Labour across the road. What Johnson will do as prime minister of dissident Tories like Stewart. “That sounds quite Civil-War-ist, but that (and what difference it will make if somehow Labour has consistently opposed “no is what happened in 2002 when Blair tried Hunt wins) we don’t know. deal”. But more limply than the dissident To - not to have a vote on the Iraq war”. We can most firmly exclude what Johnson ries. Labour has now said it will demand a The horseshoe Tony Blair had tried to push along his sup - (and Hunt) say they will do: negotiate a new public vote on any Tory Brexit formula, port for the invasion of Iraq while Parliament “backstop”-free deal, very different from deal or “no deal”, and back Remain in that was not sitting. The backbench Labour MP Theresa May’s, and have it done and dusted new public vote. But with ostentatious reluc - theory Graham Allen booked a hall to convene MPs by 31 October or soon after. tance. “unofficially”. Blair backed down and re - Johnson has said he thinks it “absolute More on page 5 Page 4 2 NEWS More online at www.workersliberty.org Trump’s Gulag-on-the-border allowed to start bathing four days By Martin Thomas ago (when the visit was an - Nearly 550 workers at the Way - nounced)”. fair company in San Francisco The CBP people were openly and Boston have staged walk - hostile — a Facebook group includ - outs outside company head - ing 9,500 out of their 20,000 number quarters after hearing that the has been revealed, which carries company had taken a $200,000 openly racist and abusive comment order including kids’ beds for a — and made the members of contractor known to work with Congress hand in their phones be - detention centres. fore the visit. But one Congress - That protest, and others, were man, Joaquin Castro, was able to sparked after Alexandria Ocasio- get a phone in. Cortez and other members of the “The members of Congress asked US Congress got to visit the Cus - the women’s permission to photo - toms and Border Protection (CBP) graph — they said yes, please share detention centre in Clint, Texas, on what’s happening”, reports Ocasio- 1 July. Cortez. CBP did some “cleaning up” be - Women and children are held in fore the members of Congress ar - crowded rooms, with little access to rived. A group of women, pictured washing facilities. They are refused above, told Ocasio-Cortez that they soap, toothbrushes, and toothpaste, were moved into the crowded and given only sachets of shampoo. room from outside tents before our When they ask for water, they are The Customs and Border Protection camp in Clint, Texas: there, some men are held in rooms with standing room only arrival. “They said they’d gone 15 told: drink from the toilet. days without a shower, and were Men are held in rooms so children in federal custody is that enforce custody since Donald local people have tried to donate crowded that it is standing-room the Trump administration has Trump took office. stuff, CBP has refused the dona - only. The same was done by the threatened to arrest and deport the A “stench” pervades the Clint de - tions. Stalinists in eastern Poland in 1939, parents or other adults if they don’t tention centre — stained clothes, The Trump administration has when they rounded up Poles for have legal status. Even immigrants toddlers without nappies, and ba - responded with a grudging admis - deportation into the USSR. This is with legal status are afraid to claim bies caked in dirt. Fluorescent sion that some things need to be in a rich, supposedly democratic the children. lights remain on overhead 24 hours fixed up at the detention centres — country. Lawyer and child advocate War - a day, the building is often cold, and a message from Trump person - And much of this is done for ren Binford told the New Yorker children and adults lie on concrete, ally to the Congresswomen (all profit. Many of the USA’s detention magazine after she and a team of sometimes under an aluminium non-Anglo, but most born in the centres — not Clint, but many oth - attorneys interviewed dozens of foil blanket, sometimes not. USA) that they should “go home”, ers — are run by private contrac - children detained at Clint. “They In June, US government lawyer plus a threat of renewed swoops tors, who turn a tidy profit. GEO are not safe, because they are get - Sarah Fabian argued in court that and deportations of “illegal” mi - Group and CoreCivic, the two ting sick.” Dolly Lucio Sevier, a the law’s “safe and sanitary” stipu - grants. largest private prison companies, doctor, has called the conditions: lation doesn’t mandate that the Close these detention centres! are known financial supporters of “tantamount to intentionally caus - government provide detained chil - Let families be reunited! End the Trump. ing the spread of disease.” As of dren with soap or toothbrushes. deportations! Legalise the USA’s There are 300 children in Clint. June, two dozen detainees have CBP currently holds 2,000 children millions of “undocumented” One reason there are now so many died in Immigrations and Customs in federal custody a day. When people! Open the borders! New setback in USA Socialist Party calls a special conference on 21 July and Solidarity, and the main - of the SP’s weekly paper and from nistic cartoons of Margaret By Rhodri Evans stream Orthodox Trotskyism of By Pete Boggs the SP’s Executive Committee. Thatcher (bit.ly/th-ctn). There is no public announce - Ernest Mandel, represented The SP (Socialist Party) is hold - Evidence for the NFF’s claims of The SP has come a long way ment about this yet, but we reli - within Solidarity. ing a special conference on 21 bureaucratism comes from an since the 1980s, but even now it ably hear that the conference of Workers’ Liberty has had July to discuss issues from the email sent in error by Taaffe-sup - feels like much of their politics on the US revolutionary-socialist friendly relations over the years conflict in the international net - porting CWI secretary Tony such issues has merely been group Solidarity on the week - (as well as political differences) work linked to the SP (Commit - Saunois to every national section grafted on to avoid putting off all end 29-30 June voted to set up with Solidarity, and we see this tee for a Workers’ International, revealing plans to expel Taaffe’s but the most backward recruits. a committee to explore convert - as a setback. We hope to learn CWI), and a split looks likely. opponents if they convened a There is little evidence that the more. ing it from an organisation into SP doyen Peter Taaffe has meeting of the CWI’s leading com - NFF or the Irish section have fallen an educational centre. formed a faction in the CWI, “In mittee. into identity politics or a wholesale This follows the decision by the Defence of a Working-Class Trot - The history of the SP, and before abandonment of working class larger International Socialist Orga - skyist CWI”. They contend that it Militant, also includes antipathy politics. The greater fear should nization (ISO) in March-April to the Irish section has moved into to movements which fought not be that they are openly propa - dissolve itself. “petty-bourgeois Mandelism” against oppression outside of gating opportunist politics now, With Solidarity, there is no hint The date on the front page of Sol - through its work in its feminist solely class boundaries. but rather that if flung out of the of a scandal or row triggering the idarity 512 (3 July) was given pro-choice campaign ROSA and an SP they will flail around and then dissolution. The word is that the wrongly on the front page as “2 overemphasis on students. CRITICAL descend into the opportunism group came to consider itself too June” (though it was right on the The “Non-Faction Faction” Autonomous struggles for which they have been accused of. small, weak, elderly, and divided back page). This year’s Workers’ (NFF) in the SP, aligned with the women’s, gay, or black libera - SP comrades who have been to function as an organisation. Liberty summer camp is the majority in the CWI, charges Taaffe tion have been dismissed as un - prompted to rethink should make These moves mark the expiry ninth , not the eighth. Carola with bureaucratism and being un - necessarily divisive. a critical reassessment of the whole (at least for now) in the USA of Rackete’s name was misspelled able to relate to the new wave of In a factional battle when Mili - SP/ Militant tradition and the “Or - two major political traditions orig - as Rakete.