SolFor isociadl ownershaip of the rbanks iand itndustryy No 395 24 February 2016 50p/£1 Inside: Junior doctors YES TO EUROPE step up fight YES TO SOCIALISM Junior doctors have made plans for escalating strikes in the junior contract dispute. See page 3 Are we all savages? Solidarity reviews ‘The Revenant’, in cinemas now. See pages 6-7 Librarians plan strikes to save services Ruth Cashman, Lambeth Unison, reports on library workers’ plans to strike. NO BREXIT! FIGDavHid CameTron’s negFotiatioOns with Rthe EU : and the referendum now set for 23 June were See page 9 designed to woo UKIP voters back to the Conservative Party. • MIGRANT RIGHTS Most of big business oppose Brexit because they think (rightly) that it might disrupt flows of Join Labour! investment, trade, and labour. Maybe not much, since a capitalist Britain out of the EU would probably try to negotiate a deal similar to Norway and Left-wing activists • OPEN BORDERS Switzerland, which apply almost all EU regulations without having a say in them, but it might disrupt. expelled from As socialists, our concern is not what is “good for business”. Labour! Join the Solidarity is for a vote to remain in Europe for the • LEVELLING UP exact opposite reason that the Tory right and Ukip are for Brexit. We support workers’ rights and open anti-purge campaign borders. We dislike the existing EU regime because we want more workers’ rights, and more open borders, than it includes. • EURO-DEMOCRACY More page 5 See page 10 2 NEWS More online at www.workersliberty.org Cause to be grateful to “an erratic Marxist” Matt Hanley reports from line Lucas, Mayor of Barcelona Ada be developed to strengthen Eu - Berlin Colau, Irish Labour MEP Nessa rope’s integration “from below” by Childers, Slavoj Žižek, some bringing people together who want Podemos MEPs, and members of European integration on a demo - The queue on 9 February went all Germany’s Blockupy. And Brian cratic basis. the way around the block for a Eno, as only one of a large number Time will tell if anything comes ticket-only political rally that had of artists and people from the out of this, but it is refreshing that nevertheless been sold out for world of music and theatre who someone seen as being of the left, months. have put their name to DiEM’s yet is not a nationalist demagogue It was standing room only in an - launch documents. People from — and is well-known across the other part of the Volksbühne the - “the world of work” are noticeable continent — is willing to launch atre at Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz in by their absence — even big names, such an initiative, without putting Berlin, where the event was shown let alone the rank-and-file. himself forward as a “saviour”, de - simultaneously on a video screen For all of the reasonable criticism spite a clear ego and a good televi - — the launching of the “Democ - made by Varoufakis and others that sion manner. racy in Europe Movement”, DiEM, the EU is controlled by unelected This approach is diametrically by “erratic Marxist”, game theorist bureaucrats who claim to be apolit - litical “erraticism”: “Some of my swered “to my friends in the Com - opposed to that of French social de - and ex-finance minister in the ical — technocrats — yet are any - greatest political friends, associates munist Party and radical parts of mocrat “saviour” Jean-Luc Mélen - Greek Syriza government, Profes - thing but, it is hard not to criticise and collaborators are people who the left who are articulating the po - chon, or German ex-finance sor Yanis Varoufakis. his apolitical protestations that the would be described in Britain as sition that disintegration, going minister and former leader of Die “What’s his game?” is surely the major problem with the European Thatcherites and neoliberals, those back to our national currencies, to Linke, Oskar Lafontaine, whose question to ask. A recent Solidarity Union is one of a lack of democracy who are incensed at the lack of our nation states and so on, is our “Plan B” for Europe amounts to lit - editorial thought the event would and transparency, when he does democracy in Europe”, claimed the solution, I remind them that... in tle more than a retreat back to na - be more of a “personal vehicle” for not offer any alternative pro - Professor at the press conference the 1930s, it was not humanism, it tional currencies and the nation Varoufakis than a movement. Yet gramme (yet). before the rally. Are these the peo - was not the left that benefited. It state. (And Lafontaine has some - DiEM has only just been launched. Would the EU be fine if it had the ple he seriously wants to work was the fascists, it was the Nazis. what unsavoury positions on the Varoufakis may well have been same policies as now, but they were with? Hardly. And Europe fell into a terrible trap refugee crisis.) centre stage, as the biggest name in - legitimated by the “people” of Eu - And would these “great friends” with immense human costs. Do we DiEM offers the possibility to volved, but he didn’t completely rope? Of course not, and surely want to join him in quoting Rosa want the same? I certainly don’t.” get the message that “another dominate the event, which was in - Varoufakis does not really believe Luxemburg on bureaucracy in the Refusing to retreat into nation- Europe is possible”, without tended as the starting shot of a this. For all his claims that DiEM is young Soviet Union? Probably not, stateism and instead democratising wishing for the total destruction broad-based, explicitly not left- not to be a leftist movement, but in - though I wouldn’t put it past the European Union — and its na - of the European Union, out to far wing, pan-European movement to stead an “alliance of democrats”, Michael Gove. tion states — is a fine aim and a de - more people than would other - democratise the EU. the speakers were clearly of the left When asked if he should, like the mand which needs to be made, and wise be thinkable. For this alone, Others speaking in Berlin, who and far-left, even if not especially to KKE, the Greek CP, not want coun - carried through. DiEM aims to we may have cause to be grate - were involved in the discussions the taste of this writer and probably tries to withdraw from the EU and spend the next two years organis - ful to Europe’s probably most which led to the launch of DiEM, many readers of this paper. argue for its break up — like his ing events across Europe, online well-known Marxist politician, included British Green MP Caro - This was not the only point of po - Thatcherite associates — he an - and analogue, in which policies can “erratic” or not. Strikes and boycotts in Iraqi Kurdistan Aso Kamal, Kurdish socialist The people have not accepted it, 25% minimum wage cut. They also bani families. Nobody knows gion, like Gulf and General Energy, they have said that the KRG rulers want the money that has been where the money goes, how they hold shares in the oil of Iraqi Kur - activist, spoke to Solidarity about class struggle in Iraqi have a lot of profits being put away stashed by KRG leaders in foreign spend it, and so on. People are ask - distan. They have a share in the ad - Kurdistan in European banks and so on. banks to be returned to Kurdistan,; ing for clarity on this question. ministration of the oil, and they The KRG wants to use religious and for money that has been si - They know that if KDP and PUK have power there. leaders in their battles. There is a phoned off by corrupt officials to be are still in power, it is because they The cheap oil in Iraqi Kurdistan There is a recession in Iraqi Kur - religious ministry in Iraqi Kurdis - returned to the public coffers. have militias and they are ruling on is going to international compa - distan, and there are strikes and tan, paid by the government. At There is a lack of clarity about in - the basis of a militia system. nies and to Turkey. And income demonstrations happening all Friday prayers, the preachers pro - come from oil. The oil revenue is It is clear that the oil is going is going straight to the KDP and the time. mote the government’s decisions controlled by the Barzani and Tala - cheap. Other companies in the re - the PUK. Since 2006, Kurdistan has had a and arguments. They tell people to share in the world oil market. From wait and be patient, to end the boy - 2013, the oil price fell and the cotts and strikes, and work without budget of the Kurdistan Regional pay. For that reason, people are Government (KRG) has fallen. The turning against the preachers. Making solidarity on Iran’s “revolution day” price was $100/barrel but now it is These are the methods that the more like $30/barrel. So there is a government is using to keep the On 11 February activists in London gathered at the Iranian currency crisis and an economic cri - people down. regime’s embassy to protest sis. Now the KRG is $22 billion in There is a political crisis in Iraqi against the usurpation of the debt. They are selling one million Kurdistan. The [ruling] KDP won’t glorious revolution of 1979 by barrels of oil a day, from work with the Change Party (Gor - the most blood-soaked section Suleimaniya, Kirkuk, Erbil, Dohok.