This from the organisers of the successful Feminist Fightback activist conferences, torchlit pro-choice protests, etc. An important event in the context of the current attacks on abortion rights - thank goodness Feminist Fightback exists to take up the cudgels for women against the bigots.
Feminist Fightback presents…a Teach-In for Reproductive Freedoms
Discussing ideas and planning action for a woman’s right to choose
12 April, 12-5pm, Clement House Building, London School of
Economics, Holborn (Holborn tube)
www.feministfightback.org.uk
rebecca.galbraith@yahoo.co.uk
12.00pm
Registration
12.30pm
Opening speech by Sofie Buckland (NUS National Executive)
1-2.15pm
a) Imperialism and Motherhood
Speaker: Anna Davin (founding editor of History Workshop Journal)
Facilitator: Gwyneth Lonergan
b) From Abortion Rights to Reproductive Freedoms
A panel discussion with Charlotte Gage (Abortion Rights), Cathy Nugent
(Workers’ Liberty), Rosie Woods (NHS worker)
Facilitator: Anna Longman
2.20-3.35pm
a) Getting your message across
Jill Mountford (former organiser of the Welfare State Network) and
James House (TV documentaries producer)
Workshop facilitator: Rachael Ferguson
b) How to campaign
Workshop Facilitator: Anne-Marie O’Reilly (trade union organiser)
3.45-5pm
Planning for a National Day of Action
Facilitators: Laura Schwartz and Rebecca Galbraith
* Food: cheap vegetarian food will be served from 12 noon
* Free creche: Please register with rebecca.galbraith@yahoo.co.uk for
a free creche place
* Social with X-talk: 7pm @ The Ivy House, Southampton Row, Holborn
* The teach-in is free to attend but a suggested donation of £1.50
unwaged and £3+ waged is encouraged.
Just a quick plug for this event organised by some students at Wadham College (inevitably, says I with a swell of pride!) It looks quite impressive, with lots of people coming and some really good speakers, including my comrades Dan Randall and Sofie Buckland. It’s going on for three days (commendably ambitious!) so I doubt if anyone, barring the organisers, will be there for the whole thing - but people can drop in for whatever meetings or events they like.
Hope to see you there!
On Wednesday Fidel Castro announced that he is definitively stepping down from the inextricably linked posts of President of the Council of State and commander-in-chief of the Cuban armed forces. He has been the twentieth century’s second most durable head of government - second only, that is, to Kim Il-Sung. This is not something to be proud of.
Of course, it must be recognised that Cuba and North Korea are very different phenomena. In North Korea millions of people have starved to death. In Cuba the government has established free universal healthcare and education, ensuring 98% literacy. Cuba’s public services are the envy of the 35 million people in the United States without health insurance - and many of those with, as Michael Moore recently demonstrated.
However, Cuba under Castro has been fundamentally a Stalinist state. There are no forced-labour camps, but there are political prisoners; there are no show-trials, but there is a secret police force. Most importantly of all, there are no free elections. There are still some in the western world who call Cuba socialist, on the grounds that they understand socialism as reform and Cuba has enacted some impressive reforms (though often it is the most right-wing fake reformists who are the most enthusiastic: take George Galloway for example). However, Cuba’s regime lacks the instincts of democracy and popular sovereignty, as well as the fierce working-class allegiance, that characterise the best reformists. In that respect, a great gulf separates Fidel Castro and Nye Bevan.
What is more, the course of reform in Cuba has not run smoothly. Facing an economic crisis following the cessation of Russian aid, the regime chose to deal with it not by relaxing the state’s political stranglehold but by inviting capitalists to set up tourist resorts inaccessible to all Cubans except for the privileged bureaucratic elite and those employed as skivvies. Prostitution, the elimination of which was one of the first achievements of the Castro government, has sprung up again as some desperate Cubans cannot make ends meet any other way.
So what will happen in Cuba now? In the short run, not very much. The regime has named as interim president Fidel’s brother Raul, who has effectively been running the country since Fidel became ill in 2006. Fidel’s resignation statement, however, hints at knowledge that this situation is unsustainable. Cuba is not China, where the “Communist Party” has turned itself into the mouthpiece of a flourishing new capitalist class; it is much smaller and the potential for that kind of elite transition does not exist. The Cuban people have but up with Castro because he has enacted reforms and defied the United States, but now he has gone they will no longer consent to be ruled by a coterie of elderly Stalinists. In the medium term, then, either the system ludicrously and insultingly called “People’s Power” will have to be dismantled or there will be massive popular mobilisation to bring it down.
In the long term, there is, as the saying goes, everything to play for. Cuba seems unlikely simply to collapse as the Eastern Bloc did. Will the people of Cuba be able to hold on to and extend the social reforms they have brought about while building a genuinely democratic system of government - a workers’ democracy? In isolation, the Cuban people have with their own hands and brains maintained their first-class public services and, perforce, made great strides in the development of cheap generic drugs and green technology. If they can build a free society on this - as they will if they are not crushed between the twin monsters of Stalinism and free-market capitalism - they could be in reality what the Castro regime’s supporters foolishly or mendaciously proclaimed it to be - a socialist beacon of hope to the world. They will need our support.
Mike Treen of the Unite union (New Zealand), organiser of the first successful strike of low-paid and vulnerable workers in Starbucks, is currently on a week-long speaking tour of Britain organised by No Sweat. His first meeting is here in Oxford, at 1pm tomorrow (Monday) in Lecture Room 23, Balliol College, Broad Street, organised in conjunction with the Oxford University Living Wage Campaign.
Mike is by all accounts a fascinating and inspiring speaker, and I hope lots of people will turn up and make a good impression on a comrade who has, after all, come half-way round the world! There will also be information on the campaign for a living wage in the university and in the city of Oxford, and how to get involved here in the sort of fight Mike and the Starbucks workers have waged so sucessfully in New Zealand.
More on the Unite (NZ) “Supersize My Pay” campaign here.
An inspiring story from France in the latest issue of Solidarity. We must act in the same spirit here.
BY ED MALTBY
IN France, bosses have limited powers to regularise migrant
workers; and in recent strikes in the Essonne region, this has been used against them. Last summer, at nine branches of the Buffalo Grill steakhouse chain, around 30 staff went on strike to demand that their bosses regularise them. They occupied one restaurant for several days, and most of them won legal status. Shortly after the Buffalo Grill strike, workers at an industrial laundrette called Modeluxe struck in solidarity with their undocumented co-workers’ demands for regularisation.
The strikes have changed the way union activists and sans-papiers look at the issue. “Before,” explained the CNT militant, “sanspapiers would just join a union for protection on workplace issues. But now they’re starting to join because they see that as a way to win legal status. It will take a while to build up momentum, and people are naturally nervous about reprisals if they strike, but it’s begun.”
A number of union branch activists all over France have started targeting sans-papiers, distributing a leaflet which explains about rights at work, rights which apply even if to those working illegally, and the ways that unions can protect them from deportation as well as the actions of employers. “Union bureaucrats don’t want to touch this”, a socialist activist told me, “why would they? It’s a lot of fuss, it upsets their cosy desk jobs.”
But the government is stepping up its war on undocumented migrant workers. Sarkozy’s ministers have multiplied police round-ups and deportations of suspected migrant workers. French bosses like this. The CGT union say that in the fast-food industry, bosses are “systematically” employing workers they know to be undocumented, in order to deny them employment rights. A CNT union activist working with sans-papiers in Paris, told me that “employers use immigration law like a whip: they say to undocumented workers, ‘if you don’t work harder, I’ll report you’.”
Another activist told me that the hotels in which undocumented workers and their families are lodged at extortionate prices and in terrible conditions enjoy the tacit support of the government: “At Saint-Ouen there are two hotels, with one shower, one toilet each in the lobby, with 468 families living in them. The cops know and they don’t touch the place. I think the government subsidises them. MEDEF (equivalent of the CBI) want these workers to stay in France.”
More heat is being generated by a series of revolts in detention centres. An African union activist was recently taken to a detention centre next to Charles de Gaulle airport. The socialist activist tells the story: “He raised hell, made speeches, organised a revolt. There were demonstrations, hunger strikes, riots. The authorities quickly moved him, to Vincennes, where he did it again. People were setting fire to their beds, refusing to go back in their cells after exercise, refusing to be counted. They made the place ungovernable. Some wrapped razor blades in chewing gum and swallowed them, so that they’d have to be taken to hospital. I t’s very dangerous, but it means that they have to let you go. You can only be detained for so many days before they must either deport you or let you go.”
At a recent demonstration outside the Vincennes detention centre in support of the protestors “a lot of sans-papiers turned up, which was brave. There were people there from the CNT, especially members of our cleaners’ section, which is growing fast. There’s going to be another demonstration soon.”
On Saturday I went up to Campsfield, the immigration prison near Oxford, for the regular demo in solidarity with detainees that has been held there every month since the place was set up in 1993. There were only fifteen demonstrators, which I’m afraid rather bears out what I’ve said below about environmentalists. It’s only once a month and it’s half an hour on the bus. Come on, guys.
Campsfield was set up fourteen years ago by the Tories - the traditional party of bigotry and inhumane opprtunism - but it is maintained by a government purporting alliegance to Labour, the traditional party of the oppressed and disadvantaged. Where is the party to which the statement that “people are suffering” was a call to action rather than a calculation of poltical advantage? A visit to Campsfield drives out of the window all notion of a “balanced” view of the good and bad things this government has done. It has done good things - that I don’t contest - but those government ministers who have decided to lock up innocent people behind razor wire for the “crime” of coming to Britain while being Black, and those who have gone along with it, are fundamentally bastards. Anyone who can tolerate Campsfield and the other detention centres throughout Britain has surrendered his or her soul to Toryism.
This, however, cannot mean a rejection of the struggle through the established labopur movement, which seems in this case to have produced such appalling results. Only the united forces of the basic organisations of the basic oppressed class in our society, that is the unions, and moreover the unions in politics, can effect “fundamental and irreversible change” in that society. One union backing some non-Labour candidates is (in the right circumstances) a legitimate tactic, but it isn’t a strategic solution. Only our united efforts to either force the bastards out of out party, or (in the last resort) start a new party in which the bastards will not be welcome, can have a significant long-term effect. Let’s face it - we’re in political for the long term. all the attempts of the Left in recent years to go for short-term “breakthrough” solutions have gone off at half-cock and come to nothing, except leaving the remains of a few Left organisations as debris along the road. Let’s not make the same mistake again - all of us or none, comrades.
This morning I slept through my alarm. By nearly four hours. Which was annoying. What was mysterious, though, was the dream I finally woke up from. I dreamt that the world was about to be destroyed by a meteorite, but was saved by John Angliss. Make of that what you will.
In real international news, I learn that Suharto, former genocidal dictator of Indonesia, has finally kicked the bucket. Suharto originally came to power with the backing of the US government, who trusted him to “deal with” the Communist Party of Indonesia, at that time the largest outside the Stalinist bloc. He did this by indiscriminately slaughtering more than 600,000 people, many of them in no way connected to the Communist Party (as if that made a difference). Hundreds of thousands more murders followed in West Papua, East Timor and Aceh. Although he was overthrown in 1998, neither he nor his grotesquely corrupt (and consequently extremely rich) family have been brought to justice. This impunity, again, involves the collusion of the Western powers.
Amazingly, today David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, sent a message of condolence to the Indonesian government - that is, the relatively democratic government that owes its existence to the revolutionary overthrow of Suharto’s dictatorship! Is Miliband joining the Boris Johnson/Oxford Union Society school of diplomacy?! “Oh dear, the chap who murdered a million of your people has died. Jolly bad luck, what?” Meanwhile, West Papua is still suffering from the remaining elements of military dictatorship in the Indonesian system and needs our practical solidarity: I can’t see it getting much from Mr. Miliband.
Lastly, I draw readers’ attention to this letter (third one down) in the Grauniad. It truly is a Lib Dem classic. A councillor of that persuasion from the Lib Dem-run Liverpool City Council objects to the report that his council is the least efficient in the country. On the contrary, he says, Liverpool has moved a long way down the council tax league table since his party took charge. Middle-class people pay less tax than they did. That’s what councils are for, isn’t it? He gives every impression of having no idea that a council’s efficiency could relate to the services it provides. Hmm, well ten years ago, according to the Lib Dems, Liverpool council had the highest council tax in the country. Then they took over, cut council tax by 3% in absolute terms in one year, and now it’s the least efficient council in the country. There’s a lesson there somewhere, isn’t there? Reminds me of Oxford where the Lib Dem administration is desperately seeking cuts to make the frayed ends of their rich-pleasing tax policy meet. Playgrounds, leisure centres, all things working-class people need and Lib Dem voters with their huge gardens and private gyms don’t. Thankfully Labour in Oxford has no intention of sticking to the previous administration’s spending plans, like, er, Gordon Brown…
Oxford’s on flood alert again - some areas near the city have actually been flooded and walls of sandbags are going up on the Botley Road. The Environment Agency advises us not to panic, but the river channel across the road from my flat is at full capacity; and besides, no-one in Britain is going to trust the Environment Agency after last summer.
I really don’t see the point of the Environment Agency. They refuse to build effective flood defences because (they say) they’re too expensive, and they insist that de-silting river channels is unnecessary. Every time it rains heavily the Thames turns brown with all the mud and other things washed down from the Cotswolds. This sinks to the bottom of the channel and builds up the bed, thus reducing the capacity of the channel and increasing the likelihood of a flood. It’s so simple you’d think even an expert could understand it - but apparently not. So what does the Environment Agency actually do? Apart, that is, from turning up whenever something bad happens and shouting “Don’t panic, Captain Mainwaring”?
In other news, a superabundance of a different kind looks likely to come to Parliament. Today’s papers report that an independent review body has recommended above-inflation pay rises for MPs for the next three years. The hypocrisy of this, when Gordon Brown is trying his utmost to limit public-sector pay rises to 2%, effectively a pay cut, is staggering. There’s not much sign of pay restraint in the corridors of power.
MPs are already paid more than £60,000 a year as basic salary, and on average claim nearly twice this in expenses. Now for an active MP the expenses at least are actually necessary - paying several caseworkers, sending out thousands of letters a month etc. is very expensive. Even some MPs who I otherwise vehemently disagree with are scrupulously honest to the point of annoying their Westminster colleagues, and must be acknowledged to spend literally every penny on representation and campaigning. But the controls over MPs’ spending are often more honoured in the bnreach than the observance, and they didn’t prevent Iain Duncan Smith, for example, from paying a big wodge to his wife. Jobs for the boys (and girls) anyone? Get a job as a Tory Parliamentary bag-carrier. The Labour equivalents are, generally speaking, not so well-paid, and I sometimes think what they need is a couple of good shop stewards and a short period of carefully targetted industrial action…!
P.S. How’s this for a shameless bit of capitalist propaganda masquerading as “news” on the MSN email sign-out page? Isn’t capitalism great, equal opportunities for all, everyone who works really hard becomes a multi-millionaire! Remember, it could be you…but it won’t be.
I see Bill Clinton has said that Barack Obama might win the Democratic nomination. Well, no shit, Sherlock - though unfortunately I think it’s more likely his wife will get it. But Bill’s remark must have made for some interesting conversation at the breakfast table. I can imagine Hillary saying (in true US soap opera fashion): “Honey, I’m prepared to put up with the odd bit of fellatio and the business with the cigar. But if you try to fuck with my political career you and I are finished, buster!”
Meanwhile back in the real world, there’s still a man up a tree just down the street. You can only admire the powers of endurance of environmental protesters. He’s been there for ten days now, in a flimsy treehouse made of cardboard and plastic sheeting, in January. He must be having a horrible time. I’d get him some food and a hot drink if his tree wasn’t surrounded by fencing and security guards, and thus impossible to get to. And he does have a point - all the Council want to do is tidy up and repave the square (badly needed) and plant some new trees, so they might as well save time and money by leaving the old ones there.
It does annoy me, though, that so much effort and dedication is wasted on what I consider marginal causes. At the height of the anti-vivisection protests, every month I caught the bus to the monthly Campsfield demo in sight of hundreds of people protesting in Broad Street in solidarity with animals in cages - and I thought that if even a fraction of them would come to protest in solidarity with people in cages we might be getting somewhere. Ditto if the man prepared to spend ten days up a tree would occupy a bit of the “detention estate” instead. Not that animals don’t deserve rights, of course they do - but priorities, guys, priorities.
Update (14/01/08): I notice the tree has been cut down. This is a pity, because entirely unnecessary, but again I hope those prepared to endure such discomfort for a tree will at least turn out to support oppressed human beings. The next demo in solidarity with imprisoned migrants will be on Saturday 26th at 12:00 at Campsfield immigration prison, Langford Lane, just North of Kidlington. Bus from Magdalen Street at 11:15.
