January 2009

I
last wrote to you all in the early hours of Tuesday evening when the members
of the Cambridge student occupation were feeling particularly low and
optimism was almost non-existent.On Wednesday morning, however, after a good night’s sleep and a couple of
rousing speeches from the Marxists within the movement, hopes were rejuvenated,
and optimism was reinstalled. This was partly due to hearing that Sussex Uni
had managed to get all their demands met after a week of occupation. This made
us realise that we could not leave after only 5 days, and that we must wait
longer and make harsher demands from the University.

Members of the RMT rail union working in the control
room of Docklands Light Railway will strike for 24 hours from 13:05 on Monday,
February 2, in a dispute over the imposition of new weekend rosters.

The union suspended an earlier threat of a
work-to-rule held after the company withdrew the disputed roster, but talks
held since have failed to break the deadlock.

In January the Royal Bank of Scotland recorded the biggest loss in British corporate
history – £28bn. Just three months ago New Labour bunged £20bn of our money at RBS
to help prop it up. We have since made a £12.5bn loss on our holding as share
prices headed south. Where did our money go? It seems to have disappeared in a
puff of smoke.  So the government has
decided to give them another £5bn of our money. The bank’s worth is
disappearing by the day as its share price evaporates. At the time of writing
the total share price of the 300 year old bank was just £4bn. In 2007 it was
£78bn.

I’m writing this inside the Cambridge University Law Faculty at 1am on Wednesday
28th January, after approximately 100 hours of occupation. At the time
of entering the building (last Friday evening) I believe we were the 16th
student university to have been occupied in protest of the Gaza situation.
I have been active in the occupation over the last four days,intervening
in every meeting and trying to ensure that we follow a genuinely Marxist
method in our attempt to have our demands met.

On
the 21st of January 10 school students from all around Edinburgh
attended the first meeting of the ESSU (Edinburgh School Students’ Union). The
meeting was billed under the title “Why we need a Union” and was attended by
students from three different high schools.

As a young militant in the 1980s I met Peter Snape MP (now Lord Snape) at an annual conference of my union, the Transport Salaried Staffs Association.  He spoke on transport policy and later in the evening I recognised him in the bar and argued with him about Union and Labour Party policies.  I remember saying, emboldened by a couple of pints; “The trouble with Labour MPs is that too many of them are in it for the money, and some of them are actually corrupt.  Of course, I don’t mean you personally.” He replied; “The trouble with you is that you are obsessed with betrayal.”  In the […]

Tube cleaners who led the strike last July for a decent wage are under attack. Mary Oboakye was sacked at a disciplinary earlier in January.

We don’t accept that management can just
push these people around and treat them like dirt. Calls for Mary
Oboakye to be reinstated will be backed up with an action at Metronet
offices at lunchtime on Wednesday January 28th.

UCU (the University and College
Union – the main union for lecturers) and UNISON are battling to save London
Metropolitan University from management plans to cut at least 330 jobs. ‘Times
Higher Education’ puts it higher, estimating it “could mean up to 500
individuals (between one in seven and one in five of the current staff)" losing
their jobs(22.01.09)