Jeremy Corbyn has proposed the abolition of student fees and the reintroduction of maintenance grants for all students. Harry Bark, of the Leeds Marxists and Marxist Students for Corbyn, provides a socialist perspective on the question of free education and equality.
We publish here two recent letters that we have received from Socialist Appeal supporters in Coventry, which outline and explain the enthusiasm amongst workers and youth for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour leadership campaign. As one comrade writes, Jeremy’s campaign and potential victory represents a “big step forward for our class”.
Following on from mass rallies in Liverpool, Birmingham, and Coventry in the past week, over two thousand people gathered in Camden, London, last night to hear Jeremy Corbyn speak about his alternative to austerity. It is clear that a new political movement is being forged, providing a point of reference for workers and youth.
Following on from the backing offered by Unite, FBU, RMT, and ASLEF unions, Corbyn’s campaign for the Labour leadership has now also received the support of the CWU (postal workers) and TSSA unions, as well as that of UNISON, the big public sector trade union. The unions now need to mobilise all their members to vote for Jeremy.
George Osborne and the Tories are pushing for local councils to join together to form regional combined authorities, which will be given powers and responsibilities for budgets, investment…and for cuts. Darrall Cozens, President of the Coventry Trades Council, analyses the real interests that lie behind these latest Tory plans.
The vote on the Tories’ welfare reform bill, which would see £12 billion cut from the welfare budget, has revealed the depths of servility to which the Blairite leaders of the Labour Party like Harriet Harman are prepared to stoop. At the same time, it has highlighted the contrast between the Blairite leadership candidates and Corbyn.
After a week of frothing at the mouth, the New Labour acolytes have finally called forward their Messiah to try and push back the surging Corbyn tide. But so hated is Blair, that his intervention will have the opposite effect to that intended, pushing more voters towards Jeremy’s anti-austerity campaign.
To the shock and surprise of the Blairites, Jeremy Corbyn has emerged as the frontrunner in the race to become the next leader of the Labour Party. The right-wing are now hell-bent on doing everything they can to prevent Corbyn from winning. These professional politicians are completely out of touch and cannot understand why Jeremy’s anti-austerity message is so popular.
Osborne’s latest Budget was proclaimed to be “stealing Labour’s clothes”, with the announcement by the Chancellor of a new “national living wage”. But make no mistake about it: this was a typical Tory budget, announced by a government of the rich, for the rich, by the rich; a budget intended to make workers, the youth and the poor pay for a crisis they did not cause.
As George Osborne announces £12 billion more in vicious new cuts, a new report has revealed that big business is getting a massive £93 billion each year from the public purse in the form of grants, subsidies, and tax breaks. The Tories and the right-wing press complain about “benefit scroungers”, but the real parasites are the capitalists themselves.
The news that the national executive of Unite, Britain’s largest union, has come out in support of Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign to become Labour leader will be welcomed by both Labour members and trade unionists. The trade union leaders must now throw their full weight behind Corbyn and argue for a strong socialist programme in order to galvanise the vote for Jeremy.
An open letter has appeared in the Guardian from various leaders of the labour movement and figures from the Left in Britain, appealing to Cameron for debt relief for Greece. But the solution to austerity, Rob Sewell argues, will not be found in appeals to the capitalists and their representatives. Instead, the Left leaders should be fighting for a socialist programme.