Liberation — Revolution Socialist Youth

Iraqi militias hunt down ‘Emo’ youth

March 15, 2012 By admin Leave a Comment

Up to 58 Iraqi teenagers haven been beaten to death or shot in the last few weeks as Iraqi militias and Islamists target ‘emo’ youths. More than 650 have been killed since 2006.

The shocking figures are the result of a US puppet state with no authority or desire to challenge the warlords. The Iraqi Interior Minister recently described emos as devil worshippers.

A list was recently distributed by Militias in Baghdad’s conservative Shia neighbourhood of Sadr City with 30+ names and addresses of young people who needed to be punished.

This chilling warning is posted on the hit-list:

“We warn in the strongest terms to every male and female debauchee, if you do not stop this dirty act within four days, then the punishment of God will fall on you at the hands of Mujahideen (Muslim holy warriors).”

In Iraq the term ‘emo’ is widely synonymous with ‘gay’. It is obviously an attack on homosexuals and although homosexuality isn’t illegal, it is still a massive social and religious taboo. Anybody perceived to be gay is a fair target and the perpetrators of homophobic violence are rarely punished in this new, post-occupation Iraq.

Islamic militias in Iraq have have long targeted the LGBT community in what they call “honour killings” permitted by a strict interpretation of the Koran (the Muslim bible). The militias, which arose originally to fight the imperialist occupation, have always targetted certain groups they consider to be a bad influence – like alternative youth, trade unionists and women’s rights activists.

Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, a former resistance leader, described emo youths as “crazy and fools” and “a plague on Muslim society” but did not condone the violence and said they should be dealt with within the law.

In August 2011 letters from the Education Ministry urged schools to crack down on what it believes to be “abhorrent behaviour”, even banning mobile phones with cameras and prohibiting students from leaving school at lunchtimes where they might engage in ‘dirty activities.’

Iraqi police units who are specifically assigned to protect social minorities say they are almost powerless to stop the threats against gays and Emos. One officer assigned to the so-called social abuse squads said police are meeting with clerics to ask for help in urging the public against killing what he described as “the Emo or the vampires or Satan worshippers.”

After the US-led invasion in 2003, the occupying forces disbanded the army, police and civil service organisations. This created a power-vacuum which was mainly filled by radical militias based on local community power structures; usually these militas are little better than armed gangs, centred around a charismatic cleric.

Yet their role in resisting the occupation has given them great social power, which the Iraqi state has largely failed to curb. Intimidation, bribery and corruption of local police services is common, and the militias are suspected of sheltering those behind the murders.

The price of imperialist war in Iraq has been the devastation of a once-progressive society. Far from ‘bringing democracy’ to the Iraqi people, US bombs and sanctions have killed millions and left the survivors at the mercy of reactionary gangs imposing strict religious law on the population.

The Iraqi government, puppet of the US government, is powerless to stop the militias. In many areas Iraqi officials and MPs rely on the support of these militias for votes and protection.

The murder of so many young people is a tragedy, but we should not lose sight of who is ultimately to blame. The US and UK imperialists have enriched themselves by plunging an entire people into barbarism. Bush and Blair have blood on their hands. Now Obama and Cameron are pursuing an even more brutal war in Afghanistan, backing a government which has legalised rape, and legalised the second-class status of its female citizens.

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The human cost of UK imperialism

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The problem with the Poppy

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The War on Terror

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Filed Under: International, LGBT Oppression, News, Youth Oppression Tagged With: emo, iraq, Youth

Immigration sweeps target Latin American workers

March 13, 2012 By REVOLUTION LONDON Leave a Comment

In late February, the police and Border Agency launched a series of co-ordinated sweeps for undocumented ‘illegal’ workers. The mass raids are staged in order to inflict maximum intimidation. The aim is simple: punish the unlucky few to set an example to all workers without the right visas.

At the end of February, dozens of police showed up to a concert by an artist with a mainly Spanish-speaking fanbase. 90 people were pulled from the queue and thrown into waiting vans.

While some of the arrested were later released, one man was put through the government’s fast-track deportation scheme and found himself escorted by hired thugs on a government-charter plane back to his native country.

Since the number of people succesfully deported remains a tiny fraction of the estimated number of undocumented workers, why are the police going to all this expense?

There are two main reasons: the first is that high-profile raids like these send out a powerful message about the police’s commitment to persecuting ordinary working people and their families. Those living and working in Britain without the correct visa live in constant fear of arrest and deportation, with the threat of being separated from their parents or children. The impact on family and work life is incalculable.

Secondly, so-called ‘illegal immigrants’ are every government’s favourite punch-bag; blamed for everything from Cancer in your coffee to the world financial crisis, Britain’s ethnic minorities are made the scapegoat for the social policies beyond their control. To make the victimisation of Britain’s super-exploited illegal workers easier, they are not entitled to state-appointed lawyers.

Unless they are married to an EU national, their only option is to seek asylum. However the UK government has proved it has no problems sending people back to certain torture and death on flights billed to the taxpayer.

Put simply, when those fleeing war and persecution cannot be certain of sanctuary on British shores, then those ‘merely’ fleeing poverty and hopelessness have no chance.

One of Britain’s major exports is weapons. But since an expanding arms industry relies on more and more wars, it’s obvious that Britain is not going to welcome the millions left homeless, injured and jobless by british-made bombs.

European governments have been deporting illegal immigrants since mass immigration started in the 50s and 60s. French President Sarkozy has deported more than 10,000 Roma in less than a year.

Nor are mass raids by large numbers of armed police anything new. Such tactics are used by any government which wants to make its point in an unsubtle but efficient way.

Don’t believe the government and tabloid scare-mongering about illegal migrants bleeding Britain dry. The reason there’s a shortage of houses is because the government and private sector have only built a few thousand affordable houses in the last 20 years. The reason the country has debt is because we borrowed £1trillion from bankers to bail out other bankers.

Immigration laws against the free movement of the world’s people are a racist hypocrisy. Money can buy you citizenship in any country in the world, and countries like the US and UK invade other countries to ensure that British millionaires can move their money into new markets.

We think that the true purpose of barriers to movement are to keep working people divided. Immigrants are presented as a threat to ‘our’ jobs, ‘our’ culture and ‘our’ country. But migrant workers don’t sack tens of thousands of British workers, while creaming off a fat bonus. Migrant workers don’t shut thousands of libraries and privatise schools. And it wasn’t migrant workers who benefitted when a tiny clique of bankers held our country to ransom.

No, millions of ordinary British workers, native and migrant, Muslim and Christian are paying the price of the capitalist crisis. We say blame the bosses and bankers – not the foreign workers who have more in common with us than we do with our politicians and corporate elite.

We want to kick out those who profit from exploitation and poverty, not those who are fleeing poverty and find only harsher, more precarious exploitation on our shores.

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No-one is illegal!

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Racism and capitalism

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Black youth unemployment hits 40%

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Filed Under: Anti-Racism, Civil Liberties, Liberation, News Tagged With: asylum, deportation, migrants

Why Parliament can’t solve sexism

March 9, 2012 By Sally Turner Leave a Comment

Anyone interested in knowing David Cameron’s contribution to International Women’s Day won’t be surprised to learn that it was limited to signing a pledge to criminalise “verbal, non-verbal or physical” sexual harassment.

The token gesture is unlikely to appeal to the more unashamedly sexist members of his party, but reflects a growing trend within the Tory party to relate to “women’s issues” and be seen to take a more active approach on questions of equality.

It is one of the commitments in the Council of Europe’s convention on violence against women, which has already been signed by 18 countries including France, Germany and the Ukraine.

In particular, the convention sets out a definition of sexual harassment, as “violating the dignity of a person, in particular when creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment.”

This, it says, is “subject to criminal or other legal sanction”.

While we are not opposed to laws which give women greater power to oppose abuse in the workplace and home, we think the extensive cuts to rape crisis centres, women’s refuges and related services reveal the Tories’ real priority. Real services cost real money – signing a pledge costs nothing.

The agreement says that those who rape or ‘seriously harm’ women will be prosecuted in this country if charges aren’t brought abroad. Currently, only murder and paedophile offences committed abroad can be prosecuted in British courts.

Yet the conviction rate for rape and other sexual offences is already embarrassingly low. Thousands of attacks go unreported, and the police are notorious for their lack of interest in rape cases.

In the same way that making ‘incitement to religious hatred’ has done precisely nothing to stop the spread of religious intolerance, so you can’t simply legislate sexist and other oppressive ideas out of people’s heads.

Sexism exists because of the inferior position of women in all capitalist societies. While women in the west have won many formal rights and equalities, they still face the double burden of wage-labour and unpaid housework. Women are still subjected to a permanent threat of physical and sexual violence in the workplace, on the street, and most often in the home.

In the rest of the world the situation is far worse. Women are the majority of and the worst treated among the world’s workers. Capitalism – the accumulation of vast wealth amongst a small elite is founded on the super-exploitation of women’s economic and social status.

You can criminalise the words and thoughts, but you can’t eradicate them without abolishing the system which feeds and fuels those ideas.

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What’s IWD all about?

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Capitalism… and exploding breast implants

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Women’s oppression and liberation

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Filed Under: Liberation, News, Women's Oppression Tagged With: language, sexism, women

Why celebrate International Women’s Day?

March 8, 2012 By admin Leave a Comment

The place of women in society is as important to the continued success of capitalism as it is to the working class’s potential to unite and overthrow it. We don’t believe equality is anywhere near achieved between men and women – to achieve it means breaking down the family unit, the wage system and the sexist ideas which are the foundations of our exploitative and oppressive society. No women’s liberation without socialism – no socialism without women’s liberation!

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What’s IWD all about?

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Capitalism… and exploding breast implants

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Women’s oppression and liberation

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Filed Under: Liberation, News, Women's Oppression Tagged With: iwd, women

Black youth unemployment hits 44% – politicians do nothing

March 6, 2012 By admin Leave a Comment

Since the start of the economic crisis in 2008, youth unemployment has skyrocketed to 20%, meaning young people are the main victims of a jobs massacre designed to cut costs and boost profits.

The inevitable result of tripling uni tuition fees to £9k a year has been a record fall in university applications, piling further pressure on a young workforce that has very few options in terms of training or professional qualifications.

Yet behind the headlines, there is one statistic that is more revealing than any other about the nature of the government’s class war against young and working people. Young black people suffer a jobless rate more than twice the national average – 44%.

This is no accident, nor is it new. Black communities started to suffer from high unemployment when Britain’s industrial economy was dismantled and offshored in the 1980s. Like former mining communities devastated by the disappearance of local work, black communities concentrated in our inner-cities have been left with the social consequences of long-term unemployment and racist employment practices.

Poverty leads to crime leads to the victimisation of black people by a police force proved to be institutionally racist through its attitude to Stephen Lawrence’s murder.

The government is making real attacks on the living conditions of Britain’s poorest communities – slashing youth service funding by 75%, removing Sure Start services, inciting schools to go private and throwing people out of work like the dole is going out of fashion.

These real material factors are having a profound impact on the landscape of communities already blighted by decades of widespread unemployment, under-funded education and a racist police which acts as a law unto itself, making young black and Asian men more than 7 times more likely to be searched than their white counterparts.

Why is this happening? In 2008/9 the government removed 100% of funding for ESOL courses in London. These vital courses were provided free mainly to immigrant women who wanted to learn English. One of the first crisis-related attacks on education, it attracted no public outcry, making it an easy option for the government.

But what does black unemployment have to do with immigration? True, most black youth have never been on a foreign holiday, let alone come from another country. However, the situation is the result of the racist policies of one government after another.

The ultimate reason for high unemployment amongst black youth won’t be found in ‘cultural’ pseudo-explanations. Rather they’re the same reasons for high unemployment in mainly white areas. Neglect by governments determined that profit-chasing bosses are the best judges of what jobs and production is useful and what isn’t.

A workforce unequally divided is one easier to manipulate. A mass of unemployed youth are acting as downward pressure on the wages of those still employed. This is a conscious strategy undertaken by a government of millionaires, determined to create a better environment for people like them.

This means ramping up racist rhetoric about the ‘cultural’ roots of ‘black violence’ and unemployment, it means driving down wages and making it easier to hire and fire.

Black youth are bearing the brunt of the Tories’ attacks on the welfare state, because the public sector is both the employer most likely to follow equal-rights employment practices, and working class families – with jobs or not- are those who rely most on the redistribution of wealth embodied by the NHS and free education.

The August Riots were a spontaneous reaction against the violence of the police in Tottenham. But it was fuelled by the despair and anger felt by a generation of young people who have no job and no prospects. This anger is legitimate, but real change can only come by uniting against those with real power – the bosses, and the police, polticians and courts who exist to defend their system.

Capitalism is based on the ability of a minority class to exploit a huge majority of ordinary working people. This relies on the success of racist propaganda spread by politicians and media, which keeps working people divided, competing against each other along racial lines rather than uniting against our common exploiters.

The success of any movement against capitalism and austerity depends on its ability to unite on a working-class basis with the disenfranchised, disaffected black youth who alone have the power to fight for their rights in education, in the workplace and in society at large.

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Fascists get cold feet in Leicester and Rochdale

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No one is illegal!

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Stephen Lawrence: racism and reluctant justice

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Filed Under: Anti-Racism, Liberation, News, Youth Oppression Tagged With: discrimination, racism, unemployment

International Women’s Day 2012

March 6, 2012 By Sally Turner Leave a Comment

8^th March is international women’s day, a day to celebrate the victories won in the struggle against the oppression and exploitation of women.

Celebrated all over the world by women’s, labour and socialist, organisations, International Women’s Day was born at a time of revolutionary struggle when women were first starting to fight for equal political and workplace rights.

In 1896, German revolutionary Clara Zetkin was arguing for women to be included in the political struggle of the emerging working class in Europe. Zetkin argued that women’s oppression was rooted within the family, and the family in turn, reinforced the power of the exploiting capitalist class. She concluded that without a socialist revolution to overthrow capitalist class society and its backwards social values, women’s liberation was impossible but that without involving women in the class struggle, the socialist revolution itself becomes impossible.

In 1910, Zetkin came to the Second International Conference of Socialist Women with the proposal that Working Women’s Day become an international event. In 1911, more than one million women and men attended rallies inAustria,Denmark,GermanyandSwedenunder the slogan: “The vote for women will unite our strength in the struggle for socialism.”

Since then, IWD has been celebrated all across the world, and since the 1980s, billions of women have been drawn into the global workforce. These masses of young women are the majority in the world’s most exploitative and oppressive jobs.

This means the struggle for women’s liberation has never been more necessary, or drawn upon the potential power of so many women joining the ranks of the international working class.

Today IWD is an official holiday in a number of countries from Afghanistan to Zambia and in China, Madagascar and Nepal it is a holiday for women only.

The struggle for women’s liberation is more important than ever. The majority of women now bear the double burden of capitalist society – working all day for lower wages in worse conditions, then performing a lifetime of unpaid housework and childcare. It is this fundamental oppression of women that is both the foundation of capitalism and the reason for the dominance of men in all areas of society.

The cuts to public sector will hit women much more than men as they make up 65% of employees. The pay freezes and pension cuts will have a dramatic effect on millions of families who rely on both parents’ income. As cuts are made to public services such as care for the elderly and young then it is inevitable that women will be ‘encouraged’ to take over this care. If encouragement doesn’t work, plans to sack 750,000 public sector workers should do the job.

The struggle against sexism, and for equality between men and women goes on, and a good step forward would be to kick out this Con Dem coalition and end their attacks on women and working class people.

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Cuts close mother-baby rehab clinic

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Why we defend the right to choose

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Women’s oppression and liberation

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Filed Under: Events, International, Liberation, News, Women's Oppression Tagged With: feminism, liberation, oppression, sexism, women

Workfare the symptom, Socialism the cure

March 3, 2012 By Dan Edwards Leave a Comment

The recent protests against workfare were an impressive example of how much we can achieve when we fight back. It shows that we don’t have to sit back and take the millionaire’s medicine, just because they say so.

Many people are celebrating the ‘victory’ of anti-workfare protesters in their campaign against unpaid work. Richard Seymour on the Lenin’s Tomb blog said recently that the government withdrawing the compulsory aspect of the workfare scheme was basically “ killing the heart of the programme.“ True, they have changed to a smaller stick, but there are still no carrots for job-seekers.

Recent pro-government news reports and commentary pieces in both the television and printed press, have focussed on people ‘getting the most’ out of workfare. The other day on the BBC, a cheery young person was telling the camera about a placement in Greggs head office which got them the job.

Jobseekers, especially young ones, are told that ‘volunteering’ your time for free is the only way to get the necessary ‘experience’. The government isn’t fooling anyone – especially not the 1 million+ unemployed graduates, college students and school-leavers who know that ‘stacking shelves in Tescos’ is not the kind of experience which bosses are looking for.

Though the government has toned down the arm-twisting on the Workfare scheme, the pressure and expectation that people should work for free is growing. Increasingly traditional white-collar jobs require applicants to have a number of internships behind them, and now so-called ‘entry level’ jobs like cleaning and shopwork are going the same way.

The huge number of companies of all sizes taking part in the scheme showed that employers were desperate to get their hands on some free workers – giving them ‘valuable experience’ and saving serious amounts of money in the process. What’s their real motive? Across all sections of the private sector- from multinationals and banks to charities and social enterprises, companies are using free labour as a way of reducing the amount of people they have to hire.

Around the recent Tesco’s campaign, lots of people said that ‘Tescos is so rich they can afford to pay people’. True, but a clearer way of putting it would be ‘Tescos is so rich because of the money they save paying out poverty wages to some, and nothing for the rest’. Companies don’t get rich by sharing the profits with their employees. The owners and managers of Tescos are raking in millions because thousands of employees only get a fraction of the value of their work back as wages.

So even though the government has ended compulsion in 3 of the 5 different workfare programs, that doesn’t impact on the fact that this state-backed ‘work experience’ is undermining wages, reducing job security and reinforcing a vicious race to the bottom among young unemployed because the companies know young people have no alternative to whatever shit terms and conditions they are prepared to offer.

On one hand, the workfare scheme is little more than a scheme for redistributing wealth from rich to poor during an economic crisis – young people work for free, add value to company, added value is pocketed by overpaid millionaire owner, young jobseeker is sent back to Jobcentre and replaced with the next ‘applicant’.

But on the other hand the wage system is automatically exploitative – the workfare scheme just ditches the bullshit about ‘a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay’. More importantly to their Tories, and their backers, the British bosses, the workfare scheme is about introducing a permanent shift in working patterns. The owners of companies want more freedom to hire and fire, more temporary contracts, and the right to pay lower wages.

Neither the Tories, nor the Lib Dems have a plan to eradicate unemployment – they think it’s a necessary part of society. High unemployment benefits the rich because they use the fear of sacking to keep their employees in line.

We are 100% against schemes which profit the rich at the expense of working class people. Not because we are ‘trying to ruin young people’s dreams’ or ‘job-snobs’ but because we are fighting for young people to get what we’re owed. We don’t want to be bullshitted that volunteering in Tescos is the first step to a millionaire lifestyle. The bosses are banking obscene profits while 1 million of us have no work or qualifications. Workfare is only the symptom of the wider disease – Capitalism and its crises, which is wrecking our lives and planet. Protests and campaigns can limit attacks and even win temporary victories like the NHS. But only socialism – the democratic economy managed by and for the working class – is the permanent cure.

The strikes and occupations by young shop-workers in Ireland at Primark and La Senza show that resistance is possible. We need to build a movement which can unite struggles to save a local youth centre or swimming pool with the electricians who faced down the big 7 construction companies. Only a united campaign, rooted in our communities, schools and workplaces can bring down Cameron and Clegg and stop the cuts.

REVOLUTION is fighting for

An end to workfare and unpaid ‘volunteer’ schemes

Back-payment for all those involved in the scheme at the same rate as equivalent employees

Real jobs and apprenticeships paid at a living wage, or the trade union rate.

Free education and training, with living grants for all students

A reverse to the 75% slashing of the budget for youth services

Have you been on a workfare scheme, or been pressured to take part? We want to hear your stories. e-mail kady@socialistrevolution.org

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What does exploitation mean?

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1 million youth unemployed – enough is enough!

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Anti-workfare protests target Tescos

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Filed Under: News, Workers, Youth Oppression Tagged With: tescos, unemployment, wages, workfare, Youth

Why are the Tories attacking disabled people?

February 25, 2012 By TOM B Leave a Comment

We live in a dangerous world. Apart from war, disease and malnutrition, hundreds of millions of people are injured every year in unhealthy, unsafe working conditions. In a world where everyone is valued according to their economic potential (how much work they can do), disabled people find themselves stigmatised and condemned to be a burden on their family, society, or both.

For disabled people obliged to exist at poverty levels, the economic crisis has placed intolerable pressure on their already-precarious living conditions. In Bolivia, protesters marched for 100 days to demand social security payments and were attacked by riot police. In London disabled rights’ campaigns have taken direct action to the heart of London, blockading Oxford Street to highlight the government’s attacks on the most vulnerable and unheard section of society.

The Tory Party has launched its effort to demolish the welfare state with an enthusiastic attack on the rights of disabled people. With the ‘Big Society’ and ‘we’re all in this together’ quietly ditched, the Tories have reverted back to type: namely promoting the need for a return to “Christian values”. Baroness Warsi was wheeled out for a trip to the Pope where she ranted against the supposed “militant secularisation” of Britain.

The Tories’ problem with this “militant secularisation” seems to be that people don’t know enough about the bit in the bible where Jesus demands the sick and infirm are forced to work for a pittance. If only we could drill honest Christian values into schoolchildren earlier, then the Tories wouldn’t face so much opposition to their vicious policies…

As though the on-going scandal over Workfare wasn’t enough, the DWP is pressing ahead with its efforts to terrorise disabled people into abandoning their welfare payments to take jobs which they are too ill to do properly. Evidently the Tories’ experience of disability is extensive enough to decide that the doctors are wrong, and that the economic crisis was caused by disabled ‘spongers’. Bollocks. Paying A4e by results to assess terminally ill patients as ‘fit for work’ has no economic motivation. It’s simply about stereotyping a section of the population which is already largely ‘invisible’ and making people blame the crisis of capitalism on the people who are some of its most exploited victims.

The rhetoric has been there for the past few months. MP Phillip Davies, in a throwback to the 1830s, argued that disabled workers should be paid below the minimum wage (to allow them to undercut wages for able-bodied workers), and Department for Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith leaked to the Tory press “hilarious” examples of benefit claimants supposedly conning the system; single-handedly causing the entire current financial catastrophe in the process. There is one motivation to this rhetoric: shifting the debate away from the banks and the economic system, onto the subject of ‘scroungers’ and ‘cheats’ who are supposedly bleeding the country dry. No mention of Osborne’s tax-free gifts to his mates at Vodafone and Topshop though…

The government has staked a lot on ‘reforming’ disability benefits. By promoting the few cases of fraud they want to smear all welfare-recipients with the same brush. The aim is a conscious and concerted effort to shift public opinion prior to introducing the reality of austerity and the ‘all-in-it-together’ agenda: naked and grotesque exploitation.

Clause 54 of the new welfare reform bill is aimed at “assisting” people on employment and support allowance in “enhancing” their skills by forcing them to work unpaid for companies whose chief executives rake in millions of pounds a year. The great and the good business leaders of our “society” are using “cuts” and “austerity” as blanket justifications for exploiting workers; and this burden falls hardest on disabled people.

People receiving disability support allowance who are placed in the work-related activity group (Wrag) will, if the government gets its way, face the prospect of being made to work unpaid for an unlimited amount of time. People will be “incentivised” to take these, no doubt exciting, meaningful and beneficial, opportunities to work for nothing by the threat of financial penalty: effectively do as we tell you or starve.

The Wrag grouping includes people diagnosed with terminal cancer who are expected to live for over six months, victims of accidents and strokes and some with mental health issues. The private moneymaking firms paid to get people back to work are not trained health professionals, their motive will be to deem as many people fit to toil as possible. For example, Action4employment has a £180 million turnover in Britain…entirely from DWP ‘work assessment’ contracts. Chief Executive Emma Harrison paid herself an £8.6milllion ‘dividend’ from this money. Profiteering bosses have to look after number 1 first, so A4e has no incentive to undermine the Tories’ efforts to force the disabled back into work.

The ideology is clear – out with the welfare state, in with the ‘on your bike’. The capitalist social structure and the wage-labour economy reduces each human to the value of their ‘labour power’ – how much it costs to employ them, and how much profitable work they can do. The bleak reality of a world where a human life is ultimately reducible to its market value has been softened in the west through services won over decades of struggle by working class people. The NHS, disability support, and state pensions are fundamental expressions of the collective strength of the working class to force wealth to be redistributed more equally. The rich don’t need any of these services, and now they think they can start to make a profit out of them. If you want to know what a formerly-public service gone private looks like, just try and take a train out of Clapham Junction at rush hour.

The Tories ‘back-to-work’ policy can be summed up as: Ageing, ill or handicapped? You’ll have to pay your own way just like Stephen Hester, Fred Goodwin and all the other multi-millionaire spongers aren’t doing. Caring for disabled people is incredibly expensive, and currently the burden of care falls mainly on the family, and women in particular who are expected to sacrifice careers and social lives to care for ill relatives.

Defending support for the disabled so they can be maintained at a good (not breadline) standard of living is a vital decision for anyone who wants to resist the growing tide of selfish individualism spewed out by millionaire Tories and their millionaire mates who own the media. We have nothing to gain by blaming disabled people for our country’s financial crisis – they didn’t cause it. Benefit fraud costs £1billion a year. This is £1billion too much, but it pales in comparison to the £120billion dodged every year by a handful of super-rich Tory party donors.

Comedian Richard Herring recently made an interesting point when arguing that society in general views disability the wrong way: perhaps rather than seeing disabled people as somehow ‘different’, perhaps able-bodied people need to be renamed as the ‘not yet disabled’; ill health and misfortune can strike anyone at any time in their life and is an important issue in a society with an ageing population.

The consequences of “cuts” and “austerity” are every day becoming more obvious and its results are shocking. It should be celebrated that life expectancy has increased, people should be allowed the opportunity to enjoy their lives and if someone suffers misfortune it is the duty of any civilised society to do all it can to help them and their family to enjoy the most satisfaction in their life – not make them feel inferior and dependent on ‘charity’. We are the sixth-richest country in the world – we can afford to take care of our disabled brothers and sisters – it’s the bosses and their politicians who are bleeding us dry.

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Why do disabled people get a raw deal under capitalism?

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New GCSE’s will penalise disabled students

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Anti-workfare protests target Tescos

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Filed Under: Civil Liberties, Cuts, Disabled Rights, Indepth, Liberation, News Tagged With: A4e, disability, disabled, DSA, handicapped, work capacity assessments

Bigger Fatter Gypsier MORE RACIST

February 20, 2012 By admin Leave a Comment

Here’s a poster speaking the truth about C4′s Gypsy Wedding show. Billboards advertising the new series have been ‘corrected’ all over Leeds.

My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding is based on packaging racist stereotypes as entertainment. It plays on widespread anti-Gypsy feelings, which stem from the way the Traveller community is persecuted and criminalised by local authorities.

The recent dawn raid to evict the residents of Dale Farm is a perfect example of the way in which the government, police and big media collaborate to demonise a tiny number of people, presenting them as some kind of threat. In reality its the unnaccountable elites in the police, media and parliament who are the real criminals.

Here’s an article exposing the racist undertones of the programme.

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Ethnic cleansing at Dale Farm

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My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding: racists’ last frontier?

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Filed Under: Anti-Racism, Liberation, News Tagged With: C4, gyspy, racism, traveller

Tories help to hire the help

February 11, 2012 By Sally Turner Leave a Comment

Photo: Red Women's Workshop

The Tories’ latest gimmick is a plan to subsidise the cost of hiring cleaners, gardeners and other domestic services. The plan revolves around introducing a scheme where the government would front half the cost of employing people to tidy rich people’s houses.

The reasoning, if it can be called that, is that this would ‘create jobs’ and boost the numbers of women in the workforce. Supposedly this will boost the profile of women in the workforce.

Cameron got the idea after hobnobbing on a taxpayer-funded junket to a ’summit’ (talking-shop) in Sweden, which has a similar system. However, the Swedish version has been rightly criticised, since it principally benefits wealthy families earning around £5000 a month.

The idea that ordinary British working families, already pressured by deep cuts to vital services like Sure Start, are going to start hiring cleaners is ludicrous.

Even if this scheme did free up thousands more women for work, what jobs are they supposed to go into? Women already make up the majority of the lowest paid, most insecure jobs – the three C’s – cleaning, caring and catering.

Women also make up the overwhelming majority of public sector workers. With the Tories having already destroyed hundreds of thousands of public sector jobs, they are now talking about raising the target to 750,000 sackings.

The increasing cost of living, combined with the fact that women workers are taking the brunt of job losses in this crisis, makes Cameron’s latest bright idea a fantasy.

Tax-breaks are also shit at redistributing wealth. They generally favour those with the awareness and resources to make their claims. Regular studies have shown that tax-breaks usually have lower take-up by those who would benefit most from them.

This policy is nothing more than a stunt by Cameron. His plan to get 30% of company boards made up of women reveals the crucial point: we don’t think that women in positions of power are more ‘resistant to corruption’ ‘less aggressive’ or any other sexist bollocks.

It’s class which is important. Women bosses profit from their female employees as much as men; Thatcher shows why women politicians are the friends of their class, not their gender.

Capitalism is a system which is immensely profitable for a few, because it uses the family and culture to maintain the super-exploitation of women across the world. From the kitchen sink to the equal pay acts, the capitalist state has begrudged women every single liberty which we have won through struggle.

We are fighting to end the exploitation of women’s unpaid work cleaning, cooking and caring within the family. We are for the collective organisation of domestic tasks. Providing efficient, universal access to cooking, childcare and cleaning services is how we can break down the biggest division between the sexes.

Such a demand is not achievable under capitalism. That’s why we are fighting for socialism – the democratic self-organisation of working people across the world. Real power in society is based on who owns what. Production of everything today is done according to the profit-logic of the capitalist market. This profit benefits a tiny minority who simply concentrate production on what is most profitable for them.

Socialism means putting the power of production into the hands of the ordinary people who produce. This is the only way we can ensure that our society is one based on fulfilling the needs of working people, rather than enriching an elite.

The oppression of women is the greatest barrier to building a new society. We mustn’t let the Tories smooth-talk about promoting women distract us from the fact that women are facing the greatest attack on our social status in decades.

We urgently need to build a mass, working class women’s organisation to resist the crisis which is driving women out of the workplace and into the home. Built on a class basis, this movement could help to rally resistance to the economic crisis around an alternative to capitalism.

This is what we are fighting for.

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