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Morning StarFor peace & socialism Incorporating the Daily Worker Tuesday January 30 2018
Revolution on the campaign trail
JOHN HAYLETT on Farc’s electoral mission in Colombia: P8
What’s so funny about Israeli occupation?
Showtime from the Frontline
previewed: P11
by Conrad LandinIndustrial Reporter
FIVE kids are being subjected to hate crimes every day — and it’s only get-ting worse.
New fi gures show a shocking 62 per cent spike in racist, sexist, ableist, homophobic and transphobic incidents since last year.
School leaders said it was “disturb-ing” to see an increase, but argued that it was still “relatively rare” for these offences to take place in schools and colleges.
But Britain’s largest teaching union NEU called for personal, social and health education (PSHE) to be
enshrined in the statute book to stamp out discrimination.
Research by the Press Association found 1,487 crimes with a hate ele-ment were committed at or near schools and colleges in the last two academic years, according to data provided by 29 forces.
Of these, 919 occurred between September 2016 and July 2017 — around fi ve for each day of the school year. In the same period the previous year, the number was just 568.
Police chiefs claimed the rise could be down to “signifi cant efforts” to improve recording systems.
But Association of School and Col-
lege Leaders general secretary Geoff Barton said: “It is disturbing to see an increase in reported hate crimes in schools and colleges. We fear this refl ects a wider problem in society beyond the school gates.
“Over the past 18 months, school leaders have told us of a number of incidents in which pupils have been subjected to racial abuse by mem-bers of the public, away from school premises, as they go about their daily lives.”
Mr Barton said it was “relatively rare” for hate crimes to take place on school premises, adding: “Schools and colleges are doing a brilliant job in holding it together.”
In some of the cases, police forces fl agged the crimes as having more than one discriminatory element to them.
Racism accounted for 71 per cent of all fl agged-up crimes recorded in the last two academic years (2015/16 and 2016/17).
Religion or belief fl ags and homopho-bia accounted for 9 per cent, disability accounted for 10 per cent and transgen-der identity for 1 per cent.
NEU assistant general secretary Rosamund McNeil said: “Hate crimes are caused by negative attitudes about difference and a cycle of harm-ful stereotypes.
“Education must include opportu-
nities for learning about people, ideas and positive relationships.
“The government has a unique opportunity to make PSHE statu-tory. That could be part of how we ensure PSHE can help students understand, discuss and prevent hate crimes and the widespread stereotypes and prejudice that causes them.”
Assistant Chief Constable Mark Hamilton, National Police Chiefs Council leader for hate crime, said: “Hate crime, particularly among young people, undermines the diver-sity and tolerance that we should be celebrating.”
HATE CRIMES SOARING IN
OUR SCHOOLSAbuse in the playground jumps by 62% – and it’s getting worse
HOMELESSNESS RISE ‘LINKED TO BENEFIT CUTS’ Home news: p5
LIES RULE IN THE WHITE HOUSEAlbert Scharenberg: p10
VW FUMES TEST BACKLASH Animal cruelty: p6
NEWS HOME Morning Star2 Tuesday January 30 2018
Morning Star
The Morning Star is the most precious
and only voice we have in the daily media
~ Jeremy Corbyn
We rely on you, our readers, to
keep the only working-class
voice in British media goingFIGHTINGFUND
donate
ONLINE
www.morning
staronline.co.uk/
support
PPFF Organiser, William Rust House, 52 Beachy Road, Bow, London E3 2NS You must be 16+ to join. Registered Small Lottery London Borough of Tower Hamlets Reg No. 2708.
DON’T SEND THIS FORM TO YOUR BANK. PLEASE MAIL IT TO:
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sort code 08-90-33 for the credit of the People’s Press Fighting Fund, account number 5050-5115 the
sum of: £ each month until further notice and debit my account accordingly.
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To the manager (include bank name, address and postcode):
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‘‘ EDUCATION
Workers walk out in battle over school becoming academyConrad LandinIndustrial Reporter
TEACHERS and support staff start a three-day strike this morning as they fi ght against plans to turn a special school into an academy.
Workers at the Village School in Kingsbury, north-west Lon-don, have escalated their dispute after management refused to pause its “consultation” on tak-ing the school out of local author-ity control.
The school says a fi nal deci-sion has not yet been made and insisted that staff terms and conditions would be retained if
the school becomes an academy.The campaign against acad-
emisation has been backed by Brent North MP and shadow cabinet member Barry Gardiner as well as by local councillors, unions and the constituency Labour party.
But the National Education Union (NEU) said Muhammed Butt, the leader of Labour-con-trolled Brent Council, had gone back on his past opposition to academies and was pushing the plan through. According to the union, Mr Butt accused striking workers of acting “to punish these children.”
Brent Labour councillor
Jumbo Chan said: “I give my full wholehearted support to the out-standing, hard-working and pas-sionate teachers and support staff at the Village School, who work tirelessly every day to nur-ture the school’s young students and maximise their potential.
“Like them and many other members of the local Labour party and trade unions, I strongly oppose the wholly unnecessary, unhelpful and mis-guided proposed plans to acad-emise such a valuable local asset, and urge others to do the same.”
Hank Roberts of Brent NEU told the Star: “The only clear,
SOCIAL MOBILITY
It’ll cost you £1,000 to work for nowtLamiat Sabin
UNPAID interns in London need to fi nd at least a grand a month to work without a wage, according to research pub-lished today.
Cheaper rent in Manchester means an intern would still need £827 a month, based on the Sutton Trust’s fi gures in its report Internships — Unpaid, Unadvertised, Unfair.
There are about 70,000 internships each year, of which about 40 per cent go unpaid.
Research carried out for the TUC found that 78 per cent of 18 to 34-year-olds could not afford to live in London away from home to become an unpaid intern.
Internships advertised this month include an unpaid design intern to work for two to three months for a designer in the lead-up to London Fash-ion Week and a six-month internship, with no set hours and only expenses covered, working for an MP undertak-ing research, analysis and briefi ngs on upcoming issues.
The Trust, which aims to improve social mobility, said
it would like to see all intern-ships longer than one month to be paid at least the national minimum wage of £7.50 and, ideally, the living wage of £8.56 (£10.20 in London).
Founder and chairman of the trust and chairman of the Education Endowment Founda-tion Sir Peter Lampl said: “Failure to [pay minimum wage] prevents young people from low and moderate-income backgrounds from accessing jobs in some of the most desir-able sectors such as journal-ism, fashion, the arts and politics.”
All internships should be advertised publicly so that young people without connec-tions can have a chance, he said.
The government has con-fi rmed that there have been no prosecutions in relation to unpaid interns, even though minimum-wage legislation makes many unpaid intern-ships illegal.
The trust is backing a Bill submitted by Tory peer Lord Holmes of Richmond to ban unpaid internships lasting more than four weeks.
FGM ORDER
Dad barred from taking daughter to GuineaA MAN has been barred from taking his six-year-old daugh-ter abroad over fears that she might be at risk of female genital mutilation (FGM).
High Court judge Ms Justice Russell made the written rul-ing yesterday after being told that the girl’s father came from Guinea, west Africa, where the practice of FGM was “widespread.”
The judge concluded that the man would face pressure to have his daughter mutilated if he took her to Guinea, so she imposed an FGM protection order.
She heard evidence from the girl’s mother and father, who are separated, other family members and an academic who has researched the practice of FGM in Guinea and other west African countries.
Ms Justice Russell said the FGM protection order would remain in force until the girl turned 17.
Legislation providing for the making of such orders came into force more than two years ago. They aim to protect potential victims rather than punish offenders.
OFF-PISTE: Sale-room worker Sid Drew sits among winter sports posters to be auctioned in Edinburgh tomorrow
NEWS HOME Morning Star2 Tuesday January 30 2018
Morning Star
The Morning Star is the most precious
and only voice we have in the daily media
~ Jeremy Corbyn
We rely on you, our readers, to
keep the only working-class
voice in British media goingFIGHTINGFUND
donate
ONLINE
www.morning
staronline.co.uk/
support
PPFF Organiser, William Rust House, 52 Beachy Road, Bow, London E3 2NS You must be 16+ to join. Registered Small Lottery London Borough of Tower Hamlets Reg No. 2708.
DON’T SEND THIS FORM TO YOUR BANK. PLEASE MAIL IT TO:
My name is: My address is:
Postcode Telephone:
Email: Please pay the Cooperative Bank PLC, Islington Branch,
sort code 08-90-33 for the credit of the People’s Press Fighting Fund, account number 5050-5115 the
sum of: £ each month until further notice and debit my account accordingly.
My account number is: My sort code is:
Standing order start date: Signature
To the manager (include bank name, address and postcode):
Standing Order, People’s Press Fighting Fund
‘‘ EDUCATION
Workers walk out in battle over school becoming academyConrad LandinIndustrial Reporter
TEACHERS and support staff start a three-day strike this morning as they fight against plans to turn a special school into an academy.
Workers at the Village School in Kingsbury, north-west Lon-don, have escalated their dispute after management refused to pause its “consultation” on tak-ing the school out of local author-ity control.
The school says a final deci-sion has not yet been made and insisted that staff terms and conditions would be retained if
the school becomes an academy.The campaign against acad-
emisation has been backed by Brent North MP and shadow cabinet member Barry Gardiner as well as by local councillors, unions and the constituency Labour party.
But the National Education Union (NEU) said Muhammed Butt, the leader of Labour-con-trolled Brent Council, had gone back on his past opposition to academies and was pushing the plan through. According to the union, Mr Butt accused striking workers of acting “to punish these children.”
Brent Labour councillor
Jumbo Chan said: “I give my full wholehearted support to the out-standing, hard-working and pas-sionate teachers and support staff at the Village School, who work tirelessly every day to nur-ture the school’s young students and maximise their potential.
“Like them and many other members of the local Labour party and trade unions, I strongly oppose the wholly unnecessary, unhelpful and mis-guided proposed plans to acad-emise such a valuable local asset, and urge others to do the same.”
Hank Roberts of Brent NEU told the Star: “The only clear,
SOCIAL MOBILITY
It’ll cost you £1,000 to work for nowtLamiat Sabin
UNPAID interns in London need to find at least a grand a month to work without a wage, according to research pub-lished today.
Cheaper rent in Manchester means an intern would still need £827 a month, based on the Sutton Trust’s figures in its report Internships — Unpaid, Unadvertised, Unfair.
There are about 70,000 internships each year, of which about 40 per cent go unpaid.
Research carried out for the TUC found that 78 per cent of 18 to 34-year-olds could not afford to live in London away from home to become an unpaid intern.
Internships advertised this month include an unpaid design intern to work for two to three months for a designer in the lead-up to London Fash-ion Week and a six-month internship, with no set hours and only expenses covered, working for an MP undertak-ing research, analysis and briefings on upcoming issues.
The Trust, which aims to improve social mobility, said
it would like to see all intern-ships longer than one month to be paid at least the national minimum wage of £7.50 and, ideally, the living wage of £8.56 (£10.20 in London).
Founder and chairman of the trust and chairman of the Education Endowment Founda-tion Sir Peter Lampl said: “Failure to [pay minimum wage] prevents young people from low and moderate-income backgrounds from accessing jobs in some of the most desir-able sectors such as journal-ism, fashion, the arts and politics.”
All internships should be advertised publicly so that young people without connec-tions can have a chance, he said.
The government has con-firmed that there have been no prosecutions in relation to unpaid interns, even though minimum-wage legislation makes many unpaid intern-ships illegal.
The trust is backing a Bill submitted by Tory peer Lord Holmes of Richmond to ban unpaid internships lasting more than four weeks.
FGM ORDER
Dad barred from taking daughter to GuineaA MAN has been barred from taking his six-year-old daugh-ter abroad over fears that she might be at risk of female genital mutilation (FGM).
High Court judge Ms Justice Russell made the written rul-ing yesterday after being told that the girl’s father came from Guinea, west Africa, where the practice of FGM was “widespread.”
The judge concluded that the man would face pressure to have his daughter mutilated if he took her to Guinea, so she imposed an FGM protection order.
She heard evidence from the girl’s mother and father, who are separated, other family members and an academic who has researched the practice of FGM in Guinea and other west African countries.
Ms Justice Russell said the FGM protection order would remain in force until the girl turned 17.
Legislation providing for the making of such orders came into force more than two years ago. They aim to protect potential victims rather than punish offenders.
OFF-PISTE: Sale-room worker Sid Drew sits among winter sports posters to be auctioned in Edinburgh tomorrow
HOME NEWSMorning Star 3Tuesday January 30 2018
PROPERTY DOUBLE WHAMMY
MoD lost billions in homes sell-off – and rent rise loomsby Our News Desk
THE MINISTRY OF DEFENCE has lost billions of pounds flogging off soldiers’ accommodation that later soared in value, auditors have revealed.
In 1996 the MoD sold off 55,000 married quarters to Annington Property Ltd for £1.66bn and then rented them back from the housing com-pany. The sale made Anning-ton one of the largest private owners of residential property in Britain.
More than 20 years on, the department is still shelling out £178 million a year in rent for
39,000 of those homes it sold off, according to the National Audit Office (NAO) study.
The government is between £2.2 billion and £4.2bn out of pocket as a result of the deal, the report estimates, based on actual house-price increases since the sale.
And the auditors say the government could take a fur-ther hit after 2021, when the way rents are calculated will change and be subject to negotiation. Currently the government is renting back the homes at a discounted rate.
NAO head Amyas Morse said: “The department car-ried out a sale and leaseback
deal almost 20 years ago based upon pessimistic views of the future growth in prop-erty values, but with the mitigating feature that the rents charged to the military families who lived there were restricted for the first 20 years.
“This has cost the public sector a great deal in capital growth, and it has been a great deal for the landlord.
“In 2021 the period of restricted rents is over. The question is now whether the landlord will get a very large rent increase on top of the very substantial capital gains they have already received.”
COURTS
BRITAIN First deputy leader Jayda Fransen called Muslims “bastards” and “rapists,” a court was told yesterday.
The 31-year-old appeared at Folkestone magistrates’ court alongside the far-right group’s leader Paul Golding on charges of religiously aggravated harassment.
They were arrested in May 2017 over the distribu-tion of hate leaflets and online videos posted during a rape trial at Canterbury Crown Court in which three men and a teenager were convicted and jailed.
Video footage entitled Muslim Rapists 2 was played that showed Faiz Rahmani with his brother Tamin Rahmani, one of the defendants, and his barrister outside court.
Ms Fransen walks up and starts to question them, asking: “Are you Muslim? What are you doing here? What are you in for?”
She also questioned them about Muslim men who were standing trial for “raping British kids,” the court heard.
Mr Rahmani told the court: “She was so aggres-sive and so loud.”
The pair, both of Penge in south-east London, were charged with three and four counts respectively of the hate crime but deny the allegations.
Britain First leaders face harassment charges
INDIAN WORKERS’ ASSOCIATION
Friends and colleagues mourn ‘Comrade Sadiq’FRIENDS and comrades of Avtar Singh Sadiq, a leader among Britain’s Indian com-munist community, paid trib-ute to him yesterday after he passed away late on Sunday.
Mr Sadiq’s death “is a mas-sive loss to the international working-class movement and the Indian Workers Associa-tion (IWA) in Britain, of which he was one of the earlier mem-bers,” IWA vice-president Harsev Bains said.
“Comrade Sadiq” was equally comfortable organis-ing a dance group or attending international communist con-ferences, Mr Bains recalled, adding that the gap he would leave for the IWA, its Leicester branch in particular and his family was “immeasurable.
“Rest in peace, comrade, for you have truly earned it,” he said. “Red salute.”
Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Sitaram Yechury sent his con-dolences to Britain-based comrades, saying Mr Sadiq “served the party through the Association of Indian Com-munists in Great Britain and the Indian Workers Associa-tion.”
Morning Star readers may best remember him for his role in the annual Leicester fund-raisers for the paper, which have raised countless thou-sands of pounds for the Fight-ing Fund as guests were guar-anteed high-profile labour-movement speakers alongside great food and company.
SAFETY AT WORK
Tory twist denying compo for victimsby Peter Lazenby
THOUSANDS of shopworkers are being denied compensation after suffering assaults because of government changes to the Criminal Inju-ries Compensation Scheme.
The changes, introduced five years ago, mean that instead of being entitled to apply for compensation for injuries, workers have to apply to a “hardship” fund.
Shopworkers’ union Usdaw says that bids for compensa-tion after criminal assaults have fallen by half — while at the same time the number of assaults on shop staff has
steadily risen. Research pub-lished yesterday showed that on average 265 shopworkers suffered physical attacks every day in 2017 — a stagger-ing total of 96,625 and an increase of 25 per cent over the previous year.
The government’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported in October that there had been an 11 per cent increase in shoplifting, con-tinuing the trend of a 26 per cent increase since 2012. Shop-lifting can often lead to an attack if staff intervene.
Usdaw general secretary John Hannett said: “The gov-ernment claimed they were reforming the scheme to better
focus support for victims, but the truth is they have effec-tively closed the scheme to many, leaving thousands of innocent victims of violent crime without the opportunity of fair compensation.
“The scheme provides rec-ognition for the pain and suf-fering of the victim, financial assistance, and in many cases the receipt of compensation gives a sense of closure on an attack and helps victims to recover from the trauma.
“Shopworkers can be par-ticularly vulnerable to attack, and it is notable that in the period that claims have halved, reported incidents have significantly increased.
“With some police forces saying they are having to scale back on their investiga-tions into theft from shops because of budget cuts, cou-pled with the overuse of fixed-penalty notices, it appears this government simply does not care about the very many shopworkers who are assaulted, threatened and abused for simply doing their job.
“I am shocked by how much damage these changes have done to the way victims are treated.”
Mr Hannett has written to Justice Secretary David Gauke urging a review.
Shopworkers’ claims drop by half despite steady rise in attacks
tangible outcome of academisa-tion has been shown to be vastly increased salaries to those at the top and a wider pay gap between those at the top and the over-whelming number of staff.
“Muhammed Butt has said that it is his aim to seek to ‘reverse the outsourcing of serv-ices’ that Brent has done previ-ously and bring them back in house as a way of providing a better and more economical service, which we applaud.
“But at the same time, in com-plete contradiction, he is propos-ing support for the running of yet another local-authority school to be outsourced: it’s utter hypocrisy.”
Cllr Mili Patel, Brent’s cabinet member for childrenMili Patel said: “The Village School and Woodfield School have worked in partnership for some time.
The education policies of the Tory government — including a £2.7 billion cut to the schools budget and barriers to schools partnering up in any way that doesn’t involve them becoming academies — have led to the Village School governors consid-
ering joining the same multi-academy trust as Woodfield. This is something most of the governors themselves would tell you they never thought they would be considering.
“As a Labour council we do not want them to take this step and I have been working hard to dem-onstrate the advantages of stay-ing within the Brent school of families to its governors.
It is encouraging the gover-nors have taken this important decision out to consultation which will give local people the chance to demonstrate the strength of feeling there is in Brent against these plans.”
Headteacher Kay Charles said: “We are consulting on the potential to form a multi-acad-emy trust with Woodfield School and ask all parties to engage and contribute. Our main aim is to provide the foundations for a partnership that helps both schools maintain their outstand-ing provision for children and young people with complex needs, in what is a challenging time for education.”
2 discs with 34 tracks from great bands and artists - a wealth of talent, consciousness and an egalitarian spirit of resistance in words and music
£10 £5 + £2 postage and packagingAll proceeds go to the Morning StarOnline: shop.morningstaronline.co.ukPhone: (020) 8510-0815
DON’T BE LEFT WITHOUT USNOW HALF PRICE!
FEATURING: Attila the Stockbroker, Thee Faction, The Hurriers, Fight Rosa Fight! Argonaut, Joe Solo, Wimmins Institute,
Minotaurs and many, many more!
HOME NEWSMorning Star 3Tuesday January 30 2018
PROPERTY DOUBLE WHAMMY
MoD lost billions in homes sell-off – and rent rise loomsby Our News Desk
THE MINISTRY OF DEFENCE has lost billions of pounds fl ogging off soldiers’ accommodation that later soared in value, auditors have revealed.
In 1996 the MoD sold off 55,000 married quarters to Annington Property Ltd for £1.66bn and then rented them back from the housing com-pany. The sale made Anning-ton one of the largest private owners of residential property in Britain.
More than 20 years on, the department is still shelling out £178 million a year in rent for
39,000 of those homes it sold off, according to the National Audit Offi ce (NAO) study.
The government is between £2.2 billion and £4.2bn out of pocket as a result of the deal, the report estimates, based on actual house-price increases since the sale.
And the auditors say the government could take a fur-ther hit after 2021, when the way rents are calculated will change and be subject to negotiation. Currently the government is renting back the homes at a discounted rate.
NAO head Amyas Morse said: “The department car-ried out a sale and leaseback
deal almost 20 years ago based upon pessimistic views of the future growth in prop-erty values, but with the mitigating feature that the rents charged to the military families who lived there were restricted for the fi rst 20 years.
“This has cost the public sector a great deal in capital growth, and it has been a great deal for the landlord.
“In 2021 the period of restricted rents is over. The question is now whether the landlord will get a very large rent increase on top of the very substantial capital gains they have already received.”
COURTS
BRITAIN First deputy leader Jayda Fransen called Muslims “bastards” and “rapists,” a court was told yesterday.
The 31-year-old appeared at Folkestone magistrates’ court alongside the far-right group’s leader Paul Golding on charges of religiously aggravated harassment.
They were arrested in May 2017 over the distribu-tion of hate leafl ets and online videos posted during a rape trial at Canterbury Crown Court in which three men and a teenager were convicted and jailed.
Video footage entitled Muslim Rapists 2 was played that showed Faiz Rahmani with his brother Tamin Rahmani, one of the defendants, and his barrister outside court.
Ms Fransen walks up and starts to question them, asking: “Are you Muslim? What are you doing here? What are you in for?”
She also questioned them about Muslim men who were standing trial for “raping British kids,” the court heard.
Mr Rahmani told the court: “She was so aggres-sive and so loud.”
The pair, both of Penge in south-east London, were charged with three and four counts respectively of the hate crime but deny the allegations.
Britain First leaders face harassment charges
INDIAN WORKERS’ ASSOCIATION
Friends and colleagues mourn ‘Comrade Sadiq’FRIENDS and comrades of Avtar Singh Sadiq, a leader among Britain’s Indian com-munist community, paid trib-ute to him yesterday after he passed away late on Sunday.
Mr Sadiq’s death “is a mas-sive loss to the international working-class movement and the Indian Workers Associa-tion (IWA) in Britain, of which he was one of the earlier mem-bers,” IWA vice-president Harsev Bains said.
“Comrade Sadiq” was equally comfortable organis-ing a dance group or attending international communist con-ferences, Mr Bains recalled, adding that the gap he would leave for the IWA, its Leicester branch in particular and his family was “immeasurable.
“Rest in peace, comrade, for you have truly earned it,” he said. “Red salute.”
Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Sitaram Yechury sent his con-dolences to Britain-based comrades, saying Mr Sadiq “served the party through the Association of Indian Com-munists in Great Britain and the Indian Workers Associa-tion.”
Morning Star readers may best remember him for his role in the annual Leicester fund-raisers for the paper, which have raised countless thou-sands of pounds for the Fight-ing Fund as guests were guar-anteed high-profi le labour-movement speakers alongside great food and company.
SAFETY AT WORK
Tory twist denying compo for victimsby Peter Lazenby
THOUSANDS of shopworkers are being denied compensation after suffering assaults because of government changes to the Criminal Inju-ries Compensation Scheme.
The changes, introduced fi ve years ago, mean that instead of being entitled to apply for compensation for injuries, workers have to apply to a “hardship” fund.
Shopworkers’ union Usdaw says that bids for compensa-tion after criminal assaults have fallen by half — while at the same time the number of assaults on shop staff has
steadily risen. Research pub-lished yesterday showed that on average 265 shopworkers suffered physical attacks every day in 2017 — a stagger-ing total of 96,625 and an increase of 25 per cent over the previous year.
The government’s Offi ce for National Statistics (ONS) reported in October that there had been an 11 per cent increase in shoplifting, con-tinuing the trend of a 26 per cent increase since 2012. Shop-lifting can often lead to an attack if staff intervene.
Usdaw general secretary John Hannett said: “The gov-ernment claimed they were reforming the scheme to better
focus support for victims, but the truth is they have effec-tively closed the scheme to many, leaving thousands of innocent victims of violent crime without the opportunity of fair compensation.
“The scheme provides rec-ognition for the pain and suf-fering of the victim, fi nancial assistance, and in many cases the receipt of compensation gives a sense of closure on an attack and helps victims to recover from the trauma.
“Shopworkers can be par-ticularly vulnerable to attack, and it is notable that in the period that claims have halved, reported incidents have signifi cantly increased.
“With some police forces saying they are having to scale back on their investiga-tions into theft from shops because of budget cuts, cou-pled with the overuse of fi xed-penalty notices, it appears this government simply does not care about the very many shopworkers who are assaulted, threatened and abused for simply doing their job.
“I am shocked by how much damage these changes have done to the way victims are treated.”
Mr Hannett has written to Justice Secretary David Gauke urging a review.
Shopworkers’ claims drop by half despite steady rise in attacks
tangible outcome of academisa-tion has been shown to be vastly increased salaries to those at the top and a wider pay gap between those at the top and the over-whelming number of staff.
“Muhammed Butt has said that it is his aim to seek to ‘reverse the outsourcing of serv-ices’ that Brent has done previ-ously and bring them back in house as a way of providing a better and more economical service, which we applaud.
“But at the same time, in com-plete contradiction, he is propos-ing support for the running of yet another local-authority school to be outsourced: it’s utter hypocrisy.”
Cllr Mili Patel, Brent’s cabinet member for childrenMili Patel said: “The Village School and Woodfi eld School have worked in partnership for some time.
The education policies of the Tory government — including a £2.7 billion cut to the schools budget and barriers to schools partnering up in any way that doesn’t involve them becoming academies — have led to the Village School governors consid-
ering joining the same multi-academy trust as Woodfi eld. This is something most of the governors themselves would tell you they never thought they would be considering.
“As a Labour council we do not want them to take this step and I have been working hard to dem-onstrate the advantages of stay-ing within the Brent school of families to its governors.
It is encouraging the gover-nors have taken this important decision out to consultation which will give local people the chance to demonstrate the strength of feeling there is in Brent against these plans.”
Headteacher Kay Charles said: “We are consulting on the potential to form a multi-acad-emy trust with Woodfi eld School and ask all parties to engage and contribute. Our main aim is to provide the foundations for a partnership that helps both schools maintain their outstand-ing provision for children and young people with complex needs, in what is a challenging time for education.”
2 discs with 34 tracks from great bands and artists - a wealth of talent, consciousness and an egalitarian spirit of resistance in words and music
£10 £5 + £2 postage and packagingAll proceeds go to the Morning StarOnline: shop.morningstaronline.co.ukPhone: (020) 8510-0815
DON’T BE LEFT WITHOUT USNOW HALF PRICE!
FEATURING: Attila the Stockbroker, Thee Faction, The Hurriers, Fight Rosa Fight! Argonaut, Joe Solo, Wimmins Institute,
Minotaurs and many, many more!
NEWS HOME Morning Star4 Tuesday January 30 2018
There were three, now they have gone
JACK AMOS1946 - 2010
Remembering his humanity, humour and
his political certainties.
Joy
VERONICA GIBSON(Liverpool)
January 30 1928 – December 22 2015
Our Mum – wartime evacuee, communist, and a great believer in “Deeds not words”
Remembering her today and always
Jane, John, Paul, Ralph and families
CONSTRUCTION
Carillion apprentices to lose their pay packets this weekby Our News Desk
UNIONS lambasted the gov-ernment yesterday following confirmation that apprentices caught up in the Carillion col-lapse will not be paid from later this week.
Skills Minister Anne Mil-ton said that affected appren-tices would only be paid by the receiver until the end of January.
The written answer to shadow education secretary Angela Rayner said that the Construction Industry Train-ing Board was “utilising their existing employer contracts” and grant incentives to secure employers for apprentices.
“Once alternative employ-ment has been secured, it will
be the responsibility of these individual employers to deter-mine the frequency of pay-ments to their apprentices,” said Ms Milton.
Ms Rayner said: “This sim-ply isn’t good enough. Minis-ters had promised that these apprentices were being taken back in-house and that they were doing everything to keep them in training, but now they admit that they could stop being paid within a week.”
And construction union GMB national officer Rehana Azam said: “Once again the govern-ment’s response to the Carillion crisis is inadequate and inept.
“These are young people starting out in their careers and they have no idea if they will have apprenticeships this time next week.
“It’s simply not good enough — the government has a duty of care to these people.
“They should give a guar-antee these people gain the skills to become Britain’s future workforce.
“We were told every Caril-lion apprentice would be con-tacted. The evidence suggests that is not the case.”
The government also announced the launch of a new company to take over Carillion’s prisons management services including cleaning, reactive maintenance, landscaping and planned building repair work.
Yet the move was not well received by the PCS union, which represents ex-Carillion staff in the prison service.
General secretary Mark Serwotka said: “This decision
by [Justice Secretary] David Gauke to form a temporary government company for the ex-Carillion staff is short-sighted and wrong.
“While we welcome the ini-tial protections for the staff and services involved, the work should be brought back fully in house under the control of HM Prison and Probation Service.
“This half-way house of a government company could well be a stepping stone to a further outsourcing of the work. It shows the government has learnt nothing from the collapse of Carillion.”
The Financial Reporting Council watchdog is to open an investigation into accountancy giant KPMG over its audits of Carillion.
INDUSTRIAL
DHL tells drivers: accept £2k cuts or on your bikesby Peter Lazenby
PARCELS delivery firm DHL-UK Mail has told its self-employed couriers they must take a £2,000 a year pay cut or be sacked.
General union GMB has warned the firm to drop its threat or “face the conse-quences.”
Since the deregulation of the postal service in 2006, UK Mail, now a subsidiary of the transnational Deutsche Post DHL Group, has competed with the Royal Mail in collection and distribution of mail.
The firm delivered its ultimatum to drivers at 55 depots despite having made profits of £41 million in 2016, forking out £5m in dividends to shareholders and £900,000 in pay to directors. It delivers for big brand names including Marks & Spencer, House of Fraser, O2, Ebay and Argos.
GMB accused DHL “of appalling treatment” of couriers, who at some depots were called in by management one by one and confronted with new contracts incorporating the
£2,000 pay cut. They were told to sign or be sacked.
GMB national officer Mick Rix said: “GMB has been inundated with calls from members and other drivers at DHL-UK Mail over its draconian treatment of drivers. The company made healthy profits in 2016 and appears to be aping other parcel firms’ model: paying executives huge amounts while expecting workers to do more as they cut their pay.
“We are urging all drivers for DHL-UK Mail to contact GMB — we have lawyers waiting to talk to them.”
GMB organiser Stephen Boden said: “The way UK Mail is treating drivers is nothing short of appalling.
“Forcing self-employed drivers to take a £2,000 pay cut on pain of losing work is scandalous.
“GMB calls on UK Mail to drop this exploitative sort of action or face the consequences.”
The firm said the earnings of self-employed drivers have gone up following a “significant increase” in the number of parcels being delivered.
NATURE: A project to reveal the hidden heritage and wildlife of burial grounds across England and Wales has secured more than £580,000 in lottery funding.
The Beautiful Burial Ground scheme will record and map historic buildings and monuments and species found in churchyards and cemeter-ies, to encourage more people to visit them and help secure their future.
NEWS HOME Morning Star4 Tuesday January 30 2018
There were three, now they have gone
JACK AMOS1946 - 2010
Remembering his humanity, humour and
his political certainties.
Joy
VERONICA GIBSON(Liverpool)
January 30 1928 – December 22 2015
Our Mum – wartime evacuee, communist, and a great believer in “Deeds not words”
Remembering her today and always
Jane, John, Paul, Ralph and families
coNStructioN
carillion apprentices to lose their pay packets this weekby our News Desk
UNIONS lambasted the gov-ernment yesterday following confirmation that apprentices caught up in the Carillion col-lapse will not be paid from later this week.
Skills Minister Anne Mil-ton said that affected appren-tices would only be paid by the receiver until the end of January.
The written answer to shadow education secretary Angela Rayner said that the Construction Industry Train-ing Board was “utilising their existing employer contracts” and grant incentives to secure employers for apprentices.
“Once alternative employ-ment has been secured, it will
be the responsibility of these individual employers to deter-mine the frequency of pay-ments to their apprentices,” said Ms Milton.
Ms Rayner said: “This sim-ply isn’t good enough. Minis-ters had promised that these apprentices were being taken back in-house and that they were doing everything to keep them in training, but now they admit that they could stop being paid within a week.”
And construction union GMB national officer Rehana Azam said: “Once again the govern-ment’s response to the Carillion crisis is inadequate and inept.
“These are young people starting out in their careers and they have no idea if they will have apprenticeships this time next week.
“It’s simply not good enough — the government has a duty of care to these people.
“They should give a guar-antee these people gain the skills to become Britain’s future workforce.
“We were told every Caril-lion apprentice would be con-tacted. The evidence suggests that is not the case.”
The government also announced the launch of a new company to take over Carillion’s prisons management services including cleaning, reactive maintenance, landscaping and planned building repair work.
Yet the move was not well received by the PCS union, which represents ex-Carillion staff in the prison service.
General secretary Mark Serwotka said: “This decision
by [Justice Secretary] David Gauke to form a temporary government company for the ex-Carillion staff is short-sighted and wrong.
“While we welcome the ini-tial protections for the staff and services involved, the work should be brought back fully in house under the control of HM Prison and Probation Service.
“This half-way house of a government company could well be a stepping stone to a further outsourcing of the work. It shows the government has learnt nothing from the collapse of Carillion.”
The Financial Reporting Council watchdog is to open an investigation into accountancy giant KPMG over its audits of Carillion.
iNDuStrial
DHL tells drivers: accept £2k cuts or on your bikesby Peter lazenby
PARCELS delivery firm DHL-UK Mail has told its self-employed couriers they must take a £2,000 a year pay cut or be sacked.
General union GMB has warned the firm to drop its threat or “face the conse-quences.”
Since the deregulation of the postal service in 2006, UK Mail, now a subsidiary of the transnational Deutsche Post DHL Group, has competed with the Royal Mail in collection and distribution of mail.
The firm delivered its ultimatum to drivers at 55 depots despite having made profits of £41 million in 2016, forking out £5m in dividends to shareholders and £900,000 in pay to directors. It delivers for big brand names including Marks & Spencer, House of Fraser, O2, Ebay and Argos.
GMB accused DHL “of appalling treatment” of couriers, who at some depots were called in by management one by one and confronted with new contracts incorporating the
£2,000 pay cut. They were told to sign or be sacked.
GMB national officer Mick Rix said: “GMB has been inundated with calls from members and other drivers at DHL-UK Mail over its draconian treatment of drivers. The company made healthy profits in 2016 and appears to be aping other parcel firms’ model: paying executives huge amounts while expecting workers to do more as they cut their pay.
“We are urging all drivers for DHL-UK Mail to contact GMB — we have lawyers waiting to talk to them.”
GMB organiser Stephen Boden said: “The way UK Mail is treating drivers is nothing short of appalling.
“Forcing self-employed drivers to take a £2,000 pay cut on pain of losing work is scandalous.
“GMB calls on UK Mail to drop this exploitative sort of action or face the consequences.”
The firm said the earnings of self-employed drivers have gone up following a “significant increase” in the number of parcels being delivered.
NaturE: A project to reveal the hidden heritage and wildlife of burial grounds across England and Wales has secured more than £580,000 in lottery funding.
The Beautiful Burial Ground scheme will record and map historic buildings and monuments and species found in churchyards and cemeter-ies, to encourage more people to visit them and help secure their future.
HOME NEWSMorning Star 5Tuesday January 30 2018
The authors make a compelling case for Holyrood to become an instrument of the people
Just £8 plus p&p(020) 8510-0815 shop.morningstaronline.co.uk
by Mary Davis and Angus Reid
A MODEST PROPOSAL
In a claustrophobic concrete cell, two men face each other across a bare table. One is a wanted terrorist, the other a British intelligence officer. But as the violent secrets are revealed, the line between interrogator and confessor begins to blur.
“A book that’s too important not to read.” – Morning Star
CONFESSIONS OF A TERRORIST by Richard
Jackson
£9 £8.10 + £2.70 postage and packagingshop.morningstaronline.co.uk | (020) 8510-0815
houSiNg
rough-sleeping rise ‘linked to benefits’by lamiat Sabin
RISING homelessness can almost entirely be accounted for by private-sector tenants being evicted because of ben-efit reforms and the housing market, academics said yes-terday.
The number of people offi-cially recorded as sleeping on the streets of England rose from 1,768 when the Tories took over in 2010 to 4,751 in 2017, according to the Ministry of Housing — though charities say the true figure is more than double that.
It is the highest number since comparable records began in 2010.
Writing in the British Med-ical Journal, Mark Fransham and Danny Dorling of the Uni-versity of Oxford warn of the serious health implications of sleeping rough, including res-
piratory conditions, depres-sion, anxiety, accidents, shorter life-span and excess winter mortality.
The rise in rough-sleeping runs parallel to an increase in homeless families housed by councils in temporary accom-modation over the seven years, from 50,000 to 78,000, they wrote.
In London alone, there are
an estimated 225,000 “hidden homeless” people aged 16-25, who are sofa-surfing and being put up on a temporary basis by friends or family.
Likely causes for the huge hike in homelessness include high rents and reduced avail-ability of affordable social housing since the early 1980s, they said.
Reduced funding for sup-porting vulnerable people with housing — cut by 59 per cent in real terms since 2010 — and restrictions on housing benefit for poorer families have also contributed, the pair said.
“What is needed is a com-prehensive strategy that improves services for vulner-able people, an increased sup-ply of affordable housing, more security of tenancies, adequate cash benefits to cover the rising cost of housing and more efficient use of our exist-ing housing stock,” they wrote.
They described several ini-tiatives, such the “housing first” model, which provides a secure tenancy for rough-sleepers before associated issues like substance misuse and ill-health are addressed.
This approach is found in Finland, the only European country where homelessness has recently fallen, they said.
It is now being piloted in Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham, with estimated potential savings of up to £5 million a year.
Labour leader Jeremy Cor-byn announced on Sunday that a Labour government would immediately buy 8,000 proper-ties to house rough sleepers.
The party would also give local authorities the power to seize properties that had been deliberately left vacant, he told BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show.
Increasing homelessness down to Tory policies, say academics
PovErty
Parents ‘skip meals to feed children’by lamiat Sabin
PARENTS are skipping meals because they cannot afford to buy food for their whole fam-ily, according to a new report revealing shocking levels of “hidden hunger.”
More than one in 10 adults do not have enough money to buy food, rising to almost one in four parents with children under the age of 18, a survey of more than 2,000 people by End Hunger UK showed.
About one in 12 people polled by the coalition of anti food-poverty charities said they had gone without food for a whole day because of lack of money in the past year.
Four out of five adults believe the government should monitor how many people live with food insecurity.
A private member’s Bill introduced by Labour MP Emma Lewell-Buck, which is due to undergo its second read-ing in Parliament on Friday, calls on ministers to compile
an annual report on food inse-curity soon after the Office for National Statistics’ annual Liv-ing Costs and Food Survey data is published.
Laura Sandys, founder of the Food Foundation, one of the charities in the coalition, said: “The research shows that more and more British families are unable to provide regular meals and are frequently anxious about providing the basics: food on the table for their families.”
The former Thanet South Tory MP admitted: “Not only
is this unacceptable in 21st-century Britain, but we have to start counting the health and social consequences for the next generation.”
Ms Lewell-Buck said food insecurity must be measured as the record number of emergency foodbank parcels given out by the Trussell Trust alone — 1.1 million — is “clearly the tip of the iceberg.” The UN estimates that more than eight million people in Britain are living with food insecurity, she said.
Poor littlE crittEr: A trip to the dentist is bad enough for most of us, but when you’re only eight inches tall and weigh just 500 grams it’s something else.
Pygmy slow loris Charlie is probably the first of his species ever to have a hemimand-ibulectomy — the removal of one side of his lower jaw.
Charlie, who lives at Paignton Zoo in Devon, caught an infection in his lower jaw following surgery to remove an abscess.
WellVersed
TOP NEW PoEtry EVERY THURSDAY IN THE
MorNiNg Star
EDucatioN
THE Tories were accused yesterday of “deleting” Labour from school history syllabuses.
Labour MP Rupa Huq told the Commons that teachers and students in her constituency were concerned at the “political imbalance” of the new A-level history exam.
The Ealing Central & Acton MP argued that key events had been omitted from the syllabus.
She said: “It completely omits the 1945 to ’51 Labour government, asks candi-dates for Conservative strengths and Labour weak-nesses and stops in 1997.
“By deleting Labour are they trying to rewrite history?”
Education Minister Nick Gibb said the syllabus was “widely consulted on” before it was confirmed, while “independent” exam boards set the content “so long as they conform to the subject content.”
Tories ‘trying to delete Labour from our history’
HOME NEWSMorning Star 5Tuesday January 30 2018
The authors make a compelling case for Holyrood to become an instrument of the people
Just £8 plus p&p(020) 8510-0815 shop.morningstaronline.co.uk
by Mary Davis and Angus Reid
A MODEST PROPOSAL
In a claustrophobic concrete cell, two men face each other across a bare table. One is a wanted terrorist, the other a British intelligence offi cer. But as the violent secrets are revealed, the line between interrogator and confessor begins to blur.
“A book that’s too important not to read.” – Morning Star
CONFESSIONS OF A TERRORIST by Richard
Jackson
£9 £8.10 + £2.70 postage and packagingshop.morningstaronline.co.uk | (020) 8510-0815
HOUSING
Rough-sleeping rise ‘linked to benefi ts’by Lamiat Sabin
RISING homelessness can almost entirely be accounted for by private-sector tenants being evicted because of ben-efi t reforms and the housing market, academics said yes-terday.
The number of people offi -cially recorded as sleeping on the streets of England rose from 1,768 when the Tories took over in 2010 to 4,751 in 2017, according to the Ministry of Housing — though charities say the true fi gure is more than double that.
It is the highest number since comparable records began in 2010.
Writing in the British Med-ical Journal, Mark Fransham and Danny Dorling of the Uni-versity of Oxford warn of the serious health implications of sleeping rough, including res-
piratory conditions, depres-sion, anxiety, accidents, shorter life-span and excess winter mortality.
The rise in rough-sleeping runs parallel to an increase in homeless families housed by councils in temporary accom-modation over the seven years, from 50,000 to 78,000, they wrote.
In London alone, there are
an estimated 225,000 “hidden homeless” people aged 16-25, who are sofa-surfi ng and being put up on a temporary basis by friends or family.
Likely causes for the huge hike in homelessness include high rents and reduced avail-ability of affordable social housing since the early 1980s, they said.
Reduced funding for sup-porting vulnerable people with housing — cut by 59 per cent in real terms since 2010 — and restrictions on housing benefi t for poorer families have also contributed, the pair said.
“What is needed is a com-prehensive strategy that improves services for vulner-able people, an increased sup-ply of affordable housing, more security of tenancies, adequate cash benefi ts to cover the rising cost of housing and more effi cient use of our exist-ing housing stock,” they wrote.
They described several ini-tiatives, such the “housing fi rst” model, which provides a secure tenancy for rough-sleepers before associated issues like substance misuse and ill-health are addressed.
This approach is found in Finland, the only European country where homelessness has recently fallen, they said.
It is now being piloted in Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham, with estimated potential savings of up to £5 million a year.
Labour leader Jeremy Cor-byn announced on Sunday that a Labour government would immediately buy 8,000 proper-ties to house rough sleepers.
The party would also give local authorities the power to seize properties that had been deliberately left vacant, he told BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show.
Increasing homelessness down to Tory policies, say academics
POVERTY
Parents ‘skip meals to feed children’by Lamiat Sabin
PARENTS are skipping meals because they cannot afford to buy food for their whole fam-ily, according to a new report revealing shocking levels of “hidden hunger.”
More than one in 10 adults do not have enough money to buy food, rising to almost one in four parents with children under the age of 18, a survey of more than 2,000 people by End Hunger UK showed.
About one in 12 people polled by the coalition of anti food-poverty charities said they had gone without food for a whole day because of lack of money in the past year.
Four out of fi ve adults believe the government should monitor how many people live with food insecurity.
A private member’s Bill introduced by Labour MP Emma Lewell-Buck, which is due to undergo its second read-ing in Parliament on Friday, calls on ministers to compile
an annual report on food inse-curity soon after the Offi ce for National Statistics’ annual Liv-ing Costs and Food Survey data is published.
Laura Sandys, founder of the Food Foundation, one of the charities in the coalition, said: “The research shows that more and more British families are unable to provide regular meals and are frequently anxious about providing the basics: food on the table for their families.”
The former Thanet South Tory MP admitted: “Not only
is this unacceptable in 21st-century Britain, but we have to start counting the health and social consequences for the next generation.”
Ms Lewell-Buck said food insecurity must be measured as the record number of emergency foodbank parcels given out by the Trussell Trust alone — 1.1 million — is “clearly the tip of the iceberg.” The UN estimates that more than eight million people in Britain are living with food insecurity, she said.
POOR LITTLE CRITTER: A trip to the dentist is bad enough for most of us, but when you’re only eight inches tall and weigh just 500 grams it’s something else.
Pygmy slow loris Charlie is probably the fi rst of his species ever to have a hemimand-ibulectomy — the removal of one side of his lower jaw.
Charlie, who lives at Paignton Zoo in Devon, caught an infection in his lower jaw following surgery to remove an abscess.
WellVersed
TOP NEW POETRY EVERY THURSDAY IN THE
MORNING STAR
EDUCATION
THE Tories were accused yesterday of “deleting” Labour from school history syllabuses.
Labour MP Rupa Huq told the Commons that teachers and students in her constituency were concerned at the “political imbalance” of the new A-level history exam.
The Ealing Central & Acton MP argued that key events had been omitted from the syllabus.
She said: “It completely omits the 1945 to ’51 Labour government, asks candi-dates for Conservative strengths and Labour weak-nesses and stops in 1997.
“By deleting Labour are they trying to rewrite history?”
Education Minister Nick Gibb said the syllabus was “widely consulted on” before it was confi rmed, while “independent” exam boards set the content “so long as they conform to the subject content.”
Tories ‘trying to delete Labour from our history’
NEWS WORLD Morning Star6 Tuesday January 30 2018
POLAND
Israel to have say on Holocaust lawby Our Foreign Desk
POLAND has agreed to hold talks with Israel over contro-versial new legislation relating to the Holocaust, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday night.
He spoke ahead of Pope Francis’s address to an Italian conference on anti-semitism, at which the Catholic leader called on people of different faiths to build a “common memory” of the Holocaust.
Poland’s new Bill criminal-ises any references to nazi death camps on occupied Polish soil as “Polish camps” — and also outlaws assertions of Polish complicity in the Holocaust, in which six million Jews, over half of them from Poland, made up the majority of those exterminated.
Critics say the law could ban historical research indicating the participation of some Poles in the murder of Jews.
Simon Wiesenthal Centre director Mark Weitzman called it an “obscene whitewashing” of history that could be used to stop Holocaust survivors talk-ing about their experiences.
Nationalist governments in central and eastern Europe have heavily rewritten the his-tory of the second world war to present the Soviet army, which liberated the region from nazi occupation and ended the Holocaust, in a worse light.
In Ukraine, where the gov-ernment styles itself as the heir to far-right nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera’s Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, ref-erences to that organisation’s active participation in the eth-nic cleansing of Jews and Poles has been criminalised.
Even anti-communist histo-rian Anthony Beevor’s book Stalingrad has been banned by Kiev for detailing the mur-der of Jewish children by Ukrainian nationalists.
PHILIPPINES
Police vow to cut killings as they rejoin drugs warPHILIPPINES police resumed a “less bloody” crackdown on drugs yesterday.
President Rodrigo Duterte, who vowed during his election campaign to pardon himself at the end of his term for “mul-tiple murders,” had twice paused the anti-drugs pro-gramme — in which officers visit the homes of suspected dealers and encourage them to reform — because of reported abuses by the police.
But he has restarted the visits, which are supposed to be the friendlier prong in his anti-drugs programme, because the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency was not
big enough to handle the job.National Police director-
general Ronald dela Rosa said there would be stricter safe-guards on the visits, with jour-nalists, priests and human rights groups invited along.
He said visits had only turned violent because of the suspects but promised that they would be “less bloody” this time around.
The government says 3,968 drugs suspects have been killed in clashes with police between Mr Duterte taking office in June 2016 and last November, though human rights groups say the number is much higher.
INDIA
More than 100 arrested after wave of communal violenceMORE than 100 people have been arrested in the Uttar Pradesh town of Kasganj after a weekend of communal violence that left one young man dead, police reported yesterday.
Violence broke out on Fri-day when local Muslims cel-ebrating Republic Day were attacked by activists from the ABVP, the youth section of the right-wing Hindu chauvinist RSS, a paramilitary organisa-tion linked to the governing BJP.
ABVP members were reportedly annoyed that the Muslim celebration meant
their motorcycle rally had to be diverted and the two sides started pelting each other with stones.
The dead man was identi-fied as 22-year-old Chandan Gupta.
ABVP activists seemingly went on the rampage over the weekend after Mr Gupta was cremated, burning down sev-eral shops and vehicles and beating up Muslims.
A police statement said: “So far, 112 persons have been arrested.As many as 31 accused have been arrested, and 81 preventive arrests have been made.”
GERMANY
Volkswagen faces backlash over fume tests on humansby Our Foreign Desk
GERMANY’S government laid into Volkswagen yesterday after reports that, in an echo of the nazi era, the flagship carmaker had tested its exhaust fumes on humans and monkeys.
Transport Minister Chris-tian Schmidt had “no under-standing for such tests … that do not serve science but merely PR aims,” spokesman Ingo Strater told reporters in Berlin.
He called on companies con-cerned to provide “immediate and detailed” responses and said a ministry commission of inquiry that was set up after the 2015 emissions scandal will hold a special meeting to examine whether there are any other cases.
Germany’s automative industry is still reeling from its shaming, having been caught fitting cars with soft-ware to cheat emissions tests.
But a New York Times report on Thursday revealed that research group EUGT, which is funded by Volkswa-gen, Daimler and BMW, had carried out research on mon-keys to counter a World Health Organisation decision that die-sel exhaust is carcinogenic.
The paper said that EUGT had put 10 monkeys in an air-tight chamber and exposed them to fumes from a recent VW Beetle model and an older Ford pickup to show that mod-ern diesel technology had solved the problem of excess emissions.
The tests were carried out in 2014, before VW was caught cheating, and the car used was fitted with the illegal software that turned emissions controls on while the car was on test stands and off during regular driving, said the paper.
And yesterday the Stuttgar-ter Zeitung reported that the now-defunct research group had also commissioned tests in which humans were exposed
to nitrogen oxides, a class of pollutant. EUGT reportedly said the tests showed no effect on the 19 men and six women used as test subjects.
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said that “the disgust many people are feeling is absolutely understandable.”
“These tests on monkeys or even humans can in no way be ethically justified,” he said. “They raise many critical questions for those behind
these tests, and these ques-tions must urgently be answered.”
VW chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch said the tests were “totally incomprehensible” and must be “investigated com-pletely and without reserva-tion,” the DPA news agency reported.
Volkswagen was set up in Wolfsburg in 1937 by the Ger-man Labour Front under nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
CUBA: A US-sponsored statue of independence hero Jose Marti was unveiled in Havana on Sunday in a sign of Cuba’s focus on maintain-ing ties with the United States despite a chill in relations under President Donald Trump.
The bronze statue of Marti on a rearing horse was funded with $2.5million raised in the US by the Bronx Museum of the Arts.
The 18ft-long work is an exact copy of a sculpture installed in New York’s Central Park in 1965.
NEWS WORLD Morning Star6 Tuesday January 30 2018
POLAND
Israel to have say on Holocaust lawby Our Foreign Desk
POLAND has agreed to hold talks with Israel over contro-versial new legislation relating to the Holocaust, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday night.
He spoke ahead of Pope Francis’s address to an Italian conference on anti-semitism, at which the Catholic leader called on people of different faiths to build a “common memory” of the Holocaust.
Poland’s new Bill criminal-ises any references to nazi death camps on occupied Polish soil as “Polish camps” — and also outlaws assertions of Polish complicity in the Holocaust, in which six million Jews, over half of them from Poland, made up the majority of those exterminated.
Critics say the law could ban historical research indicating the participation of some Poles in the murder of Jews.
Simon Wiesenthal Centre director Mark Weitzman called it an “obscene whitewashing” of history that could be used to stop Holocaust survivors talk-ing about their experiences.
Nationalist governments in central and eastern Europe have heavily rewritten the his-tory of the second world war to present the Soviet army, which liberated the region from nazi occupation and ended the Holocaust, in a worse light.
In Ukraine, where the gov-ernment styles itself as the heir to far-right nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera’s Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, ref-erences to that organisation’s active participation in the eth-nic cleansing of Jews and Poles has been criminalised.
Even anti-communist histo-rian Anthony Beevor’s book Stalingrad has been banned by Kiev for detailing the mur-der of Jewish children by Ukrainian nationalists.
PHILIPPINES
Police vow to cut killings as they rejoin drugs warPHILIPPINES police resumed a “less bloody” crackdown on drugs yesterday.
President Rodrigo Duterte, who vowed during his election campaign to pardon himself at the end of his term for “mul-tiple murders,” had twice paused the anti-drugs pro-gramme — in which officers visit the homes of suspected dealers and encourage them to reform — because of reported abuses by the police.
But he has restarted the visits, which are supposed to be the friendlier prong in his anti-drugs programme, because the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency was not
big enough to handle the job.National Police director-
general Ronald dela Rosa said there would be stricter safe-guards on the visits, with jour-nalists, priests and human rights groups invited along.
He said visits had only turned violent because of the suspects but promised that they would be “less bloody” this time around.
The government says 3,968 drugs suspects have been killed in clashes with police between Mr Duterte taking office in June 2016 and last November, though human rights groups say the number is much higher.
INDIA
More than 100 arrested after wave of communal violenceMORE than 100 people have been arrested in the Uttar Pradesh town of Kasganj after a weekend of communal violence that left one young man dead, police reported yesterday.
Violence broke out on Fri-day when local Muslims cel-ebrating Republic Day were attacked by activists from the ABVP, the youth section of the right-wing Hindu chauvinist RSS, a paramilitary organisa-tion linked to the governing BJP.
ABVP members were reportedly annoyed that the Muslim celebration meant
their motorcycle rally had to be diverted and the two sides started pelting each other with stones.
The dead man was identi-fied as 22-year-old Chandan Gupta.
ABVP activists seemingly went on the rampage over the weekend after Mr Gupta was cremated, burning down sev-eral shops and vehicles and beating up Muslims.
A police statement said: “So far, 112 persons have been arrested.As many as 31 accused have been arrested, and 81 preventive arrests have been made.”
GERMANY
Volkswagen faces backlash over fume tests on humansby Our Foreign Desk
GERMANY’S government laid into Volkswagen yesterday after reports that, in an echo of the nazi era, the flagship carmaker had tested its exhaust fumes on humans and monkeys.
Transport Minister Chris-tian Schmidt had “no under-standing for such tests … that do not serve science but merely PR aims,” spokesman Ingo Strater told reporters in Berlin.
He called on companies con-cerned to provide “immediate and detailed” responses and said a ministry commission of inquiry that was set up after the 2015 emissions scandal will hold a special meeting to examine whether there are any other cases.
Germany’s automative industry is still reeling from its shaming, having been caught fitting cars with soft-ware to cheat emissions tests.
But a New York Times report on Thursday revealed that research group EUGT, which is funded by Volkswa-gen, Daimler and BMW, had carried out research on mon-keys to counter a World Health Organisation decision that die-sel exhaust is carcinogenic.
The paper said that EUGT had put 10 monkeys in an air-tight chamber and exposed them to fumes from a recent VW Beetle model and an older Ford pickup to show that mod-ern diesel technology had solved the problem of excess emissions.
The tests were carried out in 2014, before VW was caught cheating, and the car used was fitted with the illegal software that turned emissions controls on while the car was on test stands and off during regular driving, said the paper.
And yesterday the Stuttgar-ter Zeitung reported that the now-defunct research group had also commissioned tests in which humans were exposed
to nitrogen oxides, a class of pollutant. EUGT reportedly said the tests showed no effect on the 19 men and six women used as test subjects.
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said that “the disgust many people are feeling is absolutely understandable.”
“These tests on monkeys or even humans can in no way be ethically justified,” he said. “They raise many critical questions for those behind
these tests, and these ques-tions must urgently be answered.”
VW chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch said the tests were “totally incomprehensible” and must be “investigated com-pletely and without reserva-tion,” the DPA news agency reported.
Volkswagen was set up in Wolfsburg in 1937 by the Ger-man Labour Front under nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
CUBA: A US-sponsored statue of independence hero Jose Marti was unveiled in Havana on Sunday in a sign of Cuba’s focus on maintain-ing ties with the United States despite a chill in relations under President Donald Trump.
The bronze statue of Marti on a rearing horse was funded with $2.5million raised in the US by the Bronx Museum of the Arts.
The 18ft-long work is an exact copy of a sculpture installed in New York’s Central Park in 1965.
WORLD NEWSMorning Star 7Tuesday January 30 2018
RUSSIA
Communists slam media for election ‘conspiracy’by Our Foreign Desk
RUSSIA’S Communist Party has accused the Kremlin of orchestrating a “media vac-uum” around their presidential candidate Pavel Grudinin ahead of March elections.
The Russian mass media had previously “organised mass information attacks” on Mr Grudinin, the Communist Party of the Russian Federa-tion (KPRF) said, but the tac-tic changed after the govern-ment realised this was merely raising his public profile.
A source close to the govern-ment told the party that Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin had rebuked broadcast chiefs, say-ing: “What are you doing? Anti-advertising is also advertising.”
Since then, media exposure of President Vladimir Putin’s rivals has plummeted, with analysis of a week’s TV shows published by the KPRF show-ing the president was men-tioned in 759 stories, compared to just 103 for Mr Grudinin.
Between January 14 and 19 Mr Grudinin was mentioned 35 times on federal TV, the party added, with 23 of these
mentions being negative and just two positive.
The communist candidate is second placed according to opinion polls in Russia, but trails way behind Mr Putin, who has polled at over 50 per cent in most surveys.
But Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov says the Putin regime has failed to address “mass impoverish-ment and a decrease in pur-chasing power.
“For the fourth year in a row, citizens’ incomes have fallen. The flight of capital is increasing.
“Over the next three years spending on economic and social development is planned to shrink by 17 per cent.”
And Mr Putin was lording over a society “afflicted with the plagues of total bribery and nepotism,” Mr Zyuganov declared.
“It is impossible to cope with the crisis and defeat corrup-tion without changing the social and economic system,” the communist leader announced, outlining a 19-point programme to be implemented if Mr Grudinin wins, including renationalisation of key sectors
of the economy, restoring free medical check-ups, extending pre-school learning and care, rebuilding Russian industry, an eight-hour day, price controls on food and a guaran-teed first job for university graduates.n Western media darling Alexei Navalny, who claims to represent the real opposition to Mr Putin but is polling at less than 1 per cent, was arrested on the way to a dem-onstration calling for a boycott of the presidential election at the weekend.
Party complains that its challenger to Putin faces Kremlin-inspired wall of silence
UNITED STATES
YOUNG workers are rejecting the “snake-oil” of President Donald Trump to drive a growth in US trade unions, international union federation Uni Global announced yesterday.
Official figures released this month show that union membership grew by 262,000 in 2017, with 76 per cent of new members being under 35.
The data, unpicked by the Economic Policy Institute last week, reveals that big gains were made in the histori-cally less organised section of the population — though despite the increase, only 7.7 per cent of workers aged 16–34 were members of a union, compared with 12.6 per cent of over-35s.
“Unions in the United States are enduring an attack by the Trump administration and anti-worker businesses, but this new data shows that instead of backing down, unions are making it happen for workers — particularly young workers,” said UNI general secretary Philip Jennings.
“Instead of being enticed by the siren song of populism and the snake-oil of Trump, [young workers] are stand-ing together and taking control of their destiny by organising.”
Big influx of youth swells trade union membership
SYRIAN WAR
Kurds fight to drive Turks from hilltopby Our Foreign Desk
RENEWED clashes erupted on a strategic Syrian hilltop yesterday as Kurdish militia fighters tried to retake it from Turkish troops.
Turkish military officials cancelled a government- organised press tour to Bur-sayah Hill, separating the Kurdish-held enclave of Afrin from the Turkish-controlled town of Azaz, due to “security concerns.”
The Turkish attack — and reported shelling in Idlib prov-ince by government forces — overshadowed a Russian-hosted peace conference which opened yesterday.
Kurdish YPG militia fight-ers, who are battling to keep Turkish troops out of the ter-ritory they control, are boy-cotting the conference, hold-ing Moscow responsible for the invasion.
Ankara considers the YPG an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party, which it views
as a terror group and is subject to a brutal crackdown hitting the entire Kurdish population in Turkey itself.
Turkey’s Interior Ministry said yesterday that authorities had detained 311 people for engaging in “terrorist propa-ganda” by criticising the Afrin invasion in social media posts.
The ministry said the sus-pects, who are accused of sup-porting Syrian Kurdish mili-tia, had been detained in the past week but it did not provide further details.
Last week, Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders said the detentions constituted a gov-ernment “witch-hunt against critics.”
The capture of Bursayah Hill was Turkey’s top achieve-ment since the start of “Oper-ation Olive Branch,” which has so far claimed the lives of more than 50 civilians in Afrin and three in Turkish towns along the border. Five Turkish soldiers have also been killed.
UKRAINE
MOVES by health authori-ties in Lviv to start charging mothers to give birth in hospital show Kiev is not giving up on plans to commercialise healthcare, communists warned yesterday.
Lviv region health department chief Irina Mikichak said the plan is “to introduce paid delivery in our maternity hospitals,” with 60 per cent of the fee going to the doctor and 40 per cent to the hospital.
Fees will be introduced first in perinatal centres, then in the regional hospital and then in district hospitals, the Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU) said.
Paying to give birth in hospital was part of reforms proposed by Ukraine’s Health Minister Ulyana Suprun, who was born and trained in the United States but moved to Ukraine five years ago. She is nicknamed “Doctor Death” on the Ukrainian left for her opposition to universal healthcare.
While the ministry backed down after public anger, the measures being taken in Lviv show the scheme is proceeding anyway, KPU leader Petro Symonenko said.
CP lambasts planned fees for births in hospital
SUDAN
SUDANESE authorities have moved a number of political prisoners to more remote jails, the country’s Communist Party (SCP) revealed yesterday.
Party activists including general secretary Muham-mad Mukhtar al-Khatieb were rounded up during mass protests over soaring bread prices a fortnight ago.
The remote jails in Zalingh and Shala “lack the basic conditions to accom-modate the detainees” or access to proper medical care, the SCP warned.
“Apart from its notori-ous and inhuman condi-tions, the regime’s step is aiming at isolating the detainees from contact with families [and] legal advisers,” the party added.
Warning that the “lives of the detainees [are] in imminent danger,” the SCP urged communists and workers worldwide “to demand their safety and their immediate release.”
Political prisoners’ lives ‘at risk’
INVADERS: Turkish troops and their Syrian allies on the strategically important Bursayah Hill
WORLD NEWSMorning Star 7Tuesday January 30 2018
RUSSIA
Communists slam media for election ‘conspiracy’by Our Foreign Desk
RUSSIA’S Communist Party has accused the Kremlin of orchestrating a “media vac-uum” around their presidential candidate Pavel Grudinin ahead of March elections.
The Russian mass media had previously “organised mass information attacks” on Mr Grudinin, the Communist Party of the Russian Federa-tion (KPRF) said, but the tac-tic changed after the govern-ment realised this was merely raising his public profile.
A source close to the govern-ment told the party that Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin had rebuked broadcast chiefs, say-ing: “What are you doing? Anti-advertising is also advertising.”
Since then, media exposure of President Vladimir Putin’s rivals has plummeted, with analysis of a week’s TV shows published by the KPRF show-ing the president was men-tioned in 759 stories, compared to just 103 for Mr Grudinin.
Between January 14 and 19 Mr Grudinin was mentioned 35 times on federal TV, the party added, with 23 of these
mentions being negative and just two positive.
The communist candidate is second placed according to opinion polls in Russia, but trails way behind Mr Putin, who has polled at over 50 per cent in most surveys.
But Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov says the Putin regime has failed to address “mass impoverish-ment and a decrease in pur-chasing power.
“For the fourth year in a row, citizens’ incomes have fallen. The flight of capital is increasing.
“Over the next three years spending on economic and social development is planned to shrink by 17 per cent.”
And Mr Putin was lording over a society “afflicted with the plagues of total bribery and nepotism,” Mr Zyuganov declared.
“It is impossible to cope with the crisis and defeat corrup-tion without changing the social and economic system,” the communist leader announced, outlining a 19-point programme to be implemented if Mr Grudinin wins, including renationalisation of key sectors
of the economy, restoring free medical check-ups, extending pre-school learning and care, rebuilding Russian industry, an eight-hour day, price controls on food and a guaran-teed first job for university graduates.n Western media darling Alexei Navalny, who claims to represent the real opposition to Mr Putin but is polling at less than 1 per cent, was arrested on the way to a dem-onstration calling for a boycott of the presidential election at the weekend.
Party complains that its challenger to Putin faces Kremlin-inspired wall of silence
UNITED STATES
YOUNG workers are rejecting the “snake-oil” of President Donald Trump to drive a growth in US trade unions, international union federation Uni Global announced yesterday.
Official figures released this month show that union membership grew by 262,000 in 2017, with 76 per cent of new members being under 35.
The data, unpicked by the Economic Policy Institute last week, reveals that big gains were made in the histori-cally less organised section of the population — though despite the increase, only 7.7 per cent of workers aged 16–34 were members of a union, compared with 12.6 per cent of over-35s.
“Unions in the United States are enduring an attack by the Trump administration and anti-worker businesses, but this new data shows that instead of backing down, unions are making it happen for workers — particularly young workers,” said UNI general secretary Philip Jennings.
“Instead of being enticed by the siren song of populism and the snake-oil of Trump, [young workers] are stand-ing together and taking control of their destiny by organising.”
Big influx of youth swells trade union membership
SYRIAN WAR
Kurds fight to drive Turks from hilltopby Our Foreign Desk
RENEWED clashes erupted on a strategic Syrian hilltop yesterday as Kurdish militia fighters tried to retake it from Turkish troops.
Turkish military officials cancelled a government- organised press tour to Bur-sayah Hill, separating the Kurdish-held enclave of Afrin from the Turkish-controlled town of Azaz, due to “security concerns.”
The Turkish attack — and reported shelling in Idlib prov-ince by government forces — overshadowed a Russian-hosted peace conference which opened yesterday.
Kurdish YPG militia fight-ers, who are battling to keep Turkish troops out of the ter-ritory they control, are boy-cotting the conference, hold-ing Moscow responsible for the invasion.
Ankara considers the YPG an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party, which it views
as a terror group and is subject to a brutal crackdown hitting the entire Kurdish population in Turkey itself.
Turkey’s Interior Ministry said yesterday that authorities had detained 311 people for engaging in “terrorist propa-ganda” by criticising the Afrin invasion in social media posts.
The ministry said the sus-pects, who are accused of sup-porting Syrian Kurdish mili-tia, had been detained in the past week but it did not provide further details.
Last week, Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders said the detentions constituted a gov-ernment “witch-hunt against critics.”
The capture of Bursayah Hill was Turkey’s top achieve-ment since the start of “Oper-ation Olive Branch,” which has so far claimed the lives of more than 50 civilians in Afrin and three in Turkish towns along the border. Five Turkish soldiers have also been killed.
UKRAINE
MOVES by health authori-ties in Lviv to start charging mothers to give birth in hospital show Kiev is not giving up on plans to commercialise healthcare, communists warned yesterday.
Lviv region health department chief Irina Mikichak said the plan is “to introduce paid delivery in our maternity hospitals,” with 60 per cent of the fee going to the doctor and 40 per cent to the hospital.
Fees will be introduced first in perinatal centres, then in the regional hospital and then in district hospitals, the Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU) said.
Paying to give birth in hospital was part of reforms proposed by Ukraine’s Health Minister Ulyana Suprun, who was born and trained in the United States but moved to Ukraine five years ago. She is nicknamed “Doctor Death” on the Ukrainian left for her opposition to universal healthcare.
While the ministry backed down after public anger, the measures being taken in Lviv show the scheme is proceeding anyway, KPU leader Petro Symonenko said.
CP lambasts planned fees for births in hospital
SUDAN
SUDANESE authorities have moved a number of political prisoners to more remote jails, the country’s Communist Party (SCP) revealed yesterday.
Party activists including general secretary Muham-mad Mukhtar al-Khatieb were rounded up during mass protests over soaring bread prices a fortnight ago.
The remote jails in Zalingh and Shala “lack the basic conditions to accom-modate the detainees” or access to proper medical care, the SCP warned.
“Apart from its notori-ous and inhuman condi-tions, the regime’s step is aiming at isolating the detainees from contact with families [and] legal advisers,” the party added.
Warning that the “lives of the detainees [are] in imminent danger,” the SCP urged communists and workers worldwide “to demand their safety and their immediate release.”
Political prisoners’ lives ‘at risk’
INVADERS: Turkish troops and their Syrian allies on the strategically important Bursayah Hill
FEATURES Morning Star
StarComment
8 Tuesday January 30 2018
COLOMBIA’S liberation movement Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colom-bia-People’s Army (Farc-Ep) former military com-mander Rodrigo Londono,
known by his nom de guerre Timoleon Jimenez or Timochenko, hit the cam-paign trail at the weekend as his organisation’s presidential candidate.
He eschewed the traditional media-oriented campaign launch in a posh Bogota hotel in favour of addressing hundreds of supporters, many wearing shirts with the party’s rose logo, in a community centre car park in the impoverished district of Ciudad Boli-var in the south of the city.
Giant posters proclaiming “Timo president” surrounded the venue, as participants were greeted by confetti and a catchy new campaign song repeating the message: “Timo presi-dent. For the people.”
The former guerilla leader prom-ised to build “a new Colombia” by offering progressive policies to moti-vate erstwhile abstainers to vote.
“I promise to lead a government that propels the birth of a new Colombia — a government that at last represents the interests of the poor,” he declared.
“Colombia needs a new way of doing politics that focuses its attention on the worker. We came to propose a wake-up call,” Timochenko told the crowd.
“May the voice of those below, those millions and millions of poor who have never counted, may they be listened to, may they decide their future.”
The Farc also introduced the 74 candidates it is standing in the March general election, hoping to win more than the 10 seats guaranteed it until 2026 under the terms of the peace deal negotiated with President Juan Manuel Santos in Cuba in 2016 that put an end to 52 years of war.
The party’s platform includes free university education, improvements to healthcare paid for by the rich, an improved roads network for rural areas, expanded provision of electric-ity and spending on scientific research.
Other policies floated include the construction of a Metro in Bogota and a basic monthly income.
Candidate Griselda Lobo, alias San-dra Ramirez, characterised the Farc ideology as based on “principles of unity, solidarity and honesty” rather than attached to a particular political philosophy.
“That is what has characterised us as guerillas and that is what we will bring society,” she said.
Timo’s organisation retains its Farc initials, but they now represent Revo-lutionary Alternative Common Force rather than Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
While the Farc was at war with the Colombian state, the US State Depart-ment offered a $5 million reward for anyone who helped secure Timo-chenko’s capture, accusing him of directing cocaine trafficking on behalf of Farc and responsibility for “the murders of hundreds of people.”
Washington put its money and aer-ial power behind its Plan Colombia to defeat Farc, resulting in the assassina-tion of a number of key leaders, but its failure was illustrated by President Santos’s decision to break with his predecessor Alvaro Uribe, under whom he had served as defence min-ister, and to opt for peace talks.
Timo insists, as do all Farc leaders, that their organisation was never involved in narcotics but simply “taxed” those who grew, processed and transported coca products on ter-ritory they controlled.
Under the peace agreement, former combatants are committed to appear before a special peace tribunal to come clean, as in South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, over their wartime deeds and consequently to face no criminal charges.
Opponents of the peace deal and of former guerillas being allowed to take part in elections cite the reality that half a century of war left at least 250,000 people dead, another 60,000 missing and more than seven million displaced.
Opposition leader Uribe, whose fam-ily was closely linked to large-scale cocaine trafficking and to death squads funded by ranchers, drugs gangs and big business to murder peasant leaders, trade unionists, teach-ers in rural areas and others seen as a threat to their untrammelled power, is one such opponent.
He plans to file a complaint with the International Criminal Court to try to halt Timochenko’s candidacy.
As bloody as the Farc-state conflict
A goldmine for slumlordsTHE fact that one third of students have been cheated out of their rented housing deposits is just one disgrace-ful consequence of today’s unregulated housing market.
It traps many tenants, not just students, and they often have to put up with appalling conditions.
The market is a jungle, a goldmine for slumlords and the return of what 50 years ago was known as “Rach-manism.” The number of private renters in Britain has doubled in the last 20 years. It has gone up by one mil-lion since 2010, and now stands at 5.4 million.
Meanwhile, the number of council homes has fallen to just two million, a drop of 69 per cent since the Thatch-er government brought in “Right to Buy” and started stock transfer to housing associations, who currently manage 1.9 million homes.
Where have the rest of the former council homes gone? Four in 10 are now in the hands of private land-lords, who charge rents up to 50 per cent higher than in social housing.
They can do that because the demand is so high. Minuscule numbers of new council and housing asso-ciation homes are being built, while 1.2 million people are on social housing waiting lists.
Houses for first-time buyers aren’t that easy to come by either. Since the 2008 financial crash, massive de-posits have been required from mortgage lenders.
That together with the stagnation in pay rates makes it particularly difficult for young people to get on the home ownership ladder. Less than one third of 25-29 year olds own their own homes; while 39 per cent of 26-30 year olds, and more than 60 per cent of 21-25 year olds, are in private rented housing.
One third of privately rented homes fail basic health and safety standards. Yesterday’s Guardian reported that an estimated 338,000 homes rented by under-35s have been deemed so hazardous that they are likely to cause harm.
HIHThe conditions include holes in external walls, lack
of heating, insect-infested beds, water pouring through ceilings, vermin, damp and mould.
While Shelter has reported that 48 per cent of fami-lies in social housing who complained about conditions felt ignored or were refused help, the consequence for private tenants is often the risk of eviction.
One in five private tenants have faced this, even with-out complaints. Tenants’ homes, at least in England, can be easily sold beneath their feet, and no-fault evic-tion notices destroy security.
Eighty-seven Tory and 28 Labour MPs have registered that they own properties from which they earn at least £10,000 a year.
Others, like Tories Chris Pilp and Mims Davies, have interests in property investment companies. No wonder that the government has until recently resisted pressure to regulate private landlords.
Karen Buck MP deserves credit for pursuing the mat-ter in her current Private Members’ Bill, on which the government has given way. But, even if tenants have a right to take their landlords to court to make their homes fit for human habitation, how many will do so if the landlord can still evict them at short notice?
And what protection is there against landlords with-holding the deposit on spurious grounds, let alone the tenant potentially getting blacklisted by other private landlords?
All credit should be given to tenants’ activists groups like Acorn and Living Rent for taking up tenants’ rights, and mobilising to bring pressure on rogue landlords.
Trade unions and trades councils should be seeking to build bridges with such organisations, providing solidarity and bringing these mostly young people into contact with the traditions and strength of the labour movement.
But, of course, that will only provide short-term relief. What we really need is the replacement of this Tory government by a Labour government with its pledges of overcoming homelessness and providing secure homes for all.
was, it reflects Colombia’s 20th cen-tury history in which conservative and liberal bourgeois parties fought a 10-year civil war, beginning in 1948 and known simply as La Violencia. It cost the lives of at least 300,000 Colom-bians, mainly civilians.
Almost 20 per cent of the peasant population was displaced, losing their plots, farms and other possessions.
As they moved into other regions — notably Marquetalia, Riochiquito, El Pato and Guayabero — the rich landowners designated them the “internal enemy,” mobilising the army to drive them off the land.
Peasant self-defence groups came into existence, supported by the Colombian Communist Party (PCC), fighting back and creating liberated zones that resisted all efforts to liqui-date them.
In his new year address earlier this month, Timo forecast that 2018 would be a year of change and transforma-tion.
“The heroic resistance of 48 peas-
“ The former guerilla leader Timochencko promised to build ‘a new Colombia’ by offering progressive policies to motivate erstwhile abstainers to vote ”
COLOMBIA
Taking the reon the campJOHN HAYLETT writes on the electoral mArmed Forces of Colombia (Farc) which ki
FOR THE PEOPLE: Farc presidential candidate Timochenko
FEATURES Morning Star
StarComment
8 Tuesday January 30 2018
COLOMBIA’S liberation movement Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colom-bia-People’s Army (Farc-Ep) former military com-mander Rodrigo Londono,
known by his nom de guerre Timoleon Jimenez or Timochenko, hit the cam-paign trail at the weekend as his organisation’s presidential candidate.
He eschewed the traditional media-oriented campaign launch in a posh Bogota hotel in favour of addressing hundreds of supporters, many wearing shirts with the party’s rose logo, in a community centre car park in the impoverished district of Ciudad Boli-var in the south of the city.
Giant posters proclaiming “Timo president” surrounded the venue, as participants were greeted by confetti and a catchy new campaign song repeating the message: “Timo presi-dent. For the people.”
The former guerilla leader prom-ised to build “a new Colombia” by offering progressive policies to moti-vate erstwhile abstainers to vote.
“I promise to lead a government that propels the birth of a new Colombia — a government that at last represents the interests of the poor,” he declared.
“Colombia needs a new way of doing politics that focuses its attention on the worker. We came to propose a wake-up call,” Timochenko told the crowd.
“May the voice of those below, those millions and millions of poor who have never counted, may they be listened to, may they decide their future.”
The Farc also introduced the 74 candidates it is standing in the March general election, hoping to win more than the 10 seats guaranteed it until 2026 under the terms of the peace deal negotiated with President Juan Manuel Santos in Cuba in 2016 that put an end to 52 years of war.
The party’s platform includes free university education, improvements to healthcare paid for by the rich, an improved roads network for rural areas, expanded provision of electric-ity and spending on scientific research.
Other policies floated include the construction of a Metro in Bogota and a basic monthly income.
Candidate Griselda Lobo, alias San-dra Ramirez, characterised the Farc ideology as based on “principles of unity, solidarity and honesty” rather than attached to a particular political philosophy.
“That is what has characterised us as guerillas and that is what we will bring society,” she said.
Timo’s organisation retains its Farc initials, but they now represent Revo-lutionary Alternative Common Force rather than Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
While the Farc was at war with the Colombian state, the US State Depart-ment offered a $5 million reward for anyone who helped secure Timo-chenko’s capture, accusing him of directing cocaine trafficking on behalf of Farc and responsibility for “the murders of hundreds of people.”
Washington put its money and aer-ial power behind its Plan Colombia to defeat Farc, resulting in the assassina-tion of a number of key leaders, but its failure was illustrated by President Santos’s decision to break with his predecessor Alvaro Uribe, under whom he had served as defence min-ister, and to opt for peace talks.
Timo insists, as do all Farc leaders, that their organisation was never involved in narcotics but simply “taxed” those who grew, processed and transported coca products on ter-ritory they controlled.
Under the peace agreement, former combatants are committed to appear before a special peace tribunal to come clean, as in South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, over their wartime deeds and consequently to face no criminal charges.
Opponents of the peace deal and of former guerillas being allowed to take part in elections cite the reality that half a century of war left at least 250,000 people dead, another 60,000 missing and more than seven million displaced.
Opposition leader Uribe, whose fam-ily was closely linked to large-scale cocaine trafficking and to death squads funded by ranchers, drugs gangs and big business to murder peasant leaders, trade unionists, teach-ers in rural areas and others seen as a threat to their untrammelled power, is one such opponent.
He plans to file a complaint with the International Criminal Court to try to halt Timochenko’s candidacy.
As bloody as the Farc-state conflict
A goldmine for slumlordsTHE fact that one third of students have been cheated out of their rented housing deposits is just one disgrace-ful consequence of today’s unregulated housing market.
It traps many tenants, not just students, and they often have to put up with appalling conditions.
The market is a jungle, a goldmine for slumlords and the return of what 50 years ago was known as “Rach-manism.” The number of private renters in Britain has doubled in the last 20 years. It has gone up by one mil-lion since 2010, and now stands at 5.4 million.
Meanwhile, the number of council homes has fallen to just two million, a drop of 69 per cent since the Thatch-er government brought in “Right to Buy” and started stock transfer to housing associations, who currently manage 1.9 million homes.
Where have the rest of the former council homes gone? Four in 10 are now in the hands of private land-lords, who charge rents up to 50 per cent higher than in social housing.
They can do that because the demand is so high. Minuscule numbers of new council and housing asso-ciation homes are being built, while 1.2 million people are on social housing waiting lists.
Houses for first-time buyers aren’t that easy to come by either. Since the 2008 financial crash, massive de-posits have been required from mortgage lenders.
That together with the stagnation in pay rates makes it particularly difficult for young people to get on the home ownership ladder. Less than one third of 25-29 year olds own their own homes; while 39 per cent of 26-30 year olds, and more than 60 per cent of 21-25 year olds, are in private rented housing.
One third of privately rented homes fail basic health and safety standards. Yesterday’s Guardian reported that an estimated 338,000 homes rented by under-35s have been deemed so hazardous that they are likely to cause harm.
HIHThe conditions include holes in external walls, lack
of heating, insect-infested beds, water pouring through ceilings, vermin, damp and mould.
While Shelter has reported that 48 per cent of fami-lies in social housing who complained about conditions felt ignored or were refused help, the consequence for private tenants is often the risk of eviction.
One in five private tenants have faced this, even with-out complaints. Tenants’ homes, at least in England, can be easily sold beneath their feet, and no-fault evic-tion notices destroy security.
Eighty-seven Tory and 28 Labour MPs have registered that they own properties from which they earn at least £10,000 a year.
Others, like Tories Chris Pilp and Mims Davies, have interests in property investment companies. No wonder that the government has until recently resisted pressure to regulate private landlords.
Karen Buck MP deserves credit for pursuing the mat-ter in her current Private Members’ Bill, on which the government has given way. But, even if tenants have a right to take their landlords to court to make their homes fit for human habitation, how many will do so if the landlord can still evict them at short notice?
And what protection is there against landlords with-holding the deposit on spurious grounds, let alone the tenant potentially getting blacklisted by other private landlords?
All credit should be given to tenants’ activists groups like Acorn and Living Rent for taking up tenants’ rights, and mobilising to bring pressure on rogue landlords.
Trade unions and trades councils should be seeking to build bridges with such organisations, providing solidarity and bringing these mostly young people into contact with the traditions and strength of the labour movement.
But, of course, that will only provide short-term relief. What we really need is the replacement of this Tory government by a Labour government with its pledges of overcoming homelessness and providing secure homes for all.
was, it reflects Colombia’s 20th cen-tury history in which conservative and liberal bourgeois parties fought a 10-year civil war, beginning in 1948 and known simply as La Violencia. It cost the lives of at least 300,000 Colom-bians, mainly civilians.
Almost 20 per cent of the peasant population was displaced, losing their plots, farms and other possessions.
As they moved into other regions — notably Marquetalia, Riochiquito, El Pato and Guayabero — the rich landowners designated them the “internal enemy,” mobilising the army to drive them off the land.
Peasant self-defence groups came into existence, supported by the Colombian Communist Party (PCC), fighting back and creating liberated zones that resisted all efforts to liqui-date them.
In his new year address earlier this month, Timo forecast that 2018 would be a year of change and transforma-tion.
“The heroic resistance of 48 peas-
“ The former guerilla leader Timochencko promised to build ‘a new Colombia’ by offering progressive policies to motivate erstwhile abstainers to vote ”
COLOMBIA
Taking the reon the campJOHN HAYLETT writes on the electoral mArmed Forces of Colombia (Farc) which ki
FOR THE PEOPLE: Farc presidential candidate Timochenko
FEATURESMorning Star 9Tuesday January 30 2018
VOICES OF SCOTLAND
Scottish CND’s fight for peace goes on in 2018
AS WE start a New Year, Scottish CND is work-ing on ideas to continue the struggle to rid our country and our world of the scourge of
nuclear weapons. Our plans for 2018 include the
organisation of a national Rally at the Faslane Nuclear Weapons Base on Saturday September 15.
This Rally will be preceded by a march from the Faslane Peace Camp just outside Helensburgh to the base.
It is expected that representatives from peace movements in various parts of the world will speak at the Rally. An invite is also being sent to Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Stur-geon to speak.
One of the main themes of the march and rally will be the continu-ing campaign to scrap the Trident nuclear weapons system which is housed at Faslane.
These weapons of mass destruc-tion cost millions of pounds to main-tain and this is money badly needed for investment in public services such as health and education.
However the march and rally will also highlight the Treaty for the Pro-hibition of Nuclear Weapons, which was passed at a special session of the United Nations in July 2017.
This groundbreaking and historic treaty was supported by 122 coun-tries. It opened for signature on Sep-tember 20 2017 and will remain open for all states to sign and ratify.
Unfortunately the British govern-ment has shown no signs of support-ing the treaty. Nonetheless, despite this lack of interest from the British government, it has a very good chance of becoming part of interna-tional law in the not too distant future.
Basically, when 50 countries sign and ratify the treaty, it becomes part of international law. It will then be binding on those countries not to develop, test, acquire or threaten to use nuclear weapons .
Scottish CND is confident that as support for the treaty develops it will have a practical and political impact on the British government.
If the treaty becomes law, it will
put nuclear weapons possession clearly beyond the pale. It will also reduce the status or political value attached to these weapons.
As well as the September march and rally, Scottish CND is also plan-ning to organise a number of activi-ties to mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of the organisation in 1958. These plans include:
A summer full of outreach activi-ties, street work and stalls at festi-vals across Scotland
The development of a mobile exhi-bition called Scotland — a Peace of History. This exhibition will look at the Scottish journey of CND and the wider peace movement.
We hope to launch the exhibition in autumn 2018 and encourage local groups, schools and other supporter organisations to take the exhibition to various places across Scotland.
Peace Education Scotland, the educational arm of Scottish CND, is organising a Generation Y Peace Campaigning Academy for more than 100 young people.
This exciting project will take place in Glasgow in July 2018 and will involve a three day programme on all aspects of campaigning work.
Sessions will cover issues such as communications tactics, grassroots empowerment and digital engage-ment.
Apart from special activities to mark our 60th anniversary Scottish CND will continue its ongoing work during 2018.
We continue to be part of the Scot-tish Scrap Trident Coalition, where we work with a range of organisa-tions to campaign for the scrapping of Trident and the cancellation of its replacement.
We also continue to be part of the Scottish Peace Network, which tire-lessly makes the case for a peaceful, non-violent approach to resolving international tensions.
Other activities include support for the Scottish CND Trade Union Network, which brings together trade union reps and members to highlight
the case against nuclear weapons within the Trade Union movement.
Our work across the political spec-trum will also continue in 2018. At the present time there is currently an active SNP CND network and there are some encouraging signs that a similar network could be set up within the Scottish Green Party.
Scottish CND has also spoken at a number of Scottish Labour Party fringe meetings in recent years and there was support at these events for setting up a Scottish Labour/CND network.
We will also be continuing to sup-port the work of the Scottish Parlia-ment Cross Party Group convened by Bill Kidd MSP. This group has proved to be an important focal point for raising awareness about nuclear weapons and general peace move-ment issues within the Scottish Par-liament.
It would be remiss of me when giv-ing any update about the work of Scottish CND not to mention the very worrying situation which currently exists between the US and North Korea .
As vice-chair of Scottish CND Isobel Lindsay said in the most recent edition of our magazine: “The nuclear threats from North Korea are a very real source of anxiety especially for those living in the region. But the responsibility rests not just on the North Korean regime but with the supporters of nuclear weapons.”
Scottish CND has been consistent in calling for dialogue between the US and North Korea to resolve the current tensions and we will continue to make those arguments.
Research shows that an exchange involving modern nuclear weapons anywhere in the world would cause health problems and damage to the climate and food production across the planet.
The disastrous consequences of any use of nuclear weapons is one of the main reasons why organisations such as Scottish CND are needed now as much as they have ever been.
n Arthur West is chair of Scottish CND.
ants produced the formidable guerilla force of the Farc-Ep that was deployed throughout the country for more than 50 years, putting the reactionary pow-ers in Colombia in check,” he recalled.
“Half a century after the bloody confrontation, the government of Juan Manuel Santos and the Farc-Ep gueril-las, together with the international community as guarantor, signed a peace agreement, which was received and welcomed with joy by the vast majority of the Colombian people.
“At gunpoint in Colombia we learned the value of democracy, of social jus-tice and the cost of economic back-wardness. We learned and changed.”
This is not the first time that Farc has laid down its arms to pursue its aims through peaceful means, doing in 1984, setting up the Patriotic Union (UP) electoral vehicle in conjunction with the PCC the following year and engaging fully in the political process.
Its candidate Jaime Pardo came third in the May 1986 presidential race, with 350,000 votes, 4.5 per cent
of the total, while UP mayors were successful in 14 out of 1,008 local authorities.
He was assassinated the following year at the behest of drug lord Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez, revealed by the PCC paper Voz as having close links with army officers.
Pardo’s successor as UP presiden-tial candidate was PCC member Ber-nardo Jaramillo who demanded gov-ernment action in February 1989 against the death squads, declaring: “You cannot talk about peace if you do not fight effectively against para-military groups.”
He acknowledged prophetically: “I believe, and I say it with all sincerity and at times coldly, that I know they are going to assassinate me.”
Jaramillo was shot dead while wait-ing inside Bogota airport in March 1990, as the death squads murdered 21 UP legislators, 70 local councillors, 11 mayors and no fewer than 5,000 supporters in a slaughter calculated to intimidate Colombians into under-standing that desiring change was futile.
Farc members Wilmar Asprilla and Angel de Jesus Montoya were shot dead a fortnight ago in the munic-ipality of Peque, in western Antioquia, while preparing
an election campaign meeting for Farc House of Representatives candidate Wilman de Jesus Cartagena Durango.
Black community leader Temisto-cles Machado, who was renowned for his leadership in conflicts with tran-snational corporations in the port of Buenaventura and with the Bogota government, was gunned down on Saturday.
Machado, who was one of the most threatened leaders in Valle del Cauca province, was involved in negotiating an investment deal with the govern-ment last year after a strike shut down Buenventura.
More than 170 community leaders have been killed since the beginning of a peace process with the Farc in December 2016, according to inde-pendent investigators.
It is clear that, whatever the govern-ment claims, the death squads have not been stood down. Those wealthy elements who still expect their crimes to go unpunished are not reconciled to political activity by those who cre-ate Colombia’s wealth.
Farc candidates and supporters will have to be on guard, as will friends of Colombia overseas who wish to see the country’s peace agreement and com-mitment to democracy succeed.
n John Haylett is political editor of the Morning Star.
revolution paign trail
l mission of the Revolutionary h kicked off at the weekend
by Arthur West
NO NUKES: A CND rally in London
FEATURESMorning Star 9Tuesday January 30 2018
VOICES OF SCOTLAND
Scottish CND’s fight for peace goes on in 2018
AS WE start a New Year, Scottish CND is work-ing on ideas to continue the struggle to rid our country and our world of the scourge of
nuclear weapons. Our plans for 2018 include the
organisation of a national Rally at the Faslane Nuclear Weapons Base on Saturday September 15.
This Rally will be preceded by a march from the Faslane Peace Camp just outside Helensburgh to the base.
It is expected that representatives from peace movements in various parts of the world will speak at the Rally. An invite is also being sent to Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Stur-geon to speak.
One of the main themes of the march and rally will be the continu-ing campaign to scrap the Trident nuclear weapons system which is housed at Faslane.
These weapons of mass destruc-tion cost millions of pounds to main-tain and this is money badly needed for investment in public services such as health and education.
However the march and rally will also highlight the Treaty for the Pro-hibition of Nuclear Weapons, which was passed at a special session of the United Nations in July 2017.
This groundbreaking and historic treaty was supported by 122 coun-tries. It opened for signature on Sep-tember 20 2017 and will remain open for all states to sign and ratify.
Unfortunately the British govern-ment has shown no signs of support-ing the treaty. Nonetheless, despite this lack of interest from the British government, it has a very good chance of becoming part of interna-tional law in the not too distant future.
Basically, when 50 countries sign and ratify the treaty, it becomes part of international law. It will then be binding on those countries not to develop, test, acquire or threaten to use nuclear weapons .
Scottish CND is confident that as support for the treaty develops it will have a practical and political impact on the British government.
If the treaty becomes law, it will
put nuclear weapons possession clearly beyond the pale. It will also reduce the status or political value attached to these weapons.
As well as the September march and rally, Scottish CND is also plan-ning to organise a number of activi-ties to mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of the organisation in 1958. These plans include:
A summer full of outreach activi-ties, street work and stalls at festi-vals across Scotland
The development of a mobile exhi-bition called Scotland — a Peace of History. This exhibition will look at the Scottish journey of CND and the wider peace movement.
We hope to launch the exhibition in autumn 2018 and encourage local groups, schools and other supporter organisations to take the exhibition to various places across Scotland.
Peace Education Scotland, the educational arm of Scottish CND, is organising a Generation Y Peace Campaigning Academy for more than 100 young people.
This exciting project will take place in Glasgow in July 2018 and will involve a three day programme on all aspects of campaigning work.
Sessions will cover issues such as communications tactics, grassroots empowerment and digital engage-ment.
Apart from special activities to mark our 60th anniversary Scottish CND will continue its ongoing work during 2018.
We continue to be part of the Scot-tish Scrap Trident Coalition, where we work with a range of organisa-tions to campaign for the scrapping of Trident and the cancellation of its replacement.
We also continue to be part of the Scottish Peace Network, which tire-lessly makes the case for a peaceful, non-violent approach to resolving international tensions.
Other activities include support for the Scottish CND Trade Union Network, which brings together trade union reps and members to highlight
the case against nuclear weapons within the Trade Union movement.
Our work across the political spec-trum will also continue in 2018. At the present time there is currently an active SNP CND network and there are some encouraging signs that a similar network could be set up within the Scottish Green Party.
Scottish CND has also spoken at a number of Scottish Labour Party fringe meetings in recent years and there was support at these events for setting up a Scottish Labour/CND network.
We will also be continuing to sup-port the work of the Scottish Parlia-ment Cross Party Group convened by Bill Kidd MSP. This group has proved to be an important focal point for raising awareness about nuclear weapons and general peace move-ment issues within the Scottish Par-liament.
It would be remiss of me when giv-ing any update about the work of Scottish CND not to mention the very worrying situation which currently exists between the US and North Korea .
As vice-chair of Scottish CND Isobel Lindsay said in the most recent edition of our magazine: “The nuclear threats from North Korea are a very real source of anxiety especially for those living in the region. But the responsibility rests not just on the North Korean regime but with the supporters of nuclear weapons.”
Scottish CND has been consistent in calling for dialogue between the US and North Korea to resolve the current tensions and we will continue to make those arguments.
Research shows that an exchange involving modern nuclear weapons anywhere in the world would cause health problems and damage to the climate and food production across the planet.
The disastrous consequences of any use of nuclear weapons is one of the main reasons why organisations such as Scottish CND are needed now as much as they have ever been.
n Arthur West is chair of Scottish CND.
ants produced the formidable guerilla force of the Farc-Ep that was deployed throughout the country for more than 50 years, putting the reactionary pow-ers in Colombia in check,” he recalled.
“Half a century after the bloody confrontation, the government of Juan Manuel Santos and the Farc-Ep gueril-las, together with the international community as guarantor, signed a peace agreement, which was received and welcomed with joy by the vast majority of the Colombian people.
“At gunpoint in Colombia we learned the value of democracy, of social jus-tice and the cost of economic back-wardness. We learned and changed.”
This is not the first time that Farc has laid down its arms to pursue its aims through peaceful means, doing in 1984, setting up the Patriotic Union (UP) electoral vehicle in conjunction with the PCC the following year and engaging fully in the political process.
Its candidate Jaime Pardo came third in the May 1986 presidential race, with 350,000 votes, 4.5 per cent
of the total, while UP mayors were successful in 14 out of 1,008 local authorities.
He was assassinated the following year at the behest of drug lord Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez, revealed by the PCC paper Voz as having close links with army officers.
Pardo’s successor as UP presiden-tial candidate was PCC member Ber-nardo Jaramillo who demanded gov-ernment action in February 1989 against the death squads, declaring: “You cannot talk about peace if you do not fight effectively against para-military groups.”
He acknowledged prophetically: “I believe, and I say it with all sincerity and at times coldly, that I know they are going to assassinate me.”
Jaramillo was shot dead while wait-ing inside Bogota airport in March 1990, as the death squads murdered 21 UP legislators, 70 local councillors, 11 mayors and no fewer than 5,000 supporters in a slaughter calculated to intimidate Colombians into under-standing that desiring change was futile.
Farc members Wilmar Asprilla and Angel de Jesus Montoya were shot dead a fortnight ago in the munic-ipality of Peque, in western Antioquia, while preparing
an election campaign meeting for Farc House of Representatives candidate Wilman de Jesus Cartagena Durango.
Black community leader Temisto-cles Machado, who was renowned for his leadership in conflicts with tran-snational corporations in the port of Buenaventura and with the Bogota government, was gunned down on Saturday.
Machado, who was one of the most threatened leaders in Valle del Cauca province, was involved in negotiating an investment deal with the govern-ment last year after a strike shut down Buenventura.
More than 170 community leaders have been killed since the beginning of a peace process with the Farc in December 2016, according to inde-pendent investigators.
It is clear that, whatever the govern-ment claims, the death squads have not been stood down. Those wealthy elements who still expect their crimes to go unpunished are not reconciled to political activity by those who cre-ate Colombia’s wealth.
Farc candidates and supporters will have to be on guard, as will friends of Colombia overseas who wish to see the country’s peace agreement and com-mitment to democracy succeed.
n John Haylett is political editor of the Morning Star.
revolution paign trail
l mission of the Revolutionary h kicked off at the weekend
by Arthur West
NO NUKES: A CND rally in London
FEATURES Morning Star10 Tuesday January 30 2018
A US journalist recently commented in The New York Times that Donald Trump’s presidency marks the coming of age of The Society of the
Spectacle — a society in which truth is essentially reduced to a mere hypothesis and consistently subordi-nated to orchestration.
Indeed, lies and deception reign in the White House. During his first year in office alone, The Washington Post counted more than 2,000 cases in which Trump lied or made mislead-ing statements —equating to roughly five times per day.
The 45th US President, sworn into office just a year ago, may be a noto-rious denier of truth and understand next to nothing about politics but as a reality TV star and celebrity, how-ever, he definitely commands the media.
Under his presidency, politics has been replaced by a frantic scramble for media coverage. This Twitter-President has made it his habit to hurl out daily insults against his domestic and foreign adversaries. Here, even scandals serve a purpose by drawing in the public as a consumer (ie audi-ence), thus including them as part of the spectacle.
With scandals following the presi-dent’s every move, there is little time to analyse one incident before the next one makes the headlines.
The events occurring over the last couple of weeks impressively high-light this fact.
The US president decried African nations as “shitholes” and called for more Norwegian immigrants. His Republican henchmen immediately jumped to his aid, simply disavowing his remarks.
Then, as The Wall Street Journal reported, a Trump lawyer allegedly paid an adult-film star hush money shortly before the 2016 election to keep quiet about her sexual affair with Trump.
Notwithstanding the resistance of even Republican governors, Trump intends to open the nation’s coastlines to offshore drilling—with the excep-tion of the Mar-a-Lago-state of Flor-ida.
Steve Bannon, formerly one of Trump’s closest allies, has been driven from his position, and the noose around Trump’s neck in the Russia affair is getting tighter every day. To make things worse, Michael Wolff’s new book Fire and Fury reveals the grotesque and dilettantish nature of the new administration’s operations.
Few if any presidents have polar-ised the United States as much as Donald Trump has. The right-wing populist president’s ceaseless attacks on not only his political adversaries, but also the very democratic institu-tions of the nation — the rule of law, independent media, science — are shaking the country to its core.
While the liberal public does not tire of being incessantly appalled by the president’s erratic behavior, incompetence and permanent string of lies, this administration has pushed its agenda forward in certain policy areas.
Undoubtedly, numerous White House projects have fallen victim to the narcissistic president’s chaos and incompetence; the repeated attempts to reverse the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) are the most infamous example.
Following a long warm-up phase, however, this right-wing government — stacked with representatives of big oil, Wall Street, and the military, and with its majorities in both houses of
Congress — has nonetheless managed to implement cornerstones of its pro-gramme.
The administration’s greatest suc-cess came only a few weeks ago. In adopting the tax reform, the Trump administration has fulfilled the most important demand of Trump’s spon-sors, namely to further cater to the rich and to corporations through mas-sive tax reductions.
Interestingly, the Republicans—who had previously insisted on a bal-anced budget as the holy grail of budget policy under former president Barrack Obama — were not averse to financing the reform with debt, simi-lar to their mode of operation regard-ing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Over the coming decade, this reform will lead to an increase of the public deficit of up to $1.5 trillion, unless further cuts are made in other areas. Republicans in Congress are therefore already discussing the alleged necessity of further cutbacks on (already meagre) social welfare payments.
But also below the legislative level, the Trump administration has used its executive powers to change the country’s course in important policy areas.
Headed by a Verizon lobbyist, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) decided to repeal net neutrality regulations last December, a decision which is set to have far-reaching con-sequences. Moreover, by appointing the dyed-in-the-wool conservative Neil Gorsuch as Supreme Court Justice, Trump has consolidated the Court’s conservative right-wing majority.
Some changes have also taken place below the public radar. In
August 2017, for instance, the Depart-ment of Labour eliminated all data on workplace fatalities and stipulated that companies with more than 10 employees no longer need to maintain records of occupational accidents and illnesses.
Regarding climate change, the course has changed as well. Against this backdrop, and by no means acci-dentally, Noam Chomsky dubbed the Republicans the “most dangerous organisation in human history.”
After announcing his withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, Trump proceeded to channel his full support into the oil industry, the eco-nomic base of many of his most important supporters.
Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), has largely replaced the sci-entists working for the Agency with energy sector lobbyists, lifted envi-ronmental regulations on water and air pollution, and removed all refer-ences to climate change from the government website.
Trump’s first year in office has conclusively disproved the notion that he is a non-ideological deal-maker and prime business partner. In real-ity, the exact opposite is the case. Thanks to Trump, the open racism that was quieted by the civil rights movement has found its way back into public discourse.
Indeed, Trump’s biography is per-vaded by a continuity of racist thought and action. Incidents include his rallying against the (innocent) Central Park Five in the 1980s, his support of the racist Birther move-ment against Obama, his repeated slander of Mexicans and Muslims,
the defamation of the protests by African-American athletes and, most recently, his description of African countries as “shitholes.”
For many observers, the moment of truth came with Trump’s remarks concerning the events in Charlottes-ville, Virginia, in August 2017.
Armed with torches, white supremacists and neonazis marched through the town chanting: “Jews will not replace us!” One marcher even raced his car into a group of counter-demonstrators, killing anti-fascist activist Heather Heyer.
Instead of decidedly denouncing the fascist mob, Trump stated that there were “some very fine people on both sides” — a statement that even made many Republicans feel uneasy. His media patron Rupert Murdoch, of all people, was publicly looking for the emergency brake.
According to his biographer David Cay Johnston, Trump would love to be a dictator. After all, as one is inclined to add, President Trump would like to govern the nation like his corporation — in absolutist style, without opposition. His domestic and foreign policy, however, bears both the proof and burden of this fact.
At the international level, Trump has publicly insulted and degraded Washington’s allies, among them Australia, France and Germany. At the same time, he openly embraces authoritarian leaders, from Riyadh to Moscow to Manila. He finds his friends and peers in the likes of Euro-pean right-wing nationalists such as Nigel Farage, Marine Le Pen, or Jaro-slaw Kaczynski.
Trump’s ignorance of the workings of international politics makes him
a seemingly unwitting target for con-tinuous hoodwinking by his “bro-mances”— and threatens to isolate the United States internationally.
Disparaging countries as “shit-holes,” foolhardily siding with one party in highly complex conflicts (as with the Jerusalem issue), or insult-ing nuclear-armed dictators such as Kim Jong Un is not a way to make friends.
By now, foreign leaders have long understood that in order to get what they want, they only need to flatter Trump and receive him in pompous style. After all, Trump’s wishes can easily be gleaned from the president’s Tweets.
Trump’s total incapability is par-ticularly highlighted by his foreign policy actions. After all, Trump’s political decisions are, besides his narcissism, motivated by only one major aim: pleasing his supporters back home.
This holds true for his withdrawal from the climate agreement, the deci-sion concerning Jerusalem, as well as his political sabre-rattling toward Iran.
Ultimately, this also applies to his “shithole” comment and his instru-mental criticism of German refugee policy. Neither does he understand the effects his words have in other countries, nor does it interest him in the slightest.
Trump has never attempted to be the president of all US citizens. He always was, and continues to be, exclusively the president of his Republican base. In this group, his popularity remains high; around 80 percent of Republicans agree with his administration. These four-fifths of Republicans, however, translate only into a 35 per cent approval rate in overall society — too little to con-solidate Trump’s rule.
Resistance against Trump is therefore as old as his presidency. The Women’s March, held on the day after his inauguration, constituted the largest
demonstration the country has ever seen.
At the ballot box, Republicans have recently suffered a series of painful defeats. Much will undoubtedly depend on the results of the mid-term congressional elections in November.
Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the real problem is not Trump but his sup-porters — the Republican constitu-ency and their mind-set.
Even if Trump were to be removed from office or simply not re-elected, his followers — along with their deep-seated hatred of Latinos and Black people, of those who think differently, of science — will not simply vanish.
In fact, such a development would conceivably lead to an even more emphatic insistence on the fulfilment of the right-wing populist promises. This bodes a lot of trouble and adver-sity for the post-Trump era.
n This article appeared first on peo-plesworld.org.
UNITED STATES
Lies and deception reign in the White HouseALBERT SCHARENBERG examines the Trump spectacle and the end of truth in the US
CULTUREMorning Star 11Tuesday January 30 2018
HAVE you heard the one about the two Palestin-ian actors and the Brit-ish political comedian?
You soon will.Showtime From the
Frontline is touring Britain from next week and, bringing this newly formed trio led by veteran troublemaker-in-chief Mark Thomas to a theatre near you, it has that unlikely subject for comedy, the Israeli occupation, in its sights.
The fact that it’s happening at all is something of a minor miracle, given the huge obstacles Faisal Abualheja and Alaa Shehada faced just getting out of the occupied West Bank to Brit-ain.
When I meet them, the three per-formers have just finished a day’s rehearsal in a studio in east London’s Stratford Theatre Royal. The historic venue’s regal name belies the fact that it is a much-loved centre for “people’s theatre” rather than anything aristo-cratic or elitist.
And it’s just the place for a radical comedian like Thomas, who’s working with two talented Palestinian refu-gees determined to overturn stere-otypes about themselves and their situation by using comedy.
Raucous laughter breaks out fre-quently during our conversation. Thomas, renowned for his solo shows, says mischievously: “For me I think one of the challenges is allowing other people on the stage.”
Abualheja hits back: “We are trained in Palestine after 60 years of occupation. We know how to deal with someone like this and still we insisted on him apologising for Balfour, but he didn’t.”
“I have apologised every fucking day,” replies Thomas, referring to the British declaration of 1917 that handed Palestine to Jewish settlers.
Halfway through rehearsals, exactly what is being created is not entirely clear. “We still don’t know the result,” says Shehadah, “but what I hope we will do is break the stereotype of what ‘refu-gee’ means, what ‘Palestin-ian’ means, because every time you travel around as an artist suddenly there is a stereotype about who you are. You are a terrorist or victim.
“That’s the picture you’ve got, so we are trying through this show to humanise the story, to remind people that we as Palestinians are human.”
Shehada and Abualheja, both refu-gees from the West Bank who trained at Jenin Freedom Theatre, have worked with international clown group Red Nose International in Pal-estine, visiting hospitals to entertain sick children. Shehada and others started their own troupe last year, Palestinian Laughter Liberation, which he says brings comedy into the frame of politics in the occupied ter-ritories.
Abualheja sees Showtime From the Frontline as creating a new language of laughter to overcome the barriers between peoples and culture. “In this
show there are different cultures, different stories, different languages. Laughter is our language, theatre is our language. To bring that language so we can speak together as British and Palestinian artists, we create our own language to communicate.
“This is the powerful thing. We are moving forward to make a new lan-guage of comedy.”
The show came together out of a comedy workshop which Thomas, a long time supporter of Palestinian solidarity against the Israeli occupa-tion, and collaborator Sam Beale, who teaches stand-up at Middlesex Uni-versity, held last year in Jenin.
As Thomas explains, “Our philoso-phy was we weren’t going to tell any-one what to say. What we were there to do was teach people some skills they may not have in order that they can say what they want.”
Out of the workshop, Shehada and Abualheja put on their own comedy in Jenin at night during Ramadan. “We invited all the people after their fasting, we started at nine and it went for three or four hours,” says Alaa. “Really great,” adds Faisal.
But doing comedy in the occupied West Bank has its unique prob-lems. “It’s not easy because
first there are many challenges, as an artist has all over the world, which is to find a job. But in Palestine there are different challenges — to find a job, yes, but to struggle with the com-munity around you, then to struggle with the occupation.
“Many times I've wanted to go and perform in Bethlehem, but we get stopped at the checkpoints and we can’t perform there, so we cancel the performance.”
The places they need to perform are in Israel, such as Haifa and Jeru-salem, says Shehada, “because we want to meet our own Arabic audi-ence, but we cannot because we don’t have permission to go there.”
Another challenge is the NGOs and funding. “There is a system around you which is like the second or the fourth occupation,” Abualheja says. “It’s like everything in the country, all Palestine becomes a big NGO organisation. There is nothing coming from inside.”
This is not because Palestinians can’t do things for themselves but because the occupation prevents them from doing so at every step. “Pales-tine is a community of farmers, but it is not allowed for any farmer to dig a well for water. This is illegal, the Israelis will come and you will pay a lot of money and they will close it with concrete. So this is what keeps the mentality of waiting for the money from outside.”
Much of their homeland is also off limits to the actors, including the capital Jerusalem that US president
Donald Trump decided in Decem-ber belonged wholly to Israel. The world, as it happened, disagreed.
“The only time I have been in Jerusalem, I was 26
years old. Five months ago, I got an invita-tion to be in the US
for a clown workshop. The consulate is in Jerusalem. I have to go to apply there for a visa, but I cannot go.
“Then I spoke to the Americans and the Americans send papers to the Israelis and then the Israelis send papers for me …” Shehada is speaking in a frenetic voice that speeds up until the words meld together, reflecting the bureaucratic madness of being a Palestinian trying to get on with his life.
“Then, after I waited for two weeks, I get permission to be in Jerusalem for six hours, by an invitation from the States to be in my homeland.”
Problems for Palestinians do not end at the Israeli border. Shehada himself nearly didn’t make it here for the rehearsals thanks to Britain's Byzantine visa system. “It was a nightmare this time, a last minute decision and finally, thank God, they let us come.”
For Thomas, the British visa system is beyond a joke or just ripe for one and another example of the British state’s obsession with outsourcing services
to corporations. The visa application customer service was outsourced last May to a company called Sitel.
“The application goes from the Brit-ish consulate to the embassy in Amman, then to a company in Shef-field,” he says. “We are looking at a whole new document, a whole new administrative process. Because it has been outsourced you can’t phone up the consulate and ask what’s happen-ing.”
There were massive delays on Shehada’s visa, taking six weeks instead of the expected three and the trio tell a real-life shaggy dog story of the bizarre series of bureaucratic hoops that faced the actor before and after he arrived in Britain, involving police stations, bio-metric cards and very expen-sive phone calls.
For Thomas, this is the story of collapsed British public service provider Car-illion and the “obsession” Britain has had with out-sourcing to private com-
panies. “What Alaa and Faisal are describing is just the stupidity of handing over these functions of the state to outsourced companies.”
Thomas has been in the front line of British political comedy since the 1980s. More recently he has focused on political writing as well as touring, but over the years one struggle has remained close to his heart, Palestine.
In 2009, he made a typically quix-otic decision to shine the spotlight on Israel’s apartheid wall by walking along it, a feat that was met with mis-understanding and obstruction.
While there, he visited the Jenin Freedom Theatre on the West Bank and met its founder Juliano Meir Khamis. Two years later, Meir Khamis was gunned down by an unknown assailant in 2011, but, despite this shocking act of violence and attempts to burn it down, the theatre lives on.
After all the trials, the two Palestin-ian actors are here and Showtime From the Frontline is happening. Abualheja is optimistic.“We don’t have to convince everybody, because oth-erwise we would be lost in trying to convince people. Let’s do what we like, let’s have fun with it and then they
will come.“I remember
my brother saying if we brought a 100
politicians to talk about Pal-estine it would
not be as powerful as
this play. And we are a conserv-ative family, we are refugees, we
live in a camp.“So, you
see, there is hope.”
n Showtime From the Frontline tours from Janu-ary 30 until April 21, details: mark-thomasinfo.co.uk
PREVIEW
What’s so funny about the Israeli occupation?
Firebrand comedian Mark Thomas and Palestinian actors Faisal Abualheja and Alaa Shehada are about to answer that question in Showtime from the Frontline. JOE GILL reports
LIBERATING
LAUGHS: Alaa Shehada (left), Mark Thomas and (right) Faisal Abualheja
FEATURES Morning Star12 Tuesday January 30 2018
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by Brett Perkin
YOUR best exercise for the little grey cells today is a look at little grey cells with Can You Rebuild My Brain (10pm Channel 4).
In it, Lotje Sodderland recounts the story of her own life since 2011 when, aged just 34, she was almost killed by a stroke. She recalls the strange liberation she felt when she awoke from her induced coma, having no concept of past or future just an elation that she was still alive.
Quickly that turned to frustration when she discov-ered all the things she can’t do — she’s given up any hope that she’ll be able to read again, despite still being able to type the script for the documentary.
Sodderland’s story is fascinating enough on its own, but she uses the documentary to dig deeper into the advances in neuroscience that saved her life, all the while cautious of how we “fi x” something that we don’t even properly understand.
If you’re in for a medical warm-up for the brain surgery, 24 Hours in A&E (9pm Channel 4) continues to bring us riveting real-life vignettes from St George’s Hospital in south-west London.
This episode demonstrates the strengths of single parenthood and shows how families unite in tough times, the programme puff tells us, as a 20-year-old comes in following a motorcycle accident, a 70-year-old arrives at A&E with a high heart rate and a 10-year-old is rushed to hospital after hurting her knee. The worried family at the bedside is a regular theme.
If the wireless is more your bag, there’s a couple of things to watch out for on the World Service (you can get it on Freeview). Bridget Kendall examines those East Anglain larrikins the Iceni in The Forum at 9.05am, recalling Iron Age warrior queen Boudica’s famous stand against the Roman invaders.
If you fancy something a bit more historical, Jon Culshaw turns his hand to a more serious spot of impressioning than usual by becoming David Bowie in The Final Take (11.30am). Borrowing the dialogue from Bowie’s interviews since the 1960s, the Star Man chats to his longtime producer Tony Visconti in a New York studio in 2015, working on the tracks that would become Blackstar, Bowie’s fi nal album released just two days before his death.
TODAY’S WEATHER
Wednesday will become colder with sunshine and blustery showers, wintry over northern hills. Thursday will stay windy and cold, with fewer showers. Friday will become wetter, but milder.
NEXT FEW DAYS…
TV & RADIO
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INVERNESS★
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EDINBURGH★
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SHEFFIELD★
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LONDON★
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SOUTHAMPTON★Light rain10°C max, feels like 7°CWind 7mph S59% chance of rain
PLYMOUTH★
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GLASGOW★
Getting under the skin of advances in neuroscience
Not brain surgery
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FIGHTINGFUND
AFTER a pretty horrible week at the Star offi ces last week with our dear receptionist, friend and comrade Dawn pass-ing away suddenly, we’re all feeling very glum.
Our mood, however, was slightly uplifted by your gen-erosity, comrades, which nev-er fails to amaze us.
A wonderful £1,041 arrived here yesterday, and it’s looking like we might just hit our total.
Thank you to those of you who donated a score and a ten-ner in memory of Dawn, who
will be missed very much.We’re still trying to come to
terms with the loss of Ivan, and we know many of you are too. So many thank-yous to the comrades who have given gen-erously in Ivan’s memory — £100 comes in from Harrow and another £100 comes in from a dear comrade in London.
A kind reader has sent back their 501 winnings of £25, while a reader in Edinburgh sends in £20 with the message to keep providing the stories that oth-er papers won’t.
Rest assured, comrade, we will!
An impressive £80 arrived here from Oxford, while stand-ing orders continue to do a blinding job with £401 coming in. The total of the recurring payments hit an impressive £129, so thank you all so much for that.
We also received £50, £25,£23, two £20s, two tenners, £7 and a fi ver to help us in these incred-ibly diffi cult fi nancial times.
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FEATURESMorning Star 13Tuesday January 30 2018
LISTEN up peasants; times are changing. I’ve seen you at gigs. I’ve seen you danc-ing around, waving your hands in the air, dribbling lager down your fat, gorm-
less, porridge faces. Oh yes, I’ve seen you. You’ve got
your grubby hands all over the latest iPhone, haven’t you?
Taking selfies, eh? Phoning your friend for that one track you both really like, is it?
You’re holding that phone up to take a quick video for Snapchat to show everyone where you are, aren’t you?
How dare you, in the presence of millionaire pop-star Jack White — the man who wrote the song featured in the latest advert for Apple’s Beats by Dre — deem it acceptable behaviour to pull out your pathetic little trinket and take a photo?
You don’t deserve to breathe the same air as Jack White, never mind share a picture of him on Twitter.
Do you even know what a 100 per cent human experience is? This. Stops. Now.
Thank God we’ve got rich people to tell us how to behave.
Jack White is the latest musician to ban the use of mobile phones from their gigs, announcing today that his upcoming tour will be a phone free zone, saying he wants people to enjoy “a phone-free 100 per cent human experience.”
He will follow in the footsteps of illustrious artists like Guns N’ Roses and Alicia Keys.
Unlike being unable to have a pint at a Christy Moore gig or a cheese-burger at Morrissey, there’s a smug elitism that goes along with this trend of banning mobile phones at gigs that really bothers me.
You can tell I mean it, because I’ve just used “smug elitism” in a sentence mentioning Morrissey and it wasn’t even directed at him.
In the United States the latest trend in gigging is to use a service called Yondr, whereby when you enter an event you have your phone placed into a locked case that you may only access upon leaving the arena.
You keep the phone in your posses-sion, but for all intents and purposes you can’t use it until you leave. I can’t be the only one who sees this as polic-ing in its extreme?
I dread to think of the kind of
exchanges we’ll end up with when this service hits our venues:
“Where were you, son? We’ve been phoning you for hours. Your granny is dead.”
“Aw, sorry Dad. I was at an Alex Turner unplugged set. It was a pro-found and meaningful 100 per cent human experience so we couldn’t have our phones on during.”
“OK son, oK. She was calling your name there at the end. Just get here when ya can, eh?”
To me it feels self-important to make these broad decrees; to imply that the average punter who paid £50
for a ticket to your gig can’t be trusted to enjoy it properly.
It shows an almost master-servant level of disdain for the general public shelling out for the privilege of watching you perform, a pat on the head from your betters, telling you: “Now, wasn’t that more authentic?”
Obviously, people watching gigs through phones is obnoxious. It’s annoying for a spectator and frustrat-ing for a performer.
Nobody wants to spend all of that money on a ticket and then find them-selves watching a concert through someone in front’s phone.
It’s disrespectful to the performer, and everyone around you. I honestly get that, but to blanket ban all mobile phone use under some vague “you lot can’t be trusted” pretence is non-sense.
When your level of income dictates that going to see Jack White is a big night out, not being able to snap a photo at the gig or phone up a friend who was too skint to make it just feels sneering to me.
At a Kate Tempest gig I was at in 2016, before a particularly moving piece, she asked that everyone in the crowd put their phone away during;
just for this one, let’s all really get into it, and not film the stage or take selfies.
The audience complied. And you know what? That actually was a pro-found, authentic 100 per cent human experience. And it was achieved with-out anyone wagging a finger in my face and putting my smartphone in a security-tagged case. Maybe it’s that simple?
n Mick Clocherty is a writer and comedian based in Glasgow. He can be reached on Twitter @mick-clocherty.
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n Yesterday’s answers
1. The RAH jazz band is named after its founder. Who is he? Richard Anthony Hewson
2. In which English county is Seat Sandal (pictured)? Cumbria. It is one of the fells of the Lake District
3. Swallow Bank comes into which British TV comedy? Dad’s Army
1 On an Ordnance Survey map, what type of railway is represented by a thick black line?
2 What is a group of monkeys called?
3 A golf course at Merlinville-sur-Mer in France is the location of which Agatha Christie novel?
The Quizmaster with William SitwellTest your general knowledge with our daily quiz – and see if you can beat The Quizmaster...
Pic: Mick Knapton/Creative Commons
CULTURE
Banning phones from gigs reeks of smug elitism
MICK CLOCHERTY gets it, phones can be annoying. But, he wonders, is all the pretentious finger wagging necessary?
AUTHENTIC? Taylor Swift basks in the glow of a stage light and a million mobile phones
LETTERSMorning Star14 Tuesday January 30 2018
PETER FROST makes one mis-take in his otherwise excellent piece (M Star January 19) when he claims that Churchill invented the phrase “iron cur-tain.” This had been used in the same context a year earlier in a newspaper editorial by nazi propagandist Josef Goebbels.
Frost could also have men-tioned Churchill’s admiration
for Benito
Mussolini and the Italian fas-cists.
Speaking to “Il Duce” in 1927, he said: “If I had been an Italian, I am sure that that I should have been wholeheart-edly with you from start to fi n-ish in your triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism.
“Externally your movement has rendered a service to the whole world … Italy has shown that there is a way of fi ghting the subversive forces.
“She has provided the neces-sary antidote to the Russian poison. Hereafter, no great nation will be unprovided with an ultimate means of protec-tion against cancerous growths.”
Most hagiographers choose to ignore such incon-venient facts.
MARTIN DAVIDSONGranada, Spain
Yesterday’ssudoku solution
King realised capitalism had to be overturned
CIVIL RIGHTS STRUGGLE
RAMZY BAROUD is correct — Martin Luther King was far more revolutionary than the capitalist media lead people to believe (M Star January 25).
In his autobiography My Song, left-wing actor and singer Harry Belafonte, a close friend of King, mentions a party he hosted in March 1968 at his New York apart-ment.
The civil-rights leader had returned from meeting a group of black nationalists in Newark and looked shaken at their willingness to embrace violence. He was “concerned it would distract attention away from the Poor People’s Campaign.”
Although King said he “shared their rage, their pain
and frustrations,” he disa-greed with the tactics of vio-lence.
He explained: “It’s the sys-tem [capitalism] that’s the
problem and it’s choking the breath out of our lives.” King then engaged in an angry argu-ment with another guest and told him bluntly: “I’ve heard enough from you. You’re a capitalist and I’m not.”
Belafonte describes how the tension peaked: “The trouble,” King went on, “is that we live in a failed system.
“Capitalism does not permit an even fl ow of economic resources.
“With this system, a small privileged few are rich beyond conscience and almost all oth-ers are doomed to be poor at some level.”
And King continued with the telling words: “And since we know the system will not change the rules, we’re going
to have to change the system.” Belafonte wrote that they had not heard King speak in quite this way before.
Belafonte, who knew King better than most people, is clear that the civil-rights leader “at heart was a socialist and revolutionary thinker.”
Not long after this meeting, he was assassinated.
Not much has changed — the few still possess the greater wealth and capitalism is still choking the many.
It has to change, and we have to continue the cause of King and so many other cham-pions of the dispossessed to bring about an end to poverty, war and capitalism itself.
RICHARD MAUNDERSAxminster
We’ll harvest what we need, not for lucreBEYOND BREXIT
THE MORNING STAR (Janu-ary 22) carried an article by Alan Simpson about the envi-ronment stating that “a hard Brexit would be a disaster for British food and farming.”
The next day’s Star had Doug Nicholls’s article on reviving the real economy, pointing out improvements in the economy following the decision to leave the EU.
Both of these writers are honest socialists but sit on opposite sides of the EU fence.
If we believe in political action to put an end to capital-ism then we must have some ideals and not be swayed by short-term problems.
Personally I look forward to leaving the EU with no agree-ment on trade, so that tariffs make imports dearer and it becomes more viable to pro-duce food and goods here in Britain by people being paid a proper wage for their work.
The other part of leaving with no agreement is that we
do need to get rid of the Tories once their role in pushing through the divorce has been fulfi lled. Their interests are not ours, but we need them for
the time being to get us out of the EU.
Then we need a government which can direct investment back into manufacturing, fi sh-
ing and farming on the basis of what people need, not what is profi table.
JOHN HAMILTONLewisham People Before Profi t
WITNESS: Harry Belafonte
SEAGULLS
FOLLOW
THE
TRAWLER: Direct investment required
Churchill showed his admiration of Il Duce
REPUTATIONS
Left must stay clear of neolibs
UNITE
I HAVE no time for Donald Trump — but neither did I want the Democrats’ choice, Hillary Clinton, to win the US presidential election.
She didn’t understand the needs of blue-collar workers — indeed, she antagonised coalminers with her desire to close the pits down on envi-ronmental grounds.
And what’s more, as a result of recent tax cuts, one major US employer has increased its minimum wage from $9 (£6.36) to $11 (£7.77) an hour.
I do feel that the left has to isolate itself from a liberal Establishment in both the US and Britain that doesn’t understand the white work-ing class.
TIM MICKLEBURGHGrimsby
HISTORY
A tired old yoke: 1066 and all thatI AGREE with Brent Cutler (M Star letters January 27-28) when he criticises the Norman Yoke myth.
I would like to question whether any of its propo-nents have stopped to consider that there was a Saxon yoke. Ask any of the Celtic peoples of Britain and Ireland how they felt about Saxon aggression and suppression of their cultures and languages.
Prior to that, we had the Roman yoke, and even before that, a land of warring tribes, slavery and human sacrifi ce.
These islands have a long history, very little of which is to be celebrated.
OWAIN HOLLANDFowey
SPORTMorning Star 15Tuesday January 30 2018
IPC confirms Russia will be banned from Pyeongchang
WINTER SPORTS
But athletes will be able to compete as neutrals at Games
MEN’S RUGBY UNION
McNamara expects his Dragons to improveby Our Sports Desk
STEVE MCNAMARA said yesterday that last year’s scrap to keep Catalans Drag-ons in Super League was the most pressure he had experi-enced as a coach.
The former England boss took over at Stade Gilbert Bru-tus last June with the French club struggling in the bottom four.
McNamara was unable to steer Catalans clear of danger and a narrow defeat by Widnes in the final round of the Qual-ifiers consigned the Dragons to a Million Pound Game show-down with Leigh.
Catalans looked in danger of dropping out of Super League for the first time but delivered a stirring second-half fightback to take the final place in the top flight for 2018.
“You ask anybody — any
player or coach — who’s been involved in that Million Pound Game, it’s an extremely tough situation,” said McNamara, who led Eng-land to the semi-finals of the 2013 World Cup.
“It was always the reality that it could happen when I took the job. Thankfully we got ourselves out of that situation.
“It’s something that you won’t experience anywhere else in rugby league.
“It’s a reality check for eve-rybody, without a doubt. It was pretty close to being a disaster.
“In terms of improving, what it does is give everyone that real impetus that we’ve got to be better. The players have had a great attitude towards doing that.”
Catalans will aim to hit the ground running when they open their season at Widnes on Sunday.
McNamara is excited by the task of turning the cosmopol-itan Dragons into a Super League force again.
“I don’t think there’s a big-ger challenge in the sport,” he said.
“You’ve got to be able to understand the different cul-tures, there’s language barri-ers and everything else.
“That’s why the job is so attractive to me. It’s the big-gest challenge going.”
by Our Sports Desk
RUSSIA was banned yesterday from the upcoming Pyeongchang Paralympics because of its doping past.
However, the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) said about 30-35 Russians will be allowed to compete in five sports as neutral athletes at the games, which run from March 8-18.
That mirrors the situation for next month’s Olympics. The Russian team has been barred, but 169 Russians have been invited to compete.
“We are not rewarding Russia but we are allowing athletes that we believe are clean to compete under a neutral flag,” IPC pres-ident Andrew Parsons said.
It will be the second Paral-ympics without a Russian team. The country was also excluded from the Rio de Janeiro Paralympics in 2016. Since then, there has been enough improvement to justify allowing Russians to compete as neutral athletes after extra drug testing, Parsons said.
“Although the [Russian Par-alympic Committee] remains suspended they have made sig-nificant progress and we have
to recognise this,” Parsons said. “We now have greater confidence that the anti-doping system in Russia is no longer compromised and corrupted. We have also witnessed behav-ioural and cultural changes.”
The Russians who will be allowed to compete must have undergone extra testing and a course of anti-drug education.
No-one implicated “know-ingly or unknowingly by the numerous anti-doping investi-gations in Russia” can take part, Parsons said.
The team of “Neutral Paral-ympic Athletes” will be about half the size of the Russian team
that competed in Sochi in 2014.The neutral Paralympic ath-
letes will be allowed to com-pete in Alpine skiing, biathlon, cross-country skiing, snow-board and curling. They will wear uniforms without any national insignia, and fans will also be barred from waving Russian flags.
Russians had been allowed to compete as neutral athletes in some qualifying events ahead of the games before a final decision, but that came too late for Russia to qualify in hockey.
The IPC suspended Russia’s membership in August 2016
over what then-IPC president Philip Craven called a “medals over morals” culture with endemic cheating.
To be reinstated, Russian officials must either accept or disprove World Anti-Doping Agency investigations which found it ran a doping pro-gramme. The IPC also requires the Russian anti-doping agency to be fully reinstated by WADA, which is also demanding Russia accepts the investigations’ findings.
The Russian government denies ever supporting any doping programmes.
RUGBY UNION
FORWARD Richie Gray has been ruled out of Scotland’s Six Nations opener with Wales on Saturday.
The 64-times capped Toulouse lock sat out last week’s three-day training camp in Edinburgh with a calf injury.
Now the Scottish Rugby Union has confirmed the 28-year-old will remain in France this week for treatment with his club side’s medics.
But while he will miss this weekend’s Cardiff clash Scots head coach Gregor Townsend hopes to have him back for the later stages of the tournament.
Assistant coach Mike Blair said: “Richie wasn’t involved in the autumn or the summer tour so it’s a situation we have been able to handle in the past.
“Obviously he is a quality player and a guy we’re really keen to see back and how he fits in — but he also needs to get himself right. There’s no point having him here if he’s not 100 per cent.
“When will he be back? Sooner rather than later but we can’t put an exact time on it right now.”
Gray’s absence means his brother Jonny is likely to start alongside either Ben Toolis or Grant Gilchrist in the second row at the Millennium Stadium.
Gray to miss Scotland’s Six Nations opener
Have your say – send a letter
(of up to 300 words) to
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Road, London
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LOOKING AHEAD: McNamara
COMPROMISE: Andrew Parsons
SportMorning Star16
Tuesday January 30 2018
Tuesday January 30 2018 9 770307 175220
0 5
MSTAR 2018-01-30 TUE 1.0Published by the People’s Press Printing Society Ltd, William Rust House, 52 Beachy Road, Bow, London E3 2NS. Telephone: (020) 8510-0815. Fax: (020) 8986-5694. Email: [email protected]. Registered with Companies House as Morning Star (in-corporating the Daily Worker) No N5559. Printed by trade union labour at Trinity Mirror.
by Our Sports Desk
REJECTING accusations he is a sexist, Phil Nev-ille was adamant yesterday that he has the char-acter and status to be a role model after taking on the “ultimate job” as England boss.
The decision to hire the former Manchester United defender brought scrutiny last week because of his lack of coaching experience and his Twitter postings six years ago that were deemed sexist and misogynistic.
“My character stands up to any accusation that has been levelled at me,” Neville said after being presented in his new role. “I’ve lived my life right. I think I have a lot of respect within the game.”
Questioned for the fi rst time about the tweets, which he sent in 2011 and ‘12 when still a player at Everton, Neville said “they aren’t right today and they weren’t then.”
In one of the Twitter posts from 2012, Neville said he thought women would be “busy preparing breakfast/getting kids ready/making beds” instead of watching cricket like men.
The previous year, he said women “always wanted equality until it comes to paying the bills,” while another tweet read: “Relax, I’m back chilled — just battered the wife!!! Feel better now!”
Neville defended that tweet by saying he was
referring to games of table tennis and basketball he had with his wife on holiday, but accepted he was “disap-pointed” that he used wording that related to domestic violence.
“That tweet wasn’t sent out as a joke [about] domestic violence,” Neville said.
The 41-year-old Neville has taken charge of the No 3-ranked international team in the women’s game, having only had brief spells as an assistant coach with the England under-21 men’s team, Man United and Valencia since retiring as a player in 2013.
He believes that is enough.“I’ve coached the best players in the men’s game
at the top level and I believe that the players I’ll be coaching in the England women’s team are top, top-class players at the elite level,” Neville said. “For us to get from third to fi rst in the world, I think they’ll need a coach with that type of experi-ence.
“I cannot be more qualifi ed for this job … The principles that I see in women’s football and men’s football are very similar. The gap is closing.”
Neville said he isn’t using the job as a “stepping stone” to other positions in the game.
“This, for me, is the ultimate job,” Neville said. “It doesn’t get any better than managing your country.”
TAILOR TOMNewcastle 3:05
Farringdon’s doubles
Houseman’schoice
MISTER FREEZESouthwell 2:15 (nap)
PEARL NATIONSouthwell 3:55
BASKETBALL: NBA, Washington
Wizards v Oklahoma City Thunder —
BT Sport 1 12am (Wed).
CYCLING: Six Day Berlin —
Eurosport 2 8pm.
FOOTBALL: Premier League, Hud-
dersfi eld v Liverpool — BT Sport 1
7.15pm.
TENNIS: WTA, Taiwan Open — BT
Sport 2 4am, St Petersburg Ladies’
Trophy — BT Sport 1 10am.
Sport on TV
‘IT DOESN’TGET ANYBETTER’
As Neville defends tweets sent six years ago, the new England head coach says of job:
WOMEN’S FOOTBALL: ENGLAND
MEN’S CRICKET
Morgan demands more despite series victoryby Our Sports Desk
EOIN MORGAN emphasised the high standards he will hold England to when he said yes-terday that his side had been short of their best despite a 4-1 series win over Australia.
Morgan captained the tour-ists to a comprehensive one-day triumph after the dark days of the Ashes, toppling the hosts in Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney and Perth.
Trouncing the reigning world champions on their own soil is a fi ne feather in Eng-land’s cap as they build
towards a home World Cup in 2019, but there is no chance of getting carried away with Morgan at the helm.
“The big thing I’d emphasise to come from this series was the character within the side. I don’t think we played well at all throughout the series,” he said.
“I still think we have a while to go. The consistency with the bat has faded off a little bit and it had probably been our strong-est point [previously].
“But on the other hand
you’ve got some exceptional performances by the bowlers. They’ve stepped up in the series probably more than our
batters.“That’s a huge positive for us, par-ticularly in 50-over cricket when you can go through lulls of not taking wick-
ets. I thought our guys stood up really
well.”Refl ecting on the contest as
a whole, he added: “We said at the start of the series we might learn a lot and might open up
some cracks but I certainly didn’t think we’d learn as much as this or get quite so much confi dence.”
One of the bowlers who took the chance to impress Morgan was Tom Curran, unused in the fi rst three matches but a match-winner in Sunday’s dra-matic fi nale in Perth.
The 22-year-old claimed fi ve for 35 in just his third appear-ance, taking the key scalps of David Warner and Glenn Max-well before skittling the tail to seal a 12-run win at the fi rst day of business at the new Optus Stadium.
“We made 260 which is not
really a competitive score any-where you go,” said Morgan.
“But Tom bowled well up front and to get Maxwell at the stage he did was brilliant. Coming back and being an exponent of reverse swing like that was outstanding.”
Premier LeagueSwansea Arsenal
West Ham Crystal Palace
Huddersfi eld Liverpool, 8pm
ChampionshipBirmingham Sunderland
Burton Reading
Hull Leeds
Middlesbrough Sheff Wednesday
Millwall Derby
Nottingham Forest Preston
Sheffi eld United Aston Villa
League OneBlackburn Walsall
League TwoCoventry Cambridge United
Lincoln Newport County
Luton Wycombe
Stevenage Swindon
Yeovil Grimsby
Scottish PremiershipCeltic Hearts
Scottish CupInverness CT Dundee
Formartine Cove Rangers, 8pm
Scottish League TwoBerwick Rangers Peterhead
All kickoff s 7.45pm unless noted
Tonight’sfootball
ACE THE RACE WITH
FARRINGDON IN
SATURDAY’S
PAPER
