TAKE ON TAX AVOIDERS

Nationwide
Stand up for workers, Labour MPs tell Brown
Foreign labour strikes spread to Sellafield
BNP attempt to infiltrate wildcat strike
Icy Britain braced for second blast of snow

International
Obama has begun discreet talks with Iran, Syria
North Korea ‘ready to test long range missile’
Shoe thrown at Chinese Prime Minister
China puts joblessness for migrants at 20 million

DAILY BLOG REVIEW / by Kate Belgrave

At last – interesting times for the trade union movement, and the lefties in and around it. How should unions respond to the refinery and power station strikes? More to the point – can they respond… and will Labour-affiliated unions even want to?

A few from the last few days:

Excellent as ever, Dave Osler looks for parallels between the refinery strikes with workers’ reactions to Enoch Powell’s 1968 Rivers of Blood speech – and finds none. Recommended.

Jon Rogers doesn’t see xenophobia in the refinery strikes -he sees the latest chapter in the long story of the battle to protect workers’ terms and conditions. He argues that a better slogan for our lost leader Gordon would be “British jobs on British terms and conditions” or – better still – “all jobs on good terms and conditions.”

Stroppyblog makes the point – very eloquently – that socialism and trade unionism should aim to encourage the refinery strikers towards international solidarity, ‘rather than the dead-end of nationalism.’ Hear hear.

Over at the Tomb, Mr Lenin argues – partly with himself – that unions might harbour racists. He’s heard that a ‘British jobs for British workers’ protest has been planned by trade unionists for next week. Drop us a line in the comments here if you’ve heard about that – and don’t miss the comments thread at the Tomb for a pointed commentary on Labour affiliated unions.

My interest is the official status of the strikes – are they union-driven, or are workers organising them? Will the recession see people organising independently of unions – taking matters into their own hands? Are people finally sick of the indifferent support of Labour affiliated unions?

Good old Letters writes to William Hague and takes him to task for driving Tory voters to UKIP with his ‘free movement for workers within the EU’ comments on Andrew Marr. Go Letters!

Stumbling and Mumbling makes the point of the year so far: why are people picking on foreign workers when they should be abusing bankers? Man after my own heart there. And was Marx right? – capitalism turns us on each other, not the real culprits.

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