Brixton housing campaigners target estate agent

 

HOUSING campaigners in Brixton, south London  camped on the pavement outside Foxton’s estate agents on Sunday 5th April after the local council agreed a £50 million 10-year partnership deal with Foxton’s to manage all future housing needs in Brixton.

Foxton’s will now become the Sustainable Housing Co-operative Partner for Lambeth Council. The council has suffered a £90 million cut in its budget from central government.

The company will bring their commercial expertise into play and help Lambeth Council to gain a maximum return on the six estate regeneration projects throughout the borough.

This deal was not mentioned as an option in recent local “consultations” with local tenants.

A conference to address the current housing crisis has also been pledged as part of this exciting new partnership. Tickets are priced at £100 for tenants. Landlords will receive free admission.

The housing campaigners, including a local hip hop artist and activist Potent Whisper, bedded down in the window of Foxton’s estate agents in central Brixton to highlight the attack on communities in social housing throughout the borough.

Potent said: “Was just gonna let you know that a few of us are going to camp outside Foxton’s with sleeping bags and pillows to highlight displacement and the homelessness that results from the evictions.”

The council plans to demolish large swathes that are the centre of local communities and build luxury flats. Many local families face eviction.

No privatisation at the National Gallery

  by New Worker correspondent

STAFF at London’s National Gallery staged a Day of Action and a seven-day strike in the last week of March in their long-running battle against privatisation.

The National Gallery has told 400 of its 600 staff that they are to be taken over by a private company. They are responsible for the security of the paintings and the public and look after millions of visitors.

The National Gallery is the only major museum that does not pay the London living wage.

More than 40,000 people have signed a petition in support of the campaign, run by civil service union PCS, to stop the privatisation.

The workers have already taken strike action on several occasions and in February they were on strike for five days.

The dispute escalated when union representative Candy Udwin, who was involved in talks at the conciliation service Acas, was suspended on the eve of the strike.

PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: "With this privatisation plan, the National Gallery is putting its well-earned worldwide reputation at risk.

"Its decision to suspend one of our senior reps is a disproportionate and unfathomable act of bad faith and not only should she be reinstated immediately, gallery officials must commit to reopening full and proper negotiations."

More than 8,500 people have signed a petition demanding her reinstatement.

A National Gallery spokesperson said all planned education events had been cancelled or rescheduled due to the action.

Last week the union launched a People’s Inquiry into the running of the gallery in Parliament. PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka was joined by Green party spokesperson for culture, media and sport, Martin Dobson and employment rights lawyer John Hendy QC, to call on the gallery to halt its privatisation plans.

A message of support was sent by shadow culture minister Chris Bryant on behalf of the Labour party who raised concern over the ongoing dispute which they acknowledged is “damaging the reputation of the gallery, is undermining the morale among staff and is inconveniencing the public.” They also called for staff to be paid equitably, on at least the Living Wage.

Lunchtime protests took place across the country on the Day of Action outside cultural institutions in solidarity with National Gallery. The protest in London was followed by the handing in of a letter at Downing Street urging the current Prime Minister to intervene to ensure the plans are delayed at least until the next government and the incoming director have had a chance to review them.

Leading the fight-back in Greece

Ioli Gkouma speaking

by New Worker Correspondent

A WIDE spectrum of communists in London last Saturday joined London-based Greek communists in a packed meeting at the Marx Memorial Library to hear Ioli Gkouma speak on behalf of the KKE about her party’s line on the way forward for Greece.

The KKE has been criticised by some for refusing to support the current government led by the democratic left party Syriza, or to join it in a coalition.

Syriza came to power on a popular pledge to renegotiate the extreme austerity measures imposed on Greece by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund but has failed to win any concessions.

Ioli pointed out that Syriza, while claiming to be left-wing, nevertheless supports the EU and is not seeking to remove Greece from either the EU or the Eurozone.

Under these circumstances it is impossible to escape from the austerity regime and to join with Syriza would make the KKE guilty of promoting a lie and deceiving the workers of Greece.

She said the root cause of the problem is capitalism and Greece can only escape through a socialist revolution that will free Greece, not only from EU and IMF oppression but all capitalist oppression.

“We do not want to come out of the EU only to find we have to make trading agreements with Russia or Brazil and still be controlled by capitalist regimes,” she said.

Her talk was followed a long and high level discussion, which included issues like the problem of the threat of the Golden Dawn fascist party and the KKE refusal to be led astray on popular demonstrations in Athens by agents provocateurs into making violent assaults on public buildings.

It also covered the impossibility of implementing any kind of real socialism from with a capitalist state structure and the dangers of trying to do so.

Down with the puppet fascist regime!

Dermot Hudson and Andy Brooks on the picket

by New Worker correspondent

 KOREAN solidarity activists returned to the south Korean embassy in London last week to protest against the US military exercises in the occupied south and the current imperialist hate campaign that the Americans are focusing against Democratic Korea.

New Communist Party leader Andy Brooks joined comrades and friends protesting outside the puppet regime embassy in Westminster against the “Foal Eagle” and “Key Resolve” drills that have heightened tension on the divided Korean peninsula.

The second picket of the embassy this year was organised by the UK Korean Friendship Association and its numbers were boosted by members of the NCP and the Korean Friendship Association as well as some young Spanish KFA members living in London.

Taking the microphone, KFA chair Dermot Hudson denounced the latest imperialist provocations against the homeland of Juché pointing out that at the beginning of the year the DPRK had made sincere, patient and painstaking efforts to reduce tension with the US, even offering to suspend holding nuclear tests if the Americans and their lackeys called off their war-games. But these efforts were casually brushed aside by the US and the imperialists have steamed ahead with holding the exercises.

These imperialist war games will last for over six weeks and are massive in scale. Over 11,000 US troops and more that 200,000 south Korean puppet soldiers are taking part in annual drills that simulate the invasion and occupation of the socialist north.

Two comrades held up a DPRK flag, another two displayed the large KFA banner that always accompanies these demonstrations while others maintained a constant commentary on the microphone or gave out leaflets on the street. Over a 100 leaflets, specially produced for the picket, were handed out calling for the immediate cancellation of Foal Eagle and Key Resolve and the unconditional withdrawal of all US troops from Korea.

The UK Korean Friendship Association (KFA) organises solidarity meetings and protest pickets in London throughout the year. The KFA also works side by side with the Friends of Korea committee which also holds regular events in London.

• video of the picketers outside the puppet embassy

NATO and the crisis in Ukraine

by New Worker correspondent

ANTI-FASCISTS and peace campaigners packed the Baptist Central Church in Bloomsbury on  Thursday 19th March for a meeting organised by Stop the War to examine the role of Nato in the current crisis in Ukraine.

Speakers included Jonathan Steele former [Guardian] journalist, Andrew Murray chief of staff Unite the Union, Kate Hudson CND general secretary and Alex Gordon RMT and leader of Solidarity with Anti-fascist Resistance in Ukraine.

All the speakers emphasised that Nato interventions were behind the coup a year ago in Ukraine that brought to power a government that included open Nazis who now dominate that government, not but numbers but by aggression and terror.

They all agreed this was part of a long-term US strategy to surround Russia with a hostile military presence and destabilise Russia in order to achieve US global hegemony.

Jonathan Steele rather naïvely claimed that the fall of the Soviet Union had brought an end to the threat of nuclear war, which he said, has now been resurrected by Nato.

None of the speakers was pro Putin but they did point out that all the measures the Russian government has taken have been justifiable self-defence actions.

Alex Gordon made a very strong speech, detailing the rise of neo-Nazism in Ukraine and other European countries, for example Golden Dawn in Greece, Pegida in Germany and the legalisation of pro-Nazi symbols and public events in the Baltic States.

He also attacked those who are trying to revise history to make it appear that the Soviet Union was the aggressor in the Second World War and that Germany was the victim.

There was a lively debate, which included allegation of imperialist aggression against Putin and a complaint from some Latvian students present that it was hypocritical of Alex Gordon to complain at the legalisation of the swastika in Latvia while the hammer and sickle is legal here.

Alex Gordon made a very robust reply to this, condemning anyone who would try to make an equivalence between the Nazis and communism when the Red Army played the major role in defeating the Nazis.