Lead story

Cameron’s Calais disaster

by Daphne Liddle

PRIME Minister David Cameron is in deep trouble over the humanitarian and economic catastrophe that is unfolding in Calais as thousands of refugees from countries that have been devastated by his and his predecessors’ policies are desperately and determinedly trying to get into Britain.

Cameron’s efforts to keep them out with more police, more checks on lorries, more fencing and more sniffer dogs are causing a traffic crisis that had gridlocked half of Kent and is choking off the main artery of trade between Britain and Europe.

Cameron has tried blaming lorry drivers — fining the drivers and the haulage companies that employ them up to £2,000 a time for every migrant stowaway found hiding in, on or under their vehicles.

These fines are not being paid and the haulage companies — most of them patrons of the Tory party — are up in arms.

The French, whose fellow imperialist government is equally to blame for the crisis, just want the migrants to leave France so their co-operation in policing the port is half-hearted.

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Cameron’s Calais disaster

Tube strike: it’s about jobs and safety, not money

LONDON Underground workers staged another 48-hour strike this week in protest at plans to run the trains all night on some lines at weekends.

RMT, Aslef, TSSA and Unite rejected Management’s latest offer of increased pay and bonuses because it ignored the unions’ demands on health and safety, staffing and shift patterns.

Aslef accused London Underground of being completely inflexible over terms and conditions for the Night Tube, leaving it with no other choice than to press ahead with the walkout.

Aslef officer Finn Brennan said: “We genuinely regret the disruption this will cause, but the blame for this must rest with the pig-headed determination of the Mayor to insist on a September 12 launch of Night Tube instead of allowing more time for a negotiated settlement to be reached.”

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Tube strike: it’s about jobs and safety, not money

Scottish Labour Leadership elections

by our Scottish Political Correspondent

THE MONTH of August is generally known as the Silly Season when journalists scramble to find “proper news” when parliaments close and politicians head for the beach.

This year the Labour leadership campaign has generated plenty of “proper news” where the strong showing of Jeremy Corbyn has given rise to panic and smears in the rightwing press, including the Guardian.

It is a little known fact Scottish Labour is also having a leadership contest. This is a hard fought struggle between incumbent deputy leader Kezia Dugdale on the right and Ken Macintosh who is slightly different in ways which political scientists can discern by careful comparison of the fine print of policy statements.

Dugdale offers an exciting programme which includes: “Simpler procedures for the election of Scottish Executive Committee and Scottish Policy Forum Representatives with the Chair, Vice-Chair and Treasurer of the Scottish Labour Party.”

She has said that a Corbyn victory would “leave Labour carping on the sidelines for years” and wants a “reformed” House of Lords based in Glasgow, which ought to set the heather on fire.

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Scottish Labour Leadership elections

Red Star in Clerkenwell Green

by New Worker correspondent

THAT REVOLUTIONARIES need to study the past goes without saying but Mick Costello, the Industrial Editor of the Morning Star in the 1980s, put his special take on the significance of history in one of the opening talks at the Red Star Festival in London last weekend.

London comrades gathered at the historic Marx Memorial Library in Clerkenwell Green to meet friends, old and new, for two days of discussion, debate, culture, music and food with national and international speakers from the labour, progressive and anti-imperialist movements.

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Red Star in Clerkenwell Green

Editorial

Immigration crisis: Britain and France guilty

PRIME Minister David Cameron is displaying the ugliest face of British imperialism in his crude and ill-thought out response to the crisis of desperate immigrants in Calais trying to get into Britain and causing disruption to travel and trade between Britain and Europe.

His first thoughts were to promise “more fences and more sniffer dogs” to help the French police prevent these immigrants’ efforts to hide themselves in vehicles bound for Britain or to walk through the Channel Tunnel — risking their lives in the process.

He would never have given them a second thought if their plight had not led to traffic gridlock that is affecting trade and profits. He seems totally perplexed by their determination to get into Britain while his imperialist allies in France want nothing more than for the problem of these refugees to move to Britain and cease to be their responsibility.

Both governments are responsible for this tide of human tragedy. They, along with the United States, took part in the attacks on Libya, the undermining of Syria and the Iraq and Afghan wars and numerous interventions in North Africa that have devastated once stable and prosperous countries, “bombed them back to the stone age”, destroyed their infrastructures and left them at the mercy of warring extremist factions. They have made these countries impossible to live in safely and are surprised that suddenly there are thousands of traumatised and desperate people on our doorstep with their children looking for somewhere safe to live.

The countries where the people first arrive in Europe — Italy and Greece — are doing their best to offer humane assistance but are overwhelmed. The governments and mass media in Europe are building barriers against these refugees but at a local level a lot of humanitarian work is being done.

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Immigration crisis: Britain and France guilty