anti-sexism at work: frances o’grady page...
TRANSCRIPT
F O R P E A C E A N D S O C I A L I S M
Proudly owned by our readers | Incorporating the Daily Worker | Est 1930 | morningstaronline.co.ukWednesday March 7 2018£1
XXPAGE
This edition is being provided to delegates attending the TUC Women’s Conference with the compliments of RMT
ROHINGYA: ETHNIC CLEANSING HASN’T STOPPED
8PAGE
ANTI-SEXISM AT WORK: FRANCES O’GRADY
UNI REHASHES
OUT-OF-DATE
LECTURES ‘TO
BREAK STRIKE’UNIVERSITY bosses are playing out-of-date recorded lectures to students in an eff ort to under-mine and break staff strike action in defence of pensions.
The University of Edin-burgh’s law department is using years-old recordings in place of striking lecturers, the University and College Union (UCU) revealed yesterday.
Other universities are threat-ening to dock lecturers’ pay if they refuse to catch up with the backlog of teaching when they return to work.
UCU Scotland offi cial Mary Senior said the university’s new principal Peter Mathieson had “sat on his hands” and not taken steps to resolve the dispute.
“But it’s quite another thing
for Edinburgh University to be proactively taking steps to break the strike in this under-hand way.”
NUS Scotland vice-president education Jodie Waite said: “The idea of serving up recordings of classes from years gone by — all in the name of undermining staff and lecturers’ campaign for fair terms and conditions — beggars belief. Staff and stu-dents deserve better.
“The only positive solution to these strikes for students is universities getting round the negotiating table and reaching an agreement with their staff
— not looking for shortcuts or get-outs.”
Lecturers, support and admin staff at more than 60 universities are now mounting their second wave of strike action in defence of their pensions.
Employers’ body Universi-ties UK (UUK) wants to sever the link between pensions and fi nal salaries, leaving payouts dependent on the vagaries of the stock market.
UUK is made up of university
vice-chancellors, whose own pensions are linked to their sala-ries. They are exempt from the proposals, which UCU says will cost retired staff £10,000 a year.
UCU members struck from Monday to Wednesday last week, are on strike from Mon-day to Thursday this week and will be out from Monday to Friday next week. They have received support for their cause from students both on the picket line and via occupa-tions of university offi ces.
Negotiations between UCU and UUK resumed yesterday through conciliation service Acas. But even as negotiations take place some university chiefs appear to be escalating the confrontation.
Turn to page 3
THE WONDERFUL WAVELENGTH
NEVILLE HAS A LOT MORE WORK TO DO
■ MUSIC REVIEW
■ SIMMONDS SPEAKS
WILL STONE tunes in to a mesmeric performance by techno master Alva Noto
Turn to page 11
THE STRUGGLE FOR EQUALITY GOES ON
■ FEATURE
In a year of many milestone anniversaries for women, VICKY KNIGHT reminds us that our lib-eration has still yet to be won
Turn to page 9
THE England manager needs to stop making it all about himself and about his team.
Turn to page 14
by Peter Lazenby
Edinburgh University accused of undermining lecturers fi ghting for pensions
Pic
: Nei
l Ter
ry P
ho
tog
rap
hy
7PAGE
2Morning Star WednesdayMarch 7 2018 news
morningstaronline.co.uk morningstaronline
@m_star_online
www.cwu.org
The Communications Union
@CWUNews
CWU SENDS
GREETINGS TO ALL
DELEGATES
TO THE TUC
WOMEN’S
CONFERENCE
DAVE WARD
GENERAL SECRETARYJANE LOFTUS
PRESIDENT
■ RETAIL
SAINSBURY’S STAFF
URGED TO SAY NO TO
ADVERSE PAY DEALUNITE has warned that Sains-bury’s workers will have to give up paid breaks, their spring bonus and premium pay for Sunday working if they accept the supermarket’s pay off er.
Bosses plan to increase the basic rate of pay by £1.20 an hour to £9.20 and £9.80 in Lon-don from September (the living wage stands at £8.75, £10.20 in London).
Sainsbury’s said it will be investing £100 million in its employees this year, funded by cost savings.
But Unite acting national
offi cer for food and drink Bev Clarkson warned that workers are faced with a “classic ‘rob-bing Peter to pay Paul’ situa-tion.”
The union, which represents more than 12,000 Sainsbury’s workers, is recommending its members reject the proposals in a consultative ballot of mem-bers that should be completed by the end of April.
Ms Clarkson welcomed the
supermarket’s intention to increase its basic rate of pay, which would represent “the highest in the industry.”
But she added: “There will be no further increase in salary until 2020 and, given what our members have been asked to give up in return for this head-line rate, the overall package doesn’t look that attractive.
“Our members will have to make a number of ‘sacrifi ces’ to secure this rate of pay which includes the removal of paid breaks and Sunday premium pay, as well as a number of
UNITE: It’s a better basic rate but ‘strings attached’ would off set rise
by Sam Tobin
■ AFTER CARILLION
THE government was urged yesterday to ditch plans to privatise Ministry of Defence fi refi ghters’ jobs following the collapse of contractor Carillion.
Unite said the devastat-ing eff ect on public-sector contracts caused by Caril-lion’s demise was “the best argument” against privatisation.
Assistant general sec-retary Gail Cartmail was speaking at a public-sector rally in the Commons last night. She said outsourc-ing of vital public services should halt following the Carillion collapse.
The deadline for private-sector bids to take over Defence Fire and Rescue Services, which provides cover on MoD sites, has been extended until May.
Ms Cartmail said the “appalling debacle” of Carillion left thousands jobless, vital construction projects mothballed and 30,000 suppliers high and dry.
She added: “So why should hardworking and dedicated fi refi ght-ers be subjected to such a fractured and fl awed privatisation process and all the concerns that this poses for national security at military bases?”
Unite: Don’t privatise fi refi ghters’ jobs at MoD
■ CRUEL DETENTION CENTRE
Home Offi ce letter threat to Yarl’s Wood hunger strikersby Lamiat SabinParliamentary Reporter
DIANE ABBOTT raised an urgent question in the Com-mons yesterday about Home Offi ce threats to women on hunger strike in Yarl’s Wood.
She was fi nally given per-mission to visit the immi-gration removal centre last month, despite becoming shadow home secretary in 2016. Her visit coincided with a hunger strike over inhumane conditions and indefi nite detentions.
The Home Offi ce has been accused of ordering “punitive deportations” after the leaking of a letter sent to hunger strik-ers that warned of “accelerated removal.”
Ms Abbott told MPs that the Home Offi ce and Serco and G4S — the private companies that run the prison — denied there was a hunger strike. “It now seems that we were misled,” she said.
Immigration Minister Caro-line Nokes said the letter was part of offi cial Home Offi ce
guidance. “Nobody wants detainees to be at any risk, but it is important that they should not regard that as a route to prevent removal from this country,” she said.
Labour’s Stretford & Urm-ston MP Kate Green said that many women who have been victims of abuse and torture are detained and released numerous times before being allowed freedom.
Tottenham MP David Lammy accused the government of
indiff erence to the plight of women who have been detained for months and even years without an end in sight.
And the SNP’s Stuart C McDonald said: “The large-scale routine detention of thousands of human beings in private prisons for an inde-terminate period, simply at the discretion of immigration offi cers, is frankly a stain on our democracy and an aff ront to the rule of law.”
CONCERN: Diane Abbott and shadow attorney general Shami Chakrabarti visit Yarl’s Wood, near Bedford
GO AWAY: A billboard protesting against the offi cial visit by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is driven around London’s Parliament Square
morningstaronline.co.uk morningstaronline @m_star_online 3
Morning Star Wednesday
March 7 2018news
CLOSING DATE: Monday March 19
WE’RE HIRINGADMINISTRATOR
We are looking for an Administrator to join the business team in our busy east London offi ce.
Working Monday to Friday, 35 hours per week you will be the fi rst point of contact for all visitors and telephone enquiries.
This post is subject to a six-month probation period. Holidays start at 28 days per year rising to 30, plus bank holidays.
If you have the skills and are ready to take on a new challenge at a national newspaper, which isn’t afraid to tell it like it is, email [email protected] for an application pack.
Women and minority ethnic candidates are particularly encouraged to apply
The successful applicant will need…
Excellent communication and interpersonal skillsMulti-tasking, planning and organisation skillsDigital and physical record-keeping and reporting skillsThe ability to work fl exibly in a small team and off er new ideasIT skills and experience including use of Microsoft Offi ce softwareAn interest in the labour movement and progressive issues
■ PROTEST
May urged to cut relations with Saudi despots, not fawn over visiting princeby Ceren Sagir
ANTI-WAR campaigners and MPs called on the government yesterday to end its relations with Saudi Arabia’s crown prince instead of welcoming him on a state visit.
Mohammad bin Salman is to visit Britain today on the Prime Minister’s invitation.
The government has defended the visit, claiming that supporting the repressive tyranny, which is bombing the daylight out of Yemen, has made both countries “safer and more prosperous.”
Labour MP Chris Williamson said that a Labour government would have an ethical foreign policy with Jeremy Corbyn as an “incredibly principled leader.”
He told the Star: “We can’t rely on an export to a despotic regime like Saudi Arabia.
“We need to use our infl uence to bring pressure on repressive regimes like Saudi Arabia to introduce human rights reforms in the country.”
The prince is the second most senior member of the Saudi regime and currently oversees
the bombing of Yemen, where tens of thousands have been killed or injured.
The Saudi regime has sup-ported the repression of Bahrain by intervening with the peaceful protests in 2011, imposed a block-ade on Qatar and detained the Lebanese prime minister.
Andrew Smith of the Cam-paign Against Arms Trad said the “overwhelming majority” of people in Britain do not share PM Theresa May’s politi-cal and military support for the Saudi regime.
He said: “Despite the spin surrounding the crown prince, he is a fi gurehead for one of the world’s most authoritarian dictatorships.”
Mr Smith said it was time for the government to end its “shameful support for this appalling autocracy.”
A recent poll showed that more people in Brit-ain oppose the visit than support it and only 6 per cent support arms sales to Saudi Arabia.
Stop the War Coali-tion convener Lindsey German said: “UK sup-port for and involvement
in the brutal and illegal bomb-ing of Yemen in favour of the Saudi dictatorship exposes Brit-ish foreign policy as devoid of authentic ethical content.
“By inviting the crown prince … Theresa May and her govern-ment are once again demon-strating their open approval of Saudi Arabia’s actions.”
Ms German said it is vital that people attend the protest outside Downing Street this evening to make clear the Brit-ish government’s complicity in the war on Yemen is opposed and that they demand a “peace-ful and humane” foreign policy.
The Saudi Prince Not Wel-come protest at Downing Street starts at 5pm.
changes to the attendance policy.“Unite believes these ‘strings’
will off set any rise in basic pay. We will be holding a consulta-tive ballot of our members at the end of the month.”
Shopworkers’ union Usdaw said the pay rise was “welcome news” for members working in Sainsbury’s.
But national offi cer Joanne McGuinness also sounded a note of caution, saying: “We will be looking closely at the whole deal, as we understand the company are proposing some contractual changes.
“Consolidating pay can ben-efi t staff , but we want to check the eff ects on all individual workers.”
Star comment: p8
■ ELECTIONS ■ FRONT PAGE
by Lamiat Sabin
CHARITIES and academics called on the government yes-terday to urgently rethink its decision to run a pilot scheme in which voters will have to show identifi cation to vote in May’s local elections.
More than 40 organisations and professors have written to Constitution Minister Chloe Smith to say that the require-ment would result in millions of poorer people being denied a vote if implemented nation-wide at the 2022 general elec-tion.
The Electoral Commission has warned that 3.5 million people have no form of photo identifi cation. Eleven million – 24 per cent of the electorate – do not have a passport or photo driving licence.
The coalition is led by the
Electoral Reform Society (ERS) and includes Age UK, the National Union of Students, Operation Black Vote, the Royal National Institute of Blind Peo-ple, St Mungo’s and Stonewall.
In the letter, they point out that only 28 allegations of voter impersonation were made last year, when nearly 45 million votes were cast — and that just one allegation led to a conviction.
ERS chief executive Dar-ren Hughes said: “Electoral fraud is a serious issue, but mandatory voter ID is a sledgehammer to crack a nut.”
Labour’s shadow minister for voter engagement Cat Smith said: “This govern-ment must urgently rethink its plan, to keep democracy as open and accessible as possible.”
MORNINGSTAR
ONLINE.CO.UK
The socialist
news hub
HAVE YOUR SAY!
Write (up to 300 words) to
letters@
peoples-press
.com
Experts hammer Tories’ voter ID plan
FROM P1: St Andrews, Keele, Liverpool and Kent universities have told staff that if they refuse to catch up on missed lectures, their pay will be cut — even though they are back at work.
Meanwhile, the pay packages
of university heads continue to come under fi re.
Steve West, the vice-chancellor of the University of the West of England, was revealed this week to be receiving a package worth £315,000 — and had claimed
£43,000 in expenses.UCU called for an “overhaul” of
the university’s pay awards system after it was revealed that Mr West sits on the board which decides how much to pay him.
UNI REHASHES LECTURES ‘TO BREAK STRIKE’
morningstaronline.co.uk morningstaronline
@m_star_online4Morning Star WednesdayMarch 7 2018 news
South Essex Branch CPB
They have relocated to carry on the struggle in the north of England.
We will miss them, but we wish them every success in their endeavours.
GOOD LUCK, COMRADES!
TO LINDSAY AND
PAUL RUTLAND
CONGRATULATIONS
■ ASSET-STRIPPING FEARS
GKN engineering workers warn against takeover bidby Peter Lazenby
ENGINEERING workers are mobilising today against a business takeover that could threaten Britain’s defence industry.
Unite union and 16 cross-party MPs fear that British global engineering fi rm GKN, which holds key defence con-tracts, will be broken up and sold off if a proposed £7.4 billion hostile takeover by London-based asset-stripper Melrose plc goes ahead.
They are demanding Prime Minister Theresa May and Business Secretary Greg Clark stop the takeover in the public interest. The government’s pen-sions regulator has warned that
pensions are under threat. The GKN defi ned benefi ts pension scheme has 32,000 members, including 17,000 who have already retired.
Melrose, which was founded in 2003, has a history of tak-ing over fi rms, stripping them down and selling the remnants for quick profi ts.
Founded in 1759, GKN works with Airbus and Boeing, sup-plying and maintaining British defence equipment including Typhoon fi ghter aircraft, F-35 joint strike aircraft, and Chi-nook and Black Hawk helicop-ters. It is also a major supplier to the automotive industry, including Jaguar, Land Rover and Toyota.
It operates in 30 countries with 59,000 employees, 6,000 of
them in Britain at 10 sites that include Bristol, Cowes, Luton, Portsmouth, Birmingham and Telford.
The proposed takeover was investigated yesterday by the Commons business, energy and industrial strategy select committee.
Workers from GKN automo-tive, defence and aerospace divisions will protest at GKN Birmingham automotive head-quarters at 12.30pm today.
Unite’s acting automotive national offi cer Carol Tallentire said GKN “is at the heart of the UK automotive industry” and “essential to the government’s industrial strategy.”
She said: “In Melrose’s hands, all that would be put at risk and ministers’ plans for the UK to
be a leader in electric vehicles could be left in tatters.”
She said GKN would face debts of £1.3bn if the bid suc-ceeded, while Melrose advisers would pocket upwards of £140 million in fees.
Unite assistant secretary Steve Turner said: “They take over businesses, they break busi-nesses up, they compartmental-ise them and then fl og them off to the highest bidder in order to maximise shareholder value.
“It’s about maximising share-holder value and trousering lots of money.”
Shadow business secretary Rebecca Long Bailey said: “The government must intervene and investigate this matter urgently.”
■ ECONOMY
High Court rejects Brexit impact bidby Sam Tobin
AN ATTEMPT to force the government to publish Brexit impact studies was rejected by the High Court yesterday.
The Good Law Project (GLP) and Green MEP Molly Scott Cato sought a judi-cial review of a refusal to disclose documents on the likely eff ect of Brexit.
The Department for Exit-ing the European Union and the Treasury refused, saying that they could be obtained via the Freedom of Informa-tion (FoI) Act.
The studies have been released to MPs, but GLP’s founder, barrister Jolyon Maugham QC, said outside court that they were “bound by duties of confi dentiality.”
Tim Pitt-Payne QC, for GLP, said Ms Scott Cato and Mr Maugham were “inter-ested in contributing to the public debate” about Brexit.
Mr Pitt-Payne said the information “needs to be
available to the public” before October, when nego-tiations with the EU are due to fi nish, being “of no real value” after that point.
Evidence from FoI expert Maurice Frankel was read out, which said that an average time between a request to the Information Commissioner to a fi rst-tier tribunal decision was almost two years.
GLP submitted that the case was “exceptional” because of the urgency of the need for the documents.
But Mr Justice Supper-stone rejected permission, fi nding that FoI was a suit-able alternative.
After the judgement, Mr Maugham said GLP was considering whether to pursue the case to the Court of Appeal.
Ms Scott Cato said the decision was “incredibly disappointing,” adding that she felt the government’s refusal to disclose the infor-mation was “just a stalling mechanism.”
■ HEALTH & SAFETY
UCL loses appeal against fi neAN APPEAL by University Col-lege London (UCL) against a £300,000 fi ne after a stu-dent suff ered eye damage was rejected by the Court of Appeal yesterday.
UCL was fi ned last July after pleading guilty to health and safety breaches that led to a woman suff er-ing “life-changing” injuries.
Marie-Laure Hicks, who was studying at UCL’s Lon-don Centre for Nanotech-nology, was injured in June 2014 when glass from a “bespoke piece of equipment called a lithium evaporator”
exploded during an experi-ment. The masters student required stitches to her face and surgery to remove frag-ments of glass from her eye. After further surgery was unsuccessful, Ms Hicks was left with partial vision in her left eye. The college admitted the health and safety breaches but appealed against the fi ne.
Lord Justice Holyrode rejected the appeal on the grounds that its fi ne was not “manifestly excessive” and that UCL’s charitable status had been taken into account in calculating the fi ne.
ASH TUESDAY: The Foreign Offi ce issued a warning to trav-ellers after the Shinmoedake volcano in southern Japan erupted violently yesterday, throwing clouds of ash and smoke 7,500 feet into the air. This activity is the volcano’s biggest explosion since 2011 and has led to a number of fl ights being grounded. The volcano featured in the 1967 James Bond fi lm You Only Live Twice.
morningstaronline.co.uk morningstaronline @m_star_online 5
Morning Star Wednesday
March 7 2018news
■ PRISONS
GUARDS DEMAND ACTION
AFTER VIOLENT ATTACKCRISIS: Prison guards’ union calls for stronger protection amid an escalation of violence
■ HINKLEY POINT
Power station workers stage snow wage sit-inby Sam Tobin
WORKERS on the site of the new Hinkley Point C nuclear power station in Somerset are staging a sit-in over bosses’ refusal to pay wages for stoppages caused by recent bad weather.
French energy giant EDF and its contractors Kier and Bam outraged staff by refusing to pay them for days when snow stopped work last week.
Unite’s regional secretary Peter Hughes said it was “com-pletely unacceptable” for the contractors to refuse to pay its workforce “while those workers
remained available for work dur-ing last week’s extreme weather and across the weekend.”
He said that workers were told to return to their lodgings last Thurs-day and were available to work over the weekend as planned.
Mr Hughes added that staff were “instructed not to report for work due to the red weather warnings.”
But, when workers returned to the site this week, they were told “via text that they would not be paid Friday, Saturday and Sunday.”
Mr Hughes said: “We have already seen the government in Scotland call out companies
who have adopted such tactics and we agree that employees should not be penalised for fol-lowing safety advice.
“The union urges the employer to observe common sense in this issue and pay their employees.”
He also pointed out that the “current problems at Hinkley were not organised or caused by Unite but the actions of [the workers’] employers.”
An EDF spokesman said staff unable to work during recent bad weather would “be paid in line with agreements signed with the trade unions.”
■ HOMELESSNESS
Empty homes in England on the riseTHE number of empty homes in England rose last year for the fi rst time in almost a decade, statistics revealed yesterday.
There were 205,293 proper-ties unoccupied for more than six months, a 2.6 per cent rise in the fi rst increase since 2008, according to fi gures from coun-cil tax databases.
Empty Homes charity said its research showed 37 out of 53
of the areas with the highest proportion of long-term empty properties were in the north of England.
Director Helen Williams said the government should consider allowing councils to charge “a lot more” tax on vacant homes.
Shadow housing minister Melanie Onn said Labour in gov-ernment would allow councils
to charge a 300 per cent council tax premium for leaving proper-ties empty for more than a year.
She said: “It’s simply unac-ceptable that the number of empty homes is rising and that there are over 200,000 long-term vacant homes while homelessness is also on the rise.
“Labour in government allo-cated over £300 million a year to bring empty homes into use.”
■ LABOUR
Communists and Momentum unite to discuss action planNORTH LONDON commu-nists joined Momentum activists on Monday night to address how communists can work with Labour for a socialist future.
Brent Momentum activist Michael Calderbank joined the North London branch of the Communist Party of Britain (CPB) meeting at the Marx Memorial Library to address whether there was a “danger,” as suggested by blogger Guido Fawkes, in ask-ing others to vote for Labour.
Susan Michie, CPB, opened with her experience of Labour Party activists and trade unionists who recog-nise the need for the Com-munist Party for its analysis, building of broad alliances, internationalism and organ-isational abilities.
She pointed to the need to restore political education for better understanding of the capitalist state’s role, imperi-alism and that socialism will not be won solely through parliamentary activity.
Only through building on the struggles of trade unions and the many campaigns and movements against aus-terity, privatisation and war can the forces of reaction be beaten.
Mr Calderbank pointed to a growing broad unity across the labour move-ment to move on from neoliberalism and how deregulation has led to tragic disasters — the Gren-fell Tower fi re is just one example. He also pointed to the contradictions within Labour councils, which has led to rows over the contro-versial housing project HDV in Haringey.
A thought-provoking and friendly discussion followed with overall agreement on future activity, for example to build unity between the trade unions and constitu-ency activists. It was also agreed that co-ordinated eff orts would be made to win London local councils for Labour in May.
Left events for the upcoming week: Red List on Saturdays
PRISON offi cers are demanding better protection after a guard suff ered severe head injuries following an attack at HMP Bedford.
Guards’ union POA said the offi cer was drafted in from another centre because of staff shortages.
“A fi ght broke out between prisoners, and he tried to break it up,” a union spokesman said. “The prisoners turned on him.”
The union said the offi cer’s head was repeatedly stamped on in the incident on Saturday. The attack is the latest incident in a catalogue of violence in Britain’s under-staff ed, over-crowded prisons.
It prompted the POA to call for offi cers to be issued with a hand-held spray called PAVA.
POA national chair Mark Fairhurst said: “We are now demanding that all staff are given the tools to keep them safe and we now insist that PAVA spray is rolled out nation-
ally without delay.”PAVA is stronger than CS gas
sprays, causing temporary pain and blindness, but POA says it is less dangerous than electric tasers, which can cause perma-nent damage and even kill.
Mr Fairhurst said: “The time for excuses from HM Prisons and Probation Service has now passed.
“It needs to act immediately to prevent the crisis in our pris-ons from escalating. I do not wish to be announcing the death of an offi cer because our employer failed in their duty of care towards staff .”
In the 12 months to Septem-ber last year there were 28,165 assaults in prisons — a 12 per cent increase — including 7,828 assaults on staff .
POA offi cial Glynn Travis said the offi cer injured was trying
to protect prisoners who were being assaulted when he was attacked.
Mr Travis said: “Despite fi ne words from the government and the employers, the chaos and violence continue. We are calling for action from the employers.”
The escalation of violence in prisons was debated in the House of Commons yesterday.
Labour’s shadow justice sec-retary Richard Burgon said: “The Conservatives have noth-
ing to off er to address the scale of the crisis in our prisons.”
A Ministry of Justice spokes-person said: “No prison offi cer should go to work in fear for their safety, simply for doing their job.
“That is why we are giving offi cers the tools they need to manage violent off enders, including body-worn cameras for all offi cers, new-style hand-cuff s and piloting PAVA inca-pacitant spray.”
by Peter Lazenby RIOTS: Bedford
morningstaronline.co.uk morningstaronline
@m_star_online6Morning Star WednesdayMarch 7 2018 world
Unite London Print Branch
LE/7031L
Tom Murphy Branch Chair
Mick Cotter Branch Secretary
Sends Solidarity for International Women’s Day and greetings to TUC Women’s Conference For real equality and a world
without oppression and harassment
■ UNITED STATES
Sanders lambasts Senate bid to let banks off the leashby Our Foreign Desk
LEFT-WING Senator Bernie Sanders has condemned a bid by Republicans and several Democrats to scrap the limited protections put in place to pre-vent a recurrence of the 2008 bankers’ crash.
The Economic Growth, Reg-ulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act is expected to be voted on by Senate this week and gain the 60 of 100 votes needed to pass.
It would repeal some of the provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act, which has had questionable success but nonetheless has put a stop to some risky practices.
Mr Sanders said yesterday that the banking Bill was “a disaster.”
“The Wall Street crash of 2008 showed the American people how fraudulent many of these large banks are. The last thing we should be doing is deregulating them.”
He questioned why “any member of Congress [would] vote to move us closer to another taxpayer bailout of large fi nancial institutions.”
Mr Sanders pointed to an assessment of the new Bill’s provisions by the Congressional Budget Offi ce (CBO), which noted that it would “increase the likelihood that a large fi nancial fi rm with assets of between $100 billion [currently £72bn] and $250bn would fail.”
The Bill would lift the limit over which a failure of a bank or “shadow bank” — insurance companies, hedge funds and so on — from $50bn in assets to $250bn and free such compa-nies from other restrictions and duties.
Research used by the CBO found that just a 1 per cent decrease in a fi nancial fi rm’s capital-to-assets ratio increased its likelihood of collapse by 60 per cent.
Big banks have long demanded the scrapping of the Dodd-Frank Act so that they can increase their profi ts through riskier activities.
■ EAST ASIA
Two Koreas’ leaders agree to meet for reconciliation talksby Our Foreign Desk
THE KOREAS have agreed to hold a landmark set of talks next month, with the leaders of the two countries meeting in a former village on the border.
President Moon Jae In of the south and Kim Jong Un of the north will meet in late April in Panmunjom, where the Korean war armistice agreement was signed in 1953, said South Korean security chief Chung Eui Yong.
Mr Chung went to Pyongyang with a South Korean delegation this week for offi cial talks fol-lowing the successful co-oper-ation during the recent Winter Olympics in the south.
The summit would be only the third such meeting. The previous two, in 2000 and 2007, led to co-operative projects later scuttled by more right-wing South Korean governments.
Mr Chung said Mr Moon
and Mr Kim would talk before meeting and would establish a “hotline” to lower tensions.
The co-operation between the two Koreas stands in stark contrast to the bellicose rheto-ric of the US and its ally Japan.
US President Donald Trump has threatened to use force against North Korea if it does not follow his country’s instruc-tions on its nuclear programme.
Mr Chung said North Korea had expressed willingness to hold a “candid dialogue” with the US to discuss nuclear disarmament and establish diplomatic relations.
North Korea also said it would not need to keep its nuclear weapons if military threats against it are removed and it receives a credible secu-rity guarantee, Mr Chung said.
US-led forces devastated North Korea in the 1950-53 war, destroying nearly all of its towns and cities. Its nuclear weapons have been developed in the context of continuing US threats of force.
■ UNITED STATES
Florida senators vote to arm teachersSTATE senators in Florida have passed a Bill that allows teach-ers to carry guns in school and imposes some weak restrictions on the sale of military-style rifl es.
The law, passed late on Mon-day, increased the minimum age for buying rifl es from 18 to 21 and created a waiting period on sales of the weapons.
It does not nearly approach the restrictions on fi rearms
wanted by survivors and fami-lies of the victims of the Feb-ruary 14 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
Students travelled to the state capitol to demand far wider-reaching changes to stop the frequent killing of children in schools.
Senator Bill Galvano insisted the Bill’s provisions were vali-dated by criticism from both people who want unrestricted
access to deadly weapons and those who want to stem the fl ood of US gun murders.
A grand jury began hearing evidence yesterday against Nikolas Cruz, who is accused of killing 17 children and teach-ers at the school and injuring more than a dozen others.
A grand jury is an antiquated legal proceeding through which criminal charges are brought in the US.
GREECE: Train routes were suspended for the day as railway workers staged a 24-hour strike yesterday in protest against the privatisation of the rolling stock maintenance company and a lack of staff .
As part of Greece’s bailout, the government has forced through a detrimental privatisation programme.
Separately, taxi drivers walked off the job for nine hours yester-day to protest against the ride-sharing service Uber, which they claim has been tacitly supported by Greece’s bailout creditors.
HAVE YOUR SAYWrite (up to 300 words) to [email protected] or 52 Beachy Rd, London E3 2NS
■ SOUTH KOREA
Political scandals hit Establishment SOUTH KOREA was hit by more political scandals yes-terday, with ex-president Lee Myung Bak accused of taking bribes and a provin-cial governor forced to quit amid rape allegations.
Prosecutors said yesterday they had called in Mr Lee for questioning over suspicions that Samsung Electronics had given money to a car-parts maker run by his family.
And South Chungcheong governor Ahn Hee Jung quit after his secretary accused him of repeatedly raping her.
morningstaronline.co.uk morningstaronline @m_star_online 7
Morning Star Wednesday
March 7 2018world
Netanyahu slams ‘Iranian tyranny’
Watchdog to tackle sexist advertisingFRANCE: Broadcast watch-dog CSA said yesterday it would try to reduce sexist advertising.
In the spotlight par-ticularly is the use of women as props to sell products and advertisers and broadcasters will face unspecified sanc-tions for “excessive” ads.
CSA official Sylvie Pierre-Brossolette said the plan was part of a push to tackle violence against women.
Beaten Renzi blasts election’s winners ITALY: Austerity fan Mat-teo Renzi attacked the duelling victors of the Italian election — the chauvinist Five Star Movement and the far-right League — yesterday.
It appeared Mr Renzi feared that supporters of his Democratic Party, with less than 23 per cent of the votes, would defect to Five Star, which won the most.
He said he would quit as party secretary only once a government is formed — in effect, ruling out a Five Star-Democrats coalition.
South Africa meat products recalledSOUTH AFRICA: Several countries, including Zambia, Mozambique and Swaziland, have recalled South African meat products believed to be contaminated by bacteria that causes listeriosis.
The processed meats, from a factory in Polok-wane in the north-east, are believed responsible for 180 deaths in South Africa since early last year.
Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi said there had been 950 cases of the dis-ease since January 2017.
UNITED STATES: Scandal-hit Israeli Prime Minister Ben-jamin Netanyahu gave a hysterical speech yesterday to a conference of zionist lobby organisation Aipac.
In line with warnings that he would take extreme measures to distract from corruption inquiries, Mr Netanyahu alleged that “darkness is descending” on the Middle East due to a “radical tyranny” in Iran.
Labelling Tehran “more extreme and belligerent,” he said: “We must stop Iran, we will stop Iran.”
in brief n MYANMAR
ROHINGYAS STILL IN PERIL IF THEY
GO HOME, WARNS TOP UN OFFICIALby Our Foreign Desk
TOP UN human rights official Andrew Gilmour said yester-day that it is impossible to safely send Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh back to their homes in Myanmar because widespread and systematic vio-lence appears to be continuing against them there, amounting to “ethnic cleansing.”
The UN assistant-secretary-general said that during a four-day visit to Bangladesh, refugees told him “credible accounts of continued killings,
rape, torture and abductions as well as forced starvation” in the western Myanmar state of Rakhine.
“Safe, dignified and sustaina-ble returns are of course impos-sible under current conditions,” Mr Gilmour said.
Some 700,000 Muslim Rohingya have fled Buddhist-majority Myanmar to Bangla-desh since late August, when Myanmar security forces began sweeps through Rakhine after attacks by a Rohingya insur-gent group.
There are credible accounts of widespread rights abuses,
including rape, the torching of homes and killings, carried out against the Rohingya, leading to accusations that Myanmar is guilty of “ethnic cleansing” or even genocide.
Mr Gilmour said the rate of killings and sexual violence in Rakhine has subsided since August and September — but “it appears that widespread and systematic violence against the Rohingya persists.”
“The nature of the violence has changed from the frenzied bloodletting and mass rape of last year to a lower-intensity campaign of terror and forced
starvation that seems to be designed to drive the remain-ing Rohingya from their homes and into Bangladesh,” he said.
Myanmar’s government has built two reception camps and a transition camp for Rohingya refugees in northern Rakhine, but Mr Gilmour says that it is unsafe now to repatriate the Rohingya.
“The conversation now must focus on stopping the violence in Rakhine state, ensuring accountability for the per-petrators, and the need for Myanmar to create conditions
for [the refugees’] return,” he said.
Myanmar’s government spokesman did not answer repeated requests for comment on Mr Gilmour’s statement.
Last week, Myanmar’s army deployed additional troops to the border with Bang-ladesh with the apparent aim of driving about 6,000 Rohingya refugees staying in a no-man’s land into Bangladeshi territory.
Myanmar denies the Rohingya citizenship and falsely claims that they are all immigrants from Bangladesh.
ETHNIC CLEANSING: Human rights chief says continuing violence against Muslim minority means refugees can’t return
n SRI LANKA
Emergency declared in wake of mob attacks on Muslimsby Our Foreign Desk
SRI LANKAN President Maithri-pala Sirisena declared a state of emergency yesterday amid fears that anti-Muslim attacks in several central hill towns could spread.
Details of the emergency decree were not immediately announced and it was unclear how it would affect life on the island, where Buddhist-Muslim tensions have flared in recent years with the growth of extrem-ist Buddhist organisations.
The areas where the violence erupted on Monday, outside the town of Kandy, remained under curfew yesterday, with soldiers and police patrolling the streets
and no-one allowed outside except for in emergencies.
President Sirisena’s office said the decree would “redress the unsatisfactory security situation prevailing in certain parts of the country.”
It said the country’s secu-rity forces “have been suitably empowered to deal with crimi-nal elements in the society and urgently restore normalcy.”
While government officials did not specifically mention Buddhist extremists, many com-ments appeared aimed at them.
The government will “act sternly against groups that are inciting religious hatred,” cabinet minister Rauff Hakeem said after a meeting with the president.
The emergency announce-
ment was made after Buddhist mobs swept through the towns outside Kandy, burning at least 11 Muslim-owned shops and homes.
The attacks followed reports that a Buddhist man had been killed by a group of Muslims. Police fired tear gas into the crowds and later announced a curfew.
So far, no violence has been reported elsewhere.
Prime Minister Ranil Wick-remesinghe said the govern-ment condemned the “racist and violent acts.
“As a nation that endured a brutal [civil] war, we are all aware of the values of peace, respect, unity and freedom,” he said on Twitter.
n MIDDLE EAST
Trump has made peace talks impossible, says Abbas aideSENIOR Palestinian offi-cial Mohammed Ishtayeh objected yesterday to US President Donald Trump’s claim that the Palestinians have walked away from peace negotiations, say-ing US policies in favour of Israel have pushed Palestin-ians away from any future process.
Mr Ishtayeh, a top adviser to President Mahmoud Abbas, said a series of US steps have harmed the cli-mate ahead of an expected peace proposal by the White House.
“Which negotiating table?” Mr Ishtayeh asked. “Since he came to power, there have been no negotia-tions whatsoever.”
He criticised the US deci-
sion to recognise Jerusa-lem as Israel’s capital, the planned move of the US embassy there, US cuts in funding to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees and restrictions on the Pal-estinian diplomatic office in Washington.
His condemnation follows the Palestinian ambassador to Britain Manuel Hassas-sian and former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy say-ing in London at the week-end that the imbalance in power between Palestine and Israel made negotiations impossible.
Aside from Mr Trump’s inflammatory recent deci-sions, the US continues to give Israel billions of dollars in military aid each year.
n EUROPEAN UNION
Luxembourg joins lawsuit over Hungary nuke plantLUXEMBOURG is to join Austria in suing the European Commis-sion for giving permission to Hungary to expand its Paks nuclear plant.
Environment Minister Carole Dieschbourg told reporters on Monday that her government would add its weight to the case that Austria is to file at the Court of Justice of the European Union, the bloc’s top judicial institution.
“It is important that no pub-lic funds be invested in nuclear power,” she said. “It is definitely the wrong way.”
The expansion of the Paks
plant had come before the Euro-pean Commission for approval under state aid laws, which strictly limit government investment in the economy.
After Hungary agreed to implement several measures to ensure supposed “fair com-petition,” EU officials said the project, being carried out with Russia’s Rosatom, could go ahead.
The European Commission said it would defend its deci-sion in court.
Based on previous rulings, the court is likely to find in favour of the commission.
VIOLENCE: Sri Lankan soldiers clear away debris after a building was vandalised in Digana
morningstaronline.co.uk morningstaronline
@m_star_online8Morning Star
featuresWednesday March 7 2018
SUPERMARKET Sainsbury’s claims to be the best-paying of the major players that dominate the food retail sector in Britain, which doesn’t say a great deal.
They all have records of accumulating huge amounts of profits out of shoppers in recent decades, which they put down to the genius of a small number of chief executives who are rewarded with salaries and bonuses adding up to millions of pounds a year.
In contrast, the poor bloody infantry — workers who stack the supermarket shelves, store goods in warehouses or face the public every day as they operate cash regis-ters or answer customer queries and complaints — are paid wages at a level that makes it impossible to make ends meet.
Many staff members rely on government tax credits to boost their take-home pay from unspeakable to barely acceptable.
That means that supermarket customers — other work-ing people — not only provide Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Mor-risons, Asda, Lidl and the rest with their megaprofits but are also expected to top up, through our taxation, the wages of the underpaid staff employed by the supermar-ket premier league.
The Citizens UK charity, campaigning for a real liv-ing wage — not the misnamed fake introduced by unla-mented Tory chancellor George Osborne — estimated in 2015 that state benefits claimed by supermarket staff exceeded, at about £1 billion a year, what these firms paid in corporation tax.
It was clearly the belief of Sainsbury’s, Tesco and so on that, whoever was responsible for ensuring that super-market staff were earning enough to meet their needs, it wasn’t them.
Nearly three years have passed since the Citizens UK report and little has changed.
Sainsbury’s headline claim is that it will increase the hourly rate for workers at its 1,400 stores to £9.20 from September.
The small print discloses not only that this will be a two-year deal, with no further pay discussion until 2020, but that workers will be stripped of hard-won existing benefits — paid meal breaks, annual bonus and premium pay for Sunday working — to ease Sainsbury’s pain in financing the new deal.
Unite union official Bev Clarkson’s description of this as a “classic ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’ situation” is dif-ficult to argue with.
What kind of a pay rise is it when it is largely financed by the workers themselves?
When Sainsbury’s and other supermarkets wanted staff to accept Sunday working as normal, they sugar-coated the proposal with premium pay and denied suggestions that they would return in future to do away with it.
Sainsbury’s management is no more iniquitous than any other employer. It is simply single-minded about its bottom line. It’s what capitalism is all about.
Workers have to be equally single-minded about their ability to earn a living sufficient to keep themselves and their families and to take all necessary action to achieve that.
A shoddy deal for Sainsbury’s workers
Korean rapprochement?
Star comment
THIS is a huge year for women at work. For one thing, we have lots to celebrate. We’re marking 50
years since the Ford Dagenham strikes, 100 years since some women won the vote and, of course, 150 years of the TUC. But we’re also facing huge chal-lenges.
In the past few months, the flood of disclosures of sexual harassment at work has pro-vided an insight into the scale of the problem across all sec-tors.
From Hollywood to the Houses of Parliament, it’s rarely been out of the news. And rightly so. As long as this issue is front and centre, we have a unique opportunity to win a better deal for working women.
Today, I’m proud to welcome hundreds of women trade unionists to the TUC Women’s Conference, where we’ll be dis-cussing how to do just that.
Already in 2018, we’ve had the scandal of the Presidents Club dinner. What shocked me wasn’t just the behaviour of rich men from business and politics or that the young women were employed by an agency for the paltry sum of £175. It was that they were prevented from taking a break — that there was literally no escape.
These women were forced time and again to be at the beck and call of drunken, lout-ish, groping men.
They were made to sign so-called non-disclosure agree-ments, which shows the employer was expecting unac-ceptable behaviour.
We know that, traditionally, the media has ignored or down-played violence against women. So let’s be clear — sexual har-assment is a form of violence against women and it’s hap-pening in our workplaces all the time.
In 2016, TUC research found that over half of women had
experienced sexual harassment at work, including two-thirds of young women.
A third of women have been on the receiving end of unwel-come sexual jokes, a quarter have experienced unwanted touching and a fifth have suffered unwanted sexual advances.
And we know from our members that the rise in zero-hours contracts, the ero-sion of employment rights and the increasing prevalence of employers silencing their workers means more violence, harassment and bullying.
But before the media atten-tion, before women felt able to say #metoo in their thousands, trade unions were supporting members in their workplaces,
fighting for dignity at work and campaigning to end violence and harassment in all forms.
Consider the story of Audrey White, manager of a clothes store in Liverpool, who was sacked in 1983 for complaining about the sexual harassment of four women in her team. She was reinstated after a five-week picket, supported by dockers, car workers and other local union members and activists.
Her story reminds us that sexual harassment is not a new problem and that behaviour like this was never OK.
And it also highlights the power of unions and their members. Audrey’s campaign put sexual harassment at work in the spotlight and ultimately led to the legislative changes
that help protect workers from it.
In 2018, we want the cam-paigning work of trade unions to pay off yet again.
In June, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) will be discussing whether it will bring in a legally binding inter-national treaty on ending vio-lence against women and men in the world of work.
Governments would be required to incorporate the treaty into national law and employers would have to fol-low it. Governments would also be expected to commit to reviewing and reporting their progress.
Throughout the campaign, unions have called for the treaty to specifically focus on
Unions and their members still
have much to do to ensure
dignity at work for women,
writes FRANCES O’GRADY
Sexual harassment i
of violence against w
and it’s happening i
workplaces all the t
HISTORIC: Female sewing machinists at the Ford plant in Dagenham vote unanimously to return to work, ending their dispute
POLITICIANS in Washington who have been intent on seeking a pretext to launch a pre-emptive strike against North Korea must be spitting feathers over the summit plan between Seoul and Pyongyang.
South Korean President Moon Jae In can expect to come under huge US pressure to make excessive demands and to reject the North’s proposals to reduce tensions and make the Korean Peninsula a nuclear-free zone.
The Korean people as a whole want a peaceful and united future, as the welcome given to united Korean teams at the recent Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang showed.
Left to their own devices, there is no reason why Presi-dent Moon and Kim Jong Un cannot deliver such a desir-able future.
morningstaronline.co.uk morningstaronline @m_star_online 9
Morning Star
features Wednesday March 7 2018
violence against women, recog-nising that violence and harass-ment at work overwhelmingly affect women, due to discrimi-nation, unequal power rela-tions and non-standard work-ing conditions.
And the Westminster gov-ernment agrees with us. It has written to the ILO asking for the same robust protections that the TUC has called for.
So in the next few months, trade unionists urgently need
to lobby employers to support this process. Our sisters and brothers at the International Trade Union Confederation are leading this campaign and have a campaign toolkit for unions.
What better way to celebrate International Women’s Day than committing to end vio-lence and harassment in work, in Britain and across the world?
■ Frances O’Grady is general sec-retary of the TUC.
nt is a form
st women,
g in our
e time
THIS year, we mark 100 years since the Representa-tion of the People Act was passed, granting some
women over 30 the right to vote for the first time in Britain.
This landmark moment for women’s rights came on the back of tireless campaigning and self-sacrifice by suffragettes in the face of intransigence and belittlement from male politi-cians of the day.
It was a huge step forward and it is right that we celebrate the tenacious women who played a key role in achieving it.
Yet this anniversary also serves as a poignant reminder that progress takes time and is not always equally shared.
It would be another decade before women gained equal vot-ing rights with men, regardless of age or economic status. And another half-century before equal pay for women was enshrined in law.
A hundred years on, many more advances have been made for women’s rights, but there are still many more battles to be fought.
Too many women still face the gender pay gap, discrimi-nation and harassment in the workplace, precarious employ-ment and restrictions on their reproductive rights.
The recent Time’s Up and #metoo movements have opened many people’s eyes to the scale of gender-based vio-lence and oppression which persists in our society.
It has been both shocking and incredibly powerful to see so many women share their experiences.
The outpouring of anger has also reminded us that it is incumbent on women who have a platform to speak out on behalf of others and to use their strength to fight for those in weaker positions than their own, as those attending this week’s TUC women’s con-ference will be doing in their hundreds.
In recent weeks, I have seen that spirit in action as women and men in my own union have been out on snowy picket lines at colleges and universities across the country.
They are fighting for fairer pay and decent pensions, not just for their own benefit but for the future generations of education staff who will follow them.
Unprecedented numbers of young people, members, students and the public join-ing and supporting the picket lines, battling the elements in the face of some of the worst weather to hit Britain in years.
Just like the suffragettes, whose motto was “deeds, not words,” those members know it is only through action and standing up for change that real progress is made.
Until the fruits of progress can be enjoyed by all, we must keep working on behalf of all women everywhere.
And it is in this year, 2018 that we remember many milestones, whether they be the birth of the
TUC, votes for women, equal pay, the Windrush 70 years on or the fantastic NHS.
I use the words of one social-ist, feminist and international-ist suffrage sister, Sylvia Pan-khurst, in particular to close, encapsulating perfectly our movement’s struggle.
Sylvia said: “I know we will create a society where there are no rich or poor. No people without work or beauty in their lives, where money itself will disappear, where we shall all be brothers and sisters, where everyone will have enough.”
Happy International Wom-en’s Day.
■ Vicky Knight is UCU president-elect and chair of the TUC women’s committee.
In a year of many milestone
anniversaries for women,
VICKY KNIGHT reminds
us that our liberation has
still yet to be won
Women have made great progress, but the struggle against oppression goes on
PAVING THE WAY: Audrey White
SISTERHOOD: Glasgow women calling for equal pay from the city council
STRUGGLE: Suffragettes pictured marching in 1908
morningstaronline.co.uk morningstaronline
@m_star_online10Morning Star
featuresWednesday March 7 2018
nRichard House (RH): Linda, DPAC is legendary
for the direct and fearless cam-paigning you do for this most just of causes. Can you tell us first about your own back-ground and how DPAC came into existence?
Linda Burnip (LB): I come originally from the north-east and have spent much of my life campaigning for rights and change either in my early years as a Nupe shop steward in a very militant union branch or later against Thatcher’s Tory cuts to health services and edu-cation attacks, through neo-liberal Labour Party changes to Local Housing Allowance, which were the original bed-room tax cuts and latterly since 2010 campaigning to reverse the savage cuts imposed on disabled people by the Tories and Lib Dems.
If only I could do the same to all DWP secretaries of state as I did to James Purnell, I’d be happy. After we met he went home and resigned. I’m hop-ing to meet Esther McVey in the very near future.
I’ve always believed in equal-ity and social justice and that public services should be run for the benefit of those they serve rather than to make prof-its for faceless shareholders.
This seems to me rational rather than specifically “left-wing,” though my politics have previously been described as somewhere to the left of Trotsky.
DPAC was originally set up in response to the first Tory Budget, starting life as “Disa-bled People’s Protest” when we had a disabled people’s section marching against the Tories in Birmingham in October 2010.
We knew disabled people would have to fight to stop their rights being slowly stripped away. We marched in the pour-ing rain, but from then on DPAC grew and grew until today our reach through social media is around half a million, with thousands of formal members.
nRH: It’s difficult not to be in awe at what you and
DPAC have done and are doing. Regarding former DWP min-ister James Purnell, perhaps Justine Greening’s declining to become DWP minister showed distaste for DWP treatment of disabled people. Can you describe some actual experi-ence of being involved in DPAC? And what are its most notable achievements to date?
LB: Debbie Jolly, a very important person involved in establishing DPAC and how it operates, and I were both determined that DPAC should be about and for the many not the few — a movement for real change and not a platform for the glorification of any particu-lar individual.
DPAC depends on the input of many people in many dif-ferent ways — without them, DPAC as it exists wouldn’t have evolved.
No-one involved with DPAC would suddenly have a miracu-lous recovery if offered £75,000 pa to go and work for Maximus or any other odious money-grabbing corporation.
We’re completely independ-
ent with no formal funding and everyone contributes what they do voluntarily because they’re committed to human rights for disabled people.
While DPAC is run by disa-bled people, we welcome input and support from non-disabled allies.
We’re well-known for our direct actions, which are nec-essary to make ourselves heard by politicians and others who otherwise seem oblivious to our existence or who seem to wish to punish us simply for being disabled.
These are perhaps the fun part of being involved with DPAC. It’s where we come together to protest and where we share a common goal — very empower-ing, especially for people whose voices are often ignored.
We’ll continue to fight in any way we can against the many attacks the Tories continue to heap down on disabled people and we’ll not be silenced.
Our main focus for protests and direct actions has varied. Our first protests were monthly outside Atos head office in Tri-ton Square — protests which had a party-type feel to them.
We’ve also held tea parties and other protests outside DWP head office in Tothill Street.
Once we turned up to find they’d put out barriers to form a cage that they seriously expected us to go into.
More recently we’ve moved ever closer to Parliament via Westminster Abbey, which we tried to occupy a few years ago.
Parliament is, after all, where politicians who vote to decimate the lives of disabled people are based, so we need to keep taking our demands to them.
Many disabled people can’t physically join us at these events either because they’ve
no support due to cuts to care and support funding or due to the limitations of their impair-ments.
So whenever we have a visible street protest we aim to have something people can do from their own homes in support.
It’s important to us that no-one’s excluded and that all have a way in which to make their voices heard.
On a day-to-day basis we provide peer support to people who email us or contact us via social media.
This can be traumatic, as some of the horrors disabled people are subjected to have a longer-term impact on our own mental health.
It’s purely luck that we too aren’t forced to suffer similarly, but it’s also this that helps keep us angry and even more deter-mined to fight back.
Importantly, as we campaign from a social model perspec-tive, we don’t say that disabled people suffer or are vulnerable because of their impairments but because of the way they’re
treated by society and what a neoliberal capitalist system subjects them to.
We get huge numbers of wide-ranging emails and, as I don’t live in London, I do much of the backroom things rather than going to meetings or speaking there.
This commonly means that by lunchtime I’ve responded to over 20 queries on different topics, which can leave my head spinning a bit.
DPAC also has a vibrant research team who were, with myself and Debbie, solely responsible for providing the damning evidence to the UN which led to Tory-led Britain being the first country to be investigated using the Optional Protocols in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
We presented incontroverti-ble evidence of at least 40 grave systematic rights violations, leading to an unprecedented investigation by the UN dis-ability committee.
This record of Tory govern-ment atrocities against disabled people can never be unwritten and will exist for eternity.
nRH: Can you say something about DPAC long-term aims
and whether you think we’ll ever have a society in which DPAC isn’t needed any longer?
LB: Our longer-term aim is not just to reverse the attacks on disabled people’s human rights that have rained down on us since 2010 but to seek real systemic change so disabled people are fully included in society and have equality and social justice in all areas of life.
This won’t happen until we have an education system that’s fully inclusive for every disa-bled child. That really would be systemic change.
n Linda Burnip is a disability rights activist aka a pain in the government’s backside. Richard House is a Corbynista activist based in Stroud, Gloucestershire. For more information about DPAC or to make a donation visit dpac.uk.net.
‘After I met DWP secretary
James Purnell, he went home
and resigned. If only I could
do the same thing again’Richard House talks to disability rights activist LINDA BURNIP about
her campaigning, her achievements and giving evidence to the UN
morningstaronline.co.uk morningstaronline @m_star_online
Morning Star Wednesday
March 7 2018culture 11
Murderous intent, from Islington to York
LENA and Timea have known each other since they were children in a small village in Hungary.
In In Strangers’ Houses by Elizabeth Mundy (Constable, £7.99), a desire to see more of the world has brought them to Islington where they work as cleaners in private homes.
When Timea vanishes, Lena is convinced that one of her clients has silenced her after she uncovered one too many secrets with her duster. The police don’t agree, so it’s up to Lena to find her friend.
This debut novel begins a series featuring an appeal-ing, and more believable than
usual, ama-teur sleuth. The daily help set-up, along with the guest worker s u b c u l t u r e , should mean it’s a long time before Mundy runs out of plots.
A student reunion takes place in Oxford in 1980, in The Kennedy Moment by Peter Adamson (Myriad, £14.99).
Present are a Marxist pro-fessor, who fears he’s been left behind by history’s tides, a leading epidemiologist haunted by a lost love, a his-torian ashamed of not being an activist, an advertising
c o p y w r i t e r ashamed of his meaningless success and a Third World medic fighting a losing battle.
Over a weekend, old romances are reconsidered and buried irri-tations resurface.
Above all, we witness the lack of self-esteem which must torture all those whose com-promised adult lives can never match the brilliance of their youthful promise.
But when an angry outburst is defused by a daft joke, it leads to a conspiracy to use perilous means to achieve
noble ends.This tense
p o l i t i c a l thriller is also a marvellously u p l i f t i n g novel about a group using their friend-ships to col-lectively defrag the mental debris accrued in middle age and rediscover the young believers within.
Essex cops Frank Pearson and Cat Russell investigate when a body is found dumped on the seafront at Southend in Mark Hardie’s Truly Evil (Sphere, £8.99).
The identity of the corpse comes as a surprise in more
ways than one. But the case gets even more compli-cated when they find a link to a simi-lar crime that took place 50 years earlier and seems to have been the subject of an official cover-up.
Hardie couples solid police procedural action with a con-spiracy story that rings dis-turbingly true.
A woman goes missing in another first novel, Exhibit Alexandra by Natasha Bell (Michael Joseph, £12.99).
She’s a part-time lecturer at York University, mother
to two lovely young girls and crazy about her devoted hus-band Marc. So why, he asks the sceptical investigating officers, would she choose to leave?
Evidence soon appears that convinces the police that they will not find Alex alive, but Marc refuses to be convinced and carries on looking for his wife, seeking clues in areas of her life which he’s come to realise he knew little about.
Meanwhile, the reader knows for sure she’s being kept incarcerated — but not why.
This is a really unusual and rather unsettling femi-nist suspense thriller, the sort that your mind carries on reading long after you’ve put it down.
Mat Coward investigates crime fiction
Steve Swell Quartet
The Vortex, London
HHHHI
IF FREE, improvising trom-bonism is the sonics of outra-geous breath, the shivering slide work of Steve Swell which opens his quartet’s gig at the Vortex is its epitome.
With the open-spirited US hornman are three powerful British musicians. The art-ist on drums is Mark Sand-ers, the arch-bassist John Edwards and pianist the protean Liam Noble. Free musical spirits indeed.
Edwards saws at his bass with the phenomenal energy of a jazz lumberjack and plucks his strings with a pow-erful resonance next to the endless inventive subtlety of Sanders’ percussion, with his sticks, brushes and mallets caressing and striking all the surfaces of his drum set and other nearby objects.
Watching his aural inter-play is as compelling as listening to his timbral for-mulations and adventures in sound.
As for Swell, his brow-beaten trombone holds a whole century of jazz history in its slides.
His harsh, raw notes some-times seem as if they’re parading or protruding from a New Orleans tailgate. At others, it’s as if he were kissing down his mouth-piece, blowing US love all over east London.
Noble plays a beautifully quiet and very slow sequence during the first long piece, as if he were creating melody itself , while Swell breath-ily guffaws, Sanders’s cym-bals ring and tinkle and Edwards’ bow whines like the snow whirling in the wind outside.
It was that kind of living, breathing, session.
CHRIS SEARLE
n MUSIC REVIEW n MUSIC REVIEW
Swell time with a jazz quartet on top of their game
FREE SPIRIT: Steve Swell Pic: Sdswell/Creative Commons
A weird and wonderful wavelength at the BarbicanAlva Noto
Barbican, London
HHHHI
HAVING studied a rc h itec t u re and trained in landscape design when he was grow-
ing up in East Germany, it’s perhaps not so surprising that Carsten Nicolai, aka Alva Noto, would end up creating architec-tures of sound, now commonly known as soundscapes.
This sold-out British pre-miere of the soon to be released Unieqav, the final instalment in the UNI trilogy, is a spectacu-larly produced amalgamation of audiovisuals, glitch and thumping techno bass.
Performing the album in full, Nicolai electrifies the Bar-bican’s main hall — arguably London’s best space for con-temporary music — with each beat having its corresponding oscillating waveform.
The remarkably captivating end result has the audience mes-merised and, at times, almost on their feet — Unieqav is as dance-floor ready as it is immersive and wouldn’t be out of place in a club.
Quintessentially German techno in concept, Nicolai gets French sound poet support act Anne-James Chaton back on stage to incorporate his voice into a French Kraftwerkesque mix.
WILL STONE tunes in to mesmeric
techno master Alva Noto
ELECTRIFYING: Alva Noto Pic: Mark Allan/Barbican
Appearing earlier, Chaton’s performance was in need of a collaborator. Similar in concept to Noto, his voice-led perform-ance feels unfurnished and clumsier.
But reunited with Noto fol-lowing their collaboration on the track Uni Acronym for 2011’s Univrs — the second
album in the Uni series — their tried and tested alliance works both on and off stage.
As niche as Noto sounds, his talents have taken him to the Hollywood heights, co-com-posing the soundtrack to The Revenant with Japanese artist Ryuichi Sakamoto.
His other collaborations
include with legendary Berliner Blixa Bargeld, of Bad Seeds and Einsturzende Neubauten fame, on the side project ANBB and score composer Michael Nyman with whom he wrote an opera.
On tonight’s evidence, though, we can be certain that in future Noto will have more to impress us with in his own right.
morningstaronline.co.uk morningstaronline
@m_star_online12Morning Star WednesdayMarch 7 2018 info | entertainment
CONTACT US
GENERAL ENQUIRIESWilliam Rust House52 Beachy Road, London E3 [email protected](020) 8510-0815 (Mon-Fri 10am-5pm)
ADVERTISINGMoshfi qur [email protected](020) 8510-0815 ext. 205
CIRCULATIONBernadette [email protected]
CAMPAIGNSCalvin [email protected]
Tell us what you’d like to see more of in your paper! [email protected] with your ideas
WEATHER OUTLOOK
Payable to PPFF to:
Fighting Fund, 52 Beachy Rd, London E3 2NS
Give by post...From 10am-5pm on
(020) 8510-0815
phone...morningstaronline.co.uk/
pages/support-us
and online
Fighting Fund
WE know from your mes-sages that people have been braving the snowy weather to post their donations. I want to take a moment and urge friends to please stay safe during this cold snap. Now that London is no longer affected by the snow, some newspapers have forgotten that other areas are still in the grip of wintry storms.
A big thumping handshake goes to the supporter from Watford who sent in a £200 cheque and instantly boosted both our spirits and the fund total to £507.45.
It’s always exciting to see just how global the Morning Star family is. Yesterday, one of our recurring donations came all the way from a comrade in the US – thank you for your £20,
it’s always much appreciated. Another recurring supporter, this time from Glasgow, kindly donated £30. Hats off to every one of the “recurrers,” together you raised a very tidy £77.45.
A massive shout out goes to that friend from Kent who sent in £50 so that we can continue producing fearless journalism and championing those people that the right-wing press seem
determined to silence. Looking at the fi gure above
it looks like we might just hit our target this month. With-out wanting to tempt fate, could you help make March a bumper month? And, fi nally, a friend from Weybridge sent in £40 with the much-needed message of “stay positive for this month, it has 31 days.” Yes, indeed.
TODAY
Sunny spells and show-ers for most, the odd heavy shower in places. Showers falling as snow over Scottish hills. Some rain for parts of south-east England clearing during the afternoon.
NEXT FEW DAYS
Sunny spells and show-ers Thursday and Friday. Becoming cloudy and rainy from the south on Friday. Wet and windy Saturday with some snow in the north, mainly over higher ground.
YOU’VE RAISED:
£4,713
24days left
WE NEED:
£9,081
QUIZMASTER with William Sitwell
TODAY’S QUESTIONS
YESTERDAY’S ANSWERS
1. What is a key’s ‘bow’? The bit that stays out of the lock and is used to turn the key
2. What is the Latin name for the northern lights (pictured)? The aurora borealis
3. Which European country’s internet domain code is .pt? Portugal
1 Toubkal is the highest peak in which African mountain range?
2 What does a white C in a red disc on a London road refer to?
3 Earlier this year Minette Batters became the fi rst woman to lead which industry association?
Solution tomorrow…
DAILY SUDOKU (intermediate)
HISTORIAN Lucy Worsley loves a bit of dress-up and the ratio of fact-sharing to corset-cavorting can sometimes leave a viewer wanting.
However, taking that into consideration, this show looks like it could be a blast as Wors-ley teams up with materials scientist Zoe Laughlin to rec-reate an Elizabethan nine-day rager that courtier Robert Dudley threw to woo Queen Elizabeth I.
Hopefully, the hundreds of Tudor workers who must have been involved in the origi-nal explosive rave will get a mention in Lucy Worsley’s Fireworks for a Tudor Queen (9pm BBC4).
While An Alternative Art History (9.45am, BBC Radio 4) continues shining a 15-minute blast of light on unsung art heroes from the 20th century.
Yesterday’s episode on socially engaged sculptor and radical activist Elizabeth Catlett was illuminating: she was the fi rst African-Ameri-can woman to recieve a mas-ters degree in fi ne arts, but gave up her US citizenship after being blacklisted as a communist in the McCarthy era. It’s well worth listening to on BBC iPlayer.
Today, Karl Heinz-Adler is the focus, a popular East German architect who hid his abstract paintings for decades, afraid of how they would be recieved in the GDR. One defi -nite boon is that 90-year-old Adler is a contributor to the show alongside celebrity cura-tor Hans-Ulrich Obrist.
Jo Brand’s resilient team at Elm Heath social services (pictured above) continue to be ground down by cuts and
workload in the bitter comedy Damned (10pm, Channel 4).
The gem of this series is how Brand and co-writer Morwenna Banks mine the laughs in between harrowing tales of neglect. This week, could work experience Mimi be behind the missing fi les? Also life is looking up for Jo Brand’s jaded Rose, who is being romanced by Denise’s visiting brother.
Finally, one for the night-owls: tune into Women’s Foot-ball: USA v England (midnight BBC2) for the last match of the SheBelieves Cup. England have everything to play for, a win against the US team would see the Lionesses secure the trophy. For anyone new to the game, keep your eyes on striker Ellen White, who has already enjoyed a brilliant tournament.
TV and radio preview with Amy Smith
Brand’s team of social workers shine among cutbacks in winning comedy
Yesterday’s sudoku
Alamet’s
Crosswords are
fi endish fun on
Saturday
morningstaronline.co.uk morningstaronline @m_star_online 13
Morning Star Wednesday
March 7 2018letters
THE Morning Star did well to publish Steve Sweeney’s article (M Star February 26) defending a British volun-
teer who fought in Syria with the YPG against the Isis fascists and is now being prosecuted in this country
for his pains. Keep up the good work.
CHRIS PURNELLOrpington
Thanks for article in defence of British YPG volunteer
■ JIM MATTHEWS
HAVE YOUR SAY
Write (up to 300 words) to
or by post: 52 Beachy Rd,
London E3 2NS
EVENTS
Readers & Supporters
COATBRIDGE — Lanarkshire Readers and Supporters Morning Star sale: Every Saturday outside Asda. Call Ronnie on 07906 195-404.
DUMFRIES — Morning Star sale: Eve-ry Saturday from noon at the Mids-teeple. New readers and sellers welcome. Call Stuart on 07780 804-561.
DUMFRIES — Readers and Supporters meetings: New members welcome. Email [email protected] for details.
DUNDEE — Morning Star sale: First Saturday of every month at 11.30am at Brooksbank Clock, Mur-raygate. Ring Raymond Mennie on 07894 901-688.
EDINBURGH — Regular Morning Star sale: Every Saturday at the bottom of the Mound, noon to 2pm.
GLASGOW — Morning Star sale: Every Saturday, 1-4pm, at Buchanan Street stall (opposite Gordon Street).
GLASGOW — Unison Scotland Read-ers And Supporters Group meeting: Should Britain Remain in the Single Market and Customs Union? What Is Best For Workers? Speakers: Dave Watson, Unison Scotland policy head, and Professor John Foster, secretary of Radical Op-tions in Scotland and Europe. Chair: Kate Ramsden, Unison NEC member. Friday April 13, 6-8pm, at Glasgow Unison Branch Offi ce, 84 Bell Street, Glasgow G1 1LG. All welcome.
LEICESTER — Readers and Support-ers Group: Contact Dave Wilford at [email protected] or (0116) 2897-975, or David Grove at [email protected] or (01780) 238-463.
LEICESTER — Readers and Support-
ers Group: Meeting on Friday March
9 at 7 pm in Harriet Law room, Sec-
ular Hall, LE1 1BW. Come along and
help to plan this year’s Festive Din-
ner. All welcome.
LONDON — Regular Readers and Sup-
porters meeting: Contact Mary on
07719 383-322 or email london-
MANCHESTER — Entertainer: If any
readers’ groups run fundraisers
and need a performer, they can al-
ways contact Dave Puller on 07815
006-671 or email d.puller@ntl-
world.com.
NORFOLK AND SUFFOLK — Readers
& Supporters Group: Sean Meleady:
07758145671 and email smelea@
hotmail.co.uk
NORTH DEVON — Morning Star sale:
Every Saturday: Contact G Sables
on gerrard.sables@phonecoop.
coop.
SHEFFIELD — Regular Star sales
pitch: Thursdays and Saturdays,
Sheffi eld city centre — contact
[email protected] for de-
tails.
SHROPSHIRE — Regular paper sales:
Call Jim, 07896 976-833. Email
SOUTHAMPTON — Meeting: Chris
Williamson, Labour MP, speaks on
“Saving local services - what can
Labour councils do?” 7pm tonight
at Unite’s offi ce, 41 Castle Way,
Southampton. All welcome.
SWINDON — Paper sale: Every Satur-
day. If you can help, contact Pete at
WEST DUNBARTONSHIRE — New
group: For details of activities con-
tact George 07511 546-085.
■ THE Daily Worker of March 7 1938 carried a piece by Donald
McKay McNicholl, later a long-stand-ing Associated Press editor, focusing on the keynotes of Labour’s League of Youth (LLY) conference: hostility to the national government's “hands across the sea” approach to fascism, criticism of the “lack of freedom granted to the youth by the Labour leaders” and “appreciation of the Soviet peace policy,” including a demand that Britain ally with both France and the USSR against fascism.
The conference endorsed proposals for a 40-hour week, abolition of over-time, two weeks’ paid annual leave, the creation of national parks “in
place of rich men’s game preserves” and sports grounds for all.
“The strongest applause was given to Alec Bernstein, editor of Advance, the paper of the left-wing of the LLY, which also favoured unity with the Young Commu-nist League. Both argued that a phrase in the conference pol-icy documents saying that such demands “can only be made the law of the land when a Labour government takes power” be amended to “will be made.” Platform
steamrollering and a very hasty vote could not stop this, but a bewildering
announcement was made that the policy document would
be subsequently “rewritten in popular language.”
A discussion on a lengthy amendment proposed by Ted Wil-lis, which was “rather more militant in character than those
laid down in the offi cial document,” was remitted
to the national advisory committee, but it was accepted
that Advance would be offi cially accepted as the league’s offi cial paper.
You can read editions of the Daily Worker (1930-45) and Morning Star (200 0-today), online at
Ten days’ access costs just £5.99 and a year is £72
mstar.link/DWMSarchive
80 YEARS AGO TODAY...
GRAHAM STEVENSON explores the Star’s online archives
Labour youth league conference sees demands strengthened
A customs union would tie us to EU
■ BREXIT
JEREMY CORBYN, speaking in Coventry on February 26, called for “a” customs union with the European Union.
This new “customs arrange-ment,” the Labour leader said, would “depend on Britain being able to negotiate agreement of new trade deals in the national interest.”
That simply cannot hap-pen if Britain is in a customs union of any kind. Customs unions bind their members to common tariff s, so we could only have a trade deal with another country if the EU nego-tiated it.
And being in a customs union with the EU means staying with the rules of the single market, including the free movement of capital and labour. It means abiding by the rulings of the European Court of Justice, an institution not mentioned at all in Corbyn’s speech.
To all intents and purposes, it means remaining in the EU, but without even a courtesy vote being held.
Labour stood in the 2017 general election on a platform of Brexit. “Labour accepts the referendum result and a Labour government will put the national interest fi rst,” its manifesto declared.
Now the party is signalling that it is moving away from its acceptance of our referendum decision.
For the time being, the line — repeated in Corbyn’s Coven-try speech — is still that Labour respects the people’s referen-dum decision.
But references to “a” customs union only encourage those in his party and elsewhere who have never given up attempt-ing to reverse our referendum decision.
WILL PODMORELondon E12
I THANK Comrade Chris Birch for his kind words (M Star March 5).
As per his request I am trying to carry on his eff orts to have the Morning Star reviewed on television and radio by the BBC.
To this end I have begun an online petition calling for this to happen. The text can be read before you sign here: mstar.link/BBCpetition.
Please urge everyone you know — even non-Star read-ers — to add their names.
Many other areas of pub-lic interest and opinion are ignored by “Auntie” and if we can have any sort of suc-cess it may inspire them to assist in forcing the corpo-ration to abide by its own charter of impartiality.
Dr PETER STORCHRhu
Sign petition for end to BBC boycott
■ OUR PAPER■ HOUSING
I AM grateful to you for publishing my article Home Truths About the Housing Crisis (M Star February 22).
However, although I was happy with necessary editing in order to trim, a change to a paragraph was made which then did not refl ect my view.
I did not say that the housing crisis can only be
solved by constructing more houses — that is not what I believe.
The original was: “It is always said that the housing crisis can only be solved by building more homes.”
I would be pleased if this could be pointed out.
CAROL WILCOXSecretary, Labour Land
Campaign
Correction of a home untruth
SOLIDARITY: Supporters of Jim Matthews, who fought Isis terrorists as a member of the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, wear masks with his face on outside Westminster magistrates’ court as he appeared on a terrorism charge last week
morningstaronline.co.uk morningstaronline
@m_star_online14Morning Star Wednesday March 7 2018 sport
Kadeem Simmonds Morning Star Sports Editor
A successful Neville can be huge for both the Lionesses and the women’s gameENGLAND: While he’s started off well, it’s crucial that the England manager stops making it all about himself and let the team be the headline-grabbers
SORRY to disappoint you, Phil Neville, but not everybody wants you to fail.
Speaking prior to the SheBelieves Cup, Nev-ille spoke to the media amid claims that there were a group of people who wanted him to mess up as England boss.
That couldn’t be further from the truth. The reason there was such outrage at him getting the job was because those who followed and sup-ported the Lionesses wanted the new manager to succeed.
The moment Neville was announced, people wished him the best and prayed he was a success.
If Neville gets this right, it means England will win games and hopefully major trophies.
“We know people are watch-ing these games expecting us to lose them,” Neville said last week.
“People want me to fail, 100 per cent. They want me to come here and lose all three games. But do you know what? That’s just how it was in my playing career. People wanted me to fail. That’s part of my motiva-tion.
“The team have got their motivation, I have got mine. It is to show people that we will be successful. I’m not going to be judged by my bosses at the FA off these three games. But they know they are three mas-sive games and, if you look at England’s record in this tourna-ment, we have found it difficult to win games.”
This is different to being a Manchester United or Everton player. Had he performed badly, there were others around him to pick up his slack.
It didn’t matter if he failed to prepare for a game. It is rare that one player can force a team to lose regardless of how badly they played.
But, as a manager, Neville needs to get game preparation
spot on. The England squad depend on him to get things right in the build-up to games.
They need him to select the strongest 11 players for each match and for his substitutions to be the correct ones. If he gets this wrong, he will lose games.
This England job isn’t about him, but he’s making it out to be, which was the exact thing people worried about when the Football Association hired him.
To say that it’s the “English mentality” to want to see peo-ple fail is just wrong.
When the FA appoint a new manager, supporters and fans want to see them strive and lead England to glory. They may not agree with the decision, as they are entitled to, but bias is usually put to one side for the so-called greater good.
“Why do people want me to fail? I think it’s the English mentality,” he added. “I’m sure Gareth [Southgate] feels the same way sometimes.
“But also, I think it was a sur-prise to people that I wanted to take this job and the negativity that surrounded it, there are people who want me to fail.”
It’s just not true. We as Lion-esses fans didn’t want attention to turn from the third best side in the world to their manager and his story.
Take the 2-2 draw against Germany as an example.
The headlines before the match had even begun was how Neville had used his con-tact book to bring David Beck-ham to the game and give a pre-match talk.
England’s social media was awash with pictures of Beck-ham with the players.
Now this isn’t a new thing. This happens quite a lot in cricket and rugby. Former players will address the team and hand players making their debuts their shirt and cap.
It’s a tradition that football is beginning to pick up.
And yet Beckham’s presence dominated the match. Players were asked afterwards about what it was like to meet him, what did he say, how did it make them feel.
No-one cares. We wanted to know what went wrong for the first and second goal. We wanted to know how it felt to hold a strong Germany side to a 2-2 draw, having to come from behind twice.
I say we, I mean the fans that have been around the past few years and beyond, not the ones who are keeping an eye out because Neville is in the dug-out.
It’s great that the former United coach can call upon his friends for advice but not at the expense of the real story, the players.
And I can’t blame the FA for this. The media and casual fans were always going to pay more attention to Neville than the performances on the pitch.
I actually think he has
started well. That performance against France was the perfect debut and the side’s ability to fight back against Germany was proof that this side won’t give up under Neville.
And he’s already taking on the clubs, namely Arsenal.
“But Arsenal, they have pulled a lot of players out of international squads, all the squads, Scotland, Netherlands … they’ve got a continental cup final coming up, so we’ll see if those players play in the next game.”
That was in reference to Jordan Nobbs not making the trip to the United States and hinting that she perhaps could have played a part in the She-Believes Cup.
If Neville wants people on his side, more quotes like that and less about his Class of 92 friends will go a long way.
Someone recently asked me
what Neville should do if he wins a major tournament with England.
And while many will say he should go get a job in the men’s game, I disagree.
If Neville is serious about women’s football, leave Eng-land with a trophy and stop off in Manchester.
Use your contacts at United and force them to start a wom-en’s side.
Take charge of it, work your way up into the Women’s Super League and battle Manchester City, Chelsea and Arsenal as the dominant women’s side in England.
That will be a better manage-rial legacy than floundering in the men’s game and becoming just another guy.
Now I know, surely I would want a woman in charge of the United women’s team.
And while I do, long-term,
even I can hold my hands up and admit that Neville’s allure as a World Cup or European Championship boss may finally force the powers to be at Old Trafford to take women’s foot-ball seriously.
Perhaps the next Emily Ram-sey wouldn’t have to leave the club and sign for Liverpool.
This isn’t a new opinion, it’s been said many times before and will continue to be said, but a strong United in the women’s game can only be beneficial to England.
It adds another top team in the game, another club for young talented players to join and increases the talent pool for Neville and his successors to choose from.
So no, no-one is wishing Neville to fail. It’s the total opposite. A successful Neville could be monumental for the women’s game in Britain.
“Neville should stop off in Manchester and use his contacts to force United to once again have a women’s team
INSTRUCTIONS: Phil Neville talks to Nikita Parris
morningstaronline.co.uk morningstaronline @m_star_online 15
Morning Star Wednesday
March 7 2018sportn MEN’S FOOTBALL
Fiorentina and Cagliari to retire Astori’s 13FIORENTINA and Cagliari have retired their No 13 shirt in memory of Davide Astori, the Italian clubs announced yesterday.
The 31-year-old was found dead in his hotel room in Udine on Sunday, hours before Fioren-tina were due to face Udinese in a Serie A fixture.
All of Sunday’s seven Serie A games were postponed as a result and tributes from across the footballing world poured in for the defender who won 14 caps for Italy.
Fiorentina and Cagliari, Astori’s club between 2008 and 2016, announced yesterday they had retired the number 13 shirt in honour of their former player.
Fiorentina also confirmed they will honour the deal Astori was going to sign and donate the money in full to Astori’s partner Francesca and their two-year-old daughter Vittoria.
News broke on Sunday morn-ing that Astori had died fol-lowing a “sudden illness” and prosecutors opened a culpable homicide case a day later over his death.
n WOMEN’S TENNIS
Williams: Return to game has been hardby Our Sports Desk
SERENA WILLIAMS said yes-terday that preparing for her return to tennis following the birth of her first child has been difficult and she still has doubts about how she can “keep going.”
Williams makes her come-back to the WTA Tour this week when she takes on Kaza-khstan’s Zarina Diyas in the opening round of the Indian Wells Masters.
The 36-year-old was last in action 14 months ago when she clinched her 23rd grand slam singles title by winning the Australian Open.
She gave birth to daughter Alexis Olympia on September 1 and has since been working her way back to fitness.
“It’s been hard,” Williams said. “There have been so many days, even still, that I’m like: ‘How am I going to keep going?’
“But I keep going and I know that I might not be at my best yet, but I’m getting there. As
long as I’m moving forward, even if it’s at a turtle’s pace, I’m OK with that.”
Williams decided against defending her Australian Open crown in January following concerns over her ability to make an impact in Melbourne.
But she believes returning to
singles action now — a month on from playing a Fed Cup dou-bles match for the United States — will stand her in good stead for the year’s three remaining grand slams.
Speaking before competing at the Tiebreak Tens event in New York, where she reached the semi-finals, Williams added: “If I want to play in those grand slams and play well, then now is the perfect time to start.
“My expectations, I don’t know what they are. I can’t go and say: ‘I expect to lose,’ because that’s just something I’ll never say. It’s just a little different, I’m just expecting to see where I am more than anything.
“I don’t need any more moti-vation, I have the best thing I could ever want right now. I’ve always been an extremely moti-vated person.
“My main thing is I would love for my daughter to be around with me doing great and playing amazing, so it definitely gives me some moti-vation.”
INDIAN WELLS MASTERS: 36-year-old has not played in 14 months
n WOMEN’S CYCLING
World Cup-winning quartet are heading down underby Our Sports Desk
RECENTLY crowned world champions Emily Nelson, Charlie Tanfield, Ethan Hayter and Kian Emadi are part of the 27-strong squad Team England will be taking to the Common-wealth Games in Australia next month.
Only five of the riders have previous Commonwealth expe-rience across the track cycling, para-cycling, road cycling and mountain bike disciplines, with Olympic gold medallists
Jason Kenny and Laura Kenny not participating and Lizzie Deignan electing not to defend the road-race title she won in Glasgow.
Philip Hindes, a two-time Olympic team sprint cham-pion, Emadi, Helen Scott and Sophie Thornhill are the only members of the team that have previously won Commonwealth medals.
Tanfield, Hayter and Emadi will head Down Under on a high, having won gold in the men’s team pursuit at the 2018 UCI Track Cycling World
Championships in Apeldoorn last week, while Nelson won her first senior title in the women’s Madison alongside Katie Archibald.
Both Jason Kenny, who reversed his decision to retire and began his comeback in January, and wife Laura Kenny, who gave birth seven months ago, also won medals in the Netherlands, but neither will head for the Gold Coast.
Deignan is also missing the Games as she is prioritising her road commitments with her professional team.
AUSTRALIA BOUND: Emily Nelson
Wednesday March 7 2018
Published 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.
SPORT Wednesday March 7 2018 INSIDE: Neville can be huge for England
9 770307 175237
1 0
MSTAR 2018-03-07 WED 1.0
Champions LeagueManchester City Basel, 7.45pm
Tottenham Juventus, 7.45pm
ChampionshipLeeds Wolves, 7.45pm
Scottish PremiershipKilmarnock St Johnstone, 7.45pm
SheBelievesCupFrance Germany, 9pm
TONIGHT’S FOOTBALL
SPORT ON TV
■ CYCLING: Stage one, Tirreno-Adri-
atico — Eurosport 1 12.30pm.
■ FOOTBALL: Champions League,
Tottenham v Juventus — BT Sport 2
7pm, Manchester City v Basel — BT
Sport 3 7pm ; Championship, Leeds
v Wolves — Sky Sports Main Event
7.30pm, SheBelieves Cup, United
States v England — BBC Two Eng-
land 12am.
■ GOLF: European Tour, Hero Indian
Open — Sky Sports Main Event, Sky
Sports Golf 5.30am.
■ TENNIS: WTA, Indian Wells — BT
Sport 1 7pm.
THREE WEEKSKempton 7:10 (nap)
YOUNG TOMCatterick 1:50
Farringdon’s Doubles
STAR ARCHERKempton 5:40
Houseman’s Choice
TODAY’S TIPS
■ ATHLETICS
Mo Farah claimed yesterday that he was racially harassed while travelling through Ger-many’s Munich airport.
The four-time olympic champion left Britain for Ethiopia on Monday to complete his final train-ing block before next month’s London Mara-thon and his journey took him via Germany, where he had an alterca-tion with a pushy law enforcement officer.
Farah filmed the exchange on Instagram Live, later posting it to his Instagram and Twit-ter feeds with the cap-tion: “Sad to see racial harassment in this day and age. 2018…!!!!”
Farah claims racial abuse
■ MEN’S RUGBY UNION
One Jones for another in Wales’s Six Nations sideby Our Sports Desk
RhodRi Jones has joined the Wales squad for sunday’s six nations clash with italy in Cardiff.
ospreys prop Jones has replaced scarlets’ Wyn Jones, after he was ruled out of the rest of the tournament with hamstring trouble.
Assistant coach neil Jenkins backed 15-cap front-rower Rho-dri Jones to settle straight into the task, as Wales bid to bounce back from two straight six nations losses.
“Well Rhodri had his first cap back in 2012, he’s been in
the squad for some time, so he’ll fit right in,” Jenkins said of ospreys prop Jones.
“it’s obviously very sad for Wyn.”
Wales are bidding to hit back from defeats to england and scotland in order to close a frustrating six nations tourna-ment on a high, with home fix-tures against italy and France remaining.
Bath’s British and irish Lions back-rower Taulupe Faletau is back to full fitness after knee ligament trouble and itching to face the italians in Wales colours.
Jenkins admitted Warren Gatland’s men will be boosted
by the 27-year-old’s return.“Taulupe’s an outstanding
rugby player, he’s world class,” Jenkins said. “To have him fit and available for selection is massive for us.
“him playing for Bath for the last couple of weeks is big for us.”
■ MEN’S RUGBY LEAGUE
HILL LOOKS FORWARD TO ‘AWESOME’ TESTS IN UNITED STATESNRL: Clubs fearful of high-altitude conditions in Denver stadiumby Our Sports Desk
enGLAnd regular Chris hill welcomed the decision to take a Test match to Colorado yes-terday and dismissed any fears associated with playing at high altitude.
some nRL clubs have raised concerns over the distance involved for a mid-season inter-national between england and new Zealand and have sought assurances about staging the game at the Mile high stadium in denver.
The match on June 23 is seen as an important stepping stone towards the 2025 World Cup which will be held in north America and hill is full of praise for the organisers’ initiative.
The Warrington prop also insists, from his experience of attending a high-altitude train-ing camp in south Africa in the build-up to the 2013 World Cup, that there is nothing to fear from the conditions the play-ers can expect in denver.
“it’s brilliant taking it some-where new and letting the people of the United states see what it’s all about,” hill said.
“They are big on sport in general, aren’t they? And the stadium in denver looks pretty awesome.
“We’ve trained at high alti-tude a few times. The first couple of days you can feel the difference and then you start getting used to it. it’s the same for both teams, isn’t it? We’ll be sweet.
“i’m looking forward to it if selected. it should be a good Test there.
“The mid-season games are a great thing for international rugby league. it sets it up for the end of the year.”
hill also welcomed the reap-pointment of veteran Austral-ian Wayne Bennett as head coach and the plan to continue with regular get-togethers dur-ing the domestic season.
“he’s a top bloke and a great coach,” hill said. “i’m looking for-ward to working with him again.
“Meeting up every four or six weeks just for a feed and a coffee together does make that difference. You do get your connections with each other. it showed in the World Cup how tight we were as a group. “
hill is expected to be included in Bennett’s updated elite performance squad of super League-based players when it is unveiled today and is tipping his Warrington team-mate daryl Clark for a recall after making an impressive start to the season.
The 2014 Man of steel played for england in the 2014 and 2016 Four nations series but lost out to rival hookers James Roby [st helens] and Josh hodg-son [Canberra] for the 2017 World Cup.
“i should imagine Clarky will be straight back in it,” said the Wolves skipper. “Jack hughes has performed well, so i wouldn’t be surprised if he gets in.
“The amount of english tal-
ent at the minute is fantastic.”The Rugby Football League
will also announce the england Knights squad, which is being brought out of mothballs in 2018 under former huddersfield coach Paul Anderson.
POSITIVE: Chris Hill
REPLACEMENT: Rhodri Jones