Book review: The Other Hand by Chris Cleave (Sceptre)

October 20, 2008 by

“Most days I wish I was a British pound coin instead of an African girl,” opines the protagonist of The Other Hand. The pound coin has many advantages, not least of which is its effortless mobility:

“A girl like me gets stopped at immigration, but a pound can leap the turnstiles, and dodge the tackles of those big men with their uniform caps, and jump straight into a waiting airport taxi. Where to, sir? Western civilisation, my good man, and make it snappy.”

Little Bee is a Nigerian girl fleeing men armed with machetes and men armed with official powers. Sarah is a suburban career woman juggling a young son who refuses to take off his Batman suit with an extramarital affair with a Home Office functionary, Lawrence. Their lives are thrown together in an unlikely way, forcing them to confront themselves and the society they live in.

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Filed Under: Imperialism, Reviews

Workers should be running the country

October 17, 2008 by


Sanitarios Maracay, a Venezuelan factory under workers control, holds an assembly. Topics covered include the previous boss’s acts of sabotage, logistics of workers control, and socialism of the 21st century.

Filed Under: Venezuela, Workers in Struggle

Labour – not so worker friendly

October 15, 2008 by

Many people recognise that National is no friend of the workers, but should workers and unionists be called on to vote for Labour? They have been in government for the past 9 years but are workers better off as a result? Check the record:

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Filed Under: 2008 Election, NZ Labour Party, Workers in Struggle Tagged With:

Wellington bus drivers fight back

October 14, 2008 by

– Spark Editors

Over the last couple of decades, workers have taken significant hits to their pay and conditions. The last nine years of Labour-led government has seen no significant improvement for the great majority of working people. That’s why some groups of workers, like the bus drivers, have started fighting back.

On 25 September 2008, the bus company Go Wellington locked out all its bus drivers, mechanics and controllers for 24 hours, in response to limited industrial action in support of the drivers’ pay claim. This is the first time that Wellington city bus drivers have been locked out. As this issue of The Spark goes to press, negotiations are continuing.

The Workers Party fully supports the Wellington bus drivers. Workers Party member Nick Kelly was recently elected president of the Wellington Tramways Union, the union of Wellington bus drivers.

Public support for the workers affected in this dispute has been strong. For example, a street collection for the drivers by Brass Razoo Solidarity Band and Workers Party members the day after the lockout raised $260 in less than an hour.

By contrast, there has been little public sympathy for the management of NZ Bus who locked out the drivers, and have constantly lied in the media about the drivers’ pay claims and what drivers currently earn.

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Filed Under: Workers in Struggle Tagged With: ,

The environment: a class issue

October 14, 2008 by

– Byron Clark

When environmentalists talk of ecological doomsday (real or imagined) it’s unusual for working-class people, or groups fighting for the working class, to respond. As Alan Roberts pointed out in 1979, in words that are even more relevant today:

“The bulk of the population of the underdeveloped world live continuously with the threat of doomsdays over their heads; but even in the supposedly ‘affluent’ societies, the life of the majority is hardly so unflowed that they can indulge in the luxury of anxiety over some remote apocalypse. There are threats much closer at hand, promising an equally drastic demolition of the world as they themselves experience it – for example, those that affect their productive activities: whether their health will survive over fifty years of working life, whether they will have a job next week, and whether, if they have a job, they will be able to drag themselves out of bed when the alarm clock rings.” (The Self-Managing Environment, p7-8)

Both liberal environmentalists and “workerist” leftists can develop a mistaken view that workers have no concern with environmental issues. Liberals then orient themselves to groups like students and more affluent sections of society, while leftists focus their energy on issues like wages and job losses.

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Filed Under: Environment
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