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PRIVATE RAIL HAS FAILED US

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McCLUSKEY SLAMS ‘FERAL PARTY RIGHT’

Unite union leader calls on moaning Blairite Labour MPs to off er something more than attacks on their leader

by Marcus Barnett

UNITE general secretary Len McClus-key told critics of Jeremy Corbyn yester-day to be less “feral” and “hysterical” in a stark challenge to the Labour right.

Mr McCluskey told ITV’s Peston on Sunday that there was “nothing wrong” with criticism of Mr Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party.

But he urged critics to be “a little bit more constructive” about supporting the Labour leader.

Mr McCluskey singled out a core “small rump” of right-wing Labour MPs bent on undermining Mr Corbyn. “Day in, day out, the fi rst thing they thought about was ‘how do we criticise and attack’,” he said.

The union leader, who is a noted leftwinger and stalwart sup-

porter of Mr Corbyn, said that he would prefer to see more support from Blair-ite MPs.

“There’s nothing wrong with criticis-ing the leadership if you have a par-ticular view, but it should be less feral, less hysterical and more constructive.

“That way, we will have a better chance of having a united party in order to gain power.”

In the build-up to the May local elec-tions, Mr McCluskey blasted “Corbyn-hater” MPs in a New Statesman article, singling out Chris Leslie, Neil Coyle, John Woodcock, Wes Streeting and Ian Austin for particular criticism.

Though he stated that he did not wish to see prominent critics of Mr Corbyn kicked out of the party, Mr McCluskey said, on the question of deselecting Labour MPs, that parlia-mentary representatives must answer to their members.

Following on from his public com-ments last week that MPs should not act as if they have a “job for life,” Mr McCluskey told Robert Peston that there have always been methods of holding representatives to account.

“Accountability has always been there within the Labour Party. There have always been trigger ballots for MPs,” he said.

Mr McCluskey defended Labour’s policy on Europe, arguing against arch-Blairite Peter Mandelson that the party’s best strat-egy for economic growth is to begin “a negotiation with Brussels” that will allow “frictionless access to the single market,” while remaining outside it.

The union leader said that “we can get tariff -free access

to the single market and a customs union, as opposed to the customs union,” through serious negotiation and assured viewers that Mr Corbyn’s Labour Party could handle negotiations with Europe far better than Prime Min-ister Theresa May’s administration.

Asked whether former London mayor Ken Livingstone, who is sus-pended from the Labour Party due to his claim that Hitler supported zionism in the 1930s, should be kicked out, Mr McCluskey said: “If there was a rule in the party against stupidity, then he and lots of other people should have been excluded.”

He added: “I reject the idea that my party — a party that I have been in

for 47 years — is a toxic Labour Party that is anti-semitic and misogynistic.

“That’s just nonsense.”marcusbarnett@peoples-press.com

£

It’s vital to rebuild a green activism

We’re fi ghting for dramatic changes

■ ENVIRONMENT

■ ARTS

IAN SINCLAIR argues the case for a return to the vibrant direct action and lobbying campaigns which won huge victories against polluting capital in the 2000s.

Turn to page 10

Equity leader CHRISTINE PAYNE outlines the measures being taken in the creative industries to reverse years of declining diversity.

Turn to page 9

Pic: Reclaim the Power

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■ STATE OF THE ECONOMY CONFERENCE

LABOUR VOWS TO STAMP

OUT ACCOUNTING ABUSESby Sam Tobin

JOHN McDONNELL urged a crackdown on poor practices in the accounting and audit-ing industry at the weekend, pledging that “there will be no more Carillion scandals on Labour’s watch.”

At Labour’s State of the Econ-omy conference on Saturday, Mr McDonnell announced that the party had commissioned an independent review of Britain’s corporate auditing and account-ing regime.

The shadow chancellor said Carillion’s demise had “once again highlighted the cata-strophic failure and inadequacy of our regulatory system,” add-ing that “the accounting and the pensions regulators have once more failed to do their jobs.”

He said the review, which will be led by Professor Prem Sikka from the University of Sheffi eld, would consider whether regulatory bodies should be merged, abolished or restructured and what penal-ties or fi nes should be imposed in future.

Mr McDonnell said: “Yet again, accountants and auditors seem to operate with impunity while lining their pockets.

“The lack of openness, trans-parency and accountability means nobody ever seems to be punished for their transgres-sions.

“We have seen it all before. We still await proper investi-gation of the accounting and auditing shortcomings which led to the banking crash 10 years ago.

“Our regulatory system is simply not fi t for purpose.”

He pointed out that there were 29 regulatory bodies responsible for the fi nancial sector, including the Faculty Offi ce of the Archbishop of Canterbury, while some pro-fessions were self-regulated, amounting to a “regulatory maze.”

Mr McDonnell said the system had created “enor-

mous opportunities for waste, duplication, obfuscation and buck-passing” and, ultimately, failed to protect consumers or promote confi dence.

He added: “We need a com-plete overhaul of the entire regulatory framework for

fi nance and business, to pro-mote openness, transparency, accountability and, where nec-essary, to impose appropriate punishments.

“There will be no more Car-illion scandals on Labour’s watch. That is why it is essential that we have a crackdown on poor practices in the account-ing and auditing industry.

“Under the next Labour government, the ‘big four’ fi rms will not be allowed to continue to act like a cartel that prevents new market entrants or drive down standards.”

Mr McDonnell told the conference that he planned to bring reform proposals forward at the Labour con-ference in September.

samtobin@peoples-press.com

REGULATION: ‘There’ll be no more Carillion scandals on our watch,’ vows shadow chancellor

■ COMMUNIST PARTY

‘Left government must replace May’by Our News Desk

BRITAIN’S deepening social cri-sis confi rms the urgent need to replace Theresa May’s minority regime with a left-led Labour government, Communist Party general secretary Robert Grif-fi ths declared at the weekend.

Reporting to the party’s exec-utive committee, he slammed Dame Judith Hackitt’s review of building regulations in the wake of the Grenfell Tower disaster and the Tory response.

She had stopped short of calling for a ban on combustible cladding, while Housing Secretary James Brokenshire had pledged a con-sultation on the Hackitt report fol-lowed by unspecifi ed legislation.

“The is the ‘British way’ when it comes to limiting the reckless, anti-social, profi teer-ing activities of big business — guidance notes, voluntary codes of practice, toothless ombudspersons, ‘light touch’ regulation and, when things go horrendously wrong, commit-tees of inquiry, judicial reviews,

empty declarations and, occa-sionally, a royal commission,” the CP leader said.

“In fact, anything except legislative bans and powerful action to enforce them.”

Mr Griffi ths condemned the sale of social housing to devel-opers, property speculators and “giant US multinational corpo-rations such as Blackstone.”

And he attacked “socially aff ordable” housing clauses in private-sector housebuilding contracts as a “cruel hoax.”

The CP leader argued that only a huge programme to build more public-sector houses and fl ats would ensure “decent, aff ord-able and secure homes for all.”

Mr Griffi ths also highlighted Britain’s “institutionally racist” immigration system and severe funding and staff shortages.

The party executive reaffi rmed its call for the election of a left-led Labour government, while warn-ing that only an upsurge in mass extra-parliamentary campaign-ing will create the most favour-able conditions for victory.

news@peoples-press.com

UNITED FRONT: Some of the many anti-fascists who turned out on Saturday to oppose the Football Lads Alliance rally Pics: Neil Terry Photography

MESSAGE OF HATE: Participants in the fascist event listen to a speech

ARREST: Police lead away a man who tried to attack the anti-fascists

CRACKDOWN: Shadow chancellor John McDonnell

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Morning Star Monday

May 21 2018news

Author John Callow provides the fi rst critical reappraisal of Connolly’s last major work using a wealth of original documents and photographs.In Connolly’s 1915 work the great revolutionary grapples with questions of nationhood, women’s rights and political and economic democracy in a way that resonates today.Includes forewords by Bob Crow and Paul Kenny.

James Connolly& The Re-Conquest of Ireland

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TWO-THIRDS

OFF

■ MANCHESTER

Fascist Football Lads Alliance ‘run out of town’ by protestersby Peter Lazenby

AT LEAST two fascists were arrested during a Manchester rally by the far-right Football Lads Alliance (FLA) on Saturday.

The hooligan organisation attempted to exploit the fi rst anniversary of the Manches-ter Arena terrorist bombing, which killed 22 people, includ-ing many youngsters, at a pop concert on May 22 last year.

The FLA managed to mus-ter 200 to 300 supporters at Saturday’s rally, while a coun-terdemonstration organised by Unite Against Fascism and Stand Up to Racism attracted 600 anti-fascists.

Two fascists were arrested as they tried to attack the counterdemonstration, which was supported by MPs repre-senting constituencies in north-west England, Labour council-lors and trade unions including

the National Education Union, GMB, Fire Brigades Union and Unison.

Dan Hett, brother of Man-chester bombing victim Mar-tyn Hett, supported the coun-terdemonstration.

The Survivors Against Terror co-founder said the FLA were “shamelessly hijacking the anniversary of the attacks to peddle their racist, Islamopho-bic views.”

He added: “We ran the rac-ist Football Lads Alliance out of town.”

Speakers at the anti-fascist rally included Pete Middleman of the TUC’s North West region.

Participants held a minute’s silence in memory of those killed in the terrorist attack, followed by a reading of their names.

Paul Jenkins of Unite Against Fascism said: “Multicultural Manchester has shown that it does not welcome racists or

fascists on our streets trying to exploit the horrifi c attack on the Arena in order to try to whip up racism and divide our communities.”

Unite Against Fascism co-convenor Weyman Ben-nett warned that danger still exists from the FLA and and an off shoot calling itself the Democratic Football Lads Alli-ance (DFLA), which is working with Ukip.

The organisations are seen as the successors to the English Defence League, which was formerly able to mobilise thou-sands of racists and fascists.

“They plan to come to Man-chester again on June 2,” Mr Bennett told the Morning Star. “With Ukip they are trying to build a street organisation.

“We now urge everyone to come out on the streets again on June 2 to protest against the racist DFLA.”

peterlazenby@peoples-press.com

■ MOTABILITY OPERATIONS

Disability activist argues for cap on charity chiefs’ pay by Sam Tobin

“GROSSLY overpaid” charity bosses should have their sala-ries capped to ensure money is spent on the people who need it, says leading disability cam-paigner Linda Burnip.

Two parliamentary commit-tees have branded the £1.7 mil-lion pay packet for the boss of Motability Operations “totally unacceptable” and criticised the fi rm, which supplies cars to peo-ple with disabilities, for hoarding £2.4 billion in cash reserves.

Motability chief executive offi cer Mike Betts was given a 78 per cent increase in his pay package over nine years, despite running a taxpayer-supported monopoly with zero competition.

The work and pensions and Treasury committees called for the National Audit Offi ce to review the scheme.

Work and pensions commit-tee chair Frank Field said that Motability “operates as a monop-oly that faces no competition” and needs to “get a grip on itself and realise the privileged posi-tion in which it trades.”

Disabled People Against Cuts co-founder Ms Burnip said Motability was a “wonderful” scheme while criticising Mr Betts’s vast salary and bonuses.

She told the Star: “It seems an awful lot of money for some-one to be paid when they have a captive audience.

“I think that most CEOs, both of Motability and most of the big disability charities, are grossly overpaid for what they do and there should be a cap maybe on what they earn.

“I’m sure there are lots of people who would do it for less. That money instead could go towards disabled people and help them getting vehicles.”

samtobin@peoples-press.com

■ SCOTLAND

Sturgeon slammed after urging separatist debate SCOTTISH Labour told Nicola Sturgeon to “focus on jobs, schools and hospitals” yesterday after she vowed to “restart the debate” on Scottish independence.

The SNP leader said the conclusions of the party’s economic growth commis-sion this week would off er the opportunity for a debate on Scotland’s future. Reports have suggested it will back the creation of a Scottish currency.

“Once we get some clarity, which hopefully we will in the autumn … about the Brexit out-come and the future relationship

between the UK and the EU, then I will consider again this question of the timing of an independence referendum,” the First Minister told ITV’s Peston on Sunday.

“Over the next couple of weeks we will, I suppose, restart a debate about why independence for Scotland is an opportunity.”

Scottish Labour leader Rich-ard Leonard said: “Scotland does not need, and [its] people do not want, this tired argu-ment again. The SNP should rec-ognise that and focus instead on jobs, schools and hospitals.”

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■ MANCHESTER

Footballing comrades unite to boot fascism out of cityby Marcus Barnett

THE Our City United anti-fascist football tournament brought together trade union-ists and community activists in Manchester at the weekend.

The tournament took place at FC United of Manchester’s Broadhurst Park ground in the northern suburb of Moston, organised by local anti-fascist group 0161 Community.

Nearly 200 spectators turned out for the contest at the fan-owned football ground, where six seven-a-side amateur teams representing local boxing clubs, football supporters, nightclub staff , the Manchester branch of Labour left organisation Momentum and tenants and anti-fascist organisations bat-tled for supremacy.

Thanking those who attended, community organ-iser Dave Brennan told the Star that the event had been a huge success.

“Our City United was a mas-sive celebration of unity among the working class and mutual

respect in our communities and across the world,’ he said.

“Working-class people of all backgrounds came out to have a laugh with each other, make new friends and swear to main-tain vigilance against fascism and divisiveness in working-class communities.”

Also present were guests of honour from Denmark, who were warmly welcomed and invited to discuss anti-fascist

politics in their cities at a pub-lic meeting the night before.

In the end, the tournament was won by an FC United sup-porters’ team.

After the trophy ceremony, revellers watched the FA Cup fi nal between Manchester United and Chelsea in FC’s grounds, before the club hosted a party with local reggae band Ruff Trade.

marcusbarnett@peoples-press.com

UNITED: Manchester Momentum FCPic: Paul Cronin

■ PARTY ROW

Youngsters disown chair’s bid to derail Labour Brexit thrustby Our News Desk

LABOUR’S youth organisation Young Labour condemned attempts by its chair yesterday to undermine the party’s policy on Brexit.

Young Labour national chair Miriam Mirwitch, an Owen Smith supporter, had co-signed a statement with Labour Students chair Melantha Chit-tenden demanding that party members be given a say in Labour’s Brexit policy.

Both are party rightwingers

and contributors to the Blairite magazine Progress.

The letter, which said that “we deserve to have our voices heard by our own party,” included a link to LabourSay.EU, a website that is a data-collect-ing operation for Progress and fellow anti-Corbyn candidates in the party’s impending national executive committee elections.

Labour insiders have blasted the letter, which they say has violated democratic processes and has used Young Labour’s 110,000 overwhelmingly Cor-byn-supporting members as a

tool to undermine the party in the media.

Young Labour’s national committee, overwhelmingly composed of Momentum mem-bers and trade union delegates, said in a statement released yes-terday that it wished to “col-lectively reassure” members and the public that “Miriam Mirwitch’s actions do not rep-resent Young Labour’s national committee.”

They argued that any change in Brexit policy would “dam-age the credibility” of the party and emphasised their support

■ FESTIVAL

JOHN MCDONNELL told hundreds gathered at Wakefi eld’s With Banners Held High festival yester-day that Labour and the trade union movement is on the rise again, writes Peter Lazenby.

“The labour and trade union movement is growing stronger,” the shadow chancellor told a cheering crowd, which included young activists from the McDonald’s fast-food chain.

“We are building our movement and we are ready to replace the Tory government.”

The banners of miners, public-service workers, trade union councils and others were paraded through the city to the open-air venue of the festival.

The festival began four years ago to mark the 30th anniversary of the end of the 1984-5 min-ers’ strike against pit closures.

Since its launch it has grown to be a wider cel-ebration of campaigning trade unionism.

Other speakers included TUC general sec-retary Frances O’Grady and Yorkshire Labour MP Jon Trickett, whose Hemsworth constituency includes former mining communities devastated by the Tories’ destruction of the industry.

Banners tell the story of a movement on the rise

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Morning Star Monday

May 21 2018news

for Labour’s current stance, which is to leave the single market and join some form of customs union.

“Alongside the broader Labour and trade union move-ment, we fight for a Labour government that can deliver a departure from the Euro-pean Union which guarantees the greatest benefit for the working-class movement and provides the most advanta-geous way to implement a full socialist programme,” the state-ment said.

“Without any consultation, our national chair signed a peti-tion on a website which openly promotes itself as a funding operation for anti-Corbyn NEC candidates promoted by Labour First and Progress.

“We believe it is important that the chair does not mislead the public on Young Labour’s position towards Labour’s Brexit policy.”

news@peoples-press.com

n STARS SPEAK OUT

World leaders put ‘on notice’ to tackle gender inequalityby Our News Desk

BRITISH actors Letitia Wright and Thandie Newton are among a galaxy of stars calling on world leaders to end gender inequality.

An open letter, also signed by Oprah Winfrey and Reese Witherspoon, demands urgent action on the issue from coun-tries across the globe.

The letter, published today, warns leaders they are being put “on notice” and demands a commitment to help every girl receive an education.

“There is nowhere on Earth where women have the same opportunities as men, but the gender gap is wider for women living in poverty,” said the letter.

“Poverty is sexist. And we won’t stand by while the poor-est women are overlooked.

“We won’t stop until there is justice for women and girls eve-rywhere. Because none of us are equal until all of us are equal.”

The letter also points out that 130 million girls without an education, a billion women without access to a bank account and 39,000 girls becom-ing child brides every day. It

vowed to fight “for women eve-rywhere paid less than a man for the same work.”

Romilly Greenhill, UK direc-tor of the One Campaign, which is leading the call, said: “Girls’ education is essential in the fight to end extreme poverty, and ensuring every girl gets the chance to learn is the key to unlocking their huge potential.

“Until we’re able to break down the barriers holding girls and women back on a global level, extreme poverty and gen-der inequality will continue to exist.”

news@peoples-press.com

n COURTS

£1BN THE AIM FOR

GOOGLE’S iPHONE

PRIVACY BREACHGOOGLE faces a mass legal action at the High Court today over allegations that it unlaw-fully collected personal infor-mation from millions of iPhone users.

Campaign group Google You Owe Us, led by former Which? director Richard Lloyd, is seek-ing at least £1 billion in com-pensation for some 5.4 million iPhone users.

The lawsuit alleges that, between June 2011 and February 2012, Google bypassed default privacy settings on iPhones to track users’ online behaviour on the Safari web browser.

It is said that Google then used the data collected via “the Safari Workaround” to target iPhone users for the tech giant’s Dou-bleClick advertising business, in breach of the Data Protec-tion Act.

Google, however, maintains

that the English courts do not have jurisdiction to hear the case.

When the lawsuit was launched in November, Mr Lloyd said the case, the first of its kind in Britain to be brought against a tech giant for allegedly misusing personal data, was “one of the biggest fights of my life.”

He added: “I believe that what Google did was quite simply against the law. Their actions have affected millions and we’ll be asking the courts to remedy this major breach of trust.

“Through this action, we will send a strong message to Google and other tech giants in Silicon Valley that we’re not afraid to fight back if our laws are broken.

“In all my years speaking up for consumers, I’ve rarely seen

such a massive abuse of trust where so many people have no way to seek redress on their own.”

A Google spokesman previously said: “This is not new. We have defended similar cases before.

“We don’t believe it has any merit and we will contest it.”

n Culture secretary Matt Han-cock admitted yesterday that just four social media compa-nies had turned up to a meeting with him on internet safety.

Mr Hancock told the BBC Andrew Marr Show that the government would put forward legislation imposing fines on companies that fail to enforce anti-bullying or harassment rules.

He said: “The fact that only four companies turned up when I invited the 14 biggest gave me a big impetus to drive this proposal to legislate through.”

samtobin@peoples-press.com

Tech giant in dock as consumer champion pursues compensation claim

n NHS

Tory cuts killing community health plansPLANS to expand NHS commu-nity services to help people stay well in their own homes have been scuppered by funding cuts, a new report has found.

NHS Providers, which repre-sents English NHS trusts, said promises to prioritise NHS community services had been broken, with existing services being overstretched, under-

funded and understaffed.The report found that 52 per

cent of community trusts said their funding had fallen in this financial year and 82 per cent were worried that community health services would not receive the investment they need.

Shadow health secretary Jon Ashworth said: “Eight years of austerity is seriously damaging

the community health services we all rely on.

“At the very time when we should be investing more in community health provision, services are being restricted and vital staff like health visitors and district nurses are falling.

“Sadly, all that is on offer from this Tory government is more cuts and neglect.”n DISASTER INQUIRY

FIREFIGHTERS paid tribute yesterday to the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire as the public inquiry into the disaster starts today.

The hearing will begin with two weeks of tributes from family and friends remembering the victims of the June 14 2017 fire in which killed 72 people perished.

Fire Brigades Union (FBU) general secretary Matt Wrack said: “The Grenfell Tower fire was a devastating and heart-breaking tragedy. Seventy-two people died and the lives of those who survived were forever changed.

“On behalf of firefight-ers everywhere, we pay

our respects to those who died, were injured or lost loved ones.

“A whole community has been devastated. The thoughts of all firefighters will be with them as trib-utes begin at the public inquiry.

“The FBU is working with local people to help the community to recover. We will continue to do everything in our power to help them rebuild their lives.”

Lead counsel to the inquiry Richard Millett said that starting the hearings with tributes will ensure that participants “never lose sight of who our work is for and why we are doing it.”

Firefighters pay respects to Grenfell Tower victims

by Sam Tobin

nUNITY: Frances O’Grady, John McDonnell MP and Jon Trickett MP join the thousands of people who turned out for this year’s marchPics: Neil Terry Photography

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n MIDDLE EAST

Sadr promises to form an ‘inclusive’ government

Iranian-backed People’s Mobilisa-tion paramilitary forces, which came second with 47.

“Our door is open to anyone as long as they want to build the nation and that this be an Iraqi decision,” Mr Sadr said.

“During our meeting, we agreed to work together and with other parties to expedite the process of forming a new Iraqi government,” Mr Abadi told a joint press conference.

“It will be a strong govern-ment, capable of providing services, security and economic prosperity to its citizens.”

Sairoon, which is a coalition of Sadr followers, the Commu-nist Party and other secular groups, has prioritised fighting against rampant corruption, poverty and outside interfer-ence in Iraqi affairs.

Tehran had stated publicly before the election that it would not allow what it called “liberals and communists” to govern Iraq. Iran has influenced the choice of prime minister in the past.

Winning the largest number of seats does not automatically guarantee that Mr Sadr, who

did not stand as a candidate, will be able to hand-pick a prime minister.

Electoral blocs will have to negotiate a parliamentary major-ity behind a candidate and the government should be formed within 90 days of the official results, but negotiations are expected to drag on for months.

The election dealt a blow to Mr Abadi, but he could still emerge as a compromise can-didate, having balanced Wash-ington and Tehran during his term in office.

international@peoples-press.com

by Our Foreign Desk

SHI’ITE cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Sairoon (On the Move) coa-lition won most seats in Iraq’s par-liamentary elections, reassured Iraqis yesterday that their next government will be “inclusive” and mindful of their needs.

Speaking in the wake of Sat-urday night talks with Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, whose Nasr (Victory) bloc did poorly in the election, Mr Sadr said that their meeting “sends a clear and comforting message to the Iraqi people.

“Your government will take care of you and will be inclusive. We will not exclude anyone. We will work towards reform and prosperity.”

Sairoon won 54 of the cham-ber’s 329 seats, while Nasr gained 42, taking third place behind the Fatah (Conquest) coalition, led by Hadi al-Amiri and dominated by

n INDIA

Confidence vote threat causes BJP man to quitINDIAN Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was left with egg on its face at the weekend when its chief minister in Karnataka state stood down after just two days in office.

BS Yeddyurappa threw in the towel rather than face defeat in a confidence vote.

The BJP made a pre-emp-tive strike for the chief min-istership, approaching state governor Vajubhai Rudabhai Vala, also a BJP member, after it became the largest party in Karnataka, but without securing a majority of assembly members.

It took 104 seats in the 224-member state assembly election, but its major oppo-nents — the Gandhi dynas-ty’s Congress franchise and the secular Janata Dal party — won 117 between them.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi hailed Mr Yeddy-urappa’s resignation deci-sion as a victory.

“I am proud that they have been shown that, in India, power, corruption and money is not everything, but the will of people is every-thing,” he commented.

n SYRIA

Isis fighters ‘to be let out of capital’SYRIAN political and mil-itary officials remained tight-lipped yesterday over an apparent deal to evacuate all Isis fighters and their families from southern Damascus.

Dozens of buses were filmed on Saturday enter-ing Yarmouk and Hajar al-Aswad ready to move Isis personnel to Badiya in the eastern desert.

The surrender became inevitable following recent army advances that reduced its occupied by 70 per cent. It would mark the first time in seven years that the capital has been free of jihadists.

Before leaving, Isis set light to its posts in Yarmouk, which began as a refugee camp for Palestinians driven from their homeland in 1948.

The built-up area, previ-ously home to tens of thousands of Palestinians and Syrians before, was attacked first by Free Syr-ian Army units and then occupied in 2015 by Isis.

FINISHED? Haider al-Abadi

n HAVANA PLANE CRASH

Cubans hold two days of mourning for 110 jet deadby Our Foreign Desk

CUBANS observed two days of official mourning at the week-end, with flags flying at half-mast, in tribute to the 110 peo-ple killed when a passenger jet crashed in flames shortly after take-off from Havana on Friday.

The authorities said that there were only three survivors, all women, from the 113 people on board, making the accident Cuba’s deadliest air disaster in nearly 30 years. All three remain in a critical condition.

Allegations of previous safety complaints against the little-known Mexican com-pany Damojh that leased the nearly 40-year-old Boeing 737 to Cuban flagship carrier Cubana have begun to surface.

Damojh declined to com-ment, while Mexico’s Direc-torate General of Civil Aero-nautics said a new audit of the company would be undertaken to ensure it was still “fulfilling norms.”

Cuban authorities disclosed that 99 of the passengers killed on the domestic flight to the eastern city of Holguin were Cuban, while three were for-eign tourists — two Argentin-ians and a Mexican — and two were Sahrawi residents of Cuba.

Ten Nazarene pastoral cou-ples returning home after a retreat were among the vic-tims, the Cuban Nazarene Church said.

Th six Mexican crew mem-bers were also killed.

President Miguel Diaz-Canel visited the morgue on Saturday after reviewing the crash site the previous day.

Cubana leased the jet less than a month ago, Transport Minister Adel Yzquierdo said on Saturday. It was struggling to meet demand for flights and was serving many domestic routes by bus instead.

Cuba often has to lease planes because the US block-ade makes it difficult to acquire more modern aircraft.

international@peoples-press.com

SHOCK: Cubans grieve after the deaths of their loved ones in a plane crash (top and bottom) and (left) Cuban investigators scour the plane’s wreckage to uncover the cause of the crash

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Morning Star Monday

May 21 2018world

Two injured Gazans die from woundsPALESTINE: Two Pales-tinians wounded in Israel’s shooting spree on Monday have died, the Health Ministry in Gaza reported at the weekend.

The two men, aged 20 and 58, had been in a critical condition.

Since the Great Return March demonstrations began on March 30, at least 110 Palestinians have been killed and over 2,500 wounded by live fire, the ministry said.

Inmates and fugitives in new Catalan cabinetSPAIN: Catalonia’s new president Quim Torra included jailed and exiled politicians in the cabinet he named at the weekend.

Jordi Turull and Josep Rull are on remand for involvement in the inde-pendence referendum campaign, while Antoni Comin and Lluis Puig i Gordi fled to Brussels.

The new cabinet “is a clear message that they want to continue with the problems, the con-flict and provocation,” said conservative Peo-ple’s Party representative Xavier Garcia Albiol.

Maoists kill five police with mineINDIA: At least five police officials were killed and two critically injured yes-terday when Maoist rebels targeted their vehicle in the Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh state.

They detonated a land-mine as an armoured vehi-cle ran over it, police said.

Police reinforcements rushed in and launched a hunt for the attackers.

Santrich suspends hunger strikeCOLOMBIA: Jesus Santrich, who helped craft the 2016 peace deal that saw the Rev-olutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) demobilise and disarm, has suspended a 41-day hunger strike.

The Farc leader, who was protesting at his detention and expected extradition to the US on cocaine-traffick-ing charges, said he was responding to supporters’ appeals and would redouble efforts to help implement the peace accord.

“My situation is a calcu-lated accident that can be extended to any Farc politi-cal member,” he warned.

in briefn VENEZUELA

OBSERVERS PRAISED FOR

DEFYING DISRUPTIONby Calvin Tuckerin Caracas

PRESIDENT Nicolas Maduro’s campaign chief Aristobulo Isturiz has praised the “courage” of the International Accompa-niment mission for coming to Venezuela to observe yesterday’s presidential elections.

“You may see the extent to which some elements of the opposition will go to disrupt the election and prevent peo-ple from voting,” Mr Isturiz told a meeting of the electoral experts in Caracas.

“Venezuela is facing eco-nomic warfare and a campaign of violence that included the burning-down last summer of a maternity hospital with 54 women inside.

“We have already dismantled several attempts to attack the elections and the military will be fully deployed to ensure a peaceful vote.

“We are besieged on all sides, but our real battle is with US and European imperialism, not opposition candidate Henri Fal-con,” Mr Isturiz added.

The Maduro campaign, which has staged a series of huge ral-lies across the country in the past week, appeared confident of victory in the poll, despite rampant inflation and shortages of food and medicines.

Mr Isturiz pledged that Mr Maduro would immediately recognise the election result whether he wins or loses.

Adopting a conciliatory tone, Falcon campaign chief Julio Cesar told the international observers that the opposition challenger rejected violence and supported an electoral solution to the country’s crisis.

“We do not agree with those in the opposition who are urg-ing people not to vote,” he said.

“We can have a dialogue. We acknowledge the legacy of the left wing in Latin America,

including the good initiatives of Hugo Chavez.

“We do not support US mili-tary intervention,” he added.

The observers, drawn from 86 countries, were also addressed by the campaign teams of two minor candidates.

The spokesman for Evangeli-cal candidate Javier Bertucci expressed “absolute confidence” in the electoral system, while independent Reinaldo Quijada said there was “no possibility” of electoral fraud.

n Communications Minister Jorge Rodriguez derided as “ridiculous” Colombian Presi-dent Juan Manuel Santos’s claim to have been alerted to planned ballot fraud by “reli-able intelligence sources.”

“He always says he was warned by intelligence sources. Every time that Mr Santos is ‘outraged’ … it’s to see if anyone’s paying attention, because otherwise no-one cares,” Mr Rodriguez scoffed.

international@peoples-press.com

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: International monitors check in on vote despite right-wing threats

n CHINA-US

Trade war averted thanks to ‘positive, pragmatic’ talksby Our Foreign Desk

CHINESE Vice Premier Liu He announced in Washington at the weekend that China and the United States have reached consensus on economic and trade issues, pledging not to engage in a trade war.

Mr Liu, who heads the Chi-nese side of the China-US com-prehensive economic dialogue, was in Washington at the invi-tation of the US government.

He revealed on Saturday that the two sides had agreed not to launch a trade war and to stop slapping tariffs on each other’s exports.

Noting that his visit had been positive, pragmatic, constructive and productive, Mr Liu explained that the most important reason for its achievements was the con-sensus reached previously by Xi Jinping and Donald Trump.

Both sides will enhance trade co-operation in energy, agriculture products, health-care, high-tech products and finance, he said.

Such co-operation is a win-win choice as it can promote high-quality development of the Chinese economy, meet people’s needs and help the US reduce its trade deficit, he added.

The two states will also strengthen co-operation in

mutual investment and intel-lectual property protection, Mr Liu said.

This, he added, not only ben-efits both nations but also helps support the stability and pros-perity of the global economy and trade.

He underlined that China, with a large middle-income population, will become the world’s largest market and will be highly competitive.

The Chinese deputy premier insisted that nations seeking to enter the market would have to improve the competitiveness of their products and service to attract Chinese customers.

international@peoples-press.com

n DR CONGO

New Ebola jab to be dished out in western MbandakaAN experimental Ebola vaccine will be administered today in Mbandaka, the Congolese city of 1.2 million people where some residents are infected, Health Minister Oly Ilunga announced yesterday.

“The vaccination campaign begins tomorrow … It will tar-get first the health staff, the con-tacts of the sick and the contacts of the contacts,” he said.

Initially, the campaign will target 600 people, but more than 4,000 doses are already in Congo and more are on the way, according to officials.

The vaccine is still in the test stages, but it was effective in the West Africa outbreak a few years ago.

Four new cases have been confirmed as Ebola, the Health Ministry confirmed yesterday morning.

A total of 46 cases of haem-orrhagic fever have been reported, including 21 con-firmed cases of Ebola, 21 prob-able and four suspected.

President Joseph Kabila and his cabinet agreed on Saturday to increase funds for the emer-gency to around £3 million.IN CHARGE? Muqtada al-Sadr

CELEBRATION: A Beijing couple in wedding attire sit in front of a poster that urges: ‘To more closely unite around the party central committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core, spare no effort to strive for the success of the great new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics’

CONFIDENT: Nicolas Maduro

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@m_star_online8Morning Star Monday May 21 2018 features

NICOLA STURGEON’S bid to restart the debate on Scot-tish independence looks like a ploy to avoid facing up to the failings of her administration and the real problems facing Scots.

Confronted with a resurgent Labour Party, which under Richard Leonard is asking tough questions about the nationalists’ refusal to use devolved powers to stop cuts to public services and the continued funnelling of public money to outsourcing firms that use fake self-employment and umbrella companies to “dodge tax, cut costs and exploit workers,” Scotland’s First Minister prefers to maintain the fantasy that her government is powerless to act until the country separates from the rest of Britain.

She claims the independence debate will be one of “ambition and hope,” rather than “based on despair” as she describes the debate on leaving the European Union.

Sturgeon does not pause to consider that it is the unam-bitious and defeatist approach to Brexit she shares with the Liberal Democrats and the right wing of the Labour Party that is “based on despair.”

The glum prediction that Brexit is a blank cheque for a Tory bonfire of our rights and social security systems rests on an assumption that working people are totally incapable of defending or extending rights they won through collective struggle in the first place.

It also depends on the bizarre assertion that the Tories are somehow unstoppable despite their party being mired in its own disagreements on an exit deal and led by a lame-duck Prime Minister who can’t dictate to her own Cabinet, let alone to the country or other EU member states.

Her attempt to reopen a proposal that was rejected by the Scottish electorate less than four years ago is of a piece with the repeated attempts we see to turn the clock back on the EU referendum debate rather than assessing where we are and what potential the current situation holds.

For Sturgeon, as for the Labour right, this is less because she can’t see that potential than because she is determined to close the window of opportunity for radical political, economic and social change opened up by the Labour Party in the era of Jeremy Corbyn and Richard Leonard.

Others in Scotland are less despairing.For an ambitious and hopeful debate, we could do worse

than look to the way the Radical Options for Scotland and Europe (Rose) campaign is exploring how we can build a future that democratises our countries and empowers our peoples.

A new constitutional settlement could include the aboli-tion of the House of Lords, perhaps with its replacement by an elected chamber that would be responsible for cross-UK decision-making in a federal Britain in which England, Scotland and Wales enjoy equal rights, as sketched out by the newly ennobled socialist campaigner and Morning Star campaign committee member Pauline Bryan — a life peer whose democratic vision, if we can make it a reality, will certainly rule out her being a peer for life.

Negotiating a deal that gives us access to the European market and a customs union, as supported by Unite leader Len McCluskey yesterday, rather than seeking warts-and-all membership of the single market and existing customs union, gives us a chance to detach ourselves from restric-tive EU regulations on competition, public ownership and state aid that would clip the wings of an incoming Labour government.

Leonard’s proposals to bring social care back into local government control, outsourced staff back into public employment and cap rents in a new Mary Barbour law show a commitment to use powers Scotland has to change things for the better, just as Corbyn’s programme does on a Britain-wide basis.

All their liberal critics have to offer instead are replays of movies that weren’t that interesting the first time round.

Reopening the Scottish indy debate shows Sturgeon is out of ideas

Star comment

We can all see that rail privatisation hasn’t workedAslef leader MICK WHELAN says that the

decision by Chris Grayling last week shows

the case for bringing all of Britain’s

railways back into public ownership —

permanently — is now unanswerable

“WHO needs J e r e m y Corbyn? N o t w h e n y o u ’ v e

got Chris Grayling nationalis-ing the railways. He’s already got things going on the East Coast main line. Even better, the Transport Secretary’s now the butt of jokes from John McDonnell.

“‘Come on Chris. East Coast today, the whole system tomor-row’ was the shadow chancel-lor’s hilarious tweet. 

“Only a free marketeer like Grayling could insist that kicking Virgin Trains East Coast off the London to Edin-burgh line and replacing it with a state-owned operator of last resort didn’t amount to

temporary nationalisation.”Not my words. The words of

Alistair Osborne, the business-friendly business commentator of The Times in Rupert Mur-doch’s business-friendly news-paper on Thursday. 

When you have a promi-nent right-wing journalist, writing in an influential free-market and Tory-government-supporting paper, taking the mickey — in fact, taking you to task, because he sarcastically savaged an earlier decision by Failing Grayling as a “brilliant wheeze” — then you know you’re in trouble.

And there was more. “The really embarrassing thing is that it took him six months to make a blindingly obvious decision.

“Finally, the penny has

dropped. You can’t have a com-petitive rail franchise market if you can screw up a bid and still keep the train set.”

You won’t be surprised to learn that this is what we think too.

Because Aslef, the trade union for train drivers — and 96 per cent of the train drivers in England, Scotland and Wales choose to belong to our union, which was formed in Leeds in 1880 — campaigned first for the public ownership of our railways, which we achieved under the Labour government of Clement Attlee immediately after the second world war and against the privatisation of Brit-ish Railways by John Major 45 years later.

Because we can all see that privatisation hasn’t worked.

Even Margaret Thatcher described the privatisation of our railway as a privatisation too far, because it is a natural public monopoly and should be run not for private profit but as a public service.

On every measure put for-ward by Major in the 1990s, rail privatisation has failed. Fares and public subsidies have soared — we now have the highest fares in Europe — while our trains have got more crowded and the rolling stock has, on average, got older. 

There is no real competition between the train operating companies. And where there is competition, between the freight operating companies, it has led to disaster.

We all know why the priva-tised train companies like the

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Morning Star Monday

May 21 2018features

Improving diversity and dignity at work are among our top prioritiesCHISTINE PAYNE outlines the motions

up for debate at Equity conference

which reflect a modern, changing union

EQUITY members from all over the country are gath-ering in London to take part in our Annual Rep-

resentative Conference. As ever, we have a packed

agenda examining the indus-trial priorities for our members working in theatre, television, live entertainment, film and the wider creative industries.

Backstage conditions, improving dignity and respect at work, improving working-class access to creative pro-fessions, Brexit, freedom of movement and threats to the availability of stage lighting equipment are just some of the issues which will be debated by our members who work in a huge range of roles including as actors, directors, design-ers,  choreographers, singers, dancers, stage managers, audio performers, circus art-ists, entertainers and models.

In the months ahead we will be looking to improve our col-lective agreements in the West End and subsidised theatre sec-tors and we have embarked on an ambitious organising project in the video games industry where we hope to raise stand-ards for people working in a range of creative roles which contribute to the success of many well-known titles.

In recent years we have been making great strides towards increasing fairness in the enter-tainment industry, and we are seeing real progress in many areas of our work on equalities. 

This year, our demands on equalities are set to expand fur-ther — our LGBT+ committee is calling on the union to provide employers, commissioners and casting directors with insights on spectrum identities and the lived experience of trans people. 

We will also discuss how we can take action to tackle the prejudice and discrimination faced by these members.

Elsewhere, Equity’s deaf and disabled members’ committee will be asking us to challenge employers and casting profes-sionals to justify the practice of engaging non-disabled per-formers in roles portraying D/deaf and disabled characters

on stage and screen, we will consider increasing specialised pastoral care to BAME student actors in drama and our Essex branch will be raising concerns about the sexualisation and objectification of women in music videos and in their asso-ciated staging in live settings. 

These motions and others which will be debated over the two days of conference are reflective of a modern, chang-ing union, seeking to make working in the arts and crea-tive industries accessible, safer and more inclusive. 

The pursuit of equality has been a key demand of our lay members and none more so than our outgoing president Malcolm Sinclair. 

Malcolm’s determination to bring more BAME members into our union and his efforts to make all of our democratic structures more diverse has been as tireless as it has been successful. 

Malcolm expresses his pas-

sion for his union and our potential to make change articulately, intelligently and in a way that is both compel-ling to members and earns the respect of employers and many other stakeholders in the indus-try. I will miss his support and insight very much indeed.

As we say goodbye to Mal-colm we wholeheartedly con-gratulate our incoming presi-dent Maureen Beattie — the union’s second female presi-dent and the first since Beatrix Lehmann in 1946. 

Maureen will be known to many for her leadership in investigating and uncovering solutions to eliminate sexual har-assment and bullying from our workplaces, casting and audition spaces in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein revelations last year. 

Maureen initiated and led a body of work alongside Equity’s sexual harassment working group and we are now implementing the recom-mendations of the Agenda for

Change report, most notably through our Safe Spaces cam-paign which is being rolled out across the industry.

Maureen’s ambition is to “create an industry which is 100 per cent inclusive, an industry where no matter your individual characteristics or your caring responsibilities you have as good a chance of landing that job — whatever it may be — as anyone else. That’s the dream. The time has come for the employers and engag-ers in our industry to acknowl-edge and honour the connec-tion between the £92 billion brought into the UK last year by the creative economy and the people whose work brings in such riches.”

I could not agree more and am very much looking forward to working with Maureen and our soon to be elected council from July.

■ Christine Payne is general secre-tary of Equity.

LOOKING AHEAD: Equity is seeking to improve collective agreements in the West End

franchise system — when they talk about “risk and reward” they mean there is no risk, it’s all reward — but we need a Labour government elected at the next general election com-mitted to putting the wheels and steel of our fragmented and privatised railway back together as a modern, inte-grated, and publicly owned system fit for the 21st century.

That’s not just what we, as a progressive trade union affili-ated to the Labour Party, want. It’s what the overwhelming majority of passengers want too.

Opinion polls show they are fed up with being ripped off by the train companies. Annual season tickets in the south-east of England now cost around £5,000 — an awful lot of money to pay just to get to work in London — especially when you know £500 of that is going straight into the pockets of the privateers as profit.

That’s why we welcome the decision to bring the East Coast back into public ownership, at least temporarily, using the vehicle of Directly Operated Railways Ltd, until all our rail-ways are under proper national-ised government control.

This is the third time in 10 years that a private company has messed up on that line. And remember that last time when that happened and it was run in the public sector, it returned more than £1 billion to the Treasury.

It’s important that staff and pas-sengers are prop-erly protected

while the Transport Secretary desperately tries to patch up a failing franchise system that everyone in the industry knows doesn’t work.

I think it’s sad that Tory dogma — and no-one is more wedded to the failed privati-sation model than Grayling — means they will, in time, return this service to the pri-vate sector, doubtless for it to fail again. 

Because with Failing Gray-ling, Richard Branson and Brian Souter — the operator VTEC, despite using the Virgin logo, is in fact only 10 per cent owned by Branson and 90 per cent by Stagecoach — it’s like alchemy in reverse.

Instead of turning base metal into gold, they turn gold into base metal and the profits made by East Coast when it was in the public sector into losses.

That’s why we want all parts of Britain’s railway — the wheels and the steel brought back together under a publicly owned operator, not a private, profit-making company more interested in dividends than safety.

Because we only have to look at Railtrack to see the horrific consequences that can have.

■ Mick Whelan has spent 34 years on the railway, and 34 years as an active trade unionist. He was elected general secretary of Aslef in 2011, became chair of the Trade

Union & Labour Party Liaison Organisa-

tion in 2016 and was elected to the national executive com-mittee of the Labour Party in 2017.

DOGMA: Chris Grayling

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@m_star_online10Morning Star Monday May 21 2018 features

LOOKING back from today, we can now see the mid to late-2000s marked a high point in activ-ism, media interest

and government action regard-ing climate change in Britain.

Increasingly large and prom-inent Climate Camps, drawing attention to climate endanger-ing infrastructure, were organ-ised every year between 2006 and 2010.

The direct group Plane Stu-pid occupied runways and the roof of Parliament to highlight the danger of airport expansion and Climate Rush, inspired by the suffragettes’ campaign for the women’s vote, carried out media-friendly actions, including a picnic at Heath-row departures and dumping a pile of horse manure on Jeremy Clarkson’s driveway.

With documentaries such as An Inconvenient Truth in 2006 and The Age of Stupid in 2009 attracting huge audiences, David Cameron’s Tories sensed the shift in public opinion and rebranded themselves as an environmentally friendly party.

The slogan “vote blue, go green” was adopted and famously the old Etonian hugged a husky.

Ridiculous and shameless as this PR campaign was, the political arms race created by Cameron’s supposed green shift both proved the power of the green movement and pro-duced the political landscape it needed to win several impor-tant victories for the climate. 

Driven forward by a huge Friends of the Earth campaign, the 2008 Climate Change Act legally bound Britain to mak-ing 80 per cent cuts in carbon emissions by 2050. 

The coalition government scrapped the expansion of Heathrow after the 2010 gen-eral election and, following actions and campaigning by a coalition of groups on coal, analysis by Imperial College London showed the dirtiest fossil fuel dropped from gen-erating 40 per cent of UK elec-tricity in 2012 to just 2 per cent

in the first half of 2017. Zoom forward to today and the cli-mate crisis that green activists devoted their lives to averting in the late noughties has only become more urgent. 

For example, while senior cli-mate scientists have repeatedly explained that carbon admis-sions need to fall immediately and rapidly to avert climate catastrophe, the International Energy Agency reported that carbon emissions hit a record high last year, increasing by 1.4 per cent. 

The New Yorker’s David Wallace-Wells provides some much-needed reality to the 2015 United Nations Paris cli-mate agreement, which com-mitted the 195 signatories to keeping the global temperature increase to below two degrees and ideally under 1.5 degrees.

“Not a single major indus-trial nation was on track to ful-fil the commitments it made in the Paris treaty,” Wallace-Wells notes, citing a November 2017 New York Times report based on data from Climate Action Tracker. 

“To keep the planet under two degrees of warming — a level that was not all that long ago defined as the threshold of climate catastrophe — all sig-natory nations have to match or better those commitments.”

Speaking to the Morning Star

after the Paris Agreement, Pro-fessor Kevin Anderson, deputy director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, said it was “reasonable to say 3-4°C is where we are heading and probably the upper end of that” — by 2100, if not before.

The corporate world has already come to terms with this likely future, with an internal Shell planning document pre-dicting a 4°C increase in the short term. 

Similarly in 2012 Pricewater-houseCoopers told businesses and governments that they “need to plan for a warming world — not just 2°C, but 4°C or even 6°C.” 

“What we are talking about here is an existential threat to our civilisation in the longer term,” Sir David King, former chief scientific adviser to the British government, recently noted in an Environmental Justice Foundation report. 

“In the short term, it carries all sorts of risks as well and it requires a human response on a scale that has never been achieved before.” 

Speaking in 2011 about the risks climate change poses to Australia, Professor John Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, was even more direct, declaring: “The difference between two and four degrees is human civili-sation.”

As these warnings highlight,

the importance of the looming climate chaos is hard to over-estimate. 

“Every single day, climate change is the most impor-tant thing happening on the planet — there’s nothing even remotely close,” argues US cli-mate activist Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, writing in the New Yorker magazine. 

In contrast to this urgency, with a few important excep-tions — the nationwide anti-fracking movement — the green movement in Britain seems to have been

in a serious rut since 2009-10. The failure of the 2009

Copenhagen United Nations climate summit was a massive blow to the green movement’s morale, while the coalition government’s austerity pro-gramme led many activists to move from climate-specific work to campaigns such as UK Uncut and housing battles. 

In addition, it is clear since 2015 that many activists on the left who are concerned about climate change have put their time and energy into support-ing Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party, many join-ing Momentum.

Indeed, Corbyn’s environ-mental policies have broadly been positive. Friends of the Earth graded Labour’s 2017 election manifesto 34 points out of 48, behind the Green Party on 46 but above the Lib-

eral Democrats (32) and Con-servatives (11). 

That Morning Star columnist Alan Simpson is advising Cor-byn on environmental issues is welcome, as is shadow chan-cellor John McDonnell’s recent announcement that Clive Lewis MP had joined his team to “drive the climate change issue into the heart of Treasury policy-making, and therefore into the centre of government policy-making.”

However, there are still huge problems within the Labour Party when it comes to creating and pursuing effective policies on climate change. 

Many Labour MPs are still wedded to the ideal of a cor-porate-dominated neoliberal economy. The GMB union supports fracking. And, most importantly, Labour under Corbyn is still a pro-economic growth party — the word “growth” is mentioned 15 times in the election manifesto — despite this economic dogma being exactly the thing that is driving the planet over the climate cliff.

Rather than this old, 20th century thinking we desper-ately need new, radical ideas and action. We need, as Sir David King notes above, a wholesale transformation of our economies, which will only be possible with a pro-found shift in our politics and societal values. 

“Has an economic shift of

this kind ever happened before in history?” worries Canadian writer Naomi Klein in her essential book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate. 

She cites the historical exam-ples of the civil rights move-ment, the campaign against apartheid, the abolition of slav-ery and the New Deal to give an idea of the scale and influ-ence of the mass movement that is now needed to defend the climate. 

Others have suggested the societal mobilisation that occurred during World War II is closer to the level of change that we need to aim for.

This, then, is why a rein-vigorated green movement is needed now more than ever — to press the current Tory gov-ernment and Corbyn’s Labour Party to take proactive and effective steps to deal directly with the threat of climate change. 

And we need to act now. As McKibben notes in his New Yorker article, though “it feels as if we have time to deal with global warming … In fact, cli-mate change is the one problem that the planet has ever faced that comes with an absolute time limit. Past a certain point, it won’t be a problem any more, because it won’t have a solu-tion.”

■ Follow Ian Sinclair on Twitter @IanJSinclair.

A rejuvenated green movement is needed now more than ever

MILITANT: Climate change protesters at Farnborough Airport in 2007 and (left) G20 Climate Camp activists in London in 2009

by Ian Sinclair

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Morning Star Monday

May 21 2018culture

The End of the French Intellectual

by Shlomo Sand(Verso, £16)

PHILOSOPHER Bertrand Rus-sell once claimed that Britain was the only country where he could not identify himself as an intellectual.

While this country might not “do” intellectuals, the French embrace them with a vengeance. Or, according to Israeli author Shlomo Sand, they did up until the present.

The French have always accorded the producers of “high culture” an emi-nent status and the Parisian intellectuals from the time of Vol-taire and Rousseau have wielded an influ-ence over public opin-ion quite alien to the more prosaic British.

Yet the term intellectual as a noun only came into general usage in the late 19th century, when the convulsive Dreyfus affair tore the country apart.

Leading men of letters took sides, with Emile Zola’s devas-tating J’Accuse spearheading the attack on the government and French hypocrisy in gen-eral.

In modern times, the likes of Jean Paul Sartre — “the most emblematic and famous critical intellectual of the 20th century” — became the voices of social conscience, operating outside the main structures of business or politics.

But the first world war, when nearly all intellectuals supported their respective sides in the conflict, marked the decline of their position as moral arbiters speaking in the name of humanity as a whole.

Sand signals his own atti-tude by quoting Jacques Pre-vert. “Intellectuals should

not be allowed to play with matches” and the core of Sand’s book examines the roles of those many intellec-tuals who embraced Marx-ism, particularly in the post-second world war period, and those seduced by “the discreet charm of fascism” which, use-fully, he distinguishes from nazism.

Subsequently, in the view of the influential Pierre Bourdieu, the new “advent of the technocrats … has dis-placed intellectuals from the public arena.”

Moreover, the possessors of cultural capital have faced a

problematic relation-ship with the develop-ing workers’ movements representing those with no economic capital.

Sand reflects through-out on Judeophobia and, as the writer of the much-praised work

The Invention of the Jewish People, he rejects the term anti-semitic.

His chapter on the virulent anti-Islamic atmosphere in France centred on the Char-lie Hebdo massacre asks, and answers, the question, “Why did more than four million French people parade under a slogan that identified them with a totally irresponsible and Islamophobic magazine?” It will make many readers re-examine the current anti-Corbyn diatribes and their motives.

This hugely informative and highly readable book is written with an engaging humility.

Sand laments that just when he has achieved the status to which he has always aspired that “the moral intel-lectual stands in a twilight zone” and that “this strange creature of pluralist democ-racy” is on the decline.

GORDON PARSONS

n FICTION

After The Winter

by Guadalupe Nettel(Maclehose Press, £14.99)

IN AFTER the Winter, Mexi-can writer Guadalupe Nettel attempts to answer some big questions. What does it mean to live as a Latin American in exile? What binds these experiences together, if at all?

How is this diaspora under-stood and recounted in a mod-ern age of globalisation and mass migration?

It’s a powerful story, exquisitely translated by Rosalind Harvey, in which Nettel engag-ingly charts the tribu-lations of Cecilia, a shy young Mexican woman from Oaxaca who decides to move to Paris to finish a thesis on Latin American literature and Claudio, a Cuban exiled from Old Havana, who works in publishing.

Cecilia discovers she has a morbid fascination with

funerals, especially the ones taking place in the Pere Lachaise cemetery just outside her shared f lat and, after moving to a new place on her own, she strikes up a friendship with a sickly neighbour.

Tom is a mysterious Italian with whom she shares din-ners and walks in the neigh-bourhood.

They also share a common interest in death and cemeteries and her new friend believes he

can communicate with the dead. During one of those walks

in Pere Lachaise they stumble across the grave of Chopin.

“His name was inscribed on the white surface with an eloquent simplicity, along-side the beautiful sculpture of a woman,” Cecilia reflects. “There was something in the fact of dying that could not be expressed in words or in any book in the world.

“Music was probably the most appropriate medium.”

When Tom leaves Paris for

Sicily because of his health, Cecilia’s life is left in a state of emotional limbo before she embarks on a tempestu-ous relationship with Claudio, a misogynist obsessed with order and cleanliness.

The narrative may lose its intensity half-way through but it still manages to capture moments of real beauty and humour, particularly in the evocative trips to cemeteries in search of the graves of writ-ers, poets and philosophers, among them Cesar Vallejo,

Julio Cortazar and Carlos Fuentes.

Nettel, who lived for a time in Paris as a student, suc-cessfully captures the lives of Latin Americans in exile — their trials, denials, obses-sions and passions, as well as their underlying search for love.

Hers is a dark tale of restless souls away from their home-lands for whom death and cemeteries become places of ultimate rest and belonging.

LEO BOIX

Grave obsessions of stranger in a strange land

n CURRENT AFFAIRS n URBAN LIFE

Capital crime sceneTales of Two Londons: Stories From a Fractured City

Edited by Claire Armitstead(O/R Books, £13)

LONDON is a danger-ously divided entity and the effects of gen-trification, alienation and eradication on

the capital’s inhabitants, at the mercy of cost-cutting govern-ments and the unjust housing market, are not always evident to the very privileged until it’s too late.

The city is trying to hold itself together at a point in history when it is feeling “frac-tured and embattled as rarely before in peacetime,” writes Claire Armitstead, editor of Tales of Two Londons.

She has ensured that more than a third of the voices in her anthology of prose, poetry, reportage and letters reflect the fact that nearly 40 per cent of Londoners are not British-born.

Their voices runs deep. A Story in Three Languages by Memed Aksoy asks the reader to imagine being forbidden to speak in their mother tongue. A nation of people being told to “swallow their tongue” is a nation of people “not being,” he writes. Although he speaks of Kurds under the tyranny of Turkey, his words would reso-nate with many of those who are oppressed.

There is also the Grenfell Tower fire in “three acts,” in which Channel 4 presenter Jon Snow regrets that he has been on the “wrong side of the terrible divide” that led to voices of the North Kensington com-munity being ignored by the mainstream media.

This is tragically exemplified by a Grenfell Action Group blog post, also included in the col-lection, that prophesied a fire of such scale.

The divisions are also drawn-between white and black.

In The City As a War-zone by Penny Woolcock and Stephen Griffith refers to China Mieville’s novel The City and The City which describes two metropolises occupying the same space, where

the residents are “forbidden to acknowledge each other’s existence and have to unsee each other instantly.”

Refreshingly, Woolcock acknowledges her privileges as a white woman and states that she is lucky — amid escalating gang warfare between black teenagers

in London for which there are “invisible front lines” naked to the eyes of others — that she can walk home to her Georgian resi-dence in Islington “not thinking about losing my life.”

Notting Hill’s Last Stand is by Ed Vulliamy who, like me, was raised in the area long before the eponymous film coincided with the neighbourhood becom-ing an extension of Chelsea.

He launches a scathing attack on the gentrifiers and developers — “vultures and vandals” — picking through the local Bohemian, Caribbean,

Cockney, Moroccan, Spanish and Portuguese cultures.

Although the money-go-round of development capital-ises on authentically vibrant community and nostalgia — exemplified by the new faux identikit “villages” mushroom-ing around London — this love of the past is an irritant to giant developers who see sentimen-tality getting in the way of their grand designs.

Vulliamy’s words will pierce the heart of anyone who has seen this destruction with their own eyes.

Tales of Two Londons eloquently demonstrates the rapacious divisions engineered between rich and poor in the city, says LAMIAT SABIN

French intellectuals obscured in moral twilight zone

RAPACIOUS DEVELOPMENTS: A nightmarish procession of shoeboxes with no architectural merit are being built in Hackney Wick’s ‘Fish Island Village’

Pic: Michal Boncza

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@m_star_online12Morning Star MondayMay 21 2018 info | entertainment

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WEATHER OUTLOOK

TODAY

Mostly sunny and warm, though isolated heavy showers and thunder-storms developing in some southern parts later. Cooler with coastal mist in the east. Cloudy with rain in the north-west.

NEXT FEW DAYS

Rain in the north-west soon clearing. Most places sunny and warm, though a continued risk of thunderstorms in some southern parts. Eastern areas generally cooler with coastal mist at times.

QUIZMASTER with William Sitwell

TODAY’S QUESTIONS

SATURDAY’S ANSWERS

1. Of the four inner planets, which has the strongest gravity? Earth

2. What shape are both a room in the Royal Observatory at Greenwich and the central lobby of the Houses of Parlia-

ment (pictured)? Octagonal

3. Which word is used to mean a tree that has been grown from seed and never pruned? Maiden

1 True or false: pike, luce and jackfi sh are names for the same creature.

2 In which work by Jane Austen does the heroine’s bridal veil get torn shortly before her wedding?

3 True or false: all of Gilbert & Sullivan’s operas begin with a chorus.

Solution tomorrow…

DAILY SUDOKU (doddle)

REPORTER Richard Bilton reveals new evidence about the safety failures that led to the deaths of 72 people in last year’s Grenfell Tower inferno on tonight’s Panorama (8pm BBC1).

Manchester: a Year of Hate Crime (22.35pm Channel 4) takes viewers to the front line of racial and religious hatred as the city’s police respond to hun-dreds of reports a month and hears from community leaders as they attempt to face down abuse and heal the divides.

An extra-long episode begins the latest series of 24 Hours in Police Custody (9pm Channel 4), documentaries on detective work made with the co-oper-ation of Bedfordshire Police.

A woman’s body is found in grassland and she appears to have bled to death. Neighbours

had heard a row between her and her partner, who is acting oddly. It’s raw stuff , not for the faint-hearted.

Five scientists working in dif-ferent parts of the world bear witness to some of the dramatic changes to our planet that have occurred in their lifetimes, as the global climate warms in Climate Change and Me (9.45am Radio 4).

Today it’s the turn of marine biologist Professor Callum Rob-erts, who has seen coral reefs once teeming with life reduced to grey, lifeless underwater landscapes, with devastating consequences for marine bio-diversity.

In today’s brief Witness epi-sode (12.04pm Radio 4), we hear from Gordon Liu, who became a “barefoot doctor” in Sichuan province after Chairman Mao

launched a scheme to provide healthcare to the rural masses in 1968. Thousands of young-sters were provided with basic medical training and sent out to work in China’s villages.

Misha Glenny starts a new three-parter, The Invention of the Netherlands (8pm Radio 4), in his The Invention of… his-tory series. Tonight’s episode is titled Orange Fever.

Radio 3’s Composer of the Week is Maurice Ravel (1875-1937). Today’s episode (noon) explores how his Spanish background (he was born in the Basque region of France and his mother spoke Spanish) infl uenced many of his early works.

Top US guitarist Bill Frisell’s recent set at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival is featured on tonight’s Jazz Now (11pm Radio 3).

TV & radio preview with Eddie Henderson

Net is closing on those responsible for Grenfell Tower’s safety failures

Weekend crossword 1,239

Weekend sudoku

Previous solutions

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NO POST at the weekend but my hopes are high this week as the Aslef, Equity and PCS con-ferences, as well as the Wales TUC, will bring together many trade union militants who I can exhort to donate to the daily paper of the labour movement.

The train drivers’ union is kindly providing the paper free of charge to delegates, as many unions supportive of the

Morning Star do during their conferences to introduce it to new readers.

If you’re at Aslef and normally buy the paper, now’s your chance to make a donation in lieu of the money you’ve saved. And if you’re there and don’t normally buy it — please do give us a try and if you like what you read start buying it when you get home.

The weekend just gone dem-

onstrated just how necessary the Morning Star is as an alter-native voice, as the airwaves and newspaper columns of the mainstream media drowned out all the real news in an orgy of obsequious royal-worship. One Morning Star contributor tells us that she counted 61 arti-cles about the public event in Windsor in a single edition of Lord Rothermere’s Daily Heil.

While billionaire-owned papers drooled over some wealthy layabouts the elected management committee rep-resenting the owners of this newspaper — that’s you, dear readers — was meeting to plan this year’s AGM, taking place next month in Glasgow, Man-chester, Cardiff and London. Do join us at one of the meetings and help shape our future.

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Morning Star Monday

May 21 2018letters

■ The Daily Worker of May 21 1938 reported a public meeting

held by Artists International Asso-ciation (AIA) held at Unity Theatre in Goldington Street, Somers Town, London. Six artists working in diff er-ent branches of art — “Realism, Social Realism, Surrealism, Abstract Art, Industrial Design and Cartooning”, spoke on the nature of their involve-ment.

Walter Hood advocated for artists associating themselves with their real public — the people. But abstract painter William Matvyn Wright and surrealist painter Roland Penrose “made pleas for the personal ego and the ‘unconsciousness’ as the inspira-tion and the arbiter of art.”

Intriguingly, Wright worked in the Auxiliary Fire Service during the second world war. Witnessing strange silhouettes during bombing raids, his art began to refl ect this all too real life. In his 50s he illustrated BBC children’s character Andy Pandy.

On more worldly grounds, Misha Black gave the audience something concrete to think about in a “com-mon-sense talk” on indus-trial art. Black was a founder with others of the organisation that became AIA.

Born in Azerbaijan into a wealthy Jewish family, he was later professor

of industrial design at the Royal College of Art in London.

The Worker’s own Gabriel “brightened up

proceedings” with a “witty dissertation” on “why he had to cartoon” and why he did not like Mr Cham-berlain. The applause

he got showed that the audience agreed. Real

name Jimmy Friell, he was a self-taught cartoonist. After

him, “Eric Newton, the art critic, had a diffi cult job at this stage, but his tact carried off a diffi cult ordeal.”

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

Artists gathered to talk about the future of progressive works

AT THE care home where I volunteer they were marking the royal wedding.

This was understandable, as many of that gen-

eration are inter-ested in matters

relating to the monarchy.

And of course as adults they can opt out if they want

to. Indeed one gentle-

man expressed

his disgust at the cost and mentioned that we should read The Ragged Trousers Philanthropists!

It did though concern me when I overhead parents talk-ing about a kind of street party they’d held at a school their children attended.

We should not be indoctri-nating our children in sup-port of an outdated consti-tutional arrangement that should have no place in a modern democratic society.

TIM MICKLEBURGH Grimsby

Fans are understandable, but keep kids out of it

■ ROYAL WEDDING

AN INTERESTING take on how Theresa May and her activists in Wales hope to win the hearts and minds of the electorate was seen at last week’s Welsh Con-servative spring conference.

The conference took place at Ffos Las racecourse in Car-marthen West, where nowa-days “the press” rarely go, with speeches made in what looked like the snooker room.

Here May made a speech in which she, directly or indi-rectly, managed to insult the majority of the populace of Wales and its institutions.

The main target were schools, where incompetent teachers teach dullard-like children, along with the NHS, featured in the the latest Wales TV newspeak.

This was, apparently because the electorate is voting for the wrong sort of MPs, AMs and councillors — ie not Tory ones.

Unfortunately for them, their lack of appeal is not only to voters but also the Welsh Establishment.

The stubbornness of the peo-ple living in Wales in ignoring the blandishments of Tory can-didates drove its leader, Andrew Davies, to such despair and hunger for some kind of grip on power that he sought allies in the Senedd to outvote Labour.

That that should be the Tory-hating, I put it mildly, Leanne Wood and Plaid Cymru says something. Drink maybe!

ROY JONES Colwyn Bay

Tories in Wales remain a disaster zone

■ POLITICS

Caribbean reds helped beat fascist

■ WINDRUSH

IN HIS article on Windrush (M Star May 18), Peter Frost men-tions the arrival of the Empire Windrush in 1948 and the rac-ist attacks in the Notting Hill area instigated by Mosley’s fascists among others in 1958.

It is important to note the role of the outstanding Com-munist Billy Strachan who, as leader of the London branch of Caribbean Labour, organised a welcome meeting for the peo-ple who had just arrived from the Caribbean in June 1958 at Holborn Hall.

Ten years later when vicious racist attacks in Notting Hill broke out there was a standoff when black people defending themselves against the fascist thugs were confronted by a large force of police.

Billy Strachan, with two other Caribbean Commu-

nists, the late Trevor Carter and Winston Pinder, rushed to the scene. Seeing the police ready to disperse the black locals and realising large num-bers of black people would be attacked and arrested, Billy Strachan stepped forward and said “Listen young men, go home, tonight is not our night.”

Such was his prestige among West Indians in London, the people heeded him and wisely left the streets.

Winston Pinder personally told me of this incident and my research last year into the life of Billy Strachan unearthed the Holborn Hall meeting.

These Caribbean Commu-nists and others in the post-World War II era continue to inspire us.

DAVID HORSLEYLondon SW4

VOLTAIRE’S observations that “it is forbidden to kill; there-fore, all murderers are pun-ished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets,” seems to capture the “exceptionalism” shared by the US and Netanyahu shown when opening the US embassy in Jerusalem.

Unfortunately, this mindset appears to infect the Labour Friends of Israel MPs, who seem to express more loyalty to Israel

than to the people they serve here in Britain.

This is evidenced by the time spent in continual attacks cit-ing anti-semitism against fel-low Labour MPs and people of the left and by their abject defence of Israel’s claim that Hamas must accept responsi-bility for the events (massacre) in Gaza.

Jeremy Corbyn has stated that Labour is a government in waiting.

If so, then he must address this problem of LFI head on, without delay.

Many of us are rightly con-cerned by their arrogance, their unaccountability and their seeming undeserving prestige in the Labour Party.

For most people this group-ing serves no useful purpose in a democratic party and should be immediately disbanded.

As with one of your regular contributors Dr Richard House,

I am no anti-semite but a Labour Party member who is appalled at some of our MPs who are wittingly, or unwittingly slavishly danc-ing to the tune of a foreign government.

WILLIE SHIELDS

Dundee

Labour MPs’ excuses on Gaza a disgrace■ PALESTINE

HAVE YOUR SAY

Write (up to 300 words) to

letters@peoples-press.com or

by post: 52 Beachy Rd,

London E3 2NS

NO EXCUSE: As the new Trump embassy was opened in Jerusalem, people in Gaza were being gunned down and gassed just an hour and a half’s drive away

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@m_star_online14Morning Star Monday May 21 2018 sport

n MEN’S FOOTBALL

Gordon hails Celtic’s historic treble sideby Our Sports Desk

CELTIC’S double treble will “stand the test of time,” goal-keeper Craig Gordon said on Saturday.

A 2-1 win over Motherwell at Hampden in the Scottish Cup final made it another domestic treble for Celtic under Brendan Rodgers.

Under the Irishman, the Hoops have now won all six domestic titles on offer in his two years at the club to make for an historic double treble — their latest Premiership title

was a seventh in a row — and, although they were favourites for every trophy at the start of the season, Gordon says their achievements should not be underestimated.

“We’re very happy and delighted with the achievement to back up last year’s invinci-ble treble with another treble,” the 35-year-old said. “You can’t even imagine how difficult a thing that is to do.

“For this group of players now to manage that and do it in some style, it is a fantastic achievement and one that will really stand the test of time.”

The arrival of Rodgers has been the driving force behind Celtic’s dominance in the past two campaigns and, with the former Liverpool boss set to stay at Parkhead after being linked with a move down south this summer, the Scot-land No 1 says the consistency he has brought to Glasgow has been the secret behind their success.

He said: “The consistency levels we have shown in the cup and the league over the past two seasons has been tre-mendous and we have to try and keep that going to achieve

more great things with this team.”

He added: “We just try and win football matches and by doing that we give ourselves the opportunity to make his-tory.

“I think he’s the only man-ager to have two trebles at Celtic, so his name is in the history books as well as all the players that have played under him and it’s there for everyone to see in years time.

“It has not sunk in just yet the feat of what we have actu-ally achieved, but it feels good at the moment.”

n MEN’S FOOTBALL

England told how to handle racismby Our Sports Desk

ENGLAND’S World Cup squad will be briefed on how to deal with poten-tial racist abuse in Russia at this summer’s finals.

A number of racism issues have reared their head in Russian football over the years, most recently when Fifa started disciplinary proceed-ings against the Russian Football Union for alleged racist chanting aimed at French players when the two countries played in March.

The Football Asso-ciation’s protocol is for players to report any sus-pected abuse from fans to the referee or one of the match officials immedi-ately.

And Three Lions boss Gareth Southgate said on Saturday that part of his planning for the tourna-ment will include prepar-ing his players for any racist incidents they may face.

“We work with our

players on how we will support each other if anything like that was to happen,” said Southgate.

“There would be some official protocol to follow if it did happen, but we really hope it is a situa-tion that doesn’t emerge and that it’s a festival of football we are talking about on the pitch and not talking about things off the field.

“The most important thing is that internally we are able to support our players if something does happen and they under-stand how their team-mates and our staff are going to go about that.

“There are some ses-sions we will do with them about that and then there is the official protocol to be followed. As a federation I think we would be strong in push-ing for the right solutions within that.

“So we have everything in place, but most impor-tantly is that internally the players feel they have that level of support.”

n RUGBY LEAGUE

SHAUN WANE ranked Wigan’s 38-10 victory over in-form War-rington on Saturday as their best of the season before warning the rest of Super League that they have yet to hit their straps.

The Wolves went into the Magic Weekend encounter at St James’ Park as the competition’s form side but saw their 10-game winning run ended by the ruthless Warriors.

Wigan took a 16-10 lead into half-time and upped their intensity after the break to romp to an eighth straight success.

“That’s our best win this year,” said Wane. “But it’s very hard for me to be satisfied. I want to be happy with it, but there’s still lots of areas we need to improve on. I always dwell towards them.”

Wolves loss to Warriors

n MEN’S FOOTBALL

UNITED LEGENDS RIP INTO JOSE FOLLOWING FA CUP FINAL DEFEATChelsea 1-0 Man United

by Simon Williamsat Wembley

MANCHESTER UNITED man-ager Jose Mourinho’s substitu-tions were slammed by two former players in the wake of their 1-0 defeat to Chelsea in the FA Cup Final on Saturday.

Eden Hazard netted the only goal of a disappointing game from the penalty spot on 22 minutes having been felled by Phil Jones in the box.

It was the first penalty to be scored in an FA Cup Final, other than in a shootout, since Ruud van Nistelrooy for Red Devils against Millwall in 2004.

But despite dominating possession in the second half, United failed to test a resolute Chelsea backline, condemning Mourinho to failure to guide his team to any silverware this season.

Paul Scholes and Rio Ferdi-nand, speaking to BT Sport,

questioned Mourinho’s substi-tutions, particularly the deci-sion to take off Marcus Rash-ford and Jesse Lingard in the 73 minute while leaving Alexis Sanchez, whose difficult start to his United career continued at Wembley, on the pitch.

“Jose’s substitutes, he brought Rashford and Lingard off just as they were starting to influence the game, I thought,” said Scholes, who lifted the FA Cup three times as a United player.

“I thought Jesse was just getting into those spaces, between the midfield and the back four. Rashford then had a great chance, made a great run and all of a sudden they were taken off.

“Sometimes those two local lads are the easy target. How Sanchez stayed on the pitch with them two creating problems as they were I have no idea.”

And Scholes’s former team-mate Ferdinand agreed. He said: “We looked at each other

and thought: ‘Wow, that’s a big call there,’ because Sanchez wasn’t playing well or influ-encing the game in any way, shape or form.

“Listen, the manager is paid to make big decisions. Today, in terms of substitutes, I don’t think he made the correct ones.”

After the game Mourinho cleared up his reasons for not starting Lukaku who had been sidelined for the last three matches with an ankle injury.

He said: “When a player tells you he is not ready to play, when the player tells you he is not ready to start the game, then the question is how many minutes you think you can?

“But how can I convince a player who tells me he is not ready to play? That makes no sense.”

Despite the result, Mourinho was happy with his side’s per-formance, declaring that he would be watching intently over the coming days to see

what is written in the press.He said: “I’m quite curious

to, especially because now I’m on holidays and I have more

time for that, I’m quite curi-ous today, tomorrow the next couple of days to read, to watch, to listen your opinions.”

Scholes and Ferdinand question manager’s substitutions as Chelsea get the better of Red Devils at Wembley

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Morning Star Monday

May 21 2018sportn MEN’S RUGBY LEAGUE

McDermott slams Leeds for playing ‘soft’ in Tigers lossby Our Sports Desk

LEEDS coach Brian McDermott accused his players of being soft as they crashed to a 38-10 defeat by Castleford on Satur-day at the Magic Weekend in Newcastle.

The Rhinos conceded six tries in a fourth defeat in their last five games to lose more ground on the top four in the Super League.

McDermott’s men trailed 28-0 before prop forward Mikalai Oledzki scored his first Super League try while second-rower Brett Ferres added a consolation effort in the last minute.

“I thought both teams looked a bit erratic to start with and I was hoping we were going to get hold of the game first,” McDermott said.

“I thought we were soft in the first half. It’s very rare I say that about my players. I thought we took some soft options and conceded some soft tries.

“Cas got hold of the game and they looked very good. Their goal-line defence was great.”

Already without five regulars through injury, Leeds lost cap-tain Kallum Watkins and full-back Jack Walker with knee injuries while prop Nathan-iel Peteru sustained a second biceps injury of the season and

hooker Matt Parcell sustained a shoulder injury.

After a slow start to the sea-son, Castleford looked more like the side that ran away with the League Leaders’ Shield in 2017 as the new half-back pair-ing of Jake Trueman and Jamie Ellis begins to gel.

“I’m pleased with the per-formance and the quality of the performance went on for longer than it has done in our season so far,” said coach Daryl Powell.

“There’s more consistency coming from players. We had more players playing well today than we’ve had in recent weeks. So there are a few things for us to get excited about.”

n MEN’S FOOTBALL

Conte remains ‘committed’ to Chelsea after cup winChelsea 1-0 Man Unitedby Amar Azamat Wembley

THERE is no arguing with Anto-nio Conte’s popularity among Chelsea’s supporters, even after a season in which the club, title winners under the Italian in his first season, struggled to match their opponents this time around.

This FA Cup victory on Satur-day was forged from the resil-ient character shown by his team, an attitude Conte himself has had to display on several occasions this season as he bemoaned the perceived lack of support shown by the club to him in the transfer market.

One would think this vic-tory, courtesy of Eden Hazard’s first-half penalty, strengthens his position. However, as we have seen before, the Chelsea hierarchy does not fear mov-ing managers on — even those with the popularity factor that Conte has.

It was quite telling that the former Italy boss spent a sig-nificant amount of time in the post-match press conference answering questions about his future. One senses, despite it all, we could have seen the last of him at Stamford Bridge.

“I have a contract and I am committed to this club,” said Conte, after Chelsea clinched the FA Cup for an eighth occa-

sion. “I think that, after two years, the club knows me very well and, if they want to con-tinue to work with me, they know me.”

He added: “I can’t change. My way is always the same — hard work and to build a strong men-tality with my players. I can’t change, I can’t change.

“I think my past speaks very clear as a player and as a manager. You can say what you want, but I am a serial winner and I showed this in a difficult moment for the club. In two seasons, I brought two trophies for the club.”

Goalkeeper Thibaut Cour-tois played a crucial role in the win, pulling off a number of key saves against a Manchester United side managed by former Blues boss Jose Mourinho.

Asked if Chelsea need a big summer to add players in order to challenge for the title, Cour-tois said: “Yeah, I think so. I think especially if you see how [Manchester] City and United are spending and working.

“I think, if we want to aim for the top, we should do the same — obviously within the limits of what’s possible as well.

“I think that the transfer market has gone pretty crazy. Nowadays you pay £80 million for a defender. I think that’s crazy figures.

“We’ll see what’s going on and I am sure the board will do what needs to be done.”

JUBILANT: Chelsea celebrate their FA Cup victory as a team while Gary Cahill (bottom left) and Antonio Conte (bottom right) hold the trophy aloft

HARD TO TACKLE: Castleford Tigers Liam Watts on the ball against Leeds Rhinos at St James’ Park

Monday May 21 2018

Published by Peoples Press Printing Society Ltd (12750R), William Rust House, 52 Beachy Road, Bow, London E3 2NS. Telephone: (020) 8510-0815. Email: enquiries@peoples-press.com. Printed by trade union labour at Reach.

SPORT Monday May 21 2018

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MSTAR 2018-05-21 MON 1.0

INSIDE: Conte ‘committed’ to Chelsea after FA Cup win

KIRKLAND FOREVERWindsor 8:45 (nap)

UPTOWN FUNKCarlisle 3:15

Farringdon’s Doubles

PROJECTIONWindsor 7:45

Houseman’s Choice

TODAY’S TIPS

SPORT ON TV

■ BASEBALL: MLB, Philadelphia

Phillies v Atlanta Braves — BT Sport

2 12am (Tue); Los Angeles Dodgers v

Colorado Rockies — BT Sport/ESPN

3am (Tue).

■ BASKETBALL: NBA play-offs Cleve-

land Cavaliers v Boston Celtics — BT

Sport 1 1.30am (Tue).

■ CRICKET: Royal London One-Day

Cup, Hampshire v Surrey — Sky

Sports Cricket 1.55pm & Sky Sports

Main Event 2pm.

■ FOOTBALL: Bundesliga relegation

play-off, Holstein Kiel v Wolfsburg —

BT Sport 1 7.15pm.

■ MOTORSPORT: World Touring Cars

from Circuit Zandvoort, Holland —

Eurosport 2 7.30am & Eurosport 1

11am-12pm & 4.30pm-5.30pm.

■ NETBALL: Netball Superleague,

Team Bath v Team Northumbria —

Sky Sports Action 6.45pm.

■ TENNIS: Roland Garros — Eurosport

2 9am. WTA, Internationaux de Stras-

bourg — BT Sport 1 10am.

■ WOMEN’S FOOTBALL

Stoney backed to become new United managerby Our Sports Desk

CASEY STONEY has been backed to be an “amazing” manager of Manchester United’s new women’s team as reports over the weekend suggest she is close to landing the job.

United are expected to be announced as members of the inaugural FA Women’s Cham-pionship — the second tier of a restructured league system — in the week ahead.

The club have been inter-

viewing for a first-team boss and 36-year-old former England captain Stoney appears poised to step into the role.

She is set to be confirmed in the post which is likely to mean leaving her role as assistant to England manager Phil Neville.

Neville’s sister, England netball coach Tracey Neville, backed Stoney to be a big hit as a first-time manager.

She wrote on Twitter: “Con-gratulations @CaseyStoney, you will do an amazing job. What a good choice of club as well.”

Phil Neville and brother Gary were mainstays of the United men’s side during the peak years of the Alex Ferguson era.

Stoney retired from playing in February after a career in which she won 130 England caps and a host of club honours, leav-ing Liverpool to join the new-look Lionesses coaching staff.

Until announcing in March that they planned to launch a side, United had faced criti-cism for being the only Premier League club without a senior women’s team.

Sports minister Tracey Crouch said United had “finally dragged themselves into the 21st century” by taking that decision.

■ FOOTBALL

ENI ALUKO inspired a dramatic comeback yesterday as Chelsea completed the Women’s Super League season unbeaten.

The Blues’ undefeated record was under seri-ous threat as goals from Jess Clarke and Niamh Charles put opponents Liverpool 2-0 up after only nine minutes.

But Aluko, making her final appearance for the Blues before mov-ing on in the summer, pulled one back with 20 minutes to play before creating the visitors’ equaliser for Ji So Yun.

Ji then curled home a superb winner with six minutes remaining to wrap up a thrilling 3-2 victory for the champi-ons.

Manchester City secured second spot, and a place in next season’s Champions League, with a 3-0 win at home to Everton.

Chelsea are unbeaten

■ MEN’S RUGBY LEAGUE

BROUGHTON HAS DRAGONS’ MAGICby Our Sports Desk

JODIE BROUGHTON scored a second-half hat-trick yesterday as Catalans Dragons climbed off the bottom of Super League with a commanding 26-12 win over Salford at St James’ Park.

It was a crucial match in the Dragons’ battle to avoid the bot-tom four and they rose to the challenge to move to within two points of the eighth-placed Red Devils.

Weller Hauraki opened the scoring after a positive start by Salford, but Catalans went into half-time with a slender lead thanks to efforts from Ben Gar-cia and Julian Bousquet.

Broughton went over for his 100th Super League try and made it three in 13 minutes to end Salford’s challenge.

George Griffin had the last word, but the Red Devils were well beaten.

It was the first meeting between the sides at the Magic Weekend and it is not one that will live long in the memory.

Salford went into the game in Newcastle occupying the final top-eight place and they were quickly out of the blocks.

Derrell Olpherts had already had a try ruled out for offside when Hauraki opened the scor-ing by powering his way over under the posts after a well-worked one-two with Mark Flanagan.

The Dragons got their first look at the Salford line on 14 minutes and they left with points as Garcia stretched out to touch down on his 100th Catalans appearance from Greg Bird’s flat pass.

Josh Drinkwater missed the conversion from out wide and Tony Gigot was also off target from a penalty after Griffin interfered at the play the ball.

But the Dragons contin-ued to turn the screw and got their reward as Bousquet took advantage of Logan Tom-kins’s mistake from Michael McIlorum’s kick into the in-goal area.

Gigot added the extras to

make it 10-6 and it would have got worse for Salford had Gar-cia not failed to get downward pressure on Drinkwater’s dab through.

The Red Devils would have been relieved to go into the break only four points down, but they were unable to shift the momentum after the restart as Catalans took control thanks to Broughton’s clinical finishing.

The winger crossed for his milestone try after taking Brayden Williame’s looping pass and shrugging off Niall Evalds’s attempted tackle.

He outpaced Robert Lui to cross for his second after tak-ing Drinkwater’s sublime pass inside his own half before col-lecting Gigot’s pinpoint kick to the corner to complete his treble.

Salford suffered another

blow when centre Kris Welham hobbled off with a leg injury and Gigot slotted over his third goal from a penalty to end their remote hopes of a miraculous comeback.

Griffin strolled over for a consolation score five min-utes from time, but Jack Lit-tlejohn summed up a miser-able afternoon for the Red Devils when he dropped the restart.

IN THE FRAME: Casey Stoney

HAT-TRICK HERO: Jodie Broughton