Asia

Vietnam: excerpts from Workers' Fight, 1974-1978

Introduction "The war is won" "Vietnam: which class will hold power now?" "Trotskyism in Vietnam" "Stalinism in Vietnam" Download the whole lot as pdf . Introduction In the late 1960s and early 1970s, big demonstrations against the US war in Vietnam were a major route by which tens of thousands of young people came into revolutionary socialist politics. It was not just that the demonstrations were big; or that the corruption and authoritarianism of the various tinpot dictators of South Vietnam, propped up entirely by US power, were disgusting; or that millions of young people in the USA hated...

World News in Brief

Japan Thousands of workers have rallied in Tokyo demanding job security and wage rises. Japan’s economy is in its worst condition for three decades, with several large firms announcing job losses. The rally, organised by the Japanese equivalent of the TUC, represents a markedly different approach to that taken by many union leaders in the UK (such as those of the GMB and USDAW) who have meekly accepted job losses and have reduced the union’s role to that of mitigating the impact of forced redundancies. Banners on the Japanese rally included slogans such as “never let workers get fired”...

A workers’ answer to the food crisis

Last week thousands of garment workers in Bangladesh went on strike in protest at rising food prices. Factory workers earn as little as a $1 a day and have seen the price of rice increase by a third since last year. Some 30 million people in Bangladesh – nearly a quarter of the population — may be going without a daily meal. Food riots have taken place this year in Egypt, Haiti and Burkina Faso. The United Nations predicts that 33 countries in Asia and Africa face “political instability” as a result of food price rises. It says the global food bill has rise by 57% in the last year, with basic...

1968: Vietnam solidarity and the British left

March 17 1968. 20,000 gather in Trafalgar Square for a rally and march to the US Embassy in protest against the US war in Vietnam. The Square is full of the flags of the National Liberation Front (the “Vietcong”), who, only weeks previously had launched the Tet Offensive that had taken a largely rural guerilla war into the cities of Vietnam, getting as far as the gates of the US Embassy in the capital Saigon. Someone throws red dye into the fountains to symbolise the blood shed in the war. Police move in but are resisted — a policy of “no arrests” means demonstrators try to snatch back those...

Japan, 1945-52 When US imperialism forced democracy

Parts of the left back any opposition to US imperialism around the world dogmatically, without qualification, and with little attempt to examine what the effects and actions of the imperialist power are. Or what the political character of the local alternatives to imperialism are. These leftists might be suprised by the story of the US imperialist intervention in Japan, contradicting as it does, some preconceived notions of how an imperialist power behaves. Japan’s Second World War had the most brutal end. On 6 August 1945 a US Superfortress bomber, the Enola Gay, dropped an atom bomb on the...

Stop repression in Burma!

As thousands of monks and others protesters remain under arrest and subject to torture in Burma, campaigners in 30 cities around the world staged a series of rallies last weekend against the bloody crackdown. In London, around 10,000 people joined the demonstration on 6 October, with the TUC, Unison, NUJ and other unions backing the protest. Campaigners and unions have focused their demands on getting multinational firms to stop propping up the military regime and withdraw from Burma. For the last 45 years Burma has been ruled by a military dictatorship with a savage reputation for brutality...

Who Says Cannibalism Is Wrong?

Why not, asked Jonathan Swift, an Anglican priest of Dublin, making his "modest proposal" for solving two of eighteenth-century Ireland’s great problems, "overpopulation" and mass starvation — why not eat your small children? That would keep down the population, he argued, and ensure that those who lived were well nourished. Much of Swift’s text — one of the most effective satires ever written — was then given over, after the fashion of a cookery book, to a gruesomely detailed discussion of how best to dress and cook, and when best to serve, the various parts of a child butchered for the table...

Workers’ revolt in Bangladesh

By Sacha Ismail Bangladesh is convulsed by fierce class struggles, centred around the country’s garment industry. Many tens of thousands of workers have gone on strike, blocked roads, attacked factories and other buildings, demonstrated, fought the police and rioted in the streets. Every day comes news of fresh strikes in a variety of industries — mainly the ready-made garment (RMG) sector, but also mill workers, river transport workers, rail workers, journalists, lecturers and teachers. The revolt began on 20 May with garment workers’ strikes in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka — beginning in a...

Nepal: whose revolution?

By Reshma Stephens The revolt of the Nepalese people against their country’s autocratic monarchy demands our support and solidarity. The mass strikes and demonstrations which forced king Gyanendra to restore parliamentary government last month are the classic forms of a deep popular revolution, with neither the ruling class able to maintain the old system of domination any longer nor the ruled willing to tolerate it. Equally, our solidarity demands that we warn against the co-option and denaturing of this revolutionary movement, whether by the bourgeois “constitutional” opposition parties...

Bangladesh

Garment workers in Bangladesh took a day’s strike action on 2 March on safety grounds, protesting against the factory owners’ failure to provide safety to workers and demanding removal of Industries Minister Motiur Rahman Nizami. The Bangladesh Garment Workers Trade Union Centre (BGWTUC) organised the action. A fire in KTS garments in Chittagong and the collapse of Phoenix garment’s building in Dhaka left at least 73 workers dead. The BGWTUC organised a rally at Muktangan to protest against the “killings” in KTS garments in Chittagong and Phoenix garments in the capital and other garment...

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