Workers' Liberty

IRAQ AND US WORLD POLICY

Additional motion to update to 17/04/04

1. We condemn the US military action at Fallujah and elsewhere, which has resulted in many deaths - in Fallujah 600-700, many of them non-combatants.

Below is the message - belatedly translated - of Lettre de la Liaisons to the AWL conference 2004. Their comments on the French political situation - upheaval, promise and...danger - remain pertinent and the document is interesting overall. Please visit the Liaisons website and, if you speak French, subscribe to their excellent newsletter, that brings news and views from all parts of the left and trade union movement in France. VM.

You can read a report of the conference as a PDF file here.

The 2004 conference of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty took place on 8-9 May in London. Daniel Randall reports.

The year since AWL's last conference has not been an easy one. The millions mobilised on anti-war demonstrations have scattered, leaving life in the labour movement still low. We have seen the SWP liquidate the Socialist Alliance in favour of building the Respect Unity Coalition behind George Galloway; and the vast majority of the left collapse into classless, false 'anti-imperialism' over Iraq, ignoring the demands or even the existence of the new Iraqi workers' movement.

Notes on implementation of AWL conference decisions

(Draft by Martin, 10/06/04).

This text went to the AWL National Committee on 12/06/04, which scheduled it for discussion at the next NC on 05/09/04.

In June we should say something like: keep out the BNP and the Tories. Vote socialist or Labour. Fight Blair - build the LRC.

1. If we had concluded, as the Socialist Party has, that the Labour Party is finally, totally, completely and irreversibly dead in working-class politics, then of course we would abstain where we could not stand independent working-class candidates. We would also call on the unions to disaffiliate, and dismiss the current moves for an LRC as a pointless dead end. We do not.

1) We need to turn the AWL more towards face-to-face political activity.

2) Events like the European Social Forum and the Iraq war protests show the development of a new milieu of radicalised young people.

1. The Labour Party is still what Lenin called it in 1920, a bourgeois workers' party. In the last decade, there has been an enormous shift within this contradictory phenomenon towards its bourgeois pole.

Amendments on the Labour Party to various conference documents, from Bruce R.

'CLASS, UNION AND PARTY'

Add new 3(a):

"There has been a considerable erosion in traditional working class support for Labour, particularly amongst young people. Symptoms include the increase in electoral abstention, particularly in inner-city areas, and the growth of the BNP."

Motion for the AWL AGM 2004

Proposed by Mark Sandell

1. The hijab, veil and burkha are public expressions of the ownership of women by men, fathers, husbands, brothers, laid down in muslim teaching, socialists should oppose it.

Response to 'an Independent workers focus' document

By Gerry B

Sigh!

When I saw this document I sighed. Here we go again Another MT document, full of good things but no way of prioritising them, a document you feel harsh for criticising because it means well.

Draft document for AWL conference 2004

1. A new radical generation is emerging - piecemeal, fragmented and diffuse. The evidence is:
a. The continuing "new anti-capitalist" mobilisations. Most lately:

(and an alternative motion) from Martin T

2. We do not support state bans on adults' self abuse but to confuse that with the case of schools is wrong.

Some "confusion" or blurred edges are in the nature of the case. The French row about the hijab is centred in lycées (16 to 18 year olds), though some 13-to-15 year-olds in collèges have also been involved. Teenagers should have some adult rights.