Workers' Liberty

THESE ARE THE CLASS WAR DEAD

Stop in your tracks, you passer-by,
Uncover your doubting head;
The workingmen are on their way
To bury their murdered dead.

A brief look at the current industrial news is enough to make any socialist’s eyes water. We have seen the GMB (with one eye to the sinking ship of New Labour) seek talks with the Tories, and Unison scuppering any possibility of a united public sector pay fight. Even in the unions, such as PCS and NUT, where the “left” control the leadership, there is little industrial strategy to win the pay fight, and scant effort is going into the most basic task of building a fighting, militant union movement.

Fifty activists attended the Workers' Liberty trade union school in London on 15 September. Workshops looked at how to organise strikes and how to operate as a socialist political activist in the workplace, and a plenary discussed the CWU dispute and the public sector pay battle more generally.

15 September
Somers Town Community Centre, 150 Ossulston Street, London
(Behind the British Library: Kings Cross rail or tube)

The next month sees two important trade union events for socialists who want to organise for a fighting labour movement. The first is the RMT-sponsored conference for a “national shop stewards’ movement” on 28 October; the second the Respect-initiated “Organising for Fighting Unions” conference on 11 November.

A group of AWL members are attended the 4th European Social Forum here in Athens.

This 4th ESF is smaller than its predecessors with approx 10,000 people registered (50,000 was the figure given for the first ESF in florence in 2006)

The Department of Work and Pensions London Regional Committee of the PCS union has issued the following statement.

Pat Yarker reports on the AWL’s day-school for rank-and-file trade unionists

By Pauline Bradley, Iraq Union Solidarity convenor

The Tolpuddle martyrs festival is one of my favourite events in the union calendar. Held in the pretty Dorset village where in 1834, six poor, starving farm labourers held meetings and swore an oath to form a “friendly society” under a sycamore tree — it was one of the first trade unions formed.

Saturday 17 September

Noon-6pm. St Mary’s Community Centre, 302b Upper St, London N1

Those of you who have never attended the annual Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival (held this year on 15-17 July) are missing a real treat, especially if you also like rolling in clover and staring up at the star-filled midnight sky.

Thousands of public-sector workers attended rallies and lobbies on Friday 18 February to protest at government plans to downgrade public-sector pensions schemes. Friday 18 February was called by the TUC as a nationwide day of protest on pensions.

The United Campaign for the Repeal of the Anti-Union laws held a lobby of the House of Commons on 28 February. Representatives from TGWU, RMT and CWU called on Labour to include improvements in trade union rights in the Labour manifesto. They also pledged to keep fighting on the issue of repeal of the anti-union laws after the election.

Book online here.

By Nick Holden

This year's Tolpuddle Festival is on Friday 18-Sunday 20 July, at Tolpuddle, Dorset. It is a heady mixture of music, drama and politics, uniting people across the country in a celebration of the trade union movement, and the memory of the Tolpuddle Martyrs.

By Paul Hampton

Nearly 100 people marched through "murder mile" in London to commemorate Workers' Memorial Day on 28 April.

Trade unionists and campaigners rallied at Spital Square, where speakers described the worldwide death toll of 2 million workers killed every year by work. Tony O'Brien from the Construction Safety Campaign and Mick Holder from the London Hazards Centre spoke of the deaths in the construction industry, both on the job and from asbestos.

By Paul Hampton

Two million people are killed at work around the world every year according to the International Labour Organisation. This is greater than the numbers killed in wars, by AIDS or by alcohol and drugs.