Workers' Liberty

Robin Sivapalan examines the educational and social background to gangster and gun culture and starts a discussion on how institutional racism still poisons British society.

Paul Cooper reviews Bobby

Bobby Kennedy met his end on 5 June,1968. He was shot in the head, point-blank, as he made his way through a crowded hotel kitchen.
Most of the people in the kitchen were black or Hispanic hotel workers. They had been servicing the Democratic Party convention that was celebrating Kennedy’s victory in the California Primary. Bobby Kennedy was the great hope of those workers, as he was of the civil rights movement.

By Mike Fenwick, Leeds Unison health

Saturday March 3rd sees the first nationally coordinated day of trade union action in defense of the NHS. Events ranging from lobbies of MPs to rallies and marches and, for the more adventurous, an ascent of Skiddaw in the Lake District aim to highlight the crisis in the health service.

Searchlight trade union conference

A Worker is a Worker - A Trade Union Friends of Searchlight conference on migrant workers. Organised by SearchLight 10 March 2007, 10.30 am-4pm, TUC Congress House, Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3LS.

The last few weeks have seen several boosts for John McDonnell MP's campaign for the leadership of the Labour Party. With growing support among the unions and MPs, and a packed schedule of large meetings around the country, McDonnell has welcomed the “heartening and motivating” progress of his campaign.

Dita Sari, the former trade union leader and political prisoner under the Suharto regime, is chair of the ‘ new, broader National Liberation Party of Unity (Papernas). She will be its candidate for the 2009 presidential elections. Sari was interviewed by Green Left Weekly in January. Below are some extracts.

By David Broder

The movement against the far-right in Bolivia stepped up last month with a mass uprising in the nationÕs third city, Cochabamba, which dislodged the right-wing governor Manfred Reyes Villa and put forward the demand for genuinely democratic representatives. This was twinned with a solidarity strike organised by residents’ association FEJUVE in the city of El Alto, also seeking to get rid of a governor who wants to see the country split up.

By Pablo Velasco

Around 6,000 workers marched through the streets of Caracas on Thursday 8 February demanding nationalisation of all strategic industries under workers’ control.

Workers welcomed the Chávez government’s nationalisations of EDC, Venezuela’s largest electric company and the Compania Anonima Nacional Telefonos de Venezuela (CANTV) telecom company. But they called for others such as steel firm Sidor and bathroom firm Sanitarios Maracay to be nationalised - and for workersÕ control in all these industries.

By Jack Staunton

On 5 February teachers across Zimbabwe began an indefinite general strike for pay and conditions, joining doctors and nurses already taking action against poverty pay.

With inflation now reported to be running at 1,593% (the worst in the world), dictator Robert Mugabe is keeping public sector workers’ wages down in order to have enough money to keep his regime afloat. Almost 200,000 public sector workers angry about pay now pose a threat to the regime’s stability.

By Heather Shaw

The highlight of No Sweat and Students Against Sweatshop’s Week of Action (18-23 Feburary) was welcoming Andreas Aullet, a lawyer working with political prisoners and their families in Oaxaca, Mexico, and taking him on a tour of the UK.

Andres Aullet, a lawyer involved in a Committee of Relatives of Political Prisoners of Oaxaca recently toured the UK speaking about the situation in Mexico. The tour was organised by No Sweat. Paul Hampton interviewed him.

Blood Service
Members of Amicus working in the National Blood Service used Valentine’s day as a platform to draw attention to the threatened closure of local centres. There is a plan to move all blood processing and testing to three large centres in London, Bristol and Manchester. Centralising production raises the risk of deaths if there were to be any delays in its delivery.

Central trains

Guards on Central Trains are due to strike on Saturday 24 February in their continuing campaign against the imposition of a computerised rostering system called Crewplan. The next stage of the campaign was supposed to have been a ban on collecting revenue. However management threatened a 50% reduction in wages for anybody not collecting fares. They declared that there would be no rest day working or overtime for guards. This forced the guards to re-think their strategy.

By a civil servant
More than 150,000 PCS members took strike action on 31 January, more than the last national dispute on 5 November 2005. This was a solid start has been made to the campaign against cuts in the service. The union is demanding: no compulsory guarantee; a better pay system; and union agreement on outsourcing/privatisations.

Tube cleaning company and multinational ISS has said it will get rid of 200 cleaners on the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly Lines because TubeLines, the “Infraco” in charge of the lines, has slashed the budget for cleaning.

By a tube worker

RMT’s ballot for strike action over pay on London Underground has come back with a huge mandate for action. On a turn out of about 50%, 2,271 (76%) voted for strike action and 705 (24%) voted against.

Around 250 people attended a “Faith, Homophobia and Human Rights” conference in London on Saturday 17 February 2007. Ali Hili from Iraqi LGBT and OutRage! spoke at the conference. Here is part of his speech.

Of all the industrialised countries Britain is the poorest, unhealthiest and most depressing place to grow up in.

Casablanca, is perhaps the most popular Hollywood movie ever. More than 60 years old, it is now, digitally re-mastered, in the cinemas once again. Paddy Dollard went to see it.

Steve Cohen contributes to the debate on "left-wing anti-semitism"

For forty five years as a Jew and a revolutionary Marxist I have been waiting for this debate, this disputation. The time lag it itself revealing – revealing of the left’s refusal to get beyond platitudes, often nasty platitudes, in discussing Jews.