Workers' Liberty

By Amina Saddiq

At the end of March, the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns reported that, across the country, the Home Office had accelerated its programme of rounding up and deporting Sudanese asylum-seekers, including people from war-ravaged and ethnically-cleansed Darfur.

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According to the polls, the Scottish National Party is likely to become the biggest party in the Scottish parliament after the election on 3 May.

WHEN former CIA agent Bob Kiley ran London Underground, Ken Livingstone paid him £1 million a year.

By Paddy Dollard

A news item about a small event of great symbolic importance appeared in the Irish Times the other day.

by Sacha Ismail

On Tuesday 3 April, trucks of riot police drove through the Zimbabwean capital Harare, and military helicopters hovered over workers’ districts, as a two day general strike called by the Zimbabwean Congress of Trade Unions over wage rises and price increases — and against Robert Mugabe’s increasingly dictatorial regime — began.

So the British sailors captured by the Iranian navy have now been released. Their capture was a deliberate provocation by the Iranian regime, possibly in part to distract from the working class struggle now gripping the country.

By Paul Vernadsky

Hardly anyone now doubts the reality of global warming, that this is mainly the result of human productive activity and that if it continues unabated, both nature and human societies will suffer terrible destruction. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report published this week will further clarify the consequences of rising carbon emissions.

Over one hundred socialists, trade unionists and anti-deporation activists attended the No One is Illegal trade union conference in Liverpool on 31 March. The day was spent discussing the politics of the fight against immigration controls and for migrant and refugee rights.

By a GMB organiser

The Southampton migrant workers’ branch of the GMB has won union rights at UK’s largest cut flower packer — World Flowers Ltd. This comes after a six month campaign of direct action and sustained pressure on the employer.

By Sofie Buckland, NUS national executive (pc), reports on the 2007 conference of the national union of students

The recent anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade has prompted debate about lessons for today. One lesson is that formal, legal reforms will never bring about full equality under capitalism. Two hundred years on racism in Britain tragically continues to thrive; it is continually being reshaped by capitalist imperatives and bourgeois political concerns. It is a multi-faceted thing, taking economic, political, social and cultural forms. It is experienced on a daily basis by black and minority ethnic people in a variety of areas, including employment, public services, the law and policing, media and politics and in the streets. Mike Rowley presents an overview.

The Guardian recently published an edited version of a letter from a number of Socialist Teachers’ Association activists. They had responded to new advice issued by the DfES about school uniform.

I was disappointed that Solidarity chose to publish Maria Exall’s article “Faith, Homophobia and Human Rights” (Solidarity 3/107). The article reports in a positive light a conference that seems to have been the initiative of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement and was a lash up between the Gay Police Association, various religious organisations and some TUC bureaucrats.

Occasionally you find something in the “left” press which is so bad it makes you sit up, blink and wonder if you’ve read it correctly. Even by the usual low standards of the Morning Star, its 22 March article on the House of Lords was astonishing.

Jill Mountford reviews Rough Crossing: Britain, Slaves and the American Revolution by Simon Schama

Joe Stevens reviews Uncomfortable Truths — the shadow of slave trading on contemporary art and design at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Cathy Nugent reviews Child Slavery, BBC2

What did Tony Blair et al do to mark the anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade? Apart from trying very hard to avoid using that five letter word beginning in s?

From Falah Alwan, president of the Federation of Workers’ Councils and Unions of Iraq

The occupation troops and their allies, and the militias, have driven society into a sectarian war. They have also confiscated the most basic liberties.

by paddy dollard

The Arab League has offered to make peace with Israel on certain conditions, and Israel has responded with the proposal of a conference of Israel and the Arab states to discuss the Arab League proposal.

Does this give grounds for hope for progress towards peace and the setting-up of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel? Probably not.

Up to 40,000 nurses began a work-to-rule in Irish hospitals on 2 April as part of their fight over pay and hours — and said they will escalate their action if their demands are not met.

By Sofie Buckland, NUS national executive

One of the Darfuris faced with deportation is Sadiq Abakar, who has spent over seven years in Britain in Britain awaiting asylum.

By Paul Hampton

The recent teachers’ struggle in Iran is the latest visible sign of an independent labour movement emerging after 25 years of repression. This movement holds out the greatest hope — both for getting rid of the theocratic regime and winning some kind of democratic republic – but also for averting a terrible war in the region.

By colin foster

The rumour now is that Tony Blair will stand down as leader on around 9 May. There will then only be a few days for candidates to collect the 45 nominations from Labour MPs necessary to get on the ballot paper for the new Labour leader; three weeks for further campaigning; and two weeks for the actual ballot.

Dear comrades,

Do you support John McDonnell’s campaign against Gordon Brown for the Labour Party leadership?

By Keir Lawson, Glasgow SSP and Scottish Socialist Youth student organiser

The Scottish Socialist Party is currently in the midst of campaigning for both councillors and MSPs in the upcoming Scottish elections.

Unlike Tommy Sheridan’s Solidarity, the SSP is standing on an explicitly socialist platform, while emphasising our key demands of free public transport for all, scrapping the council tax and opposition to the occupation of Iraq.

By Rhodri Evans

Australia’s Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) has announced its intention to affiliate to the Australian Labor Party.

The leadership of the union — which organises federal and state government workers — asserts that they are affiliating in order to use the union’s vote within the ALP to make sure that Labor scraps the current conservative government’s anti-union WorkChoices legislation.

By Maria Exall, CWU executive

THE CWU Telecoms Executive has made an agreement with BT Global, the division of BT that deals with contracts for businesses, that means In the future BT will be able to outsource UK work to India with the acquiescence of the union. It is recommending members vote yes to this agreement.

By Pat Murphy, NUT executive

THE National Union of Teachers Annual Conference takes place in Harrogate over the Easter weekend. Those who only pay attention to this union only once a year may find the experience a very odd one.

PCS members at the Passport Service held a one day strike on 2 April against the below-inflation 1.9% pay offer from Gordon Brown.