Workers' Liberty

The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty has been discussing the question of the troops in Iraq since the end of the last year. The debate will continue at our conference on 19-20 May. Here, two contributions to the debate (note: the second is not a reply to the first).

Martin Thomas replies to Sheila Cohen

For Tom Unterrainer, click here
For Martin Thomas, click here
For Sheila Cohen, click here

By Sylvia Pankhurst

The following account by Sylvia Pankhurst is of a police-sponsored pogrom against Jewish immigrants in London’s East End is taken from an issue of Women’s Dreadnought from 26 May 1917.

“The credibility of the G8 is at stake,” warned Blairite charitymonger Bono on 15 May, in response to claims that the world's richest governments will use next month's G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany, to renege on promises they made on aid at the 2005 summit in Edinburgh.

Over the 13 years since Tony Blair was elected leader of the Labour Party, the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty has, in our publications, analysed, explained and agitated against the politics of New Labour.

By Cath Fletcher

The Rifondazione project has failed, and the Italian left now needs to rebuild. More than a year on from the narrow victory of Romano Prodi’s coalition L’Unione, which includes the Rifondazione majority, both major left currents in the party are looking to alternatives. The trade unions, meanwhile, have announced public sector strikes for early June as negotiations over a new national contract falter.

By Stuart Jordan

As you take the escalator out of Euston underground in London, the new hi-tech video advertisements display a load of badly-clothed children pressing on the screens, trying to get out.

By Dan Katz

On Monday 14 May Palestinian Interior Minister Hani Qawasmi resigned putting the recently-formed “national unity” government under pressure. Gunmen fought street battles and two dozen fighters were killed.

By Mick Duncan, No Sweat secretary

THE media has recently had a field day reporting how a number of councils, led by Tory flagship Westminster, have been putting pressure on the government over immigration. The local authorities in question claim that official statistics underestimate the number of migrant workers in the UK, and say that will have to make cuts in services unless something gives.

By a PCS member

THE 1st May “Labour Day” strike by PCS, the largest civil service union, saw action by 200,000 civil and public servants disrupt the administration of Britain - a bitter farewell to Tony Blair and a “enough is enough” message to Gordon Brown.

A hundred people attended Heartsease High School in Norwich to launch a campaign against proposals to turn the school into Norwich’s first City Academy. The meeting was chaired by local Labour MP Ian Gibson, who has come out firmly against the Academy. The Division Secretary of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and the region’s NUT Executive member were there, along with local teachers, parents (and some students), councillors and governors.

Supporters of the rank and file railworkers’ bulletin Off The Rails (OTR) met in Birmingham on May 5th. Under the title “Making our unions fit to fight”, the meeting brought together activists from various disputes to share experiences and discuss how what we learned from each other could be used to make the unions more effective and membership led.

UCU, the lecturers’ union, formed from the merger of Natfhe and AUT, meets in conference for the first time at the end of May.

The SWP have a softish motion for a boycott of Israel on the agenda (through Brighton University and UEL).

Several high profile and large NUJ branches — ITN, BBC London and Observer — have spearheaded a campaign for ballot over the NUJ’s recent decision to “call for a boycott of Israeli goods”. They believe, of course, that the policy will overturn the decision of the 2007 Annual Delegate Meeting. The sponsors of the ballot call are probably right. Whether a vote against the boycott in such a ballot will be for the right reasons is another matter.

By a CWU member

POSTAL workers are balloting for strike action on a pay offer that can hardly even be called that.

by Stan Crooke

In the 3 May elections for the Scottish Parliament, the Scottish National Party (SNP) emerged as the largest party. It looks likely to form a minority administration.

The Scottish Socialist Party (SSP), within which Scottish supporters of Solidarity and Workers’ Liberty are active, did very badly on 3 May.

Its vote went down from 128,000 in 2003 to 12,731 this year, and it lost all its seats in the Scottish Parliament.

AGAINST AN SNP GOVERNMENT

The SSP must be clear that the likely Scottish National Party (SNP) government, pro-capitalist and pro-independence, is no advance on a pro-capitalist and pro-Union Labour (or Labour/Lib-Dem) government. As the SSP has pointed out, "the SNPÅfs increasingly pro-business vision of an independent Scotland... promises hundreds of millions of pounds in corporate tax cuts to big business. This could only be achieved by plundering our public services".

By Sofie Buckland

A teenage girl belonging to the Yazidi religious sect has been stoned to death in northern Iraq. The killing was a punishment meted out for falling in love with a Muslim man, and has spiralled into further sectarian violence in the area.

By Amina Saddiq

3000 people demonstrated in central London for migrant workers’ rights on 7 April. This is much bigger than previous migrants’ rights demonstrations, and clearly a very positive step forward.

Mansour Ossanlou is a leader of the Syndicate [Union] of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company (Sherkate Vahed). He was arrested and imprisoned in December 2005. Following huge national and international pressure Ossanlou was released in August 2006, but rearrested in November. He has since been released on bail and is awaiting trial on the charge of “propaganda against the state” and “engaging in activities contrary to national security”.

Farooq Tariq, general secretary of the Labour Party of Pakistan, a significant revolutionary left group which opposes Pakistan’s military regime, its US backers and political Islam, was arrested for four days earlier this month.

Richard Preece discusses the recent anti-government demonstrations in Turkey

Much mainstream liberal and centre-right reporting on the crisis in Turkey has portrayed the debate as being a kind of “clash of civilisations in one country” between “Islamists” (or even “Muslims” according to others) supporting the ruling Adalet ve Kalk¦nma Partisi and “secularists” supporting the army and the opposition Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi.

Steve Cohen reviews February House by Sherill Tippins (Pocket Books)

By Barry Finger

“That is the mentality which sees socialism in the far distance and is really chained to the idea that what workers want is a higher standard of living, ‘a full dinner pail’, ‘peace’, ‘full employment’. All he has done is to hold fast to the existent, making it tolerable by patching up the holes. That is the next stage of socialism. Shachtman is that type complete.

Izzy Turnball asks (Solidarity 3/111) can the AWL, in this paper and at events, make its political language simpler, so that people such as herself with particular disabilities (dyslexia) or a lack of political background feel more at home. The answer is yes, in some particular ways, but not necessarily through the medium of the paper alone.

Three letters responding to Sacha Ismail’s “Peter Tatchell and voting Labour” (Solidarity 3/111).

Solidarity 3/112. Download the pages, as pdfs, here (click on "read more"), or read it on this website by clicking here.

BY Sacha Ismail

Across Iran, workers seeking to celebrate May Day faced harassment and violence from the Islamic Republic’s security forces.

By Helen Shaw

A seventeen year old Irish woman has won a High Court battle in Dublin to be allowed to come to Britain for an abortion. The woman, known only as “Miss D”, was told in the fourth month of her pregnancy that her foetus had failed to develop properly and is suffering anencephaly, which means that a significant part of the skull and brain are missing. Babies born with this condition are expected to live a maximum of three days.