Workers' Liberty

Stop the War, punk and sexism (and Attila's reply)

On 27 May, a group of young AWL members went to a Stop the War benefit gig in Balham and caused a bit of a stir by objecting to some lyrics in one of Attila the Stockbroker’s songs. Here one of them shares her thoughts with him.

by Colin Foster

Is a new nationalist political alliance emerging in Iraq, non-sectarian or at least cross-sectarian? Some reporters in the USA claim it is. The balance of evidence, I think, indicates not.

By Maria Exall

Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the leader of Scotland’s Catholic church, has made an unprecedented threat to Catholic politicians: support the church’s position on abortion or face excommunication. While Catholic intervention on the issue of abortion is par for the course, such a direct intervention is a new departure. What has caused this outbreak of “political Catholicism”?

By Tom Unterrainer

The past few weeks have seen courageous actions by gay communities in Russia, Latvia and Poland.

by Stan Crooke

“Over the past three years, the SSP has been supportive of George Galloway in his battles with Blair and the New Labour hierarchy over the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq… Despite our disagreements, the SSP supported George’s moves to form a broad, leftwing, anti-war party in England after his expulsion from New Labour in 2003,” explained an article in Scottish Socialist Voice (paper of the SSP – Scottish Socialist Party) in December 2004.

40 years ago this week, Israel fought the Six Day War against an alliance of Arab states seeking to destroy it, and won a crushing victory.

By Stuart Jordan

AS the forces of the anti-capitalist movement began to mobilise for for the anti-G8 demonstrations on Saturday 2 June, Vladimir Putin set the tone for the week by threatening to visit nuclear genocide on the people of Europe.

The march of organised religion into the centre of political life continues, as does the growth of religious sectarianism as a force in British politics. The latest sign is the outrageous speech of Cardinal Keith O’Brien against abortion in Edinburgh on 31 May.

By Paddy Dollard

The most important thing in the recent Republic of Ireland general election is what happened to Sinn Fein.

BY Elaine Jones

Following on from three days of strike action in late May, Tesco drivers based in the company’s Livingston depot are out on strike again for a 24-hour strike on 5 June in a dispute over pay, jobs and union recognition.

For five years now, every autumn, at the Labour Party conference, the big unions have voted through policies reflecting their members’ wishes but clashing sharply with the Labour leadership.

By Robin Sivapalan

MARGARET Hodge, Labour Minister for Industry and MP for Barking, has sparked another row over immigration and housing.

Last April, in the run-up to the local elections, she provided a rallying call to the BNP by claiming that eight out 10 people she spoke to on the doorstep were considering voting for the far right.

By Bruce Robinson

The government has made three proposals — on planning, energy and waste — which constitute a typical mixture of green rhetoric without effective action and with new environmental threats, concessions to business, and further removal of democratic accountability to local communities.

By Matthew Thompson

The publication of a report by the Football Supporters’ Federation calling for the reintroduction of standing areas at grounds has been criticised by the Hillsborough Families Campaign, a group representing relatives of the 96 Liverpool fans crushed to death in 1989.

By Mike Fenwick

After the fuss made last year about an “overspend” in the NHS budget, the trend has been reversed.

by a Unison conference delegate

Unison’s national delegate conference (June 19-22) will see a number of debates that could move the union in a new direction in the next year. Unfortunately some of the most important decisions for the union will not be played out on conference floor.

by a CWU conference delegate

Delegates to this year’s Communication Workers’ Union conference have voted heavily to censure the union’s National Executive Committee for nominating former general secretary Alan Johnson for Labour Party deputy leader, and to overturn the nomination.

by Dale Street

STRIKERS at the Sunvic Controls factory in Uddingston near Glasgow, which manufactures controls for domestic and commercial central heating systems, returned to work last Monday (4 June) after ten weeks.

By Maggie Bremner

PROPOSALS to radically restructure the education system on the Isle of Wight, making 150 teachers redundant and slashing their redundancy pay, are facing opposition from the unions.

Resolution 54 to Unison’s national delegate conference (June 19-22) calls for the union to support a campaign to boycott (undefined) Israeli institutions. Workers’ Liberty supporters are working with others in Unison to oppose this resolution on the basis of positive solidarity with the Palestinians.

THE Executive of the public services Unison has rejected a proposal from the relevant union committee to give money to the international trade-union news website Labourstart, on the grounds that one of the people involved in running Labourstart is a “Zionist”.

By Mark Osborn, the delegate who moved the left anti-boycott motion at UCU conference

THE new University and College Union (UCU), formed from the merger of AUT and NATFHE, met in conference for the first time at the end of May.

By Sacha Ismail

The warlords, medievalist religious fanatics and drug traffickers who dominate Afghanistan’s “parliament” don’t like Malalai Joya, of the country’s very few women MPs, one bit.

By Amina Saddiq

Two days before Solidarity went to press, on 6 June, police in the South African city of Durban attacked nurses picketing their hospital as part of a national public sector strike over pay with plastic bullets and stun grenades. Several strikers were injured and twenty arrested.

Venezuela

By Milton D Lein of the Juventud de Izquierda Revolucionaria group in Venezuela

By Stan Crooke

Russia’s President Putin has threatened to target Russian nuclear missiles at European countries in response to American plans to deploy interceptor rockets in Poland and a radar base in the Czech Republic.

A delegation from the AWL attended the annual fete of the French Trotskyist organisation Lutte Ouvriere on 26-28 May.

By Helen Shaw

ON 16 May, 30 students and “Open Borders” campaigners protested against David Coleman, professor of demography at Oxford, speaking at a conference at Manchester University.

Paul Hampton reports on the AWL 2007 annual conference

Anyone wondering why AWL members are combative with those we disagree with in the left and the labour movement might be surprised at the way we argue with each other — it’s even sharper.

18th century England was populated by a large number of Protestant sects.