Workers' Liberty

By Pete Radcliff

The BNP finished its Red, White and Blue Festival in Codnor, Derbyshire on 5 August. Once again they were able to organise this mass fascist rally without facing national mobilisation from either of the two anti-fascist groupings, Searchlight or Unite against Fascism (UAF). Nor did they face any obstruction from local Labour councils or the police or fire services they are in charge of.

By John Bloxam

On 18 July Mick Cashman died, aged just 48.

For over a decade until the early 1990s, he was a member of the AWL’s predecessor organisations and supporter of Workers’ Action and Socialist Organiser.

One for all and all for one

Will other public sector unions pull forward their disputes over Gordon Brown’s two per cent pay limit so that they hit the Government together with the postal workers?

By Sofie Buckland, NUS National Executive member

At the behest of right-wing student union officers and NEC, NUS is undertaking a wide-ranging “governance review“, aimed at overhauling democratic structures, staffing, funding, and just about anything else they don’t like.

With so many Government ministers making admissions of youthful dope smoking and Gordon Brown’s announcement that he’s getting “tough on the puff”, isn’t it time that socialists should once again unfurl their “Free the Weed” banners and raise them high? At least I think so.

By Rosalind Robson

More than four years since the war in Darfur began and not much less time since a massive international campaign called for them, the UN has agreed to send “peacekeeping” troops to Sudan. The deployment coincides with an agreement between all but one of Darfur’s opposition groups, to jointly seek peace talks with the Sudanese government.

Mike Fenwick, Airedale UNISON Health Branch (PC)

Five months of negotiation since the initial offer of a staged 2.5% have produced no real results. Staging the deal meant that it would be worth only 1.9%. So health service staff were being offered less than the governments own suggested raise. It meant Alan Johnston and the treasury would save millions. And allowed a little wiggle room from which a few extra enticements could be found.

Iran

Free Salehi and Ossanlou Now!

A demonstration to secure the freedom of imprisoned worker activists and support the independent labour movement in Iran was about to take place as we went to press.

By Jack Staunton

The Hotel BAUEN in Buenos Aires, Argentina, occupied by its workers since early 2003, is under threat of eviction by the local government in an effort to return the hotel to its original owners. They charge that since the workers’ seizure of control over the hotel was illegal, it must now be returned. Dozens of other worker-managed workplaces and co-operatives in Argentina fear similar attacks, as BAUEN is a key symbol for the labour movement.

Solidarity spoke to Pete Keenlyside, CWU Executive (speaking in a personal capacity).

What impact has the action had so far?
On the industrial front the action of rolling strikes is having a significant effect. Management have had to admit in their own staff briefings that the action is hurting them and are pleading “these strikes can't continue”.

Solidarity wins against Sodexho

Catering staff at Haggerston School in Hackney, with the support of NUT and UNISON members, have forced a pay increase from their multi-national bosses Sodexho, taking their below minimum wage £4.51 per hour to £9. On their first day of strike action 35 teachers and two technicians refused to cross their picket line, forcing the school to send students home; in fact, many students joined the picket. Sodexho backed down with a second strike day planned.

David Broder claims in Solidarity 3/115 that “Fatah is simply a bourgeois political party drenched in anti-semitism” and so, it seems, he is unable to distinguish Fatah, clearly and sharply, from Hamas.

By Sacha Ismail

A play about the Chartists whose characters include the young Friedrich Engels? Don’t get too excited.

Holding Fire, a new play being shown at the Globe Theatre on London’s Southbank as part of the “Renaissance and Revolution” series, depicts the last years of Chartism as a mass movement, opening in 1837 when debates between the reformist “moral force” wing and the revolutionary “physical force” wing were raging.

By Frank Higgins

Where did Coca Cola get its name from? Earlier this century, the “soft” drink included an element of cocaine. In the last century you could buy over the counter a drink called laudanum, which contained opium. Tighter state control of drug distribution and consumption put a stop to such things. Even potent but harmless marijuana was outlawed

By David Broder

The minority group of opinion in the AWL which thinks we should call for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq has been courted in recent months by the Communist Party of Great Britain, who, while displaying no interest in building working-class politics in the Middle East, have noticed a superficial similarity between their own slogans and those of our minority.

By David Broder

The minority group of opinion in the AWL which thinks we should call for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq has been courted in recent months by the Communist Party of Great Britain, who, while displaying no interest in building working-class politics in the Middle East, have noticed a superficial similarity between their own slogans and those of our minority.

To the Weekly Worker Group (The "CPGB")
By Sean Matgamna

Dear Mark Fisher,
I’d written the friendly letter that follows this note before we received the CPGB’s refusal to debate the question of Iraq and the slogan “troops out now” with us at your summer school. Mark, plainly you don’t believe in making life easy for those of us in the AWL who are your friends, admirers and advocates! One minute you are publishing blustery little articles in your paper that suggest you are spoiling for a fight, and which accuse us of being “afraid” to debate with you. And what happens when, after a lot of lobbying and arguing, I manage to persuade our office to take you up on it? You back out!

Charlie Salmon reviews “An Ecosocialist Manifesto” by Joel Kovel and Michael Löwy

“The twenty-first century opens on a catastrophic note, with an unprecedented degree of ecological breakdown and a chaotic world order beset with terror and clusters of low-grade, disintegrative warfare… In our view, the crises of ecology and those of societal breakdown are profoundly interrelated and should be seen as different manifestations of the same structural forces.”

Cathy Nugent continues a series on the life and times of Tom Mann

By Robin Sivapalan

As we go to press, 14 of the 26 detainees who broke out of Campsfield detention centre in Oxfordshire are still on the run. The breakout followed all night protests and hunger strikes at the worsening conditions in the prison, the incredibly high refusal rates for bail at the Newport Immigration court and the fundamental illegality of indefinite detention of these migrants.

By Alan Thomas

The recent general elections in Turkey saw a decisive victory for the ruling, mildly Islamist Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AK Party) of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The election, called in light of the Turkish constitutional court’s intervention in the presidential selection process and also following sabre-rattling from the Army who have previously toppled Islamist-led governments, saw the AK Party increase its vote by almost 13% on the previous general election. In fact, Erdogan took more than 46% - a margin unheard of since the 1980s. This obviously gives him a mandate for future governance and represents a step forward for Turkish democracy in that the Kemalist generals have not felt able to simply scrap an election which produces a result that they dislike.

Civil Service: build selective action

By a PCS member

THE civil service union PCS and the postal workers’ union CWU have separate national disputes over low pay, below inflation pay offers, massive job losses, and privatisation/outsourcing. Despite national action by both unions it is clear that the Brown Government has no intention of making any meaningful concessions to either union.

By Stuart Jordan

Freak weather conditions have emerged with increasing frequency over the last few years. This summer has seen two million people on the Indian sub-continent have their villages submerged by flood water, an extended heat wave in continental Europe and the worst floods in centuries in the UK.

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

By Louise Gold

Between 14-21 August “The Camp for Climate Action” will make its bid for the world’s attention to the effects and causes of climate change, somewhere along the fringes of Heathrow airport.

By Tom Unterrainer

“Frankly it's an extremely unpleasant Bill and I myself don't like it. It may well be twenty years ahead of public opinion; certainly working-class people in the north jeer at their Members at the weekend and ask them why they're looking after the buggers at Westminster instead of looking after the unemployed at home. It has gone down very badly that the Labour Party should be associated with such a Bill.”