Workers' Liberty

Many people reading this article may ask themselves “why join the SWP in the first place?” Others still will ask “why go on to join the AWL?” These are legitimate questions. In fact, the answer to the question “why I left the SWP” revolves almost entirely around answering the other two.

“The LRC meets at a time when socialists within the Labour Party, trade unions, left groups and many progressive campaigns are being forced to face up to a number of hard truths in reassessing their future”, read the National Committee statement to the Labour Representation conference on 17 November

Marx’s aim of transforming society into a “free association of producers” has long been ignored by large swathes of the “Marxist” left. Not only Stalinists and social democrats, but also avowedly Trotskyist organisations such as the Militant Tendency (forerunner of the Socialist Party) have equated nationalisation with socialism, with the state bureaucracy substituted for the working class as the vanguard of social transformation.

IS AND IRELAND

Continuing the series about the events in Northern Ireland in 1968-9 — the start of the long-running turmoil there, still not resolved today — and the debates and disputes as the left tried to orient itself.

Parts of the left back any opposition to US imperialism around the world dogmatically, without qualification, and with little attempt to examine what the effects and actions of the imperialist power are. Or what the political character of the local alternatives to imperialism are. These leftists might be suprised by the story of the US imperialist intervention in Japan, contradicting as it does, some preconceived notions of how an imperialist power behaves.

I don’t think there is a point in ‘taking sides’ in this faction fight. The SWP are reaping the whirlwind that they have sown.

Continuing the series on the life and times of Tom Mann

In 1887 Keir Hardie called the leaders of the trade union movement “holders of a fat, snug office, concerned only with maintaining the respectability of the cause.”

On 16 October the NUS National Executive Committee voted with only two votes (myself and SWP member Rob Owen) against to endorse the proposals of the “Governance Review” for slashing internal democracy, and, with only four votes against, to call on member unions to authorise an Extraordinary National Conference to rush through the changes.

Daniel Randall’s article in Solidarity 3/119 was extremely useful for the information it collected on working-class movements and groups in Israel and Palestine.

Energetic US diplomacy may have headed off – for the time being – the threat of a Turkish invasion of northern Iraq.

Solidarity spoke to Pete Firmin, branch vice-chair and political officer of London West End Amalgamated CWU

The deal is a crock of shite, to put it as politely as I can. If you look at it, Royal Mail have got just about everything they wanted.

The civil service union PCS is undertaking a critical national consultative ballot of members to find out whether they support the executive council’s strategy in the national dispute over jobs, pay, privatisation and other issues.

The second Feminist Fightback conference took place on Saturday 20 October at the University of East London. Almost 300 people attended and there was a real buzz at this year’s event. It was organised by a group of socialist feminists including those from the Education Not for Sale network.

Mansour Osanloo, the Iranian bus workers’ leader, has lost the sight in one eye after being denied the urgent medical treatment he needed in prison. Apparently he has now received medical treatment... too late to save his sight.

Two events over the next few weeks could put new impetus into the campaign to defend the NHS.

Firstly the release of the film Sicko, by US documentary filmmaker Michael Moore will help

Around 150 delegates and members turned up to the Scottish Socialist Party’s 2007 annual conference, held in Dundee last Sunday (21 October).

Next year is the 60th anniversary of the foundation on the NHS. Two generations of British peoples’ lives have been affected by the NHS in one way or another — as health workers, patients or carers. It’s difficult to imagine a time in the past without it, or a future with it gone.

The 23 October edition of the Daily Mail featured a rant by the odious High Tory Max Hastings, the boldface of the title screaming “How much longer will we put up with the Scots spending so much of our money?”

Between fifty and sixty per cent of the population identify as “working class”. Despite the term “working class” vanishing completely from the language of the Labour Party, the proportion claiming this now-unspoken identity has been fairly stable since the 1950s.

The final text endorsed by the Postal Executive of the postal workers’ union CWU on 22 October seems to differ from the terms negotiated between CWU leaders Billy Hayes and Dave Ward and Royal Mail bosses on 12 October mainly in added warm words. The core is the same.

Industrial News Roundup: RMT, NUJ, Unision, Immigration Controls

Talk about the NHS “reform agenda” and you end up knee deep in a flood of acronyms and abbreviations. Below we try to define what some of them mean. Our definitions are hopefully more to the point than DoH (Department of Health) circulars which prefer to hide the detail of what’s going on by using a private language of “modernisation’

In response to Bournemouth, we should initiate a long-term consistent campaign to build or revive Trades Councils as political organs of the labour movement.

The national conference of the Labour Representation Committee on 17 November will provide an opportunity for socialist and trade unionists who want turn the tide of retrogression in the labour movement.

Forty activists attended Education Not for Sale’ s “Education for Freedom” dayschool at the University of East London on Sunday 21 October.

Review of US labor in trouble and transition, Kim Moody, London: Verso

Why is US labor in decline and how can the situation be turned around? Kim Moody, a prominent Marxist participant and commentator in the US labour movement over the past three decades, has produced a coherent answer to these questions, with implications for the revival of trade unionism everywhere.

“Britain remains a nation dominated by class division”, reported the Guardian on 20 October. The division is dramatised by David Cameron’s Tory front bench, which includes no fewer than 15 men schooled at Eton. The Lib Dem leadership contest is being fought out by two men schooled at Westminster, a school almost as posh as Eton.

Over the last year assorted anti-choice forces, from the Catholic and Anglican churches to conservatives and doctors who drafted the original laws, have launched a concerted campaign to roll back abortion rights. Their main focus is the time limit, currently set at 24 weeks (although in practice much lower due to waiting lists and lack of universal provision).

The Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP) has finally gone public on the impending split in Respect, the coalition it set up with George Galloway MP in early 2004.