Workers' Liberty

Around 600 postalworkers and other trade unionists took part in a national demonstration called by the Communication Workers’ Union in Stoke on 19 January.

Canary Wharf: London Underground management have sacked two Canary Wharf Station Supervisors over some missing KitKats!

London Underground has sacked a worker at London Bridge over an alleged incident with a customer. But the company’s only “evidence” against Gyles is the say-so of a different customer who admitted there was no violence involved, but speculated that there might have been! RMT is balloting members for industrial action. Vote Yes! More: www.workersliberty.org/tube.

In December last year, several dozen left-wing Iranian students were arrested for organising or taking part in action on 16 Azar (7 December), Iran’s traditional “Student Day” of protest. Since then, many more activists have been arrested in a continuing crackdown, and one of the detained has now been murdered by the police of the Islamist regime.

Having already announced his plans to build a new generation of nuclear power stations in November 2007, Gordon Brown has just completed a “consultation” on the issue and officially announced the “new” energy policy! A policy which, surprise, surprise, proposes up to twenty nuclear power stations, which will start coming on line around 2017.

Students at Nottingham University are calling a demonstration for 21 February against attempts to quash their rights to protest and organise. One student has been arrested and others banned from the library for failing to ask permission to demonstrate and circulate petitions.

More than 100 people attended the regional conference that took place in Nottingham on January 19th called by Nottinghamshire Stop the BNP and sponsored by a number of trade unions and campaigning organisations in the Notts area and other parts of the East Midlands.

The conference was called to discuss a campaign to stop a repeat of the 2007 BNP “Red, White and Blue festival” in Codnor near both Derby and Nottingham.

On January 16, a parliamentary rally organised by Abortion Rights packed out two committee rooms with over 300 people. Speakers included various MPs and Lords from all three parties, the TUC women’s officer, an adviser to Ken Livingstone and the Fawcett Society.

The second Feminist Fightback open steering meeting saw women from across the trade union and student movements discuss direct action on abortion rights, a pro-choice teach-in and plans for international women’s day.

Like it or not, the SWP is the biggest group on the socialist left. Any attempt to unite will necessarily involve them, or at least substantial numbers of its activists. Nowhere is this more true than in the student movement, where the AWL has some experience of practical unity with the SWP.

After winning 1.5 million votes in the April 2007 French presidential election, the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire launched a call for a new “anti-capitalist party” to bring together activists from across the spectrum of the far left in a joint organisation.

I must admit, I’m no Dylanologist, so I was not particularly upset by director Todd Haynes’ decision to merge Suze Rotolo and Sara Lownds into one character, nor the fact that I’m Not There is far from a biography of Dylan. However, while the film has an excellent score (unsurprisingly, it features lots of Bob Dylan tracks) and features some memorable performances from the six actors representing the singer-songwriter’s different personas, it feels like a simple homage rather than offering any particular insight.

City of Vice, a new drama series about the Bow Street Runners, is now being shown on Channel 4 (Mondays, 9pm). Cathy Nugent interviews Clive Bradley, the writer of the most recent episode, which deals with molly houses — clubs where gay men and transwomen could meet each other.

Chris Rock at the Hammersmith Apollo.

The Blues? It’s the mother of American music. That’s what it is – the source. — BB King

Europeans involved in the slave trade stripped as much culture from their human cargo as possible but music was so deep rooted in the African men and women that it was impossible to tear it away from those who survived the horrific journey.

On 19 January Housmans bookshop in King’s Cross was packed with around fifty people coming to hear Loren Goldner speak on the recent history of the militant South Korean working class. Goldner, a left communist and a former Shachtmanite talked about modern labour movement activism in the face of rapid economic development, and the post World War Two era and the labour movement’s attitude to the Stalinist state in the North.

Part eight of a series on the Northern Ireland crisis of 1969 and the left.

• Part 1: Why Northern Ireland Broke Down

• Part 2: The Irish Workers' Group, I S and the "Trotskyist Tendency"
• Part 3: Why Northern Ireland Split on Communal, Not Class, Lines
• Part 4: When militant sloganeering meant promoting communal war
• Part 5: When socialists looked to "Catholic Power"
• Part 6: SWP (IS) and Northern Ireland in 1968-9: Advocating civil war — until it starts!
• Part 7: The end of the old order in Northern Ireland

The knives are out for Ken Livingstone. He is targetted by the main London paper, the Evening Standard. He is the subject of a sustained smear campaign — he’s a drunk, a secret “Trotskyite”.

“Exposed” in the current right wing campaign against Ken Livingstone, as the underground group central to Livingstone’s “team”, Socialist Action have always been a weird collection of individuals. Right-wing and strangely apolitical when Martin Thomas wrote this history in February 1991 (Socialist Organiser 476), they are much more right-wing today.

Will the stock-market crash of 21 January continue, or ease? We don't know. But what about the monolines?

An editorial in the Financial Times (21 January) summed up well the Government's new plan for the collapsed bank Northern Rock.

For the shareholders and potential buyers of Northern Rock, the Government is all smiles and graces. Another few billion pounds? Yes, sir, of course!

To write, as Sacha Ismail does, that U.S. "Republicans and Democrats are ... almost identical in policy terms" betrays either a startling ignorance of American politics or a form of ultra-leftism.

Pierre Lambert, leader of what for a long time was the biggest force in French Trotskyism, died on 16 January 2008 at the age of 87. His organisation - now called the "Workers' Party", and about to relaunch itself as the "Independent Workers' Party" - has in recent years focused most of its efforts on the "defence of the [French] Republic" and a call for French withdrawal from the European Union. In the 2007 presidential election it ran Gérard Schivardi as "the candidate of the mayors". But there is more to the history.

The French revolutionary left is discussing the formation of a "new party". An important milestone in that discussion will be the congress on 24-27 January of the LCR (Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire).

The 2006 election demonstrated a tentative move to the left by the American electorate. The discontent is not likely to abate any time soon. But a left that fails to force a break with the Democrats will find that this new aspiration for change will eventually dissolve into anti-political skepticism and despair.