Workers' Liberty

Recall Labour Party Conference!

By Maria Exall, CWU Executive, personal capacity

No to Saddam Hussein!
No to war!

Julie Burchill, paid to be controversial by The Guardian, attacks those “who thought that a population living in terror under the Taliban was preferable to a bit of liberating foreign fire… On this principle, if we’d known about Hitler gassing the Jews all through the 1930s, we still shouldn’t have invaded Germany; the Jews were, after all, German citizens and not our business.”

Rouge, the paper of the French Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire, has just published a special supplement to celebrate their 2000th issue. It is unashamedly a celebration, not a rigorous accounting. Even there, though, the LCR, influenced by a Trotskyist tradition, feels a need to acknowledge major errors. The biggest? “That on Afghanistan in 1980, when we rejected a campaign for the withdrawal of Soviet troops for fear of playing into the hands of imperialism... This errancy... revealed more profound failings, and the difficulty of taking account of the changes in the world situation”. They made a mistake: they say so and draw conclusions. That is the Marxist way of doing things.

Pop music can be escapist — nothing wrong with that — but occasionally it transcends that to give voice to popular concerns and question jingoistic assumptions. Here is my “top ten” of anti-war songs, some well known and some hidden gems.

Matt Cooper


Edwin Star, War
There a good reason why an anti-war song can’t just say “war is wrong”. It has already been done perfectly. When Edwin Star sings “War- urgh! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing” there might not be any deep understanding of why the Vietnam War was happening, but as a a guttural rant against the injustice and waste of it all, it can’t be beaten.

behind the news

Paddy Dollard

The attempt to reform the House of Lords has collapsed in chaos. A House of Commons vote-out resulted in the rejection of all five of the options on offer. The status quo will remain for the foreseeable future.


Tony Blair is said to find this not displeasing. For choice, Blair would have had a second chamber made up entirely of appointed members. An elected chamber? This prime minister does not trust the electorate!

• Al-Q & Saddam: permissive coupling

• Joined up government - asylum seekers
• Doctors refute asylum infection claims
• Send-A-Slug Success?

Robb Johnson takes a look at what the new Licensing Bill will mean for live music "at the margins"

The Licensing Bill will make live music illegal. Okay, that's probably just the sort of alarmist assertion the government are accusing the Musicians' Union of propagating in their opposition to the current proposed Licensing Bill.
But just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get you!

The motions booklet for the Socialist Alliance conference on 15 March has just been mailed out. It looks like the main issues for the conference will be the “new party” question; modes of election for the Alliance Executive; and Iraq.

On the “new party”, there are submissions for the Alliance to initiate a broad campaign for a new workers’ party, or alternatively to make itself “a new socialist party”, as well as more cautious proposals.

On Executive elections, the conference will chose between the existing slate system (with or without added minority guarantees), STV, First Past The Post, and election-by-regions.

On Iraq, there is agreement to campaign against the US war drive, but disagreement on whether also to oppose Saddam and Islamic fundamentalism.

The deadline for amendments – from individual Socialist Alliance members, or from local Alliance branches – is 21 February.

For the motions, go to http://www.socialistalliance.net;
for an analysis of them .

The Scottish Socialist Party conference will take place on 22-23 February in Glasgow. Angela Paton reports

Mick Duncan's anti-car article, (Solidarity 3/22) says that car journeys under five miles are made by lazy people - people driving to the corner shop or going off to the gym.

I drive my toddler two miles to nursery. If I didn't, the journey would take me an hour. A very aggravating hour, as well - on a chock-full single-decker bus with no space for pushchairs and nobody willing to stand up so you don't fall over due to the antics of a bored-witless small person.

Mick Duncan reports from the conference of United Students Against Sweatshops in Los Angeles

Four hundred campus activists from all over the US—and two members of No Sweat from the Britain—gathered in the South California sunshine over the weekend of 1-2 February to plan activity, swap ideas and hear from workers and union activists in the forefront of the fight against sweatshops.

Soyapa Melgar and Maria Luisa Regalado of the Honduran Women’s Collective, CODEMUH, will visit Britain in March.
Until 1992 Soyapa worked in a maquila—garment for export—factory. Since 2000 she has been involved in the Honduran Independent Monitoring Group, monitoring factories in northern Honduras that supply GAP.
Maria Luisa co-ordinates women’s campaigning.
More details from the Central American Women’s Network: cawn@gn.apc.org

A protest is planned on Saturday 8 February against new "anti-subversion" legislation-Article 23-in Hong Kong.
Meet 12am, Chinese Embassy, Portland Place in London, for a march to Trafalgar Square.
More at www.nosweat.org.uk

On 10 January a trade unionist at Doosan Heavy Industries and Construction, a shipbuilding firm, burned himself to death.


He commited suicide in protest against the company’s suppression of union members.

Your letters can help

By the Workers’ Organising Centre (CAT), Puebla, Mexico

On Monday 13 January, after repeated violations of labour and human rights, 200 of the 250 workers employed by the Matamoros Garment factory decided to take a stand.

by Sami Mohammad

The leadership of the Stop the War Coalition organised a massive conference [11 January] in preparation for the 15 February demonstration against war on Iraq.

In the conference there were many political parties, organisations, and famous individuals. I am a member of the Worker-communist Party of Iraq. As an Iraqi dissident, I felt it important to pay a visit to the conference. It was important to see those people who speak on behalf of Iraqi people, and what analysis, explanation and alternative the conference has for the conflict between Iraq and the USA.

Can the workers defeat the regime?

If any regime deserves to have war waged against it, it is Saddam Hussein’s. Nevertheless, war by the United States and whatever allies it can pull behind it will not advance the cause of democracy and freedom in Iraq.

By Jim Byagua

Students all across the country are mobilising against the Bush/Blair war drive. This week Essex university students were holding a ‘Don’t Go! peace camp outside Colchester barracks. Sussex students are planning a walk-outs at 3pm on the day the war starts; Hereford, civil disobedience from 9am.

Since 1997 the USA’s military spending has exceeded the total of the next nine powers
War for oil versus fight for democracy

In the first of two articles about the firefighters' dispute Chris Jones, former Merseyside FBU brigade chair and a member of the Revolutionary Democratic Group, looks at the background to the dispute.

In the next issue of Solidarity Chris will examine the questions of leadership raised by the dispute.

By John O’Mahony

It was predictable that the pro-war press would react with sharp hostility to Tony Benn’s eve-of-war interview with Saddam Hussein. The Spectator published a dollop of stale, badly-written bile by the Guardian columnist Rod Liddle.
But socialists too have reason to be hostile to Benn’s enterprising trip to Baghdad.

By Lucy Clement

The record slump in the stock market provides gloomy evidence of the chaotic nature of the market economy. Since its peak of 6,930 in December 1999, the FTSE index of the UK’s top 100 shares has lost almost half its value and last week fell below 3,500, its lowest level since 1995. But while it may offer a chance to say to the more capitalist-minded “we told you so”, for many workers the latest falls on the FTSE and Wall Street are far from being good news.

In the second part of her discussion article about issues surrounding child pornography and paedophilia, Gerry Byrne looks at how society tries - and fails - to protect children

To read Part 1 here

By Dan Katz

Israeli Labour party leader Amram Mitzna has told Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that his party would not join a national unity government. He said that Labour’s decision was taken out of a sense of “national responsibility”.

"It seems like we have been down this road before. I find it very hard to trust the Government and the employers… but I suppose we have to see what is on the table. I, however, don't believe that the Government want to find a reasonable settlement to this dispute...."
That is what Gary Thorogood, Group Secretary, Southern Command Group 4 (eight stations in south east London), told Solidarity after John Prescott promised open negotiations with the Fire Brigades Union and the union suspended strike action for the next few weeks.

No to Saddam Hussein! No to war!

Julie Burchill, paid to be controversial by The Guardian, attacks those "who thought that a population living in terror under the Taliban was preferable to a bit of liberating foreign fire. On this principle, if we'd known about Hitler gassing the Jews all through the 1930s, we still shouldn't have invaded Germany; the Jews were, after all, German citizens and not our business."

Paul Hampton reports on the AWL-CPGB (Weekly Worker) day school on 25 January
Opening the discussion for the AWL, Sean Matgamna said that the AWL wants a rational Marxist politics based on saying what is - facing reality squarely, calling things by their right names, basing ourselves on the logic of the class struggle. It is the tradition of Marx and Engels, continued by Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky. It is a tradition largely lost and forgotten after 1940, carried on halfway consistently by only a handful of Trotskyists around Shachtman and Draper.