Workers' Liberty

From Solidarity 3/27

A right-wing group is now cock-a-hoop in Washington.

"The people of Jenin and the Jenin refugee camp are living in a tragic and suffocating situation, while the world is turning a blind eye..."

By Akis Gavriilidis

In Greece we have had enormous protests against the war. The day of the attack and the next one we had massive demonstrations in all big cities - and in several smaller ones - of the country. These were the biggest for years - in some towns, they couldn't even remember when
they last had a popular demonstration.

A Sunday Times report says more than 1,000 Muslims living in Scotland have been interrogated by the police in their homes or on the street, asking whether they support Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden or have been involved in terrorist activity. Strathclyde Police say they questioned people to "gauge their views and community tensions".

By Joan Trevor

During the Paris anti-war demonstration of 22 March, a group of marchers broke away and attacked youth from the left-wing Zionist organisation Hachomer Hatzaïr.


The attackers carried Palestinian and Iraqi flags and made anti-semitic chants. Hachomer Hatzaïr protested to the organisers of the march, the Coordination de l'appel 'Non a la guerre contre l'Irak': "...it is your republican duty to stop the presence, in your march, of people and messages advocating hatred."

By Vicki Morris

What is the French left saying and doing about the war, and about Jacques Chirac, the right-wing president who appeared for a while to be leading global opposition to the US and UK's war drive?

A round-up of what has been happening round the country.

BIRMINGHAM
About 1,000 people took part in rally in the city centre on 29 March. The demonstration marched from to BBC Pebble Mill, to make their views known on the corporation's bias. Police met protesters with battons drawn and dogs on leashes.

By Peter Brown

The war has exposed once again the lack of accountability of the trade union representatives on the Labour Party's National Executive Committee (NEC).

Submitted to Labour Against the War conference
(report at LAtW conference)

About 350 people, about a third of them trade-union or Labour Party delegates, and representing about 100 Constituency Labour Parties between them, attended the Labour Against the War (LATW) conference
in London on Saturday 29 March. Matt Cooper reports

• Reasons to be cheerful

• BNP gears up for elections
• Not in our name
• Back to the church

Reasons to be cheerful

Not everyone views the prospect of civilian casualties in any assault on Baghdad as bad news.

By the Argentine Solidarity Campaign

Zanon, a ceramics factory in Neuquén, Argentina, has been occupied by its workers since 1 October 2001, when the management attempted to sack nearly half the workforce.

By Harry Glass

Workers vowed to keep up the fight after the Indonesian government passed new anti-union laws. The anti-union laws are part of the government's drive to roll back gains made by unions since the fall of Suharto, and for an IMF-inspired flexible labour market.

By Mick Duncan

Hip Hop Activists of the World is the latest group to back the struggle of the Mexican workers of Matamoros Garments, in Puebla, central Mexico.

This group of workers sweated in Matamoros produce expensive clothes for companies like the well-known German brand, Puma. In January they struck, in a fight extensively covered in the pages of recent issues of Solidarity. The workers set up their own independent union, SITEMAG, filed for their union's official recognition, demanded decent pay and respect at work.

It’s hard, when looking at pictures of dead and burned children, to fathom the depths of cynicism of the war-mongers. David Aaronovitch in the, appropriately April Fool’s Day, Guardian agonises over whether, like Madeleine Albright and half a million dead Iraqi children, it’s price worth paying. Some people have no doubts; they know exactly what the cost and who will benefit.

By Vicki Morris

Alongside the ground war, and the war for hearts and minds, we have the propaganda war (and the TV channels have a ratings war).


Nowadays, the credit to the UK/US side appears to consist not so much in the lies they are allowed to peddle as in the gratitude they earn from the TV companies for meeting televisual demand. (And, hey, why isn't the army sponsored yet?)

By Lucy Clement

For the time being Turkey has pulled back a little from its threat to send troops into northern Iraq. But the threat is still there. Huge numbers of Turkish troops are massed on the Iraqi border in a zone closed to the public and the media.

By Oona Swann

"Savages" screamed the Sun, when US prisoners of war were paraded by the Iraqis - the (not very subtle) subtext being that putting an end to such savagery justified the massive bomb-power of the US-UK invasion.

Every single part of Murdoch's vast empire of papers and media supports Bush and Blair's war. On one man's say so, irrespective of what "public opinion" really is, these papers pump out war propaganda. That is why it is so important that the labour movement and socialist groups have their own papers to get their message across. We need papers like Solidarity. Upholding the best traditions of journalism, we are on the ball in our reporting, rigorous in our analysis, and completely partisan in our affiliations: we serve the working class.

Although information is sketchy, it seems that a number of British troops in Iraq have been sent home for questioning the conduct of the war. It is not the first time that serving soldiers have been
disciplined for refusing to obey orders.

By Martyn Hudson

After all those years and books arguing the need for a "Socialist Alliance party", and that the SA as the only show in town, the Communist Party of Great Britain have effectively abandoned it.

In Solidarity 3/26 we printed an appeal for discussion and collaboration on the left so that we can unite the maximum forces for effective action in the new political ferment around us.
Over the coming weeks we will carry comments, responses, objections, starting in our next issue with a contribution from Alan Johnson.

A wounded American soldier at a press conference in Germany was asked this week if the war was as he had expected it. No, he said, it was not. He and his fellow soldiers expected to be greeted with carpets of flowers, not stiff resistance. The war in Iraq is far from being the war the US government expected, either.

By Daniel Randall

After a tremendous wave of walkouts and students strikes up and down the country, action by school students has begun to die down. This does not mean young people have stopped caring about the issue or become apathetic. Far from it!
Local demos have been taking place all over Britain, as well as an enormous national demo on 22 March with another national demo planned for 12 April. All of these demos have been attracting vast numbers of young people.

By Colin Foster
Since 27 March the Socialist Workers Party has had a new slogan on its placards for anti-war demonstrations: "Victory to the resistance". Victory for the Republican Guard and the Iraqi armed forces? Questioned, SWP members say no. It means victory for people fighting back and demonstrating everywhere.

Elections for the NUS Executive also showed a resurgence of the left. Kat Fletcher of the Campaign for Free Education and Workers' Liberty, standing on the united left Education Not War slate, came within three votes of winning the presidential election. Overall, the Campaign for Free Education got four people elected to the Executive: Laura Brickwood, Education Not War candidate for vice-president Further Education Union Development; and Kat Fletcher, Alan Clarke (also Workers' Liberty) and John Dickenson-Lilley as part-time Exec members.

But the left shouldn't boost Galloway
These days the Sun, under its new editor, Rebekah Wade, is a tired parody of its old vile self.