Workers' Liberty

It is good that Saddam's totalitarian regime has been broken. It is bad that it was done by the US/UK invaders, in their own way, pursuing their own interests.

Out of the anti-war movement we should now build a movement in solidarity with the working people of Iraq, upholding the democratic rights of the peoples of Iraq and, especially, the struggles and the rights to organise of the workers of Iraq.

• Baghdad to the rescue

• Keeping the home fires burning
• The main enemy...
• One eyed men
• Top quality war reporting

by Greg Palast

Greg Palast has a witty, sharp writing style. He writes as only an American can. However, if his journalistic style is very typically American, his subject matter is most definitely not.

The Best Democracy Money Can Buy is a collection of his writings, many first published in the Guardian and the Observer. He is also known over here for his reporting for Newsnight. His subject matter is corporate power and political corruption.

Paul Woolstenholmes is the leader of the newly formed Firefighters Against Cuts Party which is standing in eight council seats on 1 May. These are five Strathclyde Fire Board members' seats - Troon West; Annbank, Mossblown and St Quivox; Ayr Newton; Irvine Landward; Busby Ward, East Renfrewshire - plus North Ward Felixstowe (two seats) and Harvey Central, Folkestone. Paul spoke about their campaign to Vicki Morris. [from current issue of Solidarity]

The US troops in Baghdad could not protect many places threatened with looting. The hospitals? No. Thirty-three out of Baghdad's 35 hospitals were put out of action by looters, with the US troops doing nothing about it. The museums? No. The ministries of education, industry, trade? No.

By Kate Ahrens, UNISON activist

UNISON's Health Conference has accepted the proposals from the union leadership to recommend voting for the Agenda for Change pay system in a membership ballot to be held in May.

A day of the three-day long Conference was given over to debating the issue, which would see the biggest shake up in NHS pay since its foundation over 50 years ago.

By a BT engineer

The strike by engineers in BT's Customer Service division (approximately 15,000 external and control staff) due to start on Monday 14 April was called off after the employers won an injunction under the anti-union laws.

At the time of writing it is unclear exactly how the employers managed to obtain the injunction. Claims from the employers' side that they were not properly notified by the union of who was to strike have caused amusement among the workers involved as everyone has received e-mails warning them not to strike!

By a GMB member

In a stark reversal of the recent trend in union elections, the leadership's man Kevin Curran beat London Region's Paul Kenny by a surprisingly comfortable margin for GMB General Secretary.

This is bad news. Kenny was promising some serious democratic reforms to the union and the development of a major organising programme. These changes seem to be on hold.

By Vicki Morris



Newsquest Bradford managers are becoming increasingly isolated in their stand-off with their workers. Managing director David Coates and his group editor Perry Austin-Clarke have been told by government minster Chris Leslie they should pay their journalists more. Elsewhere in the Newsquest empire, NUJ members are being offered deals considerably better than the miserly two percent on the table at Bradford.

By Adie Kemp

UNISON's National Executive Committee comes up for re-election over the next two months. The whole committee is facing re-election, and the left inside the union has fielded the largest united slate of candidates since the union's foundation.

Sussex District of the T&GWU is establishing a new branch for lorry drivers, using the Web as a prime recruitment tool.

By Patrick Murphy, Leeds NUT

The National Union of Teacher (NUT) is alone among teacher unions in refusing to sign up to a national "agreement" between Government and unions which claims to offer workload reductions in return for acceptance of unqualified people teaching classes. The union's attitude is absolutely right: the workload reductions are a mirage.

By a Central Trains driver

The RMT strikes to restore the guards'' safety role are set to continue this week.


The action is mainly being taken by senior conductors and guards but has led to most services being cancelled in the those companies that have been balloted. The impact of the strikes should start to increase now as ballot results for action have now been returned from Midland Mainline (St Pancras, Notts, Derby, Sheffield, Leeds), Wales and Borders and Wessex Trains.

By Jill Mountford

At a recall conference in Brighton on 15 April, Fire Brigades Union delegates overwhelmingly rejected a pay deal that had initially been recommended by their union leadership.

Brigades from all over Britain sent a clear message to FBU leader Andy Gilchrist that they will not accept a pay deal that has 'modernisation' strings attached.

On Thursday 1 May, 160 Socialist Alliance candidates will be standing in council wards around England, and a Scottish Socialist Party slate in the Scottish Parliament elections.

They - and a few rebel-Labour, Socialist Party, and independent working-class candidates - will give voters a chance to speak out against privatisations, sell-offs, contracting-out, cuts, and the Iraq war.

In Solidarity 26 we printed an appeal for discussion and collaboration on the left so that we can united the maximum forces for effective action in the new political ferment around us. Over the coming weeks we will carry comments and responses, starting this week with a contribution from Alan Johnson, author of a forthcoming biography of Hal Draper. (Full text of the appeal here).

By Martyn Hudson

The toppling of Saddam's regime by coalition troops has led to some interesting political debates on the left. One of the most intriguing was Ian Donovan's response to AWL criticism of the CPGB/Weekly Worker "victory to Saddam Hussein for the gutless" take on the war.

A few months ago I got lost in the backstreets of Leeds looking for a certain church. I came upon a man locking up his shop and I asked him where the All Hallows Church was.

By Dan Katz

The fascist British National Party is contesting 221 council wards in May 2003 and has announced its intention to stand in 400 in 2004. The BNP is aiming to emerge as a major political force by 2004.

They are concentrating on building bases in the North West, North East and Yorkshire. BNP leader, Nick Griffin, will stand in Oldham, where he took 16% of the vote in the general election. The BNP will also contest 13 of the 15 seats in Burnley where they won three council places last year.

By Attila the Stockbroker

Hooray Hooray for the USA
Your soldiers took Saddam away
So we're all going out on the streets to play
And celebrate our liberation day
The hospitals overflow with dead
The market's bombed and we have no bread
But you said this was the only way....
And I think my family are all OK
I think my family are all OK

Sixty years ago this month the Nazis began their final assault on the Warsaw Ghetto, where 40,000 Jews were making a last desperate, heroic stand against Nazi barbarians determined to annihilate them. A mere remnant of Warsaw's once-large Jewish population, they had decided that it is better to die on your feet, fighting, than to die on your knees, unresisting. The Warsaw Ghetto was the first instance of an uprising by "civilians" in occupied Europe during the Second World War. Joan Trevor tells the story.

Centro de Apoyo al Trabajador (CAT, the local workers' support centre)

The Matamoros Garment factory closed its doors on 24 March because of a supposed 15-day "technical work stoppage". The factory's remaining 130 workers are to be paid 50% of their wages during this 15-day period. This comes after PUMA, the German sportswear giant which sub-contracted at Matamoros, pulled production out of the factory, following an international campaign protesting at working conditions there.

By Mick Duncan

Representatives of the independent union representing workers at Mexmode-Kukdong sub-contracting factory, SITEMEX, have requested international solidarity support for salary negotiations that started on Wednesday 9 April.

By Paul Hampton

Two million people are killed at work around the world every year according to the International Labour Organisation. This is greater than the numbers killed in wars, by AIDS or by alcohol and drugs.

Thursday 24 April, from 10am

At the Royal Festival Hall
(Waterloo tube/station, London)

The BJ&B factory in the Dominican Republic makes caps for Nike and Reebok and for colleges like Penn State and the University of North Carolina.

The factory, north of the capital, Santo Domingo and employing 1,600 people, has been a major focus for US students' campaigns against sweatshop labour. It is probably the largest factory among the free-trade zones of the Caribbean, Central America or Mexico to have been unionised.

By Martin Thomas

A right-wing group is now cock-a-hoop in Washington. They advocated US war on Iraq at a time when almost all the USA's ruling circles considered the idea crazily risky. They feel vindicated in their view that blasts of US military power can ratchet the whole world, bit by bit, into a levelled-out free-market arena - their ideal of democracy and liberty.

Some recent comments from the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq:

The USA promises a "roadmap" for Israel/Palestine, but has not published it. The "hawks" who pushed this war, and now hold the high ground in Washington, have the same sort of ideas on the issue as Ariel Sharon. Any "Palestinian state" they support will be a Bantustan, a long way down the road.

Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan marched into the city of Kirkuk, at the heart of the oil-rich Kurdish heartland of northern Iraq, last week - apparently without getting permission from its American allies.