Workers' Liberty

Fight back against

• Foundation hospitals

• PFI
• Education cuts

Fresh from his military victory, Tony Blair is out to target what Tory prime minister Margaret Thatcher, in so many ways his role model, called 'the enemy within' - militant trade unionism.

By Faz Velmi

Amina Lawal, a Nigerian woman sentenced to death by stoning for 'adultery', must wait until June to hear her fate. Her appeal hearing against her sentence was due in late March but was adjourned when only three of the five required tribunal members were available. There are suggestions that the trial was deliberately delayed until after Nigeria's elections -recently concluded-took place.

On 15 March, 21 defendants in the latest round of the Queen Boat trials in Egypt were sentenced to three years' imprisonment for "debauchery". The affair began when 55 men were arrested on the Queen Boat, a gay disco, in May 2001.

By Patrick Murphy

Attempts to revive the peace process in Northern Ireland (NI) have stalled. After George Bush's visit to Belfast during the Iraq war, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern expected to be able to announce the reopening of the NI Executive. Elections are due in May and the two governments don't want to postpone them.

By Dan Katz

Israeli finance minister Meir Sheetrit has announced that a long-awaited government austerity plan will be voted on in the Knesset (parliament) on Wednesday 30 April. The plan will mean an 8% public sector pay cut and thousands of jobs losses.

• More stopping, searching, jailing

• Representation
• Prison
• Race hate
• Stop and search

There is a strong case for dismissing the charges made by the Tory Daily Telegraph and others against George Galloway, of having been a bought and paid-for agent of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq -

29 May-1 June in the Assembly Rooms,
George Street, Edinburgh

Talks: George Monbiot on "A Manifesto for a New World Order"; Paul Kingsnorth and Mark Curtis on Global Capitalism; Milan Rai and Geoff Simons on Iraq after the war; and Joe Baxter of No Sweat and Gregor Gall on Workers' Struggles and Trade Unions.

The China Labour Bulletin is campaigning for improved health and safety laws to protect thousands of Chinese workers injured and killed every year.


Last year there were an estimated 110,000 deaths from industrial accidents in China and nearly 14,000 accidents in the manufacturing and mining industries alone. Over half the people in the world with pneumoconiosis (a lung disease associated with dust and silica dust) live in China. In an official survey, over 15% of all workers interviewed were believed to be suffering from some form of occupational disease.

Xiao Yunliang and Yao Fuxin, workers' leaders from Liaoyang in north east China were tried on 15 January 2003 on charges including subversion and the organising of illegal demonstrations. No verdict has yet been announced and the workers' leaders have remained in post-trial detention for over three months. This contravenes even Chinese law - a system not known for its liberality - on the time limit for announcement of verdict in a criminal trial.

The Scottish TUC conference unanimously voted to affiliate to the No Sweat campaign and establish links with the FNPBI in Indonesia.

By Mick Duncan

On Thursday 24 April a US court on the Pacific island of Saipan approved a $20 million pay-out to garment workers. The settlement will give compensation and back pay to 30,000 workers and set up an independent monitoring system to regulate wages, overtime pay, working conditions and living conditions at factory barracks.


Saipan, about 3,800 miles southwest of Honolulu, is notorious for the use of cheap labour. Transnationals make clothes on the island for the US garment market.

By Colin Foster

What were the real reasons behind the USA's drive for war in Iraq? Two polar-opposite explanations have been discussed on the left.

By Martin Thomas

Everyone wants a relaunch. Everyone is dissatisfied with the Socialist Alliance as it is, and thinks something brighter and better should be possible, given the ferment around the anti-war movement and in the trade unions.

That is the frame for the the debate at the annual conference of the Socialist Alliance, coming up on 10 May.

The Australian Socialist Alliance meets for its second national conference on 9-11 May in Melbourne. The Australian Alliance was founded in July 2001. Its main components are the activist left groups: Democratic Socialist Party (DSP, Castroite), International Socialist Organisation (ISO, linked to SWP in Britain), Workers' Liberty and others.

It has done a bit better than the English Alliance at recruiting unaffiliated socialists and establishing democratic structures, but its electoral scores have been poor.

By Clive Bradley

The United States administration has started to rattle its sabres at Iraq's neighbour Syria. Like Iraq, Syria is ruled by the Ba'th Party, though a different faction; they have been bitter rivals for decades.

By Clive Bradley

The collapse of the Ba'thist regime in Iraq and the military victory of the US and UK is a substantial political triumph for Bush and Blair. But the disorder it has unleashed poses serious questions, both for the occupying powers, and for the Iraqi people. There is a political vacuum, yet to be filled.

On 28 April, Saddam Hussein's birthday, Jay Garner presided over a meeting of those the US has chosen to 'represent' the Iraqi people, a first step, he says, towards setting up a government of Iraqis to replace the US 'interim administration'. When will the Iraqis be able to choose their true representatives in free and fair elections? In Saddam Hussein's time, the safest place to talk about politics was the mosque. So is it any wonder that the most organised political force in Iraq now appears to be religious? Nadia Mahmood of the Worker-communist Party of Iraq spoke to Vicki Morris about the prospects in Iraq for democracy, secularism and a workers' voice in politics.

One issue we did not cover in the interview is the importance of the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP). The ICP was first on the streets with its newspaper Tareeq Al-Sha'ab (People's Path) after the collapse of the Saddam Hussein regime. The headline was "The Collapse of dictatorship! Our people aspire to an independent and unified federal democratic Iraq".

by Pablo Velasco

South Korean trade unions have forced President Roh Moo-hyun to scrap part-privatisation of the railways after threatening strike action.

The Korean Railway Workers' Union argued that privatisation would result in mass layoffs, fare increases and cancellation of routes. Korean National Railroad (KORAIL) reported 219.5bn won (£116.6m) in net losses in 2002, blamed on poor management. The union organises 24,000 of KORAIL's 30,000-strong workforce.

by Pablo Velasco

Last week metalworkers went on indefinite strike at a General Motors (GM) plant and a Renault car factory in Brazil.

By Pablo Velasco

On Friday 18 April, hundreds of police descended on the Brukman textile factory in Argentina to evict the workers who had been running it for over a year.

By Joan Trevor

In March and April the Cuban government arrested dozens of oppositionists for allegedly working with the US to overthrow Fidel Castro's regime. Many of those arrested were quickly tried and have received long prison sentences. Human rights organisations have protested against the crackdown on these 'dissidents', who range from opposition leaders to grassroots human rights activists. The Campaign for Peace and Democracy, the US based organisation that originally developed the 'No to war, no to Saddam Hussein' statement circulated by the Alliance for Workers' Liberty, has protested as well.

Since May 2001, when the Fire Brigades Union voted to consider supporting election candidates closer to union policies and principles against New Labour, trade unionists and socialists have been discussing how to deal with the issue of the unions' political funds. The Alliance for Workers' Liberty has recently been taking stock of what has become a defining issue for the left, and debating how to go forward. This issue we print a contribution from John Bloxam and John O'Mahony; other contributions from the discussion among AWL activists will follow; and readers are invited to add their own comments.

• "You are not the only true socialists" - Andrew Berry
  
• "The AWL wants unity" - Mark Osborn

You are not the only true socialists

Re Solidarity 28 editorial. You seem to behave very much like the SWP - "we are the only true socialists", etc. That is arrogant. How can you be sure that every left group was on a different side in the war and did not agree with you?

In recent issues Solidarity has been running a discussion on left unity, opened by a statement in Solidarity 26. This issue we carry excerpts from two relevant proposals drafted for the Socialist Alliance conference on 10 May.

• You can't kill the spirit
  
• 23% with no strings
  
• Average pay rises go up
  
• What planet?
  
• Dublin
  
• Rail stikes
  
• Pensions

You can't kill the spirit

For more than twenty years, Glenroy Watson has been a train driver on London Underground. In that time, he has also been an RMT representative, and the most persistent champion of black workers on the Tube. London Underground Ltd (LUL) would love to get rid of him - or, at least, to undermine him and what he stands for.

By Janine Booth, President, Hackney Trades Union Council

By Paul Hampton

Nearly 100 people marched through "murder mile" in London to commemorate Workers' Memorial Day on 28 April.

Trade unionists and campaigners rallied at Spital Square, where speakers described the worldwide death toll of 2 million workers killed every year by work. Tony O'Brien from the Construction Safety Campaign and Mick Holder from the London Hazards Centre spoke of the deaths in the construction industry, both on the job and from asbestos.