Workers' Liberty

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The RMT and disaffiliation

The RMT rail union leadership proposes a set of rule changes that would open the way to the union supporting SA and SSP candidates, left Labour MPs and elements of Plaid Cymru.

By Sacha Ismail
War in the Gulf and mass opposition to it have inevitably raised big questions about the nature of our society. Why were Bush and Blair so intent on attacking Iraq? Are the US and UK governments really accountable to those they claim to represent? If two million people on the streets can't stop a war, what force can?

In Vitry-sur-Seine, a rundown suburb of Paris, in October 2002 a 17-year-old woman Sohane Benziane was set on fire by an 18-year-old boy. His friends were spectators.
Sohane had had the temerity to spurn his amorous advances. Sohane died in hospital from her injuries.

Basra protest condemns imposed oil bosses
Solidarity with the peoples of Iraq!
No US/UK occupation

By Gerry Bates

On 9 May workers at the Basra refinery, Iraq's second-largest, staged a protest, demanding elections to choose their managers. The British army officer in charge of the refinery has replaced its old Ba'ath party top managers with ex-Ba'ath party middle managers.

Will Blair swap the pound for the euro?

By Colin Foster

Will Tony Blair use his boost from the relatively quick US/UK military victory in Iraq to make a dash for the euro? Or will Gordon Brown's caution hold him back?
Is it really true that euro entry would undercut the Health Service? Or is that scaremongering given that in the core of the eurozone welfare provision is generally better than in Britain?

By Jill Mountford
"Get the Braziers Ready", urges the headline of a recent letter sent out to Fire Brigades Union members from their London regional office.
London and Merseyside are among some of the regions that have rejected Professor Frank Burchill's proposals on the long-running pay dispute. Yet, on the eve of the National Executive meeting in Sheffield (15 March), FBU activists around the country say it's too close to call as to whether Burchill's proposals will be voted down at the Executive.

By Colin Foster
The postponement of the Northern Ireland Assembly elections signifies that the London-Dublin "Good Friday" plan of 1998 to reshape Ireland, bit by bit, from above, is stalled for another long period, at least.

By Pablo Velasco

The presidential elections in Argentina offered little for the working class after years of economic collapse and austerity.

The first round on April 27 was won by Peronist ex-president Menem, whose neo-liberal "economic surgery without anaesthetic" was responsible for Argentina's collapse in 2001. He will now face another Peronist, Kirchner, in a run off on 18 May. The official candidate of the Radical Party, which has been the second-largest party for decades, got just 2.5% - suggesting it is on the brink of dissolution.

Clare Short has finally resigned from the Government - jumping before she was pushed, according to some reports. When two months ago on the eve of war she might have had a tremendous impact had she carried out her threat to resign, now, inevitably, there is an anti-climax.

By Mike Fenwick, Airedale Health UNISON (personal capacity)
Foundation hospitals mean some hospital trusts will be given a greater degree of local autonomy to run their own affairs, including setting their own wage rates, borrowing from the private sector and specialising and expanding as they see fit.
In the first place only hospitals considered to be high performers will be allowed to apply. This means a reintroduction of the Tory internal market into the NHS. Early implementers can concentrate on developing high volume services for simple operations and, such as hip replacements, and create monopolies before their local competitors are allowed to enter the race.

Three women were taken into custody by Israeli state forces after a raid on the offices of the international peace group, the ISM, on Friday 9 May.
Twenty military vehicles, army jeeps and a large armoured personnel carrier surrounded the ISM media office. Two Americans and a Palestinian woman were arrested and computers were confiscated at the office in Beit Sahour.

Maximum profile, minimum action

By Dan Katz
Less than two weeks have passed since the publication of the long awaited "road map" peace plan for Israel Peace Plan- officially a joint venture by the US and European powers - yet already it has disappeared from the diplomatic discourse.

Every single part of Murdoch's vast empire of papers and media supported Bush and Blair's drive for war. On one man's say so, irrespective of what "public opinion" really was, they pumped 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.

The slum area of Baghdad populated mainly by Shi'a Muslims, and known under the dictatorship as Saddam City, technically has reverted to its old name, Thawra (Revolution) City; in fact, its people call it Sadr City, after the Shi'a leader, Muqtada al-Sadr, who is emerging as one of the contenders for power in post-Ba'athist Iraq.

By Vicki Morris
What has 4,600 members and puts the wind up FBU General Secretary Andy Gilchrist?
Not the scab outfit the Retained Firefighters Union, that's for sure - contrary to its claims, it probably only has a thousand members. The answer is... a website.

(You alone know what is right?)
Weekly Worker is sometimes very bizarre indeed. Most of us become more calm and reflective when we sit down in a quiet corner to write. Some Weekly Worker writers who in person are mild and sane-seeming turn into crazies when they rev up to go into print.

Quick victory, slow recovery
The pro-war camp crows about the speed and relatively low casualty rate of the war on Iraq. Estimates of huge casualties and an unquenchable tide of refugees were grossly exaggerated, the implication being that the anti-war movement was mobilised under false pretences. What this leaves out is that the effects of war last long after the fighting has stopped.

By Pablo Velasco

Korean truck drivers' strike

A strike by 1,000 South Korean truck drivers has escalated into a national dispute after thousands of other drivers walked out in solidarity. The dispute began on 2 May in Pohang, with workers from the Korea Cargo Transportation Workers' Union demanding better wages and trade union rights. The strikes paralysed steel shipments from the city, the hub of Korea's steel industry.
Drivers in the capital Seoul and other cities such as Inchon came out in solidarity. The strike has held up car manufacturing, shipbuilding and other export industries. The strike shows the power a small number of strategically placed workers have in disrupting the economy.

Speakers:
Catalina from CAT, Mexican workers' support group, Puebla, speaking about the recent dispute with Puma and the wage negotiations at the Mexmode plant,
Monina Wong - Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee,
+ Anton Marcus, a union organiser of free trade areas in Sri Lanka
Wednesday 21 May at 7.00, upstairs at
the Ritzy Cinema, Brixton (corner of Brixton High Street and Coldharbour Lane)

No Sweat steering group…

Meets in central London,
2.00-5.00 Saturday 17 May
Venue details: 07904 431959
All welcome.

By Dan Katz
Evian, a small French town on the border with Switzerland, will be the heavily guarded venue for the G8 summit, to be held at the start of June.
Protesters will assemble around an exclusion zone, converging on the French side around Annemasse and, over the Swiss border, in Geneva. Anti-capitalist camps and "villages" will settle on both sides of the border. Activists from dozens of campaigns and political organisations will attempt to blockade roads leading to Evian, and prevent delegates, many of whom will be staying in Geneva, from attending.
Four-counter summits - on debt, the WTO, pensions and privatisation, and on Iraq - will convene on Saturday 31 May. And on Sunday 1 June mass demonstrations will take place on both sides of the border. The protests will continue until 3 June when the summit is scheduled to end.

By Peter Burton
No Sweat is organising a picket of the Chinese consulate in Edinburgh to protest against the continued detention of two Chinese labour leaders, Yao Fuxin and Xiao Yunliang.
They have been detained since March 2002 for protesting against the non-payment of wages and benefits such as pensions to workers at the Ferro-Alloy factory in Liaoyang.
* The picket will take place on Tuesday 27 May, from 4.00 at 55 Corstorphine Road, Edinburgh. Bring your banners!

By Paul Hampton
Two leading worker activists have been jailed in China for helping organise some of the biggest protests in the country in the past 50 years.

Yao Fuxin and Xiao Yunliang led mass demonstrations last year in protest at unemployment and corruption in Liaoyang city involving 30,000 workers.

By Riki Lane and Janet Burstall
The Socialist Alliance Australia conference, in Melbourne on 9-11 May, was very different to the English one.
Some highlights were greetings from construction union leader Martin Kingham, a reception organised by the Workers' First group in the big manufacturing union AMWU, and participation as a conference delegate by the central leader of Workers' First, Craig Johnston, who is currently facing jail for alleged "violent" industrial tactics.

By Angela Paton
The SSP made spectacular gains in the Scottish Parliament elections with six MSPs elected under the regional list system (a method of proportional representation). The Greens won seven seats. (There were 250,000 votes for the SSP and Greens in the list). Margo McDonald, former SNP, now independent, won, as did Dr Jean Turner, for the Save Stobhill Hospital campaign - who took the Labour-held constituency seat of Strathkelvin and Bearsden. Dennis Canavan was re-elected as an independent in Falkirk, with again the biggest majority in the Parliament. A pensioners' campaigner won a list seat in Central Scotland.

By Mark Catterall
"Burnley, BNP capital of Britain" proclaimed the Lancashire Evening Telegraph on 2 May. This was the day after the fascist British National Party (BNP) increased the number of council seats it holds in Burnley from three to eight, making the BNP the second largest party on the council. Labour remains the largest party on the council with 23 councillors. However Labour fielded 16 candidates in the election and got 8,784 votes, while the BNP fielded 13 candidates, receiving 8,545 votes.

Susan Jackson and Jack Hamilton continue our debate on the unions' political funds, with a reply to John Bloxam and John O'Mahony's contribution in the last issue of Solidarity. We invite further contributions.

By Sean Matgamna

"An injury to one is an injury to all" - and therefore socialists who opposed the recent Iraq war of the USA and UK should back George Galloway?

Two comments on Alan Johnson's discussion of how to unite the left ("Left Unity with the movement of movements", Solidarity 3/28) - one positive and one negative. The negative one is that I think he spins fantasies about the SWP.

Recent changes in the so-called Communist Party of Great Britain have forced us to conclude that it is not a vehicle for the building of a revolutionary movement in Britain today. Many of these changes are abrupt and radical departures from the direction in which the organisation seemed to be going after its break in the mid-1990s from old-style Stalinist attitudes on what it called the "bureaucratic socialist" states and from vulgar "anti-imperialist" positions on Ireland and Israel-Palestine.

Education Secretary Charles Clarke faced an audience of concerned and angry parents in his local constituency, Norwich, on 9 May, as he attempted to defend the Government's policy on testing and targets in schools.