Workers' Liberty

Alan Johnson describes the protests against the G8 annual meeting on 1-3 June.

When I arrive in Geneva - for the protests against the leaders of the G8 - US, UK, France, Germany, Canada, Japan, Italy and Russia - it is sun-lit but Geneva is all wrapped up and shivering. Geneva has boarded itself up. Almost no shop windows can be seen. This being Geneva, a very expensive blond wood with a nice finish has been used. Anyway, they have unwittingly created a vast urban canvass for political art and agitprop. Some of the slogans that begin to appear are great. "The rich play golf and the poor pick up the balls" reads one. But much is the usual rubbish. 'Bush and Blair - the REAL terrorists', as if al-Qaida are not.

A report from the CWU Conference and news from PCS, GMB, TGWU & FBU.

CWU conference: two narrow defeats for the left

By a delegate

The postal and telecom workers union, the CWU, met on 1-6 June. The General Conference:

• An obsession with cottaging

• The dangers of Seroxat
• Iraq to be privatised
• Gypsy killed
• New Labour backs down on John McDonnell

By Colin Foster

Capitalism in Europe is becoming euro-capitalism, like it or not. In general and in principle, we - the socialists, the labour movement, the working-class left - should "like" it.

By Harry Glass

The assault by the Indonesian army in Aceh has led to extensive civilian casualties and human rights violations.


Reports in the Australian socialist paper Green Left Weekly (GLW) say that more than 23,000 people have fled their homes. The main hospital in the provincial capital Banda Aceh reports receiving dead bodies that show signs of beatings and torture. Amnesty International announced that grave human rights abuses, including the extra-judicial killing of children and other civilians, are widespread.

By Dan Katz

In some wars there are substantial reasons for the fighting. In the Falklands/Malvinas war in 1982 for instance the Argentinian military did invade the islands and the British people living there did not like foreign military rule.

By Gerry Byrne

The Sexual Offences Bill, brought in on a wave of concern about paedophile activity, seems set to remove one of the sources of advice for teenagers who can't talk to their parents about sex, or are not getting sex education at school.

Electricity workers in Iraq have been paid their wages after threatening strike action, according to BBC reports. Around 6,000 electricity workers in Baghdad were the first to be paid at the end of May, while other government employees such as teachers and doctors have been told they will get their wages in June. They will be paid for out of Iraqi assets frozen in the US since the invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

New transport union leader Tony Woodley has pledged to coordinate a trade-union drive "to get Labour back representing working-class people".


After winning election as the new General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union, Woodley declared on 1 June that:

by Pablo Velasco

• Peruvian unions defy state of emergency

• Zimbabwe opposition strikes
• Lula gets backing from right
• Class struggle in Israel
• Indonesian socialists to contest elections

A roundup of news from around the country...

By Mick Duncan

Facing competition from China's new capitalists, the Mexican bosses are driving down wages, imposing ever poorer working conditions and constantly violating labour rights. Workers face long working hours, little or no health or safety guarantees, child labour, no freedom of association, and the violation of company Codes of Conduct.

On Sunday 1 June Martin Shaw was severely injured as a result of actions by the Swiss traffic police. A 15 person collective was blockading a bridge in Switzerland to prevent G8 delegates passing from Geneva to Lausanne, and Martin was participating in a banner drop with the slogan "G8 Illegal". Martin and another protester were hanging from both ends of the same rope from a 30m high bridge over a small stony river bed, alongside the banner.

at Menwith Hill Spy Base on 4 July

Organised by The Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases (CAAB)
Fun starts at midday

An ad hoc Committee has been set up by Socialist Alliance (SA) members to press the case for a workers' party. The Committee takes its name and composition from a meeting of SA members held before the 2003 SA conference to discuss the need for a workers' party.

By Martin Thomas

What is the "new coalition"? The Socialist Alliance conference on 10 May voted for a motion to "relaunch" the Alliance "as part of a coalition of broader left-wing forces".

The first meeting of the new Alliance executive, on 7 June, should have made it clearer whom the "new coalition" might include, and on what political platform. Unfortunately it did not.

The huge public services union Unison meets in Brighton from 15 June for its local government sector conference and its general conference.
Issues under debate will include pay, privatisation, the Government's plans for schools, and Unison's role in the Labour Party.
Adie Kemp and Ed Whitby report.

By Michel Warshawski

The "roadmap" plan for Israel/Palestine has almost no chance of success. There is no point speculating about details, but there is one fundamental reason.

By Rosalind Robson

"Tender cruelty" is how one writer described the work of American photographer Walker Evans. That description is the starting point for the "Cruel and Tender" exhibition now showing at the Tate Modern (until 7 September). The sub-title of the exhibition is "the real in the twentieth century photograph." It is not then an over-view of realism in photography or of twentieth century photography. But it is an exhibition which explores those themes.

A letter from Pete Allen

A letter from Ian Donovan of the CPGB/Weekly Worker and a response from Cathy Nugent, editor of Solidarity.

The anonymous author of your column, Writing on the Wall (Solidarity 3/30), seems determined to underline that the AWL leadership has lost the plot politically. Being reduced to flinging personal abuse and grossly mangling quotations is a transparently dishonest method of argument. I counted seven ellipses, often denoting substantial gaps, in one passage (attributed to me) alone - an incredible technique of "quotation" that can mangle someone's words to "mean" virtually anything the author chooses. This, used in order to supposedly show that someone who argues for a counterposed viewpoint is a "nut", only illustrates that the author has run out of political arguments.

Some points on the editorial in Solidarity 3/32.

By Vicki Morris

Y'en a ras le bol
De ces guignols
Qui ferment les usines,
Qui ferment les ecoles!

We've had enough
Of these clowns
Who close the factories,
And shut the schools down!

By Sean Matgamna

Because of our attitude to George Galloway MP, supporters of Solidarity and Workers' Liberty find themselves especially unpopular just now with certain sections of the pseudo-left.

Clive Bradley looks at the life and work of Luciano Berio (1926-2003)

27-29 June, London

Arts programme running simultaneously alongside main conference

Venues:
27 June: The Friends House, Euston
28-29 June: SOAS, Malet St

Register and more details from www.iwsf.org

Notes for my son by Alex Comfort

Remember when you hear them beginning to say Freedom
Look carefully - see who it is that they want you to butcher.

Remember, when you say that the old trick would not have fooled you for a moment
That every time it is the trick which seems new.

Remember that you will have to put in irons
Your better nature, if it will desert to them.

Christopher Hill, who died in March, was an eminent Marxist historian, writing on the 17th century and the English Revolution. Alan Johnson continues his appreciation of Hill's writing. The first part can be found in a recent issue of Solidarity.

By Colin Foster

The GMB union conference has called for Tony Blair to resign if an independent inquiry establishes that he was deliberately lying about "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq.


The US and British governments used claims that they knew for sure that Saddam Hussein had dangerous masses of chemical, biological and other weapons to win political support for their war. Inquiry or no inquiry, they were certainly lying. They didn't know. If they did know, they would have located some of those weapons by now. They may eventually find a few chemical weapons in odd corners of Iraq, but that won't mean they weren't lying.

Three national newspapers (the Times, the Financial Times and the Guardian) all ran stories this week about the public services union Unison "preparing the ground for a general strike". This came as a shock to most Unison members, who haven't seen much sign of Unison preparing the ground for any kind of struggle, never mind a general strike.