Workers' Liberty

By Mick Duncan

A No Sweat study trip set off on Saturday 20 September for a 10 day visit to independent union activists in Puebla, central Mexico.

No Sweat will discuss with maquila workers, and activists at the massive VW car plant - site of the oldest independent trade union in Mexico. We will meet representatives of the Zapatistas and join the CAT workers' organising centre on their educational theatre tour.

'S' did not apply for asylum on arrival at Heathrow Airport. He did not know that asylum could be claimed at passport controls in an airport. Instead, he applied for asylum the day after his arrival.

By Clive Bradley

It is still not known who planted the bomb which killed Ayatollah Muhammed Bakir al-Hakim in Najaf last Friday (August 29), along with 95 others, and wounding nearly 150 others. Rival Shi'a Muslim factions have been blamed, along with Saddam loyalists, the occupying forces themselves, Saudi agents, and representatives of al-Qaida. Whoever was responsible, it represents a major blow to American attempts to construct a stable regime in Iraq, and reveals the huge gulf between the rhetoric of securing peace in the country and the bitter reality.

• South Korea: a summer of discontent

• Free Brazilian landless workers!
• General strike in Chile
• Support locked-out Indonesian workers
• Protests at WTO Cancun, Mexico

By Faz Velmi

Rainbow flags adorned every building in the vicinity of Canal Street, Manchester's famous gay village as tens of thousands of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people descended on the city. This year Manchester's Pride celebrations over the August Bank holiday would be even bigger than usual, as it hosted the "official" European Pride event. "Europride" was not just the usual hedonism because along with the partying there was the rare opportunity to discuss politics within the LGBT community.

By Sam Ruby

Solidarity obtained some pages from Alistair Campbell's diaries (some he tore out and chucked in the bin).

Tony Blair has agreed to a TUC proposal to set up a "public services forum"-regular meetings between the Government and the unions to discuss the New Labour "reform" agenda for the NHS and other public services. The unions have a right to "advise" the Government on things they oppose! Is this-as the Tories would have it-"a return to beer and sandwiches" politicking? To the days when union leaders and Labour Ministers had a close relationship? The days when Labour Ministers were nominally accountable to the labour movement?

In June the Socialist Workers Party packed a meeting of the Birmingham Socialist Alliance with newly signed-up SWP members to remove the entire Executive of the local Alliance-and replace them with SWP members and fellow travellers. The SWP had been promoting the idea of a "Peace and Justice" candidate for next year's Euro-election-mounted jointly with the leaders of the local mosques-that is, an alliance with a religious hierarchy. Comrades in Birmingham, fearing rightly that such an alliance would be a betrayal of independent working-class politics, rejected the SWP policy. Those comrades had to go.

• Union rights: Haitian Free Trade Zone

• How to fight sweatshop bosses
• Nike "fun run"
• New pamphlet

Union rights: Haitian Free Trade Zone

The Haiti Support Group is campaigning for union rights for workers in Haiti's Free Trade areas. The Group has made the links between the fight at Tarrant, in Mexico, where Tarrant customers include Tommy Hilfiger and Levi's, and the conditions of workers who make for these same companies in Haiti.

By Mick Duncan

In July workers at the Tarrant Ajalpan factory set up an independent union, SUITTAR (Sindicato Único Independiente de Trabajadores de la Empresa Tarrant México) following strike action in June.

Tarrant workers speak of regular forced overtime, unpaid work time, being locked in the factory, verbal and sexual abuse, anti-union reprisals such as placing the names of strikers on do-not-hire lists at other factories, and the aggressive denial of freedom of association.

On 9-12 September, the Excel centre in East London hosts DSEin - Defence Systems and Equipment International-one of the world's biggest arms fairs. And why shouldn't the fair come here? The UK is the world's second biggest arms exporter after all: in 2001 arms exports from the USA were worth $9,700 million, from the UK $4,000 million. Before the Kelly affair robbed him of much of his allure, our very own defence secretary Geoff Hoon was rumoured to be opening the fair.

A comprehensive agenda of protest will greet the 1,000 exhibitors and 20,000 shoppers (see box), who will be guarded by 1,600 of the Met's finest. As well as urging readers to get involved in the protests, Vicki Morris here examines some of the issues raised for socialists by the arms trade as a whole.

It is now more than one hundred days since the Indonesian army launched its attack on the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), but there is no sign of an end to the incursion. Indonesian labour leader Dita Sari evaluated the the situation in a talk held in Jakarta on 14 August organised by the People's Lawyers Union.

• UK strikes up

• Free emergency treatment shock!
• US poverty-figures
• Ethical code changes
• Wish I'd made it up!

By Joan Trevor

The two main far-left groups in France, the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (LCR) and Lutte Ouvrière (LO), are debating whether to run a joint election campaign for the European elections in 2004. In the Euro elections of 1999 their joint slate won 5.2% of the vote, and LCR got two and LO three candidates elected to the European parliament.

Can they repeat this performance? What would they gain from it? What would they risk? Is unity this time around even likely? I cannot predict-the question is the main topic at the meeting of the LCR Central Committee next weekend-but the possibility is interesting.

In 1989 Mikhail Gorbachev was forced by the political and economic condition of the dying 'Soviet Union' to withdraw Russian troops from the Warsaw Pact countries. These Stalinist satellite states rapidly collapsed, the regimes overthrown by their own people. The collapse of the 'independent' Stalinist states of Yugoslavia and Albania, and the USSR followed. It was a demonstration of the power of workers and ordinary people to change history.

by Oona Swann

THE FIRST WORKING CLASS MOVEMENT

With turn-outs at elections at an all-time low and disillusion with politics rampant, it's odd to look back on a time when working people had no vote, when the vote seemed key to winning economic and social equality.

The Chartist movement grew out of disgust at the failure of the 1832 Reform Act to extend the vote beyond the middle classes. The political system was openly corrupt, it was acknowledged that wealth and property conferred political power, not covertly as now, but by buying votes.

Earlier this year, the Government's White Paper on higher education funding proposed to allow universities to set their own fees, with the upper limit raised from the current £1,100 to £3,000. What about the Labour Party manifesto commitment against top-up fees? No problem! Simply delay payment until after graduation, rename the proposal an 'individualised graduate tax' and watch opposition melt away. Alan Clarke looks at the prospects for a serious student and labour movement campaign against the plans.

Sean Matgamna

As a bald slogan, without further explanation, "for a workers' party" is meaningless. Half a dozen different people could agree that they are for a "workers' party" and then discover they all mean different things by it.

Martin Thomas

To "campaign for a workers' party" means three things:

1. Setting out and grouping people round basic working-class political objectives-independent working-class political representation, a workers' government, a working-class "Third Camp" in international politics.

Sean Matgamna

When I advised Mark Osborn to try rereading the Solidarity editorial on the Middle East "Roadmap", which he criticised, I had in mind that he should reread it for political meaning. It now turns out that Mark's difficulty is with the plain meaning of words.

During the recent war on Iraq one of the components of the anti-war movement was "poets against the war". Groups sprung up in many countries. The website is still going and people are still submitting poems, some of these are better than others. Find it at www.poetsagainstthewar.org.
The UK website features one by Paul Marsden MP. Fortunately there are more interesting ones than his. It includes, for instance, the following 8th century Chinese poem.

By John O'Mahony

Everything is relative… Some years ago, A., an American-Egyptian woman came to London on a holiday to stay with her long-time friend, Elizabeth, and myself. Naturally, Middle-Eastern politics came up for discussion. We showed her copies of Socialist Organiser, Solidarity's predecessor, to see what she thought about its coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Socialist Organiser then, as Solidarity now, aroused horror and wide revulsion on the kitsch left for its advocacy of a two-state resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict and its opposition to the demonisation of Israel and "the Zionists". The SWP's printshop which had printed the Organiser for years had in the late 80s refused to continue that commercial relationship because of what SO was saying on the Middle East.

By a postal worker

It is crucial that a massive "Yes" vote is recorded in the forthcoming ballot for industrial action over Royal Mail's dirty trick pay offer.

Of course Royal Mail boss Allan Leighton has claimed that a 4.5% pay rise over 18 months plus acceptance of massive job cuts is a "good deal". It's a great deal for Leighton and Co-the icing on the cake when you consider the £500,000 plus annual pay rates (plus bonuses worth up to £50,000 for one months work) that are being dished out to senior directors. It's also likely to be good deal for local managers who will be hoping a massive job cull amongst postal workers will help get them some more cash on top of the £2,000 lump sums that they have recently been awarded for "all your hard work over the 12 months… allowing us to exceed our financial targets" (letter from Allan Leighton and Co to managers).

By John Moloney

The Treasury has imposed a pay cap on many parts of the Civil Service. They are saying that about 60 bargaining units (the Civil Service is divided into 173 different pay areas called bargaining units) should only get increases in their pay budgets of between 3.2% (if the mandarins think the bargaining unit is a "good" payer) to 3.7% (if they think the bargaining unit is a low payer).

Maria Exall looks ahead at the issues that are due to be debated at the Trades Union Congress, meeting in Brighton from 8 to 12 September.

This year the Trades Union Congress meets with the issue of employment rights at the top of the agenda.

By Joan Trevor

Since the end of the Second World War capitalists have been groping-sometimes blindly-towards a united Europe, with institutions and activities to meet their needs.

Their concessions to making this Europe in the interests of its non-capitalist majority have been tiny and token: the European Parliament is next to powerless; the European Social Charter aims at leveling social provision, not out of the goodness of the capitalists' hearts but so that no one member state has an advantage over the others; the extension of worker participation in running businesses comes out of a co-option management model, not respect for the organised power of labour.

By Michael Neville

Throw a juicy bone to the slavering dogs of the media and watch them scramble around it! That's what the Hutton enquiry into the suicide of Dr David Kelly is. It is a sideshow.