Workers' Liberty

Support Iraqi workers; end the occupation
Rebuild the health service; no two-tier NHS
Scrap anti-union laws
Free education

Things are changing for the better in the labour movement. The election of new trade union leaders is beginning to impact on the Blair Labour Party, to which most of those unions with new leaders are affiliated, though the left-led civil service union PCS is a notable exception.

In an article in the last issue of Resistance, which has also been put out as a separate four-page pamphlet, you write: "the AWL position on working with Muslim people [emphasis added] is dreadful and their position on George Galloway is scandalous. But such positions can only be challenged and marginalised politically. Organisational means [meaning such things as the SWP attempt at the Socialist Alliance conference to deprive the AWL of representation on the Executive of the SA] are not only wrong - they are counter-productive."

If the trade union movement is serious about defending workers' rights in the period ahead, it will have to do two things.

Blair's "speech" to the trade union leadership during TUC conference - the written version of it circulated to the press - laid it hard on the line.

• Something you won't read in the mainstream press...
• Socialists and the "anti-war vote"
• MAB and political parties

By Martin Thomas

On 20 September, six thousand demonstrators from Israel's "Peace Now" movement rallied in Tel Aviv to demand Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Territories and condemn Israel's policy of assassinating Palestinian leaders.

It was the day after the USA had joined with Israel and two tiny US client states to register the only four votes in the United Nations General Assembly against a motion calling on Israel not to carry out its announced plans to deport or kill Palestinian Authority president Yassir Arafat. The USA had already vetoed a similar resolution in the UN Security Council.

Since the 1 September, 144 people have been arrested in protests against the Defence Systems and Equipment international arms fair (DSEi) that took place 9-12 September in East London.

By Dirk Haarman

In August Ronald Schill, interior minister in Hamburg city-state, was sacked after he allegedly tried to blackmail Ole von Beust, the Christian Democratic mayor of the city whose party forms a coalition with Schill's own party. This was the political end of Germany's best-known rightwing populist politician, once dubbed Judge Merciless, and often compared with Joerg Haider of Austria.

by Pablo Velasco

• Indonesian party fights for legal recognition
• Hong Kong: Article 23 postponed
• Korean unions to stand in parliamentary elections
• Yale University strike
• General strike in Bangladesh
• Colombian Coca-Cola workers face the sack

By Clive Bradley

At the end of May, less than a month after George W Bush had declared the war in Iraq officially over, US soldiers arrived in a poor, notoriously dangerous suburb of Baghdad offering to help the local people set up a council to run their affairs. On June 2, five local councillors were elected. One of them, Majid Muhammed Yousef, a Kurd, who topped the poll, told the International Occupation Watch Centre, that he had been reluctant to participate because he didn't trust the Americans: "It's like Palestine or Beirut," he said. "No one likes to see their country occupied."

By the FTZ workers' union

At least two thousand "free trade zones" operate in more than seventy countries, employing between 70 and 100 million workers, 60-70% of whom are women, mostly under 30 years of age. The majority of companies in these zones are in the electronic, textile and leather industries.

The FTZWU (Free Trade Zone Workers' Union) is currently fighting a difficult battle for union rights at the Jaqalanka factory in Sri Lanka - a production site for several North American clothing firms. The factory is in the oldest and largest free trade zone in the country, home to 92 firms employing around 60,000 workers.

• Argentina Solidarity Campaign/Indymedia
• Anti-sweatshop action at Labour Party Conference, Bournemouth
• Sheffield No Sweat dayschool

Tim Cooper

Channel 4's documentary Globalisation is Good (20 September) certainly lived up to its billing as "controversial" . In fact it could easily have been called "Sweatshops are Good".

For instance, the film showed a Nike factory in Vietnam where the boss and some carefully chosen workers said that they thought Nike was a brilliant employer (loans, sports facilities, clean factory, high wages, etc.).

By Rhodri Evans

On 14 September Sweden voted 56% to 42% against joining the euro.

The Social Democratic government, the main opposition parties, and the major newspapers all favoured the euro. But the voters rebelled.

By Joan Trevor

The European Anti-Capitalist Left (EACL) has had six meetings coinciding with EU summits. The first was in Lisbon in March 2000, the most recent in Athens in June 2003. The next is planned for November.

By Sacha Ismail

The first European Education Forum took place in Berlin on 18-20 September. The event, initiated and largely organised by the German-based Education is Not for Sale Network, was generally agreed to be a great success.

Five hundred people attended: mostly students, but some educational and other trade unionists (the first thing you saw on entering the conference centre was Hackney NUT's Blair Peach banner); about half were German, but there were significant numbers from other European countries. Fewer than a dozen Brits showed up. They included two right-wing NUS hacks who had been attending a European NUS meeting, and stayed for a day before running off in terror.

By Jack Cleary

The romantic 19th century song lamenting "old Robert Emmet, the darling of Erin", is still widely known and sung today - two hundred years after the public executioner hanged the 25-year old Emmet, cut him down alive, disembowelled him, and then chopped him up before a gawping crowd in Thomas Street, Dublin.

It was the last terrible act in the drama of the first Irish republicans, the United Irishmen.

By Rosalind Robson

On 11 September 1973 a bloody military coup in Chile ousted the Popular Unity government of President Salvador Allende. Allende was killed defending the Presidential Palace during the coup. Workers in the factories attempted to defend themselves against the military attacks - but they were not sufficiently organised or sufficiently armed. They went down to defeat.

Now that the mainstream parties agree on most important issues, politics in the media is reduced to a sub-species of sports commentary.

The flat facts of 1967 are that on 19 June the Israeli cabinet decided to propose peace with Arab states on the basis of guarantees for Israel's security and withdrawal from the Golan Heights and West Bank (or most of it). On 28 August-2 September 1967 a summit of Arab states adopted a policy of "no recognition, no negotiation and no peace with Israel".

Some of the Arab leaders actually wanted to negotiate. The Israeli government wanted to keep East Jerusalem and Gaza. That Israel has shown much obduracy over the years, and that we should consider the rights of the Palestinians indefeasible, is obviously true.

The flat facts of 1967 are that on 19 June the Israeli cabinet decided to propose peace with Arab states on the basis of guarantees for Israel's security and withdrawal from the Golan Heights and West Bank (or most of it). On 28 August-2 September 1967 a summit of Arab states adopted a policy of "no recognition, no negotiation and no peace with Israel".

Some of the Arab leaders actually wanted to negotiate. The Israeli government wanted to keep East Jerusalem and Gaza. That Israel has shown much obduracy over the years, and that we should consider the rights of the Palestinians indefeasible, is obviously true.

Dan Nichols, Romford

Sean Matgamna claims in one of the two pieces he wrote on Israel/Palestine in the last issue of Solidarity that Israel offered to pull out of the occupied territories in exchange for peace with the Arab states in September 1967. As far as I can work out, this is not true.

Mark Osborn, south London

Re: the debate on the 'road map'. Perhaps it would help if I try to briefly state how things stand.

Daniel Randall

What is a Zionist? For me, this is a key question in this debate and one that has not been sufficiently dealt with by the left regarding its positions towards the Israel/Palestine question.

For John O'Mahony, "Zionism" "means a belief in the right of Israel to exist and defend its existence." In his article in Solidarity 3/36, John makes it clear that this is the only meaningful definition of Zionism, and logically and implicitly therefore the Alliance for Workers' Liberty should be a 'Zionist' organisation.

By Cathy Nugent

Sixty or seventy Socialist Alliance "oppositionists" met in Birmingham on 13 September - non-aligned socialists as well as representatives of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty, CPGB (Weekly Worker), International Socialist Group and Revolutionary Democratic Group. The meeting had been called to discuss infractions of democracy in Alliance, particularly in Birmingham where newly signed up SWP members of the Alliance managed to remove the entire Executive of the local Alliance.

By Angela Paton

Mercy Ikolo is 32 years old and fled Cameroon to seek refuge in Ireland two years ago, where her 14-month old Percilez was born. Mercy made the mistake of visiting Scotland, being stopped at the port of Stranraer and taken to Dungavel Detention Centre on 17 August.

Matt Cooper looks at the life and work of Johnny Cash, who died on 12 September

I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down
Living on the hopeless hungry side of town
I wear it for the prisoner
Who has long paid for his crime
But is there because he's a victim of the times
I wear it for the sick and lonely old
For the reckless ones whose bad trip left them cold
I wear the black in mourning for the lives that could have been
Each week we lose a hundred fine young men
(From The man in black, 1971)

A delegate gives a blow-by-blow account of TUC conference

The first debate at the 2003 TUC was on employment rights. A composite highlighting the need for the right to take secondary action and the shortfalls in the current rights for union recognition was passed. Unfortunately the demand for the TUC to call a demonstration on the issue of employment rights was edited out of the composite, though it restated the repeal of the anti union laws. This demand for a demonstration was supported by the United Campaign for the Repeal of the Anti Union Laws who believe that the issue of workers rights should be made a higher political priority by the labour movement. The case for workers rights needs to be popularised so as to make inroads in workplaces where employees are unorganised, and the movement should go on the offensive on the issue.

The London Region of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) has held a comprehensive post-mortem on the 30k pay dispute.

London region rejected the final offer from the employers, and its activists were among those who pushed the dispute along after General Secretary Andy Gilchrist threw up his hands - right from the start, you might say!

By Patrick Yarker

All NUT members should by now have received a copy of the union's survey of members' attitudes to SATs.

The survey is due to be followed by a boycott ballot, so ensuring as large as possible a return of the survey can be seen by activists as a dummy-run for the vital boycott-ballot itself. Now is the time to touch base with school-based reps or isolated members, to check that everyone has received their survey, to chase up the survey's return and to make contact with the broad-based National Anti-SATS Alliance which is campaigning across the country for an end to the wasteful and damaging national testing regime.