Workers' Liberty

By John McDonnell MP, Chair of the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs

There were two Labour Party conferences. One was the official conference, organised as a publicity event for the leadership of the Labour Party. It had quite an unprecedented degree of ruthless organisation to engender the maximum televised exhibition of support for the leader of the Party. And there was a more important second and separate conference: where trade unions formed a coalition with the Labour left. For the first time in fifteen years we had an effective vehicle for left action inside the Labour Party. Every left fringe meeting was packed with delegates. Our coalition worked together to drive policies through on the floor of conference.

By Clive Bradley

Serious cracks are appearing in the Bush administration's handling of post-war Iraq. A new body, the Iraq Stabilization Group, has been set up under the leadership of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, which will take some of the power over the running of Iraq away from the Pentagon and the so-called Coalition Provisional Authority.

By Frank Higgins

If you wanted to see the "Blairite Revolution" in British politics over the last ten years graphically illustrated, the place to go this week was the Winter Gardens in Blackpool, where the Tories held their annual conference.

The Guardian neatly summed up the present status of this party-one might almost say, rump-by comparing the numbers of stalls at the Labour, Liberal and Tory conferences (220, 94, 57 respectively).

By Tony Jeffreys

The government decides soon whether or not to allow commercial growing of Genetically Modified crops in Britain. If it heeded public or scientific opinion it would say no to GM.

"Let us for a moment grant that German militarism succeeds in carrying out the half-union of Europe... what then would be the central slogan of the European proletariat? Would it be the dissolution of the forced European coalition and the return of all people under the roof of isolated national states?...

No to top-up fees!

Sunday 26 October, starts 12.30 at University of London Union, Malet Street (nearest tube: Euston, Goodge St, Russell Sq)

For more information about the Campaign for Free Education mobilisation email alan.clarke@nus.org.uk

By Alan Clarke, NUS National Executive, personal capacity

One thousand students demonstrated at Bournemouth International Centre on 1 October, during Labour Party Conference. Organised by South West Area of the National Union of Students, the theme was "Death of Free Education" and students dressed in black and processed silently through the town as if in a funeral march.

By Rhodri Evans

It was Gordon Brown who made the New Labour government's first act independence of the Bank of England from any democratic control.

The Labour manifesto had not mentioned it; the Labour Party had never discussed it; but Brown moved straight away to do what the bankers wanted.

Solidarity and Workers' Liberty believe that what's needed now is rank and file Labour Representation Committees of trade unionists and socialists in every city across the country. We have been campaigning for seven years now for the unions to form a Labour Representation Committee.

A union delegate reports from the conference

There was more open criticism of the Government at this year's conference, on the floor and in the fringes. Blair, his stance on the war, and his domestic policies are all unpopular. That needs to be followed up by union and constituency activists in the coming year.

George Bush recently requested an extra $87 billion from the US Congress to pay for the occupation of Iraq. Most of that money will go on reconstruction contracts in Iraq, and most of those will go to American firms. One of the most notable was the $500 million to support troops and extinguish oil field fires for Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, which Vice President Dick Cheney led from 1995 until 2000.

The extent of the cronyism involved in the awarding of contracts - the links between these businesses and the US administration - is quite staggering. Here's the latest revelation.

Israeli socialists Adam Keller and Beate Zilversmidt explain why they have joined a "human shield" at Yasser Arafat's presidential compound in the West Bank

Saturday [4 October] was suddenly shattered by the shockwaves of the terrible event in Haifa. A suicide bombing claimed the life of 19 people, with whole families wiped out as they sat at the tables of a restaurant jointly owned - and visited - by Jews and Arabs. Six of those killed were Palestinians, as were many of the wounded.

Re: "LCR/LO: Shall we dance?" (Solidarity 3/36)

In 1999, the joint list of Lutte Ouvrière (LO) and the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (LCR) allowed the election of five far-left deputies (three for LO and two for the LCR) to the European Parliament. Unfortunately, this success was not followed by any joint activity of the two organisations to combat together the capitalist policies of the Jospin government.

• Capitalist globalisation: Haiti

• Haitian factory life: Police and security guards attack workers
• Sheffield No Sweat launch
• Video showing in Leicester
• No Sweat at the European Social Forum

By Pablo Velasco

Trade unionists, indigenous groups and peasant organisations in Bolivia have organised strikes and road blockades against the economic policies of the centre-right government of Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada.

The European Social Forum is just a month off, tens of thousands gathering to talk politics and decide on Europe-wide campaigns for the coming year. There will be something to suit every taste!

• Monday 10 November: The AWL's own international meeting. For more information, see www.workersliberty.org/esf.

• Tuesday and Wednesday 11 and 12 November: trade union meeting organised by ETUC and CGT activists.
  
  

By Joan Trevor

The European Social Forum, Paris, November 12-15, is pledged to fight for women's rights and equality. This should be reflected in the composition of the event: equal numbers-at least-of women and men speakers; the woman angle addressed in all the discussions.

In addition, on Wednesday 12 November there will be a separate but associated event, the Assembly for Women's Rights for Another Europe.

By Vicki Morris

The London Social Forum was launched on 4 October in a lively day-long event at LSE attended by around 150 people.

The topics covered were as eclectic as the organisations offering to organise workshops on them. Life in London was examined from the point of view of transport and-in a workshop organised by No Sweat-work. Major political questions of the anti-war movement, solidarity with asylum seekers, education, Israel/Palestine, and solidarity with people in conflict zones-including now Iraq-were addressed. Inevitably there were also some frankly bizarre offerings.

This summer, workers at Tarrant Garments, a maquila just inside Oaxcala State, decided to organise a union. The bosses responded by sacking the ringleaders, people like Alejandro, a young worker in his early twenties, with two children and a young wife to support, with no wage and no benefits, blacklisted from working in another maquila.

By Mick Duncan

The Mexican state of Puebla is sometimes called the jeans capital of America. If you live in the USA, the chances are the jeans you wear were made in Puebla. They will have been made in a maquila, an assembly factory in the free trade zone.

By now most readers will probably be wondering just what the argument between Mark Osborn and myself is actually about.

Mark began the first of his three letters about the editorial in Solidarity 31 on the Israel-Palestine "roadmap" in an altogether different voice from one in which he ends his third.

"Who is out of step on Zionism?", John O'Mahony asks regarding his self-identification as a Zionist. Well, you are, John, not just with the 'anti-Zionism' of the majority of the left whom you rightly attack, but also with our own organisation, the AWL. In the AWL you are in a minority of one on this issue, as far as I know - and with the tradition from which we draw our position of "consistent democracy" as the means to resolve national divisions from a socialist perspective.

It wasn't a good idea to reproduce without comment in Solidarity (3/35) the article by François Duval that appeared in Rouge on the occasion of the anniversary of the anti-fascist demonstration of 21 June 1973. This demonstration was organised to stop a meeting of New Order, the principal fascist group then active in France. The demo has to be seen in context as a trap set for the Ligue Communiste (LC) by the Minister of the Interior Raymond Marcellin.

The anti-war group Justice not Vengeance, led by activist Milan Rai, has come out for a "United Nations Transitional Authority" in Iraq. Colin Foster argues that anti-war activists should rather focus on developing support for and links with the re-emerging workers', unemployed and women's movements in Iraq.

The Palestinian intellectual Edward Said died at the end of September

Edward Said was born in pre-partition Jerusalem and later became an American citizen. He was Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He was known both for his intellectual contributions - in particular, the book which made his name, Orientalism, first published in 1978 - and for his active involvement in Palestinian politics.

Dictator by Ruthven Todd

From a strange land among the hills, the tall man
Came; who was a cobbler and a rebel at the start
Till he saw power ahead and keenly fought
To seize it; crushed out his comrades then.
His brittle eyes could well outstare the eagle
And the young followed him with cheers and praise
Until, at last, all that they knew - his nights, his days,
His deeds and face were parcel of a fable.

Lucy Clement asks, is the consumption of art elitist? And why?

The headline said "Britons can't tell Rolf Harris from Monet". That was a little unfair: in the survey in question only seven per cent had thought Rolf painted Waterlilies. Mind you, almost half didn't know that Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa, and only 15% knew the artist behind the Scream.

But the survey - carried out by the Encyclopaedia Britannica, presumably for purposes of peddling their website subscriptions - was revealing in other ways. It found that forty-three per cent of the people questioned had never visited an art gallery in their lives.

By Martin Thomas

The lion gave voice. It was more like a squeak or a groan than a roar, but it was the lion rising to its feet and holding forth for the first time in decades.

In a fringe meeting at Labour Party conference in Bournemouth on Wednesday 1 October, five big trade unions, CWU (post and telecom), GMB and TGWU (both general unions), Amicus (engineering, electrical, scientific-technical, financial), and Unison (public services) organised a joint meeting to announce a campaign to 'put Labour back into the party'.

By John Moloney, PCS National Executive

The whole trade union movement agrees that there is a pension crisis. Whether with the state pension (too low), private sector pensions (final salary schemes closing down) or public sector (extending the pension retirement age to 65) across the whole of society pension rights are under attack. These attacks, if successful, will mean more pensioners living in greater poverty for longer.

Balloting for industrial action has begun at Rolls-Royce over a pensions dispute. Workers are voting on whether to strike against plans to cut their pensions.

The firm says the cuts will total £80 million a year. Amicus said Rolls-Royce is proposing to slash £800 million from pensions, costing each worker up to £16,000 each.