Workers' Liberty

By Colin Foster

On Tuesday 6 January, the Labour Party readmitted London mayor Ken Livingstone to membership. He had been expelled in 2000, when he ran against Labour for mayor and won, after being denied the Labour nomination despite being the majority choice of Labour Party members and trade unions in London.

Is this a triumph for the left? Or a sell-out by the previously "red" Ken? Neither.

Alan Clarke, NUS National Executive (personal capacity) and Campaign for Free Education co-chair

As Solidarity goes to press, the Government is preparing to publish a detailed final version of its plan for Higher Education student funding.

By Michaela Collins

Just before Xmas I passed a television camera crew going up my street. I felt a little frisson of interest and went on about my business. Next day I was a little more excited when the pictures aired on the lunchtime news and the camera lingered on my window. Well, Andy Warhol, it was only 15 seconds, whatever!

The news item was about an elderly couple who were found dead, one from hypothermia, after their gas had been cut off. I detail my reaction to the news because it highlights a certain ambivalence about privacy and publicity, and it is this ambivalence that is played on by policy-makers and private utilities.

Meeting to discuss and plan action against the Civil Contingencies Bill.

Saturday 17 January, 11am, Friends Meeting House, Manchester. A day of discussion with concerned individuals and organisations.

Organised by Manchester Social Forum

This month the Hutton Report on the Government's dossier for going to war in Iraq will be published. This month or next, Parliament will vote on the Government's plans to have students charged extra "top-up" fees for selected courses, or for posher universities.

By Lucy Clement

The dubious accolade of topping Google's UK chart in 2003 went to Prince Charles. His name was the website's most searched-for term of the year. When the newspapers were banned from printing the allegation that dare not speak its name, the nation temporarily abandoned its searches for Britney and Beckham and tried to find out what the fuss was all about.

You might well ask why anyone would care what Charles did or didn't do with his valet. I suspect a lot of people bothered to try and find out because they were told they weren't allowed to know, and therefore thought there might be something worth knowing. The only detailed version of the story I saw was on an Italian gossip site, although the Popbitch email apparently had most of it, albeit in coded form.

6.30-9pm, Thursday 22 January, The Other Cinema, 11 Rupert Street, London W1

To raise money for union organisers at the Centro de Apoyo al Trabajador in Mexico, No Sweat has organised a special screening of Ken Loach's film Bread and Roses (2000) on 22 January at the Other Cinema in London.

• Crackdown in Argentina

• Workers' Party expels left leaders
• Indonesian military continue war in Aceh

Crackdown in Argentina



On 20 December 2003, the second anniversary of the popular uprising in 2001 that brought down the government of Fernando de la Rúa, 50,000 people demonstrated in the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires.

• No Sweat steering group

• No Sweat + Haiti Support Group tour
• H&M

No Sweat steering group

Meets on Saturday 17 January, 12-4 pm, at University London Union, Malet Street, Euston, London. All activists welcome.

By Mick Duncan

Chinese prison officials have refused a request by the families of jailed Liaoyang union activists Yao Fuxin and Xiao Yunliang to grant Yao and Xiao medical parole for severe health problems.

Family members recently visited the two men in Liaoning Province's Lingyuan County No. 2 Prison, and found them in alarming physical condition. Yao has previously been sent to the prison hospital after losing consciousness twice due to a heart condition. He is also suffering from hearing loss and partial paralysis. Xiao is suffering from pleurisy and is almost entirely blind.

by Jim Byagua

After three hours of testimony by prosecution witnesses, Judge Lyons dismissed all charges against Miami University Fair Labor Coalition activists Nicolle, Nick, Ian and Jon because of a lack of evidence.

by Jim Bywater

More than 75,000 workers in Southern California, members of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union, have been on strike or locked out since 11 October 2003 in what has become an important test of union strength and unity. The strikers are fighting the grocers' attempt to impose a two-tier wage and benefits scale and the stocking of store shelves by vendors, as well as a 50-75% cut in health coverage. Many employers across the US are reducing health provision or forcing workers to pay higher costs and Southern Californian grocery chains are no exception, despite operating profits rising more than 10 times faster than their contributions to worker health care.

Turkey is a nation not unused to living with the day to day spectre of terrorism.

A campaign of Armenian guerrilla attacks on Turkey's interests abroad in the 1980s, and more recent Kurdish and leftist bombing campaigns inside Turkey, mean that residents, particularly of the country's major cities, Istanbul and Ankara, are aware of the risks.

But the public reaction to finding themselves enduring attacks soon described by the local media as "our 9/11" was as much one of shock and bemusement as it was grief and outrage.

• Hidden hand

• Not so nice for us
• Biting the hidden hand
• Look at me
• The real fat cats

By Cathy Nugent

"The recovery of Afghanistan must entail a restoration of the rights of Afghan women… The rights of women in Afghanistan will not be negotiable."
Colin Powell

"Do not try to put yourself on a level with men. Even God has not given you equal rights because under his decision two women are counted as equal to one man."
Sighbatullah, Chair of Afghanistan's Constitutional Loya Jirga

By Yassamine Mather

The earthquake that shook the city of Bam in south east Iran in the early hours of 26 December has cost the lives of 40-50,000 inhabitants of this city and made more than 200,000 people homeless. As the people of Bam bury their dead, Iranians consider the dangers of an earthquake of similar intensity in the capital, Tehran, which like Bam lies on a major seismological fault and where geophysicists have predicted a strong earthquake would cause a death toll of 700,000.

Thursday 15 January, 7.30pm, Great Hall, Manchester Town Hall.
Speakers include Billy Hayes (CWU), and Julie Hesmondhalgh (Coronation Street actress).
Organised by Manchester Against Racism.

"Unite Against Fascism" is a new group formed by a merger of the Anti-Nazi League and the National Assembly Against Racism.
To join Unite Against Fascism costs £10 waged, £3 unwaged/students. There are other rates for organisations and trade unions.

Contact Unite! c/o Natfhe, 27 Britannia Street, London WC1X 9JP.
Phone 020 7833 4916, or e-mail: unite@natfhe.org.uk

By Martin Thomas

The Socialist Alliance Executive on 3 January voted to support the "Respect" electoral coalition launched in Socialist Worker of 13 December, mainly by the SWP and George Galloway MP. It "regard[ed] the statement [published in December] as a good basis for the public launch of 'Respect'".

Two Executive members, Steve Godward (unaffiliated) and myself, voted against. Three abstained: John Fisher (close to SWP), Lesley Mahmood (ex-Militant), and Marcus Strom (Weekly Worker). 13 voted for.

By Steve Godward

We have changed from a left coalition which will be "of course, socialist" to one where we will "fight for it to adopt a working class and socialist platform". This major policy breach was not in my opinion within the power of the Exec.

[At the Exec] I argued that to subsume the SA in the forthcoming local elections would be the best gift the BNP would have, as it appears "Respect" is only standing in the London and European elections.

A different vision of the kind of united left political alternative needed by the working class has been put together by the Democracy Platform of the Socialist Alliance.

By Dave Parks

Socialists should ask ourselves when we engage in activity whether it helps the working class prepare for its historic mission in the slightest. If it doesn't then what on earth are we doing it for?

Clive Bradley begins a series on the issues following the war on Iraq by examining the Iraqi "resistance"

For many supporters of the war, it was "to liberate the Iraqi people." Now that Saddam Hussein has been captured, many commentators speculate that the armed "resistance" to US occupation, far from dissipating, will grow. Reports on the insurgents vary quite radically: some, like Tariq Ali (in his book Bush in Babylon, and writing recently in the Guardian) declare it to be a national liberation movement as in Vietnam or Algeria (in its "first phase"); others are less sure.

On 17-19 December, an international workshop was held in Amman, Jordan by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) to discuss the prospects for trade unionism in Iraq. The more than 20 delegations included, unfortunately, representatives of the General Federation of Trade Unions, the yellow trade unions of the Ba'th regime, but also of the Unemployed Union of Iraq (UUI) (see below) and the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) linked to the Iraqi Communist Party.

By Edward Ellis

Christmas 1989 saw the arrest and summary execution of a brutal dictator, Nicolai Ceausescu of Romania. Just before Christmas 2003 we saw the final capture of another, even more monstrous, tyrant, Saddam Hussein.

Pictures of Saddam Hussein, bemused and humiliated, will probably be yet more "iconic" than the image of Ceausescu and his wife with bullets through their heads; the old bearded man with his mouth open will be an image that makes history. Would anyone shed tears if Saddam got the same fate as the butcher of Bucharest?

By Vicki Morris



"Tous ensemble." "All together." French president Jacques Chirac appropriated the slogan of the trade union movement to end his speech about the Stasi commission on the separation of church and state. He has taken to using that slogan.

Nick Holden reviews Dude, Where's my country? by Michael Moore

Read this review here.

In Solidarity over the next few issues, and on this website, we will be publishing translations of views from the French left on the issue of the law and the headscarf.



This first text is a leaflet produced by the Ligue Communist Révolutionnaire last month.

By Terry Liddle

Born in 1834 into a wealthy middle class family, William Morris was destined for the Anglican Church. His mother had visions of his becoming a bishop. However, after education at Marlborough and Oxford, Morris abandoned religion in favour of art.

By Annie O'Keeffe

For years they have talked of it as the "nightmare scenario" which would signal the end of the Good Friday Agreement. Now, as a result of the December 2003 elections, Northern Ireland is right in the middle of the "nightmare".

By Maria Exall, CWU National Executive, personal capacity

The Communication Workers Broad Left meets for its Annual General Meeting (AGM) on 10 January.

Just before Xmas the union received a letter from BT asking us to not submit a pay claim this year. This really is an indication of how far along the "Company Union" route we have gone. BT plans to continue major job cuts, continue outsourcing to India, and press forward with the performance based pay agenda.