Workers' Liberty

By Ewa Jasiewicz, Occupation Watch, Occupied Basra

"It's the oil sector first, other sectors will follow. Soon it will change, our influence will be felt."
Hassan Jum'a, Southern Oil Company Union

Southern Oil Company (SOC) workers have won a three month struggle, underpinned by the threat of an armed strike, for higher wages. All oil sector workers in Iraq will now be receiving the SOC's negotiated wagetable. The unity, solidarity and support of oil sector workers in the central and northern fields in Kirkuk, Baaji and Baghdad's Daurra was key in achieving this victory.

By Uduak Udofa, Westminster Kingsway Student Union Executive

The Battersea site of Westminster Kingsway College in south London has just been threatened with closure. The college wants to sell the Battersea Park Road building and is also considering totally withdrawing from the area as a provider.

Press gang, by Lucy Clement

Getting cyber-spoofed is a hazard for any online entity. That's why all the big companies buy up every domain name that looks like their own (ba.com, ba.co.uk, britishairways.com, etc). But, damn it, there's always one you miss.

When New Labour launched its "Big Conversation" (this week's attraction: online chat with arts minister Estelle Morris) at www.bigconversation.org.uk, someone failed to notice that www.thebigconversation.org not only already existed, but had been going for eighteen months.

The following article by TGWU General Secretary, Tony Woodley first appeared in the Guardian on 7 February.

Morecambe Bay's famously ferocious tide may be a force of nature, but the death of eighteen Chinese workers picking cockles is due to human acts.

The cockle pickers involved form part of the growing army of workers employed in a twilight world propping up profit levels in many parts of the British economy. The right-wing response can be predicted. They will ask why these workers were in the country, not why they were working - almost certainly for very little - in such dangerous circumstances, and for whom. This is not a migration issue. It is above all an exploitation issue.

The Labour Party leadership is pushing again toward the abolition of General Committees (GCs), the bodies of delegates from ward branches and trade unions that run local Constituency Labour Parties.

"One man is king", remarked Karl Marx in an aside in Capital, "only because other men stand in the relation of subjects to him. They imagine that they are subjects because he is king".

That about sums up the Labour Party for most of the time since Tony Blair became leader of the party almost 10 years ago, on 21 July 1994. Labour activists - and, decisively, trade unionists - have been "subjects" of the "king" who looked as if he could beat, and then did beat, the Tories. He has been "king" because they have been willing to be "subjects".

By Colin Foster

The Labour Party has expelled the railworkers' union RMT. The Communication Workers' Union has condemned the expulsion and called on the Labour Party to discuss with the RMT. But many socialists have rejoiced, saying that the RMT's expulsion should and will be followed by many other unions deciding of their own accord to break links with Labour.

In fact that is unlikely.

By a RMT delegate

The RMT Special General Meeting held in Glasgow on the 6 February upheld the decision of its 2003 AGM to affiliate to organisations outside the Labour Party. The union has now been expelled from the Party. The outcome should be no surprise to the wider labour movement. The RMT has a proud tradition of standing by its principles and facing up to bullies.

By Nick Holden



The agenda for the annual conference of the Fire Brigades' Union (at Bridlington, May 11-14) has just been published and there are several motions advocating disaffiliation from the Labour Party or the opening up of the political fund to allow branches to support non-Labour candidates.

The Guardian turns on Galloway

By Rhodri Evans

The journalist George Monbiot, initiator with the Muslim activist Salma Yaqoob of talks that led to the recently-launched "Respect" coalition, has resigned from it.

On 22 January Chea Vichea, the president of the Free Trade Union of Workers of the Kingdom of Cambodia (FTUWKC), which organises garment workers, was shot dead in Phnom Penh.

Chea Vichea was an outspoken leader. He was shot in the head and chest while reading a newspaper at a busy kiosk in Phnom Penh.

By Pablo Velasco

• Bolivian general strike

• Muchtar Pakpahan to stand in Indonesian elections
• Good news from Greece

Bolivian general strike

Bolivia is on the verge of a third uprising in the space of a year - with trade unions calling for an indefinite general strike this month.

By Yasmine Mather

Elections for the seventh session of the Islamic Parliament in Iran are very strange elections, even by Iranian standards.

The scrutiny of the Islamic credentials of candidates by the ultra-conservative Council of Guardians has led to a ridiculous situation where many sitting MPs as well as some 2,500 other candidates have been eliminated from the electoral list. If you are a secular candidate, you can't put your name forward for elections, but even amongst the candidates of various Islamic groups, a very large number were considered too "liberal" by the Guardian Council.

By Dan Katz

The crisis facing the Haitian government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide continued on Sunday 15 February with a mass demonstration in the capital, Port-au-Prince.

Thousands of demonstrators - who blame the president for rigging elections in 2000 - demanded Aristide's resignation.

By Mick Duncan

Anti-sweatshop activists are targeting Disney to mark International Women' Day on 8 March. Women' Day is a chance to show solidarity with women workers across the world -and what better way than to highlight the plight of many tens of thousands of women workers who slave for Mickey Mouse?

New protests to demand freedom for the five refuseniks recently sentenced to a second year in jail in Israel, and Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Territories, have been called for Monday 23 February 2004 and thereafter every other Monday - 8 March, 22 March, 5 April, 19 April, etc.

5.30pm to 7pm, Kensington High Street/Kensington Court, London. Near the Israeli Embassy. Nearest Tube: High Street Kensington. Details: 020 7207 3997

Chinese police have repressed a protest by textile workers struggling to recover unpaid wages and other benefits after their factory went bankrupt.

On 8 February around two thousand workers from the Tieshu Textile Factory in Suizhou, Hubei province, blocked the local railway for most of the morning. Around 800 armed and regular police from neighbouring towns arrived to disperse the protestors, and blocked the arrival of hundreds more who were heading toward the scene.

Old Servant * Old Leader * New Leader * New Morality? * Old Morality * The people getting hitched… meet a hitch * Getting closer * Getting too close

By Joan Trevor

On Saturday 14 February - Valentine's Day - a march was held in the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez to remember more than 300 young women murdered there since 1993. The women were often raped before being killed and their mutilated bodies dumped in public places. The murderers - believed to be a gang - have evaded justice, and the authorities shown themselves at first dismissive of the crimes, then incompetent - and perhaps even reluctant - to solve them.

By Cathy Nugent

On 1 March twenty years ago British miners embarked on a tremendous year-long battle to save their jobs, their communities and, as it turned out, the entire industry. They also fought the Thatcher Tory government for the whole of our class. The miners were absolutely right against those union and Labour leaders who portrayed their intransigence as irrational.

Paul Hampton begins a series about world trade. What has happened to world trade since World War 2? Can, as some charities and campaigners argue, capitalist trade be made more 'fair'?

Gerd Koenen, who in the 1970s, was a leading member of the Communist League of West Germany, an eclectic but numerically substantial Maoist (and pro-Pol-Pot) organisation, has recently published memoirs. He has learned some things over the years: and one of them, as this extract shows, is the rottenness of standard left "anti-Zionism".

His rethinking is relevant outside Germany, too.

The extract is from The Red Decade: Our Little German Cultural Revolution, 1967-1977, Gerd Koenen, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2002.

Lucy Clement reviews Siddiq Barmak's film Osama

You can read this review here.

John O'Mahony continues his series of articles

"The question of the city workers is one of those that it may be said will be moved forward automatically by life itself to an appropriate place, in spite of the a priori theoretical decision of the revolutionary leaders".
G V Plekhanov, in the journal of Zemlya i Volya

The history of the beginnings of a labour movement in Russia is a subordinate part of the history of populism. The first Russian labour movement was a populist movement. It was initiated by populists who "went to the people" in the cities. It was made up of workers whose political outlook was populist.

By Daniella Vichaidith

I fundamentally disagree with the AWL majority position on "the French ban", as it essentially argues that the religious views of Muslim parents should be respected and upheld in school irrespective of the oppression that they may be subjecting their daughters to. As a result, it also effectively supports the right of religious parents to intervene in the education of their daughters.

Gerry Byrne begins an examination of the relationship between the Russian Bolshevik Party that made the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the Islamic subject states of the Tsarist empire they inherited. What, if anything, can it teach us about socialists' relationship to Islam today?

The month the National Committee of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty voted to reaffirm our opposition to the hijab (Islamic veil or headscarf) as a mechanism of women's oppression, but also to oppose the new law in France outlawing the hijab in schools. Mark Sandell outlines a minority view and Martin Thomas argues for opposing the law.

By a TGWU member



Candidates of the Broad Left have won an unexpectedly decisive 21:16 majority on the General Executive Council of the TGWU. The previous majority faction grouped around fake-left bureaucrat John Aitken has been routed. Despite retaining some influence in the union's regional structure, it is no longer a significant force in the national leadership.

By Chris Allen

NATFHE lecturers at Leicester College are in their fourth week of strike action in response to management trying to by-pass the union and get lecturers to sign up to new contracts which increase their workload and cut holidays.

The college has used local media to pretend that the strike is ineffectual. A visit to the college tells a different story. The Abbey Park campus looks like a ghost town. Management have infuriated students by insisting they come into college when many lectures are simply not happening.

By a Havering Unison member

Local Government workers in the Tory-controlled London Borough of Havering have voted for industrial action to defend conditions. 77% voted to strike against plans to charge £5 a week for staff to park in Council car parks - even if they are essential car users! There are also plans to "fast track" sick employees to dismissal. And council chiefs are attacking entitlements of staff being made redundant or seeking early retirement.