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Paul Hampton continues his series about world trade
Many of the young people, NGOs and unions who mobilised for the big demonstrations in Seattle in 1999, or in Cancun and Miami last year, argue that the alternative to the neo-liberal, free trade agenda of the multinationals, the big powers and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) is 'fair trade'. Three million people have signed Oxfam's petition to 'make trade fair'.
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The Oxfam report Trading away our rights: women working in global supply chains was published to coincide with 'Fair Trade Fortnight'. Matt Cooper gives his view.
Walk into any supermarket in Britain and look at the fruit and veg - it's grown in Kenya, South Africa or Honduras. The jeans in the clothes shops and the supermarkets are made in Romania, Taiwan or Cambodia. The cut-throat nature of modern retail means that the clothes are constantly discounted in a culture of the year-round sale, the fruit in two-for-one promotions.
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John O'Mahony continues his series of articles on the roots of Bolshevism
Populism "denied a future to Russian capitalism. The proletariat was assigned no independent role at all in the revolution. It happened accidentally, however, that propaganda designed in its content for the villages found a sympathetic response only in the cities... assembling only the intelligentsia and some individual industrial workers".
Leon Trotsky, The Young Lenin
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Martin Thomas' article on the veil (Solidarity 3/46) starts out well but he gets dragged down into a swamp of confusion in his attempt to defend the right for French girls to wear the veil at school.
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Many activists are debating whether we should "reclaim the Labour Party", or instead "build a new party". I will argue that the real choice is different. Either we do both - "reclaim the Labour Party", to the extent that such a thing is possible, and "build a new party" - or we do neither.
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The leadership of the FBU are preparing to follow the RMT into conflict with the Labour Party leadership, by proposing to next month's FBU conference a shake-up of the union's political activity. This will include a reduction in donations to the Labour Party, and a move which would return FBU policy to the position of the 2001 conference - with the exception that this time, the leadership will be proposing it, rather than fighting it.
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Reuven Kaminer takes issue with the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe's analysis of the Geneva Accords, a sketch of a possible "two-states" peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians published by Israeli soft-leftists and Palestinian leaders in October 2003. This is a reply to Pappe's article "The Geneva Bubble" which first appeared in the London Review of Books, 8 January 2004.
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The strike action at the DWP and Driving Standards Agency on 16 and 17 February was a wonderful display of solidarity. It showed just how wrong the majority on the PCS Executive of the DWP was in calling off the strikes planned for the 29 and 30 January. With thousands of non-members also joining the union, there can be no doubting the desire of DWP members to win this dispute.
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Members of the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE) staged a 24-hour strike on Thursday 26 February in seven Further Education Colleges. The strike had been triggered by the failure of management in those colleges to implement a nationally agreed pay deal.
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Across many grades, the "cover" staff are getting a raw deal. Shifts changed at a moment's notice give no chance to plan a social life or organise child care. Tubeworker has launched a campaign which wants:
