Workers' Liberty

Originally posted 22 May 2004.
The campaign for the 10 June 2004 Euro and local elections by the Respect coalition, set up by the Socialist Workers' Party (SWP) in January, is descending into a shameful scramble to grab the 'Muslim vote'.

By a member of NUJ London freelance branch

At the start of the year, the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) chapel at Express and Star newspapers (Daily and Sunday Express, and The Star) resisted the pressure of proprietor Richard Desmond to publish racist articles against asylum-seekers, particularly against the East European Roma people that the papers said would flood into Britain after the 1 May enlargement of the EU.

By Joan Trevor

Migrants are welcome in Britain - so long as they can plug gaps in the labour force, says Tony Blair.

His 27 April speech on 'The positive case for controlled migration' was delivered, aptly, at a conference of the bosses' organisation, the Confederation of British Industry. They are, after all, the ones who want select groups of workers to come and make them rich.

Very soon after they took over Iraq a year ago, the British and US "liberators" of the country turned into torturers.

By Dale Street

The only surprise about the assassination on 9 May of Ahmad Kadyrov, the Russian-imposed President of the Chechen Republic, was that it had not happened sooner. Kadyrov was one of the most reviled men in Chechnya, and deservedly so.

Brian Haw, who has decorated Parliament Square for years with his protest first against economic sanctions on Iraq, then against the recent war, and now against the occupation, was arrested in the night on Sunday 9 May.

By Pablo Velasco

• South Africa Charges against Anti-Privatisation Forum dropped

• Solidarity with Cambodian hotel workers!
• Support Argentinian food workers
• Criminal trials of Chinese workers begin

A statement from the militant union organisation, Batay Ouvriye, on the current political situation in Haiti


Already, before Aristide's departure, the political crisis had shifted up a gear. As of January 2004, the mandates of a number of Parliamentarians expired, creating a big vacuum. With the opposition's anti-Aristide, anti-Lavalas [Aristide's Party] offensive, the situation became more extreme: numerous officials abandoned their posts. The power vacuum increased. With the departure of the president, it was like an explosion: The state is in real crisis. This crisis is clear for all to see.

We continue our look at the miners' strike by following the events of May 1984 and looking at international solidarity with the British miners.


The events

Beginning of May 1984: series of mass pickets in Notts coalfield. On 2 May police estimate 10,000 at Haworth and on 3 May almost as many at Cotgrave.

By Clive Bradley

The scandal of torture in Iraq is provoking a major political crisis for the Bush administration. But its general policy in Iraq is in crisis, too. Military analysts are calling the Iraq enterprise "Dead Man Walking"; as a veteran US military strategist put it: "we will win every fight, and lose the war, because we don't understand the war we're in."

An "Iraqi Workers' Solidarity Group" has been set up to provide a framework for communication and coordination between activists interested in assembling a broad campaign in Britain in solidarity with the new workers', unemployed, and women's movements in Iraq.

By Vicki Morris

Readers might know Emile Zola's novel Germinal, based on an early strike by French coal miners in northern France in 1884. Lots of socialists know at least the last lines!

By Kate Ferguson

The American far right and their moral agenda have now made their way to Britain. With massive funding by the Bush administration, they are promoting their 'silver ring' thing as the saviour of our immoral permissive youth (wear this silver ring to remind you just to say no). That's why it is more important than ever for us to be clear about our attitude towards teenage pregnancy.

• Moving on up?

• Massive
• BAE bungs
• Feudal blues
• Siberian blues
• Viva, left of centre politicians!

Moving on up?

Residents of Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest have been promised that should London's bid to host the 2012 Olympics goes ahead, their boroughs will benefit from 'the most significant urban and environmental regeneration ever seen in London'.

Des Warren, who died on 24 April aged 66, was one of the "Shrewsbury pickets", a group of building workers who were jailed by the then Conservative government in 1973 after a bitter dispute. Warren was a steel fixer and a member of the Communist Party. He later joined the Workers' Revolutionary Party.

The 2004 conference of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty took place on 8-9 May in London. Daniel Randall reports.

The year since AWL's last conference has not been an easy one. The millions mobilised on anti-war demonstrations have scattered, leaving life in the labour movement still low. We have seen the SWP liquidate the Socialist Alliance in favour of building the Respect Unity Coalition behind George Galloway; and the vast majority of the left collapse into classless, false 'anti-imperialism' over Iraq, ignoring the demands or even the existence of the new Iraqi workers' movement.

By Alan Clarke, NUS National Executive (personal capacity)

One of the issues that would have dominated this year's National Union of Students conference (held in April) - before the conference was cut short so that students could protest outside Westminster during the third vote on the Higher Education Bill - was the long running issue of reform of NUS. This is a lot more interesting than it sounds!

By Ruth Cashman

Anyone who's watched TV or walked past a phonebox recently will be acquainted with the series of adverts produced by the Government to advertise the national launch of Further Education Maintenance Allowances for 16-18 year olds this September. In these works of modernist genius, a private detective-type, badly disguised as a fire hydrant, dinner trolley, etc, leaps out to give unsuspecting 15-year-olds the skinny on the new allowance.

By Beth Aze

Sunday 25 April saw French fascist leader Jean-Marie Le Pen arrive in Manchester. Shouldn't have been too much of a surprise really.

For all that Manchester is a hugely multi cultural city, Greater Manchester suffers the same problems as much of the UK. Poor housing, limited job opportunities, overstretched public services.

Plenty of opportunity, then, to scapegoat Black and Asian communities.

By Coral Harding, University of East London Student Union women's officer and Campaign for Free Education

Almost 100 students occupied the UEL Vice-Chancellor's offices on 29 April in protest at plans to make cuts in the university's graphic fine arts department. Proposals to cut teaching hours directly have been beaten back by a joint campaign of the student union and the lecturer's union, but the administration still proposes to make major reductions in teaching provision by merging a number of different single honours courses.

By Colin Foster

Thursday 10 June will be a big election day, but, unfortunately, one with a small socialist presence. Seventy-eight Euro-MPs will be elected, by proportional representation in each of 12 giant regions.

By Mike Rowley

In the 10 June elections the British National Party is standing more candidates than ever before, including a full slate in the European elections (bar Northern Ireland), about 600 candidates in the local elections, and candidates in the London mayoral and Assembly elections.

The BNP was formed in 1982 as a split from the fascist National Front by a group of people around John Tyndall, a Holocaust denier. Tyndall remained leader of the organisation until 1999, when he was replaced by Nick Griffin, another Holocaust denier who had the previous year received a suspended prison sentence for incitement to racial hatred.

By Janine Booth

The response of the left and labour movement to the growth of the fascists is to back "Unite Against Fascism" (UAF).

This is a campaign that could have sufficient weight to have a real impact: turning people away from the BNP, recruiting for the labour movement and making the arguments on issues such as asylum. However, UAF's strategy at the moment is to urge people to vote for "anyone but the BNP", and to urge "legitimate parties", eg, the Tories, and "faith communities", to turn out their vote at the election.

Socialists candidates Alison Brown and Daniel Murphy are standing in the local government elections in Sheffield and Manchester respectively.


Alison Brown is standing in Burngreave ward, Sheffield, for the fourth time. On the previous three occasions Alison, an ambulance worker, has increased her vote each time. She won 8.1% in 2003.

In past elections she was the Socialist Alliance candidate; this time she will be standing as "Democratic Socialist Alliance - People before Profit".

Burngreave is a poor, inner-city ward, containing large Yemeni, Somali, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Iraqi Kurdish communities. Its three councillors are all Labour. One of them, Steve Jones, is deputy leader of Sheffield City Council, and a hard-faced advocate of the council's policies of privatisation of housing, refuse, parks, recreation, and youth services.

Charlotte Mason reviews 'Suitcases and Sanctuary', an exhibition at the Museum of Immigration and Diversity.

Read this review here.

The latest editorial in Solidarity (3/50) expresses a position on the current conflict in Iraq which I believe moves us too far towards some form of critical support for the US. The editorial seems to portray the current US offensive in Iraq as being a fight for a "relatively progressive" programme against Islamic reactionaries. This, I would argue, is certainly not the case.

Am I the only reader to find Sean Matgamna's take on the assassinations of Yassin and Rantissi a surprising line of argument for a leftwing publication? How can a revolutionary socialist end up taking a stance considerably more hawkish than the average EU foreign minister?

I am one of the two innocent men framed for the 1981 betting shop murder in "Toxteth". I don't expect people to support me when I say I am innocent, what I do expect is that I am given the chance to prove I am innocent. Can you help me? Please make all politicians aware of this case.

By a civil servant

Members of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCSU) working in the Social Security offices and Jobcentres in east London walked out at the beginning of May over the suspension of a supervisor. This action was part of a series of walkouts in offices around the UK in Glasgow, Lancaster, Morecambe, Sheffield, Manchester, central London, Leicester. The offices affected in east London were at Hackney, Stratford, City, Poplar and Hoxton, and the jobcentres in East Ham, Stratford and Poplar.

Workers at Euro Packaging in Birmingham, which makes paper bags, have been on strike against redundancies and for a 37.5 hour week. The workers are members of the Graphical, Paper and Media Union. The employers are notorious for bad pay and conditions (some workers, say the union, work up to 80 hours a week and most are on minimum wage or just above). The GPMU was recently organised and won recognition. The employers have responded by "selecting" key organisers for redundancy.