Workers' Liberty

By Colin Foster

Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline recently agreed an £18 million pay package for its chief executive.

The workers have been offered a 2% rise - in real terms, a pay cut.

By Rhodri Evans

The threat from the far right in the 10 June Euro-elections may come as much from the UK Independence Party as from the British National Party.


The BNP hopes to win a Euro-seat in the north-west. But the UKIP has edged ahead of the Lib-Dems in one opinion poll. It is spending more on the Euro-elections than Labour and the Tories put together. It has the backing of multi-millionaire Paul Sykes, actress Joan Collins, freelance racist Robert Kilroy-Silk, and former Clinton campaign manager Dick Morris.

By Harry Glass

What do the surprise results of the Indian elections mean for the Indian working class?


The first surprise was the defeat of the Hindu chauvinist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has ruled India for the past five years. Most commentators thought that a BJP victory was inevitable, yet the party lost 4% of its vote compared with 1999 and more than 40 of its 182 seats.

By Martin Thomas

The left-wing monthly Red Pepper, and weekly Tribune, have joined forces to promote a "charter for the minority press".


What stung them to action was a decision by W H Smith, who control most of the wholesale trade in periodicals in Britain, to cut back still further on the number of magazines it will take. Royal Mail has also announced that from September 2004 it will scrap its Newspaper Registration Service, under which registered newspapers can go by first-class post for a second-class stamp.

The leaders of the 'Big Four' unions, Amicus, GMB, TGWU, and Unison - the trade-union 'mountains' - have recently made noises to suggest that they are about to go into labour. But so far they have not given birth even to the proverbial mouse.

• Support Colombian oil workers' strike
  

• Free Mario Bango!

Support Colombian oil workers' strike



The Colombian government is attempting to used military force to break the month-long strike at Ecopetrol, the national oil company.

By Mick Duncan

The International Olympics Committee (IOC) is turning a blind eye to the super-exploitation of workers producing sportswear marketed around the Athens Olympic Games.


The IOC ducks responsibility by stating that control over standards in this area lies with the National Olympic Committees, while the National Committees refer back to the IOC. But the Olympics Charter states that "all rights to the Olympic Symbol, Flag, and Motto belong exclusively to the IOC', giving them authority over licensing of National Committees and companies producing Olympics branded goods.

Come to Highbury Magistrates' Court on 9 July (Highbury Corner, London N7)! Activists Ewa Jasiewicz, recently returned from 8 months solidarity work in Iraq, and community film-maker Pennie Quinton have been charged with "Aggravated Trespass" whilst protesting inside and against the Iraq Procurement Conference in London on 27 April.

Key dates for solidarity

The new Iraqi Workers' Solidarity Group made a number of plans at our meeting on 25 May:

We will be organising a fund-raising benefit comedy night for Iraq's new trade unions. We'll be selling a t-shirt with the same aim.

By Clive Bradley

George W Bush says the transfer of sovereignty to Iraq will go ahead at the end of June, and is seeking a United Nations resolution to that effect. UN representative al-Akhdar al-Brahimi is already choosing a caretaker government which will hold power until elections are held - by the end of January 2005 at the latest.

The horrifying events in Rafah, the display by the Israeli state of naked ferocity and indifference both to human life and public outcry, can seem paralysing. And the plight of the Palestinians appears utterly helpless. But there is opposition even with the Israeli state; its own army is in ferment. Young conscripts, appalled at what they are being asked to do in the occupied Territories are refusing to serve. By 2003, over a thousand had declared their refusal to take part in the repression of the Palestinians. Proportional to the country's population, that is like 10,000 British troops or 40,000 US soldiers refusing to serve in Iraq. Refusenik! (Zed Books) compiles the statements and protests of many of them.

On Wednesday 12 May the Israeli army began an incursion into the Gaza Strip, with air strikes on the Rafah camp in the south of the territory near the Egyptian border. It followed the killing of 13 Israeli soldiers.

By Uri Avnery

The official purpose is to "destroy the tunnels" under the "Philadelphi Axis". But tunnels have been there for years. The army boasts of destroying 98 such tunnels in the past, but only one single tunnel has been discovered in this operation. Even if the army destroys more and more Palestinian homes in order to widen the axis - the new tunnels will just be longer.

• Rogue bodyguards

• Blair's bodyguard
• Multi-cultural? No, anti-semitic
• BNP idiot of the week
• By their celebrities shall you know them
• Not our brothers

Rogue bodyguards

Over the last weeks we have become more aware of the extent to which the Iraqi Coalition Provisional Authority "outsources" its security services. According to the Pacific News Service 1,500 of the security personnel are South Africans and many have used their backgrounds as mercenaries during the years of apartheid to bolster their credentials.

By Joan Trevor



Parents and teachers of Northcliffe School, serving Conisbrough and Denaby near Doncaster, are fighting to keep their school… and to keep it from Christian fundamentalists.

By Nick Holden

On 19 May, posters began to appear near where we live in Wigston, Leicestershire. They announced that, from the following day, the police would be applying a curfew at 9pm every night for under 16 year olds, in two-thirds of the borough in which we live.

Jim Denham recalls the strike support work done in Birmingham

At the end of last month residents of run-down Hackney estate Marcon Court awoke to find their estate getting a really decent clean-up. Could it be that Hackney Council had finally listened to our demands?

Lorna Reid of the Independent Working Class Association is standing for London
Mayor on 10 June. The IWCA has one sitting councillor in Oxford, and has conducted
a number of very local campaigns in other areas, mostly in London. Solidarity
cannot agree with much of the IWCA's localist approach and their exclusive
stress on community issues. We have very a different, we think broader,
vision of independent working class politics. Cathy Nugent
interviewed Lorna, who is based in Islington.

By Martin Thomas

On our way to leaflet a new batch of streets for Alison Brown, the socialist candidate in Sheffield City Council's elections, we passed the Yemeni mosque.


A group of men were standing outside, so I gave them leaflets. "I'm supporting Respect", said one of them.

The leaflets for the 10 June election from the Respect coalition (George Galloway and the SWP) include leftish words in the small print. But those do not mark it off sharply from the Greens, or even the Lib-Dems, and are not the cutting edges of its campaign.

The BNP is planning TV broadcasts on 28 May. "Unite Against Fascism" have called a protest against the BNP's broadcast at BBC Television Centre.

Dave Osler's letter (Solidarity 3/51) offers an opportunity to restate our position on the Jewish-Arab conflict.

Revolutionary socialists take as their fundamental stand "intransigent opposition" to the entire capitalist system in which we live. But sometimes capitalist governments do things which help us, or are at least lesser evils.

Chris Reynolds answers some important questions

Postal workers in Somerset are refusing to deliver the racist election leaflets for the British National Party (BNP)


The Communication Workers' Union said their members were following their consciences over the leaflets. Kevin Beazer of the union said: "We've got a national agreement between the union and the employer as regards the conscience clause.

"This means our postmen and women don't have to deliver offensive material, and we find the BNP to be a fascist and racist party and therefore we don't have to deliver this material."

By a rail worker

A ballot of 7,000 Network Rail workers by the RMT union has gone in favour of industrial action.

The result was 58% in favour (2,947) and 42% against (2,246). However, the RMT was forced to admit that only a very narrow majority of the signalling workers - they key section involved - voted for action.

Solidarity supporters who produce the rank and file bulletin Tubeworker have been running a campaign for reserve/cover staff. The campaign was given a boost on 19 May.

At a meeting of the Stations Functional Committee, the management agreed that 28 days notice of duties must be given and changes can not be made to those duties without consulting the staff concerned first.

By a tubeworker

The rail and tubeworkers' union RMT is in the process of balloting its members for strike action following the collapse of talks on pay and conditions within London Underground and Metronet. All three unions - RMT, ASLEF and (white collar staff) TSSA - have walked out of discussions. Only RMT is balloting its members.

London, Saturday 19 June
Assemble from 12 noon
Temple tube, Embankment
March 1pm
Rally 2pm Trafalgar Square


The TUC has called a national "Pay up for Pensions" demonstration in London on Saturday 19 June and it looks set to be well-attended. The demonstration is being supported by the National Pensioners' Convention.

The TUC demands are in line with most trade unions' policies, but the key task will be making our unions fight on those policies after 19 June. A big turnout on 19 June will put us in a better position to organise rank and file pressure.