Workers' Liberty

By Cathy Nugent

Since February 2003 a brutal ethnic cleansing has taken place against some of the peoples of Darfur in western Sudan. It has been perpetrated by the military-Islamist government and the ferocious militia which it supports.

By Gerry Bates

Blairism is the syphilis of the British labour movement! The way the government foments and encourages racism and chauvinism is only the filthiest example of it.

By Colin Foster

Although Iraq's new prime ministed, Iyad Allawi, was essentially appointed by the USA, his government now owes its authority to a UN Security Council Resolution passed on 8 June after long negotiations between the big powers. That gives it much more potential for autonomy than if its status depended exclusively on the USA's say-so.

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, and to the mistreatment of workers at the games venues.

By Pablo Velasco

• Colombian oil workers halt privatisation: solidarity works!

• "Massive summer strikes" planned in Korea
• ANC against anti-privatisation activists
• Argentine workers fight for a six-hour day

By Michelle Parker

Some of the work being initiated in Britain by the Iraqi Workers' Solidarity Group is already being done in France by a group called Solidarité Irak.

“Ernie, when we have done this job for you, are we going back on the dole?”
An unknown British soldier embarking for D-Day, shouting after the then Minister of Labour, Ernest Bevin

By Alan Clarke, National Union of Students Executive, personal capacity

On 17 June, an emergency National Union of Students conference will meet to discuss structural reforms to plug the union's £500,000 a year financial deficit.

A look back at the events of May-June and the Battle for Orgreave.

May 29-18 June: Thousands of pickets and police fight battles outside Orgreave coking plant, near Sheffield. Coke runs from Orgreave were suspended on 18 June.

• Corporate America takes over the airwaves

• Shiny new Corporate America?
• Striking a pose
• Striking it rich?

Corporate America takes over the airwaves

The UK radio market is about to be deregulated, making it ripe for take over by big media corporations. One company that will do well in the UK market is US conglomerate Clear Channel.

By a CWU member

At the General Conference of the Communication Workers Union (CWU) (14 June) the European Working Time Directive will be discussed.

At present, different sections of the union have different policies on whether individual opt-outs should continue.

In Solidarity 3/52 we reported how the leaders of Britain's biggest trade unions, Amicus, GMB, TGWU and Unison, had drawn up demands for the manifesto Labour should stand on in the next general election. We now have a copy of that manifesto, although it remains "private and confidential".

It does not include, for example, a promise to repeal the Thatcherite anti-trade union laws that Labour keeps in place in order to cow union members and prevent them taking effective action in pursuit of their goals. The trade union leaders' demands do not include a promise to tax the rich and private enterprise to pay for desperately needed public services. Where they do include good things, the language is vague.

Inside America by Jim Bywater

I think it was right to support the presidential campaign of veteran anti-corporate campaigner Ralph Nader in 2000, but not this time.

I think I will vote Respect in the Euro elections despite taking on board the very real criticisms levelled against them by Workers' Liberty. I don't think that you can ever vote for a party uncritically anyway.

Ronald Reagan's death at the age of 93 has prompted a wave of gushing eulogies. The entire US nation, we are informed, is grief stricken. President Reagan restored the US's confidence and single-handedly ended the Cold War… So they say.

Dear comrades,

Over the last couple of months, you and some other socialists have put a big effort into the Respect election campaign. Has it been worth it?

If Respect does get a reasonably big vote, that will not be because of the general leftish talk that it shares with the Greens. It will because of the chosen cutting edges of its campaign.

The last issue's interview (Solidarity, 3/52) with London Mayor candidate Lorna Reid showed up both strengths and weaknesses in her group, the Independent Working Class Association (IWCA).

By Harry Glass

On 4 June 1989 the Chinese Communist Party savagely repressed the Tiananmen Square democracy movement that had grown to threaten its rule over the previous three months. The student-based protest had occupied Tiananmen Square at the heart of Beijing.

The first two letters of this exchange appeared recently in the letters page of the Guardian newspaper. The Guardian has not printed Sacha Ismail's reply to George Galloway's reply. Sacha is a member of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty.

By Vicki Morris

The European Social Forum in London on 14-17 October will be a great event, be in no doubt. Thousands, hopefully tens of thousands, will come from all over Europe and beyond to discuss all the issues of concern to people who oppose capitalism and people who at least want to reform it.

Martin Thomas concludes a series on "Marxists and the workers' party" with a warning against fetishising the trade-union-based forms of "old Labour"

In 1909, Karl Kautsky, then a Marxist, wrote that moves to set up trade-union-based Labour Parties in continental Europe "must be fought with all the means at our disposal" (Neue Zeit, July 1909, Vol.13 no.7, pp.316-28).

By John O'Mahony

This and subsequent articles are part of the series on 'The Roots of Bolshevism', but they are out of sequence. The articles printed so far in Solidarity have dealt mainly with the populist pre-history of the Russian revolutionary movement.

Paul Hampton reviews Historical Materialism 11/4 (2003) £10

Why is the American labour movement so weak, given the rapid development of capitalism in the United States over the last 150 years? Why is union density now so low (15%) and why has no workers' party developed in the US? Does this mean socialism has failed, given the Marxist argument that economic development constitutes the basis of politics?

by Sean Matgamna

On D-Day, 6 June 1944, an armada of ships and planes launched British, American and Commonwealth soldiers into a full-scale invasion of Hitler-ruled mainland Europe. The official celebration of the 60th anniversary of that momentous event cannot but arouse mixed feelings in socialists.

By a tube worker

The RMT have cancelled strike action on the Underground set for Thursday 10 June. They did this against the wishes of the union's branches, reps and the majority of members.

By Pat Murphy, Secretary Leeds NUT

Some 10,000 school staff in Leeds are to be balloted for strike action in protest at compulsory redundancies in the city. The four main unions organising teachers and support staff, the NUT, NASUWT, GMB and UNISON are involved. If we win the ballot, there is likely to be a one-day strike which will shut down the vast majority of Leeds schools.

On the fringes of the annual conference of the public services union Unison (from 22 June in Bournemouth), there will be opportunities for both local government and health activists to get together and debate attitudes to the current pay offers, and a meeting to launch an exciting new campaign to raise support for the newly emerging trade union movement in Iraq.

By Kate Ahrens

A key issue coming up on the agenda of Unison local government conference in Bournemouth on 21 June will be the Workforce Remodelling agreement in schools which Unison and most other education unions signed up to last year, but which the NUT has maintained opposition to.

By Nick Holden

After suspending conference on 11 May the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) exec went into extensive negotiations with the employers over the conditions they wanted to implement in stage two of the 2002 pay award.

By a RMT member

The RMT is holding talks with bosses at Network Rail in their dispute over pay and the closure of the pension scheme to new workers. Both signal and infrastructure staff. have been offered the reinstatement of their Christmas bonus (£35) which they lost last year, a 25% discount on season tickets for work related travel and a Joint Working Party (talks) on pensions.