Workers' Liberty

By Cathy Nugent
On Friday 18 June Tony Blair signed up to the new EU constitution on behalf of the UK government. Short of great political upheavals this constitution will settle the relationships between the capitalist powers in an expanded European Union for a long time to come - it codifies and pushes forward a very great degree of integration.

By Garth Frankland, Alliance for Green Socialism

Over 100 socialists stood in the local elections under different left political banners. In the main they consisted of people who had subscribed in different ways to the early days of the Socialist Alliance. The numbers standing were not very different from that organisation at its height.

The biggest concentrations were on Merseyside with 51 candidates, Coventry with 14, Leeds with 14 (12 Alliance for Green Socialism and 2 Socialist Party) and Walsall with 10. There were other candidates across the country. Respect stood very few local candidates.

By John O'Mahony

Four fifths of those who voted in a referendum in the south of Ireland, held on the same day as the Euro-election, voted to deprive some babies born in Ireland - those of recent immigrants - of automatic Irish citizenship. The Fianna Fail government promoted the "no to citizenship" cause, which, "on the ground", was argued as grim and undisguised racism - "you don't want blacks here, do you?" The left and Sinn Fein campaigned against the government, but were defeated by the chauvinist groundswell.

The advances made by the right, both the BNP and the UK Independence Party, in the European elections should send alarm bells ringing on the serious left. Not least because these advances demonstrate once more the inadequacy of the left.

In the terminology of the Marxist movement, unprincipled cliques or groups have been characterised as political bandits. A classic example of such a group is the group known as “Lovestoneites”. This group, which took its name from the characterless adventurer who has been its leader, poisoned and corrupted the American Communist movement for many years by its unprincipled and unscrupulous factional struggles. The Lovestoneites were able and talented people, but they had no definite principles. They were wild-eyed radicals and ultraleftists when Zinoviev was at the head of the Comintern. With the downfall of Zinoviev and the violent right swing of the Comintern under Bukharin, they became ardent Bukharinites as quickly and calmly as one changes his shirt. Their politics was always determined for them by external pressure? The Lovestoneites never had any independent program of their own. They were never able to develop one.

Following the SWP's wrecking of the Socialist Alliance, a number of comrades stood as 'Democratic Socialist Alliance' candidates in the 10 June local government elections. One of the most successful of these campaigns was run by AWL member Alison Brown, whose campaigned in the Burngreave ward of Sheffield.

The events

1 July: Leon Brittan endorses the use of Criminal Law rather than Civil Law against the miners.
5 July: National Coal Board and NUM talks.
6 July: Management visits NUM members at home encouraging them back to work.
8 July: High Court declares NUM Annual Conference unlawful.
National dock strike called against the movement of coal.

By Pablo Velasco

Inside:

• Strike wave in South Korea

• Soldiers terrorise workers Haitian workers
• Victory for Colombian banana workers' strike
• General strike in Nigeria stops petrol price rises

"We don't want your sweatshop goods"

Jotters sponsored by Pepsi, Coke machines stocking exclusively Coca Cola, Adidas-sponsored 'training days'. These are just some of the branded products that are finding their way into our schools in order to bombard school students with advertising from multinationals. But these companies, who are often involved in sweatshop labour and human rights abuses, are hardly 'role models' for young people.

By Jean Lane

It felt just like old times. Marching through the streets of London with contingent after contingent of union branches with their banners, whistles and music, chanting working class demands...

"The workers united…" sang the megaphones.
"T&G Fighting Back" declared the posters.
"Universal Benefits are a Universal Right"
"Retirement With Dignity For All"

Bringing up the rear of the demonstration, looking for all the world like another delegation, in matching blue sweatshirts and caps, were about twenty workers with plastic bags and litter pickers, cleaning up. They were casual non-union labour. They were earning £5 an hour. No pension, sick pay, holiday pay.

Inside:

Fair Trade Fashion

Comic book

Fair Trade Fashion

Over 100 people packed into Durham Town Hall on Friday 18 June for the latest Fair Trade Fashion Show. The event was organised by Durham University anti-sweat shop campaign, an activist group which works to raise awareness of the realities of sweatshops and support alternatives.

Nike's multi-million dollar Olympics advertising campaign is in jeopardy.

Marion Jones, the record-breaking American athlete accused of taking performance-enhancing drugs, is in danger of being barred from the competition. She is under scrutiny by the US Anti-Doping Agency.

Inside:

• Give them the money!

• Poorer
• Richer
• Poorer
• On the streets
• And then you die

Give them the money!



The London Evening Standard placarded it all over town: "Mayor Ken's £100,000 crones", implying there is something wrong in Livingstone's six ex-socialist advisers and lieutenants getting a decent wage. The Standard is always against wage rises. Think of the fire fighters; of the Standard's opposition to Blair's very minimal, minimum wage. Whipping up hostility to six of the Mayor's 'advisers' getting new titles and £111,000 a year - a mere pittance in Blair's Britain: two grand a week, or £300 a day - is par for the Standard's reactionary course.
They think the six should work, for say, the average wage of skilled workers?

Anwen Bailey reports

A contingent of people from the lesbian and gay rights groups OutRage! and the Queer Youth Alliance joined a demostration for Palestinian rights on 14 May. The demonstration was organised by the Palestinian Solidarity Committee. The contingent were there in solidarity with Palesitnians, but were also urging the Palestinian Authority to halt the arrest, torture and murder of homosexuals.

Les luttes continuent!

By Vicki Morris

The French far-left suffered a knock in the recent elections for the European parliament. The joint list of the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire (LCR)-Lutte Ouvriere (LO) received 432,000 votes, 2.58% of the total. They lost their five MEPs (although because of European enlargement they were always going to struggle to get an MEP this time).

New tensions in Iraq

An opinion poll conducted by the Coalition Provisional Authority in May - but not initially released to the US public - revealed that 55% of Iraqis would feel safer if the occupation was to end. 41% wanted it to end immediately, and 45% immediately upon the interim government taking power (which it has now done; formal sovereignty is passed to it at the end of June). Over half thought the behaviour of US troops in Abu Ghraib was typical. 78% have no confidence in the CPA, and 81% no confidence in the US. Only 11% expressed approval for the CPA (against 47% last November). 81% had an improved opinion of Muqtada al-Sadr - the radical cleric who led an uprising in the Shi'a south from the beginning of April.

By Thomas Carolan

"Ireland occupies a position among the nations of the earth unique... in the possession of what is known as a physical force party - a party, that is to say, whose members are united upon no one point, and agreed upon no single principle, except the use of physical force as the sole means of settling the dispute between the people of this country and the governing power of Great Britain...
"The latter-day high-falutin hillside man exalts into a principle that which the revolutionists of other countries have looked upon as a weapon, and in his gatherings prohibits all discussion of those principles which formed the main strength of his prototypes elsewhere and made the successful use of that weapon possible.
"…Every revolutionary movement in Ireland has drawn the bulk of its adherents from the ranks of disappointed followers of defeated constitutional movements…
"Their conception of what constitutes freedom was in no sense changed or revolutionised: they still believed in the political form of freedom which had been their ideal in their constitutional days…"

Bruce Robinson looks at the lives of Ray Charles and Elvin Jones

Two major innovators in African-American music have died in the last few weeks. Pianist and singer Ray Charles (died aged 73) was central to the development of soul music. Elvin Jones (76) transformed jazz drumming and played in John Coltrane's 1960s Quartet which was a major influence on subsequent generations of jazz musicians.

An Spailpin Fanach

(Phrases in italics are James Connolly's)

Young nightsoil man who shovels human shit
Left in the streets for such as you to lift,

What is the role of Marxists in politics? To tell the truth to the working class, to instill a sense of what Gramsci called 'the pessimism of the intellect'. It is to map out a path for independent working class politics, so that the working class can emancipate itself, take power and bring about a socialist society.

A letter from the Jewish Socialists' Group to Unite Against Fascism

Jim Bywator's comments (Inside America, 10 June) on the presidential campaign seem a little wide of the mark.

True, the case against backing Nader is easy: he's not a leftist, but, rather, some sort of radical, and his campaign certainly isn't 'independent working-class politics'.

Gerry Bates (Solidarity 3-52 27 May) says "The PJP has called on Muslims not to vote Lib-Dems because the Lib-Dems are in favour of equal rights for gays and lesbians."

Gerry knows this is not true. Jim Denham reported in early May on one of the left e-mail lists, that the leaflet had been withdrawn.

In the 19 June issue of Socialist Worker there is an article bemoaning the failure of the Green Party to agree an electoral alliance with Respect. This is used as an excuse for the failure of a great electoral breakthrough.

Giving away workers' rights

By Mark Sandell

The bosses have kicked off the holiday season with an offensive against sick workers. The bosses' union the CBI have released a report claiming that 15% of the sick days taken by workers are not authentic. The fact that the number of sick days hase been falling for five years and only rose this year was ignored. Also ignored was the shocking fact that British workers work the longest hours in western Europe.

A weekend of socialist debate, 3-4 July

At Highgate Newtown Community Centre, 25 Bertram Street, London N19 (Archway or Tufnell Park tube)

Discussions on Saturday 3 July

• Israel-Palestine: what chance for peace? Sean Matgamna (AWL) and an Israeli refusenik
  
  

We need unions that serve the members

Sanjay Sirikanth, GMB member

With the recent takeover of the print union GPMU and the forthcoming acquisition of banking union UNIFI, AMICUS is fast becoming the union of choice for trade union bureaucrats seeking to secure their pension funds by pushing merger through their union Executives.

By a postal worker

In common with their latest "turn" in other unions, leading SWP officials of the Communication Workers Union have been at the vanguard of promoting job-cutting deals with management.

Anger at the Government's treatment of firefighters since the 2002 pay dispute came to a head on 17 June when the Fire Brigades Union conference voted overwhelmingly to disaffiliate from the Labour Party.

By a Civil Servant

The Democracy slate (made up of Left Unity and the PCS Democrats) has won the National Executive Committee elections in the PCS for the second year running.

In response to this victory the union's hard right-wing group, the Moderates, have split. One faction of the Moderates have joined up with right wingers in the Inland Revenue to form yet another grouping in the union!