Workers' Liberty

A briefing on the Muslim Association of Britain and its links with the Muslim Brotherhood.

14-17 October, London

Join Workers' Liberty and No Sweat activities and meetings at the ESF. Tel 020 7207 3997 for Workers' Liberty details. Tel 07719 283132 for No Sweat details.
Friday 15 October: all day: ESF plenaries, seminars and workshops at Alexandra Palace, N22

Back in June, and at the last moment, David Blunkett inserted a clause into the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc) Act.

• Wembley steel workers sacked

• Met Uni lecturers strike
• Swansea council strike set to escalate
• Fire pay dispute settled

Tony Byrne recommends a new pamphlet about the privatisation of London Underground

Communism and philistinism

This is the second part of an obituary article of James Patrick Cannon, one of the founders of the international Trotskyist movement.

Thomas Carolan continues his series about the history of Irish Republicanism

from Paul Flewers
Annie O’Keefe’s review of Darcus Howe’s depressing programme on growing hostility between non-white people in Britain (Solidarity, 13 August) fails to indicate a factor that has helped to exacerbate hostility both between white and non-white people and amongst non-white groups.

My letter is inspired by Cathy Nugent’s review (Solidarity 3/56) of the novel Maps for Lost Lovers by Nadeem Aslam.

Paul Hampton reviews Che Guevara and the Cuban Revolution by Mike Gonzales (Bookmarks, £8.99)

Dan Katz reviews Stasiland by Anna Funder (Granta, £7.99)

Pat Longman reviews Willing Slaves: How the Overwork Culture is Ruling Our Lives by Madeleine Bunting (Harper Collins, £12.99)

By Joan Trevor

It’s difficult to say whether support for the BNP, or the far right generally, has peaked. It’s certain that anti-fascists cannot be complacent.
Look at these facts and figures:
- 808,200 people, 4.9% of those who voted, voted for the BNP in last June’s European election. The BNP failed to have anyone elected.
However, the nationalist and, in their election material and the pronouncements of Robert Kilroy-Silk, racist UK Independence Party won 16.1% of the vote and got 12 MEPs elected.

The following article by Jim Gibney is taken from Sinn Fein’s An Phoblacht/Republican News from 26 August. We don’t agree with very much of Sinn Fein’s politics, but on this issue — the rights of travellers — they have a good record.

The TUC congress opened on 3 September in 1984. There was still time to rally the working class to the miners.

Robbing the rich? No way!

Conrad Black’s behaviour towards the shareholders of Hollinger International has outraged his capitalist peers.
The man who investigated Black’s looting of the Telegraph owners — to the tune of $400 million — is the former head of the New York Securities and Exchange Commission, Richard Breedon. For Breedon, turning a profit at the expense of the workers was fair enough. But robbing your shareholders to the extent that Black did was mind-boggling and a moral outrage.

Journalist and activist Ewa Jasiewicz has been held in a detention centre in Israel since 11 August, threatened with deportation.

By Clive Bradley

In the end, the crisis in Najaf ended peacefully — although many died along the way — and as a huge political victory for Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.

"Harry Sands" joined the International Solidarity Movement in protests in the West Bank this summer. This is part of a diary of his experience

• S W London No Sweat meets on Monday 6 September, 7.30pm at BWTUC Centre, 898 Garratt Lane, Tooting, SW17 (Tooting Broadway tube).
Discussion on organising low paid and sweatshop workers in London, with speakers from T&G and GMB.

Puma profits from the Olympics

From a new report by the US National Labor Committee and China Labour Watch

Puma sponsors Olympic teams and star athletes around the world. But it is unlikely that even these finely conditioned athletes could keep pace with Puma’s workers in China, forced to work up to 16.5 hours a day, from 7:30 a.m. to midnight, six or seven days a week, for wages of just 31 cents an hour.

Unions at Wal-Mart!

After years of dogged attempts to organise unions in Wal-Mart, workers in Canada are starting to make some gains at this, the world’s largest retailer.

In August, the Quebec Labour Relations Board certified a union at the Wal-Mart store in Jonquière, Quebec after more than half of its 145 workers signed cards to become members of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW). A mandatory contract will soon have to be agreed — and that would create the first union branch at Wal-Mart anywhere in North America.

Help us raise £30,000!

What a dull summer it’s been. And there’s been nothing coming into the kitty. Were it not for the money raised by comrades working at Reading Festival, it would have been a complete washout. We are looking forward to an autumn of renewed political activity and a drive on increasing public sales of Solidarity. Why not ask for a “solidarity price” for this paper — £1 — even that little extra will help us!

Jim Byagua joined the 300,000 marching through New York against Bush on the weekend before the Republican Party National Convention

New York City this week hosted the Republican National Convention — the pre-election party gathering where right-wing celebrities such as Rudolph Giuliani, the former mayor of the city and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the terminator, issue media sound bites amidst ecstatic placard-waving delegates and thousands of balloons.

The Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (CLPD) have scoured the Labour Party rule book and found a way to force a leadership contest in the Labour Party. A way, that is, potentially, to get rid of Tony Blair as leader of the Labour Party!

In CLPD’s bulletin No.67, July 2004, they set out the rules to use.

In summary:
“Conference has the power to initiate a leadership election by invoking Section 4B.2d (ii) of the National Rules of the Labour Party…

By Maria Exall

At this year’s TUC Conference, Brighton, from 13 September, there are several motions from a variety of unions on the issue of employment rights.

As in previous years these include many good positive demands, as well as the call for the abolition of anti union laws. This year, however, the unbiased observer may well be confused as to the intentions of those voting for these motions.

By Paul Hampton

Hugo Chávez comfortably won the referendum on his presidency in Venezuela last month, strengthening his hold on power until the next presidential election in 2006.

Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) announced that nearly five million (59%) voted “no” to a recall presidential election and to keep Chávez in power in the referendum on 15 August. The “yes” option obtained three and a half million votes, just under 41%.

The union movement has a marathon to run, but is performing at the level of an egg and spoon race.

The Palestinians and Israel face an Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, who has been grimly successful in his brutal policy over the last year.

Unite the socialists for the general election!

Some union leaders are claiming that they have won significant concessions from Blair and reshaped New Labour's manifesto for 2005. But even they cannot seriously deny that John Cridland of the bosses' federation, the CBI, was basically right when he said that New Labour's deal with the unions at its 23-25 July Policy Forum "left things roughly where they were".