Workers' Liberty

The latest issue of Critique communiste, magazine of the French Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire, has an interview in which researcher Michel Pialoux discusses his findings on the “disorganisation of the working class” being generated by long-term mass unemployment and casualisation in France.

The Islamist writer Tariq Ramadan is a top-billed speaker at the ESF in London in October.

The following text gives some information on the debate in France about Tariq Ramadan and his politics.

Introduction, by Sean Matgamna: How “many ideas to few people” serves mass agitation. Earlier articles have recounted the pre-history of the Russian Marxist movement in revolutionary populism. Before we go on to describe the work of the first Russian Marxist groups, the Group for the Emancipation of Labour and later its offshoot, the Iskra/Zarya group, we will first ask, with George Plekhanov: what is the socialist movement, and what do socialists do? Plekhanov, the pioneer of the Russian Marxist movement, answered this fundamental question in his 1891 text The Tasks of the Russian Social Democrats in the Famine. This is one of the basic documents of Russian socialism and we print part of it here.

Education not for sale!

At a tiny, unrepresentative “special conference” in June, the right-wing leadership of the National Union of Students (NUS) moved a step closer to its long-cherished goal of completely banishing ordinary students from involvement in the national union by passing a raft of anti-democratic “reforms”.

Thomas Carolan continues his series about the history of Irish Republicanism

I agree with Paul Flewers that socialists should subject multiculturalism to a thoroughgoing critique. He has started us off with an ugly caricature showing the pitfalls of implementing multiculturalism in a corrupt world of decaying political standards and working class demoralisation.

No Sweat is bringing two main speakers to intervene at the ESF, with its own meetings and official seminars (time, date, place on the No Sweat website as soon as we know them).

By Colin Foster

The TUC congress on 13–16 September passed a motion from the lecturers’ union NATFHE committing it to “maintain and strengthen contact with Iraqi trade unionists, in particular the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) [and] initiate, together with affiliated trade unions, a solidarity committee to liaise with, and give practical support to, the trade union movement in Iraq”.

Dan Nichols watches Fox News

Depending on which polls you trust, the US presidential race is currently either tied or being won by Bush. This is amazing when one considers Bush’s appalling record. Part of the reason behind Bush’s lead is the way that America’s politics are covered by its media.

The Labour Party conference opened at Blackpool on 1 October. It overturned and overruled the platform line on the miners’ strike.

Kitty Kelly’s new book about the Bush family — The Family — is the book that the capitalist political class deserves. It’s full of gossip, innuendo, heated-up Internet facts, speculation about familial dysfunction and disorder, rumour and salacious scandal.

With the General Election approaching, ENS will be developing a Manifesto for Education as a focus for campaigning against the Government.

Another bright-spark Blairite who has been recently elevated to high places — as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions — is Alan Johnson.

Johnson was also a “Trot” when he was a teenager. But he also soon left that behind.

By Joan Trevor

Last-minute preparations are being made for the 3rd European Social Forum, less than a month away. While it’s far from being the ESF we — or many others — would have wanted, it will still be an immensely significant and enjoyable event.

Paul Hampton reviews True Mission: Socialists and the Labor Party in the US by Eric Chester (Pluto 2004, £14.99)

Jim Byagua reviews The Good Fight: Declare Your Independence and Close the Democracy Gap by Ralph Nader (Regan Books)

The presidential election in Afghanistan is scheduled for 9 October. As of 23 August 10.35 million Afghans had registered to vote. That is good. That so many people have registered must indicate that people feel a tremendous relief at being free of the Taliban regime. (Although apparently only 42% of eligible women have registered.)

James P Cannon still has a lot to teach Marxists today and the balance sheet on his life and politics is largely positive (Solidarity 3/56 and 3/57). There is no doubt his decision to support Trotsky in 1928 was of enormous significance in creating the international tendency opposed to Stalinism, on whose shoulders we stand today.

Stories about the past of Alan Milburn are now doing the rounds of the intra-left email lists. For anyone who missed it, he has returned to government to take up the Cabinet post of Election Planner (co-ordinating rosette colours and MPs ties?)

Continuing our timeline of the events of the strike...

By Nick Holden

Fire Brigades Union (FBU) leaders are claiming a victory in the final stages of their two year long pay dispute. They say management are finally paying previously-agreed pay increases from the 2003 pay deal.

The Health Service Group Executive of the public-service workers' union Unison voted on 8 September to recommend "Yes" to Agenda for Change.

Around 100 people, and organisations, including Voices in the Wilderness and No Sweat, came together on Saturday 4 September in central London to stage the Iraq War Fat Cats Theatrical Tour.

Workers at Stratford Social Security office, in east London, are to be balloted for indefinite strike action by their union PCS The ballot starts on Wednesday 22 September and the result will be known on by Friday 8 October.

Bruce Robinson reviews The Motorcycle Diaries.

Liverpool Social Workers' Strike, Swansea ballots on all out strike, Hackney College job cuts.

Between 1 and 22 October PCS will ballot all its members for a one-day strike on 5 November.

More than 700,000 public sector workers, including 320,000 teachers, struck on 16 September in probably the biggest strike in South Africa’s history.

The South African telecommunications firm Telkom plans to shed another 4,181 workers in three years, despite making record profits this year.