Workers' Liberty

“Reactionary socialism… half lamentation, half lampoon; half echo of the past, half menace of the future.”
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto

The Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) was prominent on the platforms at the European Social Forum on 15–17 October, and as a joint sponsor of the demonstration which closed the ESF, on 17 October.

Yannick Etienne is a member of Batay Ouvriye (Workers’ Fight), a militant trade union federation in Haiti. Yannick is on a speaking tour of Britain organised by No Sweat and the Haiti Support Group. Solidarity spoke to Yannick about the situation in Haiti today and about the work of Batay Ouvriye, particularly in the new Free Trade Zone that is being built at Ouanaminthe, on the border with the Dominican Republic

By Mathew Bailey

Parents, teachers and students of Northcliffe School, serving Conisbrough and Denaby near Doncaster, have recently stopped their school from being turned into an academy run by a religious organisation, the Emmanuel Schools Foundation (ESF). This is the first time proposals for an academy have been overturned. It is, as the Yorkshire Post put it, a “huge blow to Blair”.

More than a quarter of all working families in the United States, including 20 million children, are considered low-income or poor, an independent report has found.

Prisoners committing suicide and pensioners left to freeze.

By Dan Katz

The Home Secretary, David Blunkett, is considering abolishing Britain’s absurd blasphemy laws when legislating for a new offence of incitement to religious hatred. By so doing Blunkett hopes to split those opposed to the new incitement law.

Nearly 25,000 people in London for two and a half days of debate, and tens of thousands on a Sunday afternoon closing demonstration — the European Social Forum 2004, on 15-17 October, was well worth attending, despite the rain!

By Martin Thomas

The Socialist Workers Party, a major force in the organisation both of the European Social Forum and of the Stop The War Coalition, has condemned the shouting-down of Subhi al Mashadani, general secretary of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, at the ESF on 15 October.

Former ASLEF general secretary Mick Rix has withdrawn from the Stop the War Coalition committee after its statement denouncing the IFTU. Excerpts from a statement he has circulated:

Alex Gordon, a member of the RMT rail union who visited Iraq in October 2003 and has been active in building support for the Iraqi unions, talked to Solidarity about the shouting-down of Subhi al Mashadani.

By Colin Foster

At the Respect fringe meeting at the European Social Forum (Saturday 16 October), George Galloway set out to define for Respect “the traditions in which we stand... the flag we seek to carry”.

Last week thousands of hotel workers and their allies flooded Union Square in San Francisco for a unity rally. Workers at four San Francisco hotels went on strike two weeks ago and hotel operators responded by locking out employees at 10 other locations last Friday. The lockout has been extended to the other four hotels. The union, Unite Here Local 2, represents about 8,000 workers at 60 San Francisco hotels. Some 4,000 cooks, room cleaners, dishwashers, bellmen, servers and switchboard operators are affected by the strike and lockout involving the 14 hotels.

The US has asked the British government to send you north to free up forces for another offensive against Falluja. I’m writing to ask you to refuse any orders to deploy to Baghdad or other areas currently under US control.

Nigerian trade unions organised a four-day general strike against fuel price rises in October, and have vowed to call an indefinite stoppage if the government fails to lower the price of petrol.

Earlier this month the government’s Pensions Commission reported on the state of Britain’s pension provision.

Its main finding was that 11.3 million workers were not making any pension contributions, and that those who are making pension contributions are saving “too little”.

The two major union federations in Korea — the Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU) and the more militant Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) — have formed joint headquarters for a proposed general strike.

Support the Basra oil union and a Workers' Conference

Government proposals on the Civil Partnership Bill were amended in the House of Lords recently, ostensibly to extend the rights that the legislation will give to same-sex couples to other domestic arrangements, such as carers. The amendments were, according to the Government, wrecking tactics. Below Outrage gives a response and Maria Exall puts forward an alternative view.

Jane Ashworth (letters, Solidarity 3/59) complains about my comment on the “tilt... towards pro-war and pro-occupation elements in the labour movement” of the new and still somewhat mysterious “Labour Friends of Iraq” group.

The Socialist Alliance Democracy Platform (SADP) emailed and posted a letter to the National Committee of the SWP on 27 September concerning the future of the Socialist Alliance (SA).

Adam Maor and Matan Kaminer were among five young Israelis sentenced to two years in jail for refusing to serve in the Israeli army in the Occupied Territories — and possible further jail time if they continued to refuse.

An international campaign — as part of which Solidarity and Workers’ Liberty members in London picketed the Israeli Embassy regularly for a period of months — won early release for the five, on 15 September, and then, on 20 September, exemption for them from all further army service.

Adam and Matan were in London for the European Social Forum, and are now touring England to speak at meetings. They spoke to Martin Thomas.

On 15 October the Israeli army began to wind up its latest incursion into Gaza — 16 days of military assaults against the Hamas militias who use home-made, but often lethal, rockets. The operation has killed around 100 Palestinians including civilians and some children.

Of course it is good if schools teach children about a wide variety of cultures. But, contrary to Vicki Morris’s “defence of multiculturalism”, that is not what multiculturalism is about.

By Mark Osborn

On 15 October, at the same time as the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions leader, Subhi al Mashadani was being shouted down at Alexandra Palace, Conway Hall was packed for a benefit night with comedians Mark Thomas and Simon Munnery, to raise money for the Basra Unemployed Workers’ Centre, linked to the Union of the Unemployed of Iraq.

The media’s exclusive focus on the crisis on Sudan is no accident. When it’s an “Arab” militia involved it’s a bad genocide, when it’s puppet governments doing the genocide for the benefit of western corporations, no-one gets to know about it.

By Thomas Carolan

In our survey of the history of Irish Republicanism we have reached the point beyond which the story is that of the emergence of the Provisional IRA/Sinn Fein in the last month of the 1960s and the first month of the 1970s — of the Catholic revolt in Northern Ireland which preceded that emergence and gave the Provisional IRA a mass base of support and sustenance for a war that would last 23 years (1971-94) and end with something like a deferred victory for the Provisional IRA.

In The Climate of Treason Andrew Boyle recounts a conversation which took place amongst a group of young communists in the summer of 1933, in Cambridge. Some of them would become the famous traitors who would be exposed in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, after having served the USSR as double agents within the British secret services for decades.

Rhodri Evans reviews To be a European Muslim, by Tariq Ramadan. (The Islamic Foundation, Leicester.)

Dan Nichols reviews The Monarchy, Channel Four