Workers' Liberty

Sacha Ismail on the Socialist Workers Party pamphlet Iraq: why the troops must get out now by Chris Bambery

According to Understanding Prejudice, a major new study commissioned by the gay rights group Stonewall prejudice is rife in Britain. Two-thirds of white people in Britain admit to some prejudice, even if only casual or unintentional, against one or another or against several minority groups.

Management has now been forced to recognise the GMB at Laing O’Rourke, where there is a dispute over new contracts. Previously, it had recognised only UCATT, which had agreed a new contract which slashed pay and conditions. Over 100 workers have now joined the GMB, which management initially barred from the big Channel Tunnel Rail Link site at King's Cross.

The libel case against the Daily Telegraph brought by George Galloway MP has finally come to court. It will run in court for five days, from 16 November, and then there will probably be some delay until the judge’s verdict.

Unions in Nigeria organised a general strike on 16 November after the government failed to cut petrol prices.

More than twenty worker activists at the former Tianwang Textile Factory in Xianyang city, Shaanxi Province, have been arrested by police after a seven week factory-wide strike by around 6,800 workers.

Hotel workers have demanded a boycott of nine Los Angeles luxury hotels involved in a dispute with over wages, benefits and working conditions.

Aslef, the train drivers’ union, has called 24-hour strikes by half the drivers on the Jubilee line on 4 and 24 December.

“The Company doesn’t care if you are getting rubbish money. As long as you get the work done, you are out of sight, out of mind.”

Workers at the parcel delivery company Lynx have taken two days of strike action for an improved pay offer. The company bussed in dozens of agency workers to their main depot in Nuneaton, and then claimed the strike had “had no effect”.

The last pit in the “superpit” coalfield of Selby, North Yorkshire, closed last month and with it went 1,700 mining jobs. The coalfield — which consisted of five pits and one drift mine — covered 110 square miles, an area the size of the Isle of Wight. It was started October 1976, at a time when British capitalism thought coal was a good alternative to oil. When it opened, the Selby coalfield was praised by then Labour government as a “striking symbol of the re-birth of coal as a major energy source”.

RMT members at rail-freight company EWS are to be asked about stepping up their industrial action over jobs, working hours and conditions, after talks with the company at Acas broke down.

Privatised ex-NHS staff at Birmingham’s Heartlands hospital have accepted a deal which will see them reach parity with NHS pay and conditions by 2007. The deal was offered to them by Initial Hospital Services and Birmingham Heartlands management after the workers planned strikes in protest against the “two-tier workforce”.

The national strike called by PCS on the 5 November was solid, with about 200,000 staff were on strike. Encouraging report backs show a high level of picketing across the country and that all the rallies were well attended.

UNISON and Amicus have both accepted the NHS pay package, “Agenda for Change” (AfC). UNISON members voted 3 to 1 to accept the deal, on a low (25%) turnout, while 57% of Amicus members accepted the deal and 43% rejected it on a 40% turnout.

About 50 people — many more than usual — were at the most recent monthly meeting of Iraq Occupation Focus to hear Sami Ramadani and Ewa Jasiewicz on “Trade unionism in occupied Iraq” (London, 9 November).

Britain’s basic state pension is only 15% (and falling) of average earnings. It is the meanest, in proportion to earnings, of all the richer capitalist countries.

A report by Cécile Hennion and Rémy Ourdan, translated from Le Monde of 3 November 2004.

Baghdad is an occupied city. It’s difficult to describe, but there’s always something in the air to remind you of this.

I find Solidarity’s obsessive anti-Stalinism extremely tiresome. Dishonest too.

• Ken’s favourite Muslim?
• Stone or flog? Mmmm...
• Two Jags strikes again
• Ayatollahs not so bad?

Steve Cohen reviews “An Execution In The Family” by Robert Meeropol, St Martins Press

New Labour is a clean machine. On the bridge over Victoria Station in Manchester there used to be a slogan daubed well before the age of spray paint. In bold white-wash it demanded “Save the Rosenbergs”. This was obliterated by the Labour council some time in the 1990s. I want to restore it. Thanks to that slogan, by my eighth birthday I’d become politicised on one significant issue — the cruelty, corruption and anti-communism of the USA political and judicial system.

Philip Havering reviews Anti-capitalism: where now? Edited by Hannah Dee. Bookmarks, 2004, £6

In the looming General Election a joint campaign against Blair will be mounted by four left parties.

When it happened minds came together. Struggles converged like many rivulets forming a powerful river. Floating hopes joined to become an unstoppable Hope. It all flowed towards the future. This was the force of the just-ended Zimbabwe Social Forum as thousands of radical spirits came together in central Harare from 28-30 October. Problems were attacked, common struggles found. Visions of The Society We Want abounded, strategies were laid out. The future was on the horizon, it felt.

Now showing at Tate Modern London, until 23 January 2005, is a very comprehensive exhibition of the work of photographer Robert Frank.

I once bought a tape of songs from the 1984-5 miners’ strike, and what did I find in amongst the songs by miners and about miners?

A reply to Sean Matgamna’s “Reactionary Anti-Imperialism”

Sean Matgamna’s article (“Reactionary Anti-Imperialism” [Solidarity 3/60]) was a useful brick to throw at reactionary anti-imperialists but was dishonest on three counts.

Peter Thomas examines the work of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, who died in October

At the Stop the War Coalition's National Council meeting in Leeds on Saturday 13 November the SWP leadership forced through a remarkable decision.

It voted down a motion which would have committed the Stop the War campaign to an immediate end of the occupation of Iraq. Yes, you did read that correctly. We now have a "Stop the War" campaign that refuses to support an immediate withdrawal of the occupying troops. This is a stunning betrayal of the thousands involved in StW and the millions whom have supported it.