Workers' Liberty

This year is the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), otherwise known as the Wobblies, in the United States.

Attacks by the Iraqi resistance have been made on member’s of the IFTU on the railway line between Basra and Nasiriyyah. Reports of the attack on the No Sweat website prompted this exchange. Abridged.

For the last 15 months, a number of left groups and individual members of the Socialist Alliance (SA) have grouped together under the Socialist Alliance Democracy Platform (SADP). Our main aim has been to maintain the SA as a major focus for left unity as part of the process of building a new workers’ socialist party, organisation or network as an alternative to New Labour.

Christian Parenti is a San Fransisco based activist and the author of The Freedom: Shadows and Hallucinations in Occupied Iraq.

At the end of 2004 he spoke to Solidarity about the nature of the Iraqi resistance

The Birmingham Repertory Theatre’s shameful decision before Christmas to cancel the play Behzti (Dishonour) was justified in the following way by Executive Director Stuart Rogers: “[Sikh] community leaders have been unable to guarantee to us that there will be no repeat of illegal and violent activities… we cannot guarantee the safety of our audiences… [W]e have decided to end the current run of the play on security grounds.”

Socialist Worker, the miners and the “downturn”

By Jack Cleary, from Socialist Organiser 6 February 1985

Socialists need realism, honesty and candour in assessing the world around us. On the other hand we should have no business with unnecessary or premature defeatism. Anyone reading what Socialist Worker says could not avoid the conclusion that the strike is lost.

Teaching assistants in Brighton and Hove are still in dispute over the council’s plans to cut the number of weeks a year they are paid.

There will be no working-class socialist presence in Iraq’s elections on 30 January — assuming that they do take place. The Worker-communist Party of Iraq is boycotting the elections. The Communist Party of Iraq is running, but under the banner of a “People’s Union” with a political platform limited to the “stage” of “building the democratic establishments for a united, pluralistic and federal Iraq”; and it says it is doing that only because Shia and Sunni Islamists refused to establish a broader coalition with the CP (Al-Sharq al-Awsat, 29 December, translated by BBC Monitoring Service).

Described by the National Organisation of Women as a “virtual tidal wave of anti-abortion and anti-contraception legislation”, women in the US are facing what is perhaps the greatest threat to their reproductive rights since abortion first became legal.

Argentina’s movement of occupied factories is an inspiration in the fight against neoliberalism, and an important symbol that another world is possible, necessary and emerging.

In the run-up to the 1997 general election, the British public was presented with a choice of two similar housing policies by the two main parties. The Conservatives promised wholesale privatisation of council housing. Labour wanted councils to ballot their tenants on whether or not they wanted ownership of their estates to be “transferred” to housing associations. The end seemed to be nigh for council housing. One of the best, and most successful, welfare policies of the twentieth century was to be swept aside by the neo-liberal consensus.

Uzbek “Republic”

A fair election result was finally secured in the Ukraine over the Christmas period — although only after mass protests had secured a re-run.

There will be no such happy outcome in Uzbekistan where all five parties taking part in the 25 December parliamentary election supported the incumbent President, Islam Karimov. Additionally, two-thirds of potential candidates were not allowed to stand.

There has been a huge response from trade unionists worldwide. Here is a selection of sites and appeal information.

General information

Updates on trade union appeals and news

In October 1917 soviets — institutions of working class democratic self-organisation — led by the Bolsheviks took power in Russia. Lenin’s Bolshevik party did not believe that socialism could be created in underdeveloped Russia. The Bolsheviks thought that the Russian workers were but the advanced guard for the German and west-European workers. They expected revolution to erupt in Europe.

Hardly a day goes by without news of research involving stem cells. It is also a subject of hot political debate: the Swiss recently voted 2 to 1 in favour of allowing it, while the US forbids the use of government money in some stem cell research.

When Derek Simpson was elected General Secretary of Amicus many thought it would lead to greater democracy in the union, and make the union more critical towards the Labour government.

The demand for national liberation, for the right of self-determination of a people, is understood by socialists to be a demand for radical, consistent democracy. This at once separates us from those who, such as the Buchananite paleocons, place the inviolability of the national principle above all other considerations and who may consistently oppose imperial interventions on that basis.

Upcoming events:

While the Islamists and former regime members continue to mainly target foreign troops and Iraqi state officials in the run-up to the Iraqi elections, the comprehensively anti-working class nature of the so-called resistance is revealed by a continuing series of attacks on trade union organisations and union members.

Television over the Christmas period? Well, it was the usual rubbish.

Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean, is one of the biggest US military bases outside the USA. To clear space for it, the people of the islands were deported by the British government, the former colonial ruler. 2,000 people and their children were forcibly removed and abandoned on the dockside in Port Louis, on Mauritius main island.

Within No Sweat we debate what is the best way to stop sweatshop labour. One of the biggest debates we have is around the role to be played by FAIRTRADE goods. Here Paul Hampton explains what he sees as the shortcomings and drawbacks of FAIRTRADE. We invite other readers to join the debate

The last issue of Solidarity (3-63) argued that charity appeals like Bandaid cannot stop world hunger. But does charity do any good at all? The answer to that is yes, to an extent, if you have an immediate need that it meets.

Late last year union leaders of the public sector unions met to discuss the way forward on pension rights and provision. This meeting had been convened on the initiative of the civil service union PCS but was called under the auspices of the TUC.

Liam Conway reviews Shopped by Joanna Blythman

A group of female workers have been on strike since early December at a Japanese wireless phone factory in Shenzhen, which supplies giant American retailer Wal-Mart.

Sean Matgamna concludes a response to “Don’t think twice, it’s alright” by Alan Johnson and Jane Ashworth (Solidarity 3-62).

More than 200 workers from the Iran Pars Garment factory marched from the city of Rasht (northern Gilan province) to the Iranian capital Tehran in a dispute over backpay.

Cathy Nugent reviews Al-Qaeda: the true story of Radical Islam by Jason Burke (Penguin, £7.99)

Strike action by London Underground signal and line-control staff which threatened to disrupt New Year services was called off when their union, the RMT, made a deal with management.