Workers' Liberty

* The 1906 Speech of Leon Trotsky, on Trial for His Life, to the Tzarist Court.
* Introduction: Sean Matgamna

The “war on terrorism” being waged by George W Bush’s US hyperpower and its political satellites, such as Tony Blair’s Britain, poses strongly the question of the attitude of Marxists toward political violence.

By Martin thomas

After 12 years as a coalition of the left the Socialist Alliance was shut down at a conference on Saturday 5 February.

Dear comrade,

You have been persuaded by the leaders of the so-called anti-war movement and Respect that those who fight the US and British forces in Iraq are bona fide anti-imperialists who fight for national self-determination.

The imprisoned Liaoyang worker activist, Xiao Yunliang, has been transferred to a prison with inadequate heating facilities in a mountainous rural area near Shenyang, where temperatures are currently around minus 20 degrees C. This is his eleventh transfer since he was first imprisoned in 2002.

A group representing 52 trade unions has expressed “disappointment” with the poor performance of new Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono during his first 100 days in office.

By Colin Foster

France’s right wing government plans to weaken and undermine, perhaps eventually repeal, France’s law setting a 35 hour working week, which was passed by the Socialist Party government in 1997.

Solidarity’s recent discussion of the dangers posed by global warming raises the question of how we find alternative energy sources to burning fossil fuels.

Make Poverty History is the theme of the protests that will surround the G8 summit at Gleneagles this summer. No Sweat will be heading along in full tweeds, as our Golfers Against Sweatshops make for the Gleneagles greens.

Why are the G8 bothered about Africa? A report by the Council on Foreign Relations (a right-wing US think-tank) published last year sheds light on the real issues involved.

By Bjarke Friborg, Red-Green Alliance

On 8 February the Danish right wing government secured four more years in power. The Conservatives and the Liberal party, together with their far right support party Dansk Folkeparti, now hold 93 of the 179 mandates, or three more than needed to form a majority.

Thai Labour Solidarity Committee (TLSC), made up of 26 labor organisations including trade unions, labour federations and congresses and NGOs, is receiving donations from its members and the public to help affected workers from the tsunami in Thailand.

Management of the Norwegian multinational Jotun in Turkey have sacked all 50 members of Petrol-Is union in an attempt to smash the organisation.

By Paul Hampton

The Make Poverty History rally in Trafalgar Square on 3 February launched a year of campaigning on Africa. Make Poverty History is a coalition of over 200 charities, campaigns, trade unions and others that is calling for “trade justice, drop the debt and more and better aid”.

By David Merhav

Hardly anyone opposes Sharon’s disengagement plan in Israel. Opposition comes only from the right. Even the left of the Communist Party and the other Marxist, Trotskyist and anarchist groupings favour silence rather than sharp criticism.

By a Unison member

As Solidarity goes to press, union plans for action over the Government’s plans to cut public sector pensions are in flux.

by Angela Paton, Kilmarnock SSP conference delegate

To judge by the Scottish Socialist Party’s annual conference, which took place in Perth on 12–13 February, the party, despite problems, continues to represent a level of organisation and a commitment to working-class politics that place it in a completely different category from Respect.

By Peter Hudis

Few developments are changing the world more than China’s unprecedented economic growth. In 2004 industrial production increased 16%. This growth is no flash in the pan. Per capita gross domestic product (GDP) growth in China averaged 8% a year since 1979.

The initial results of Iraq’s 30 January election show a triumph for the Shia alliance. It won 48% of the vote, an extraordinary result for a formation limited to 60% of the electorate.

By Pat Yarker

Fifteen years ago I went to see a production of Arthur Miller’s “The Price” at the Young Vic Theatre in London, where David Thacker was directing a number of Miller’s plays. At a time when Miller seemed to have been sidelined in his own country, his importance as a playwright of international standing was re-asserted on the English stage.

At the end of the TUC Iraq solidarity conference on 14 February, a group of trade unionists got together to set up an unofficial grassroots Iraq Unions Solidarity network.

From the platform of the conference itself, TUC international officer Owen Tudor had welcomed the initiative. The TUC can do many things, he said, but not grassroots network-building.

When 1,000 Catholics in the Short Strand area of East Belfast march against the IRA, when "IRA scum out" is painted on walls by local people, things have begun to change in Northern Ireland.

Firefighters at Glasgow Airport, TGWU members, have been on indefinite strike action since 29 January. The strike is over BAA’s plans to remove the current fire fighting service in the “land side” areas of the operation. The TGWU say this will jeopardise safety at the airport.

While articles in Solidarity 64 and 65 on the politics behind tsunami aid and recovery have addressed general issues concerning the stinginess of western governments to give, and the inept and corrupt agencies on the ground in affected areas, a number of key political issues have escaped attention.

Hassan Juma’a, President of the General Union of Oil Employees in Basra, spoke in London on 8 February and answered questions. The meeting was organised by Iraq Occupation Focus, and the interpreter was Sami Ramadani.

Left-wing candidate Christine Blower has been elected as Deputy General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers. She defeated the more right-wing candidate, John Bangs, by just under 5,000 votes.

Although Eric Lee’s discussion article on Menshevism (printed on page 8 of Solidarity 3/66 but due to a human/machine error not attributed to him), raised some important points of which revolutionary socialists should take note, its basic line was factually wrong and politically disorienting.

Welcome to Ruritania

A big stir was provoked in Mediaworld last week by the news that Charles Windsor, aka “the Prince of Wales”, and his partner, Camilla Parker-Bowles, are to marry in the spring. For a few days all other news, even the crisis in Iraq and the imminent General Election, was driven out of the papers. There is, to paraphrase Macaulay, nothing so ridiculous as the British press in one of its periodic fits of sycophancy.

Sacha Ismail and Peter Tatchell debate the issues

Dave Morris and Helen Steel, aka the McLibel 2, won another round in their battle against the McDonald’s burger chain at the European Court on Tuesday 15 February.

by John O’Mahony

“The unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable” was how Oscar Wilde famously described fox-hunting. The unspeakable in full and ridiculous pursuit of the unteachable, describes the strange spectacle of the racist press and the racist Tory Party howling in pursuit of Mayor Ken Livingstone for comparing Evening Standard reporter Oliver Finegold, who happens to be Jewish, to a Nazi concentration camp guard.