Workers' Liberty

Performance data:
• Spoke in 0 debates in the last year — 646th out of 659 MPs.
• Asked 0 written questions in the last year — 545th out of 659 MPs.
• This MP never rebels against their party — 630th out of 649 MPs.

News from working-class movements around the world.

The Federation of Workers’ Councils and Unions of Iraq (FWCUI) — a union federation in which the Worker-communist Party of Iraq is influential — is calling a workers’ conference in Baghdad on 2 April. In Britain, No Sweat has helped organise fundraising events to support this conference.

Two months after the 30 January elections in Iraq, there is still no new government, despite repeated announcements by the Shia and Kurdish alliances which came out top in those elections that they are about to finalise an agreement.

Message from the French union CGT Maxi-Livres and the Stop Précarité network concerning Latifa Abed, a courageous trade unionist being sued for defamation by her employer. Please give Latifa moral support by sending a message to one of the links below.

In 2003 there were 235 deaths and nearly 160,000 non-fatal injuries from accidents in UK workplaces. Deaths from asbestos are likely to reach 150,000 over the next 30 years.

Earlier this month Michael Howard unveiled some spectacularly crude propaganda against travellers, alleging that Roma and other travelling people are given preferential treatment over the settled community when it comes to planning permission. This is because of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, incorporated into

In 2001 Pete Radcliff stood for the now defunct Socialist Alliance in Nottingham East. He polled over one thousand in the constituency (one of the best SA results in the country).

This time round Pete will be standing in the name of the Socialist Green Unity Coalition.

The Labour Representation Comittee has launched an alternative Labour manifesto, counterposing policies widely supported by the trade unions to those pushed by Blair and Brown.

The manifesto was launched at a rally in London on 21 March.

The general secretary of the civil service union PCS was a rank and file militant and is considerably to the left of most general secretaries. The union’s national executive is dominated by Left Unity — an alliance of socialist groups and left-wing independents. PCS was key to putting together the public sector-wide action over pensions.

Solidarity believes that the unions should have gone ahead with their strikes against pension cuts on 23 March and 26 April.

The threat of strikes in the immediate run-up to a General Election made Blair and Brown retreat on pensions. If we had gone ahead, we could have made them retreat further, and kept up the momentum of our campaign.

The National Union of Teachers conference at the Easter weekend voted to resume the suspended pensions action after the General Election. Speaker after speaker from the left and the Executive recognised that the Government may have pulled a fast one, offering talks only to avoid a confrontation before the election.

On the Iraq demonstration on 19 March, AWL members helped Iraq Union Solidarity with a bucket collection to raise money for the new trade unions in Iraq. We also sold our new pamphlet, “Solidarity with Iraqi workers”. (which you can buy online here).

By Alan Thomas

The conference of the Socialist Alliance Democracy Platform (SADP) on 12 March was bigger than I had expected: 40–50 present over the day.

There were the usual SADP faces, people from the Alliance for Green Socialism, and a national mobilisation of ex-WRPers/Morenoites. Also Hillel Ticktin from Critique, John Bridge and a couple more from the CPGB, and the Red Party.

From Kent Campaign to Defend Asylum Seekers

The Kent Campaign to Defend Asylum seekers is organising a vigil on Sunday 3 April to highlight the plight of young refugees and their families who have disappeared following detention and deportation from the UK.

With the introduction of top-up fees only a year away, the need for a militant, left-led National Union of Students is an urgent one.

Earlier this month Oxfam announced that it would sever its links with Starbucks.

I think Maria Exall (Solidarity 3/68), is unduly pessimistic about the prospects for the TGWU/Amicus/GMB “super union”.

3–5pm, Saturday 23 April

The market in Higher Education provision made possible by last year’s Higher Education Act, which allowed the introduction of variable top-up fees, is not taking the exact shape most student activists predicted it would, but it is definitely taking shape.

Solidarity 3/70, of 31 March 2005, is online. Read the articles here.

From the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq (FWCUI). Students at the University of Basra went on strike for over a week in March. They organised demonstrations outside government buildings in Basra. The strike and demonstrations were about a vicious attack on Basra students by the Islamists in the city.

Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks and Iqbal Sacranie of the Muslim Council of Britain have increased the pressure of religious authorities on the upcoming General Election by backing Catholic archbishop Cormac Murphy-O’Connor’s call for new restrictions on women’s access to abortions.

At the recent National Union of Teachers conference, delegates voted to fight the Government’s planned expansion of the Academy programme.

Michael Howard’s summary execution of Howard Flight, the Tory MP who talked candidly about the Tories’ tax and spending plans at a private meeting, has prompted a storm of protest in the Tory Party.

Two socialists comment on the Zimbabwean elections which take place on 31 March

Kat Pinder describes a three-day protest outside Baxter Detention Centre for refugees, which is situated in a remote part of Australia.

In the Guardian on 26 March, Tariq Ali, who back in the late 1960s and early 70s was perhaps Britain’s best-known Marxist, called for a “tactical vote” for the Liberal Democrats in the General Election likely on 5 May.

The murder of Robert McCartney has been “seized upon” by opponents of Sinn Fein/IRA in Belfast, London, Dublin and Washington, as a club with which to beat them into submission and force the IRA out of existence.

In his long and cloyingly hagiographical obituary-biography of Al Richardson in Revolutionary History (a journal devoted to the history of the revolutionary Marxist movement: vol 8, no. 4) John McIlroy* in passing revives an old dispute centred on an article I published in Workers’ Liberty 10 years ago.