Workers' Liberty

By Sofie Buckland

In Britain today, one child in three grows up in poverty, in a household with less than half the average income; in 1968, the figure was one in ten.

Alan Johnson, the Blairites’ favourite ex union leader, has made a call for the unions’ influence in the Labour Party to be curtailed.

Sean Matgamna replies to Barry Finger’s On anti-war slogans: lessons from two wars (Solidarity 3-81)

By David Broder

The Civil Partnership Act coming in to force on 5 December comes with the pretensions of offering gay couples the same rights as married heterosexual couples.

Eric Lee comments on the election of Amir Peretz to leader of the Israeli Labour Party

Things can only get
wetter

Greenpeace protesters dumped sacks of coal outside Downing Street on Monday morning to protest against the British government’s lack of action against climate change.

Rosalind Robson reviews The Last Tommy (BBC1), and The Somme, (Channel Four)

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday

three days after Bastille day, yes

it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine

Michael Wood reviews The Brothers Grimm

Terry Gilliam’s latest fantastical extravaganza has all the usual exemplary production values and quirky characters. But is there anything more to it?

By Cynthia Baldry, Workers’ Fight, March 1973

In Shrewsbury on 15 March, 24 building workers appearing in court were met by a show of solidarity from other workers, meeting outside the court and then marching through the town.

Exactly 30 years ago, on 19 November 1975 Cynthia Baldry died in Liverpool. She was a member of one of Solidarity/AWL’s forerunners, Workers’ Fight.

By Martin Thomas

About 30 people attended a conference on 12 November aiming to “relaunch the Socialist Alliance”.

By Olivier Delbeke, member of the editorial committee of La Lettre de Liaisons

Several days before the riots, quite deliberately, the minister of the interior, Nicolas Sarkozy, called the youth of the suburbs “rabble” and said this “rabble” needed “industrial cleaning”.

From Débat Militant 80, 10 November 2005

Today the youth [in the riot-hit districts] usually see no chance of finding a job.

Statement signed by the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire and a number of left and left-leaning organisations. 8 November

By Joan Trevor

After 20 days and still counting of urban unrest it is possible from London to draw only a partial balance sheet of what has happened in France and what might happen next.

By Yves Coleman

In the dialect of French big-city suburbs, to “dance with the wolves” is to provoke the cops, make them run and to escape without being arrested. Unfortunately, the reality is much less romantic.

By Ed Whitby, Newcastle City Council Unison

THE following motion, opposing both the raising of the local government retirement age for a full pension to 65 and the creation of a two-tier workforce with different pension rights, was passed unanimously by Newcastle City Council Unison at the start of November.

LONDON action called off

By a PCS Socialist Caucus member in London

The planned strike action over job cuts in the London Department of Work and Pensions has been called off, despite a strong mandate from the membership for action.

By samm farai monro

At the Southern African Social Forum (SASF) held in Harare Gardens between 13-15 October, 3000 radical souls came together to discuss their struggles.

Cath Fletcher went along to the “Assembly on the Charter of Principles of Another Europe” in Florence on 12 November, a meeting of various groups and individuals involved in the European Social Forum, who are drawing up the said charter for presentation at the next ESF in Athens in May 2006.

Tesco is not a popular company. Not popular with its rivals, who envy its dominance of the grocery trade and are leading a campaign to slow down its expansion and stop its below-cost pricing of certain goods.

During the first few days of last month, reports about the police raids of Birmingham massage parlour flooded newspapers all over the world.

By Sacha Ismail

The 16 November edition of the Guardian carried two stories sharply exposing the brutal character of the US occupation in Iraq.

By Colin Foster

There are some signs of the hard-pressed labour movement in Iraq reviving, especially a strike by textile workers in Baghdad. For the 15 December elections, though, things look bad.

AUSTRALIA’S unions estimate that over half a million people joined rallies across the country on 15 November to protest at the Howard government’s anti-union laws. There were 210,000 in Melbourne, 45,000 people in Sydney, and 25,000 in Brisbane.

By Dan Katz

IN June 2005 the latest round of street fighting in Bolivia ended, having forced the resignation of the president, Carlos Mesa.

The UNT demands the nationalisation of bankrupt factories and cogestion, translated as co-management or worker participation.

By alan porter

Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez has claimed victory in his encounter with George Bush at November’s Summit of the Americas.