Workers' Liberty

The liberal Establishment, including the liberal newspapers, have responded to the still-burning political explosion ignited by the Danish cartoons showing Muhammad in a downright disgraceful way.

“But [against the state] socialists cannot give support to the Islamists either.
That would be to call for the swapping of one form of oppression for another, to react to the violence of the state by abandoning the defence of ethnic and religious minorities, women and gays, to collude in scapegoating that makes it possible for capitalist exploitation to continue unchecked providing it takes 'Islamic' forms. It would be to abandon the goal of independent socialist politics, based on workers in struggle organising all the oppressed and exploited behind them, for a tail-ending of a petty bourgeois utopianism which cannot even succeed in its own terms.

The Zanon factory in Neuquén province in Argentina has operated under workers’ control for four years. It is a great example of the creativity of working class people. Julian Pununuri from Zanon spoke to Paul Hampton during his recent UK tour, organised by No Sweat and the Argentina Solidarity Campaign.

By Laura Schwartz, convenor students against sweatshops

Between 8 and 14 February I happily accepted an invitation from United Students Against Sweatshops to attend their winter conference in San Francisco as a representative of Students Against Sweatshops and No Sweat.

By Sacha ismail

Between February 11 and 18, activists across the country organised meetings, protests, film-showings, petitioning and benefit gigs as part of the first student Anti-Sweatshop Week of Action.

By colin foster

According to detailed research by the International Crisis Group, the Iraqi “resistance” is becoming much more organised and confident. The USA’s reported repeated attempts to get into negotiations with a “nationalist” wing of the “resistance” and split it off from a “jihadi” wing have little grip.

by Amina Saddiq

In a solid display of working-class solidarity, an international day of trade union action was organised on 15 February in support of the Iranian bus workers.

If Terry Liddle wants to maintain that FA Ridley was personally a good sort (see Solidarity 3/87), I’ll take his word for it. I never met him.

Mark Sandell’s letter (Solidarity 3/87) attacking my article on secularism in France did make a sustained effort at picking holes in my argument, but did little to justify his own position.

By Alan Thomas

At the present time, Muslim populations across Europe are under-privileged and oppressed. Within the UK as well, Muslim populations suffer all the usual social indicators of racism, as well as being at the sharp end of the recent “antiterror” laws, as well as a wider post-9/11 backlash. The image of Muslim as savage, terrorist “other” is thus at the fore in a way that it has not been in many years.

By Vicki Morris

I’m not against people being allowed to publish or see the cartoons. I oppose people threatening people with violence for publishing them. And, yes, seeing them does give people more information about them (for example, they’re not all bad). But if the AWL were humanity’s last hope of seeing these cartoons, should it give them houseroom?

by Sami Zubaida, Emiritus professor of politics and sociology, Birkbeck College, London (open democracy website)

Apart from the debatable wisdom, good taste or motives for publishing the offending cartoons, the episode does raise important questions.

A petition being circulated by the Worker-communist Party of Iraq

This is a issue between political Islam and freedom of speech, but it is secondary to the killing of Van Gogh who was murdered by Islamic people in Netherlands because of his short film about the real situation for women under Islamic rule.

by emma hatton

As Solidarity went to press, the Nazi apologist “historian” David Irving was a couple of days into a three year sentence imposed on him by an Austrian court for the crime of Holocaust denial.

The fascist British National Party has seized on the Muhammad cartoons furore to push its racist cause.

Paul Anderson, writer, journalist and academic (from Tribune)

It’s clear that Jyllands-Posten was deliberately attempting to provoke a reaction when it decided to publish, and by some accounts it seems to have been motivated by a rather crude antipathy to Islam.

By Salil Tripathi, writer and journalist (from the Index on Censorship website)

IN 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini posed a stark choice: would we support an author’s right to express himself freely, or would we stand by as he is hunted down by state-sponsored assassins?

by Martin thomas

Danish author Kare Bluitgen could not find an illustrator for a children’s book on Islam. The illustrators were scared of being attacked by Islamists. Eventually Bluitgen found an illustrator to do the work anonymously.

Bruce Robinson reviews Gone Tomorrow — The Hidden Life of Garbage by Heather Rogers, (The New Press, 2005)

In the USA, the most wasteful society in the world, each person throws out two-thirds of a ton of rubbish each year.

By Daniel Randall (National union of Students National executive, personal capacity)

2006 is a big year for education. It sees the introduction of top-up fees in Higher Education, meaning that universities can charge students up to £3,000 for the privilege of studying.

by Sofie Buckland, Cambridge University

On March 7, members of the lecturers’ unions NATFHE and AUT will strike for one day as the start of an ongoing campaign to demand a decent pay offer from university employers. Both unions will begin a national boycott of assessments, exam and coursework from March 8.

According to the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight the British National Party has launched a trade union which they have, unfortunately, chosen to call Solidarity.

Eight cleaners working on the Central Line face the sack after travelling to work at a station for which they had not been given tickets.

Women truck drivers who use the port of Folkestone are celebrating a breakthrough this week in their world-wide “Right to Pee” campaign.

by a TGWU member

Supporters of the Broad Left have won a decisive victory in the elections for the executive of the Transport and General Workers Union.

by Matthew Thompson, Stockport DWP PCS Branch Secretary (personal capacity)

You might think that people claiming benefits would want to be able to speak to someone in a local office about their case. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) however claims that claimants now prefer to deal with call centres and fill out forms online.

The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty unequivocally supports women’s rights, freedom and equality. Similarly, we unequivocally oppose racism and homophobia.We say no socialism without liberation, no liberation without socialism.

A call from the Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq

To all women’s, progressive, secularist and labour movement organisations

Make International Women’s Day on 8 March a day of saying no to Islamic sharia law in Iraq

Preparations are getting underway for the annual conference of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty, the organisation which publishes Solidarity. The conference will be held on the weekend of 29-30 April, in London.

by john coan

BRITISH National Party councillor Angela Clarke has resigned her seat on Bradford council.