Workers' Liberty

By Sean Matgamna

In the 1940s, so recently-released government papers show, the BBC discriminated against “Communists”, among them Ewan MacColl, the Stalinist folk-singer, and his wife, who would later become well known as the theatrical director Joan Littlewood.

The charge of “anti-semitism” is thrown at critics of Israel by the crassest of the uncritical, and sometimes paranoid, apologists for Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians?

Around 25,000 workers at electronics company PT Maspion went on strike on at the end of February demanding that the company implement a new regional minimum wage.

Garment workers in Bangladesh took a day’s strike action on 2 March on safety grounds, protesting against the factory owners’ failure to provide safety to workers and demanding removal of Industries Minister Motiur Rahman Nizami. The Bangladesh Garment Workers Trade Union Centre (BGWTUC) organised the action.

The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) began a general strike on 28 February against the government moves to impose greater “flexibility” on Korean workers.

More than 1,000 workers at the cloth-weaving section of the Heze Cotton Textile Factory staged a five-day strike against low pay in February. Most strikers were women and the workers’ actions has affected the production of the company's other factories.

By Mark Thomas (first printed in the New Statesman, Monday 27 February 2006)

Being a card-carrying confused liberal, i.e., someone who is resolute in their lack of certainty, I was dismayed - as I'm sure you can imagine - when I sliced open an aubergine to find the seeds forming a picture of the Prophet Muhammad holding an AK-47.

By Martin Thomas

Since a Shia mosque in Samarra was bombed on 22 February, Iraq has taken a new lurch towards sectarian civil war. Over a thousand people have been killed, dozens of mosques bombed.

Mike Wood reports on the People and Planet annual forum held over the weekend of 4-5 March at Leeds University.

The following letter, addressing world labour organisations, was issued in Tehran on Monday 27 February by Tehran bus workers’ union:

On Thursday 23 February, Camden (north London) branch of the National Union of Teachers drew over 100 people to a public meeting against the Education White Paper.

By Becky Crocker

The 2 March demonstration in Westminster against the Government's plans for schools, called by Ealing NUT, was about a hundred strong. Despite the poor turn out, activists from NUT, UNISON and other unions showed determination to defeat this bill.

By Tom Unterrainer, Assistant Secretary Nottingham NUT (personal capacity)

The publication of an Education White Paper last year commenced months of wrangling, negotiations and campaigning that has gone to the ideological heart of the Labour Party.

by Sally Lopez

Much criticism of last month’s Women and Work Commission’s report on the “gender pay and opportunities gap” has focused on its failure to recommend compulsory equal pay audits for employers.

An all-out unofficial strike by workers at Cottam power station, between Nottingham and Lincoln, started in late February.

By Pat Murphy, Leeds NUT

The new pay structure for teachers affects those who take on extra responsibilities beyond their own class teaching, e.g. heads of departments, heads of year, key stage co-ordinators in primary schools etc.

By an AMICUS member

A CONSULTATION document has been issued to TGWU branch secretaries on the proposed TGWU/Amicus/GMB merger.

By Daniel Randall, NUS NEC (PC)

By Amina Saddiq

Mayor of London Ken Livingstone’s suspension from office by the Adjudication Panel of the Standards Board of England has been “frozen” by the High Court pending an appeal. Whatever the final outcome, the issues posed for socialists and serious democrats are clear.

By Colin Foster

We may be approaching the point at which — given a lead by a sufficiently strong and weighty body of activists — the multiform discontent with the Blair-Brown government's drive to chop up the welfare state could be transformed into a campaign strong enough to change the social balance of forces.

by Gerry Bates

Is Tessa Jowell guilty of personal corruption? She is not, it seems. But what a courrpt, vile bourgeois world this affair highlights — a world a million miles from the lives of working people.

By cathy nugent

On 24 February South Dakota federal lawmakers voted to ban all abortion except when the life of a woman is at stake. In doing so they deliberately began a battle which will probably go all the way to the Supreme Court and may end in abortion being made illegal across large parts of America.

Andrea D’Atri, a professor at the Argentinian national university of La Plata, is active within the Argentinian women’s group Pan y Rosas (Bread and Roses). She spoke to Laura Schwartz about the struggle for women’s rights in Argentina.

An International Women’s Day statement from iranian feminists

For International Woman’s Day the women of the “Campaign for Abolition of all Misogynistic Gender Based Legislation and Islamic Punitive Laws in Iran” have planned a daring protest which will start from Frankfurt on 4 March and end on 8 March in front of The Hague international court.

Throughout the strike, pit villages were twinned with the labour movements in towns and cities throughout the country, and there was a constant flow of activists between the two. One of the towns the North Notts strikers were twinned with was Basingstoke, and Paul and his comrades spent a lot of time with socialists and activists from there.

Paul Whetton wrote this as a delegate to Labour Party conference in September 1984

Mrs Thatcher is tough, nasty, brutal, spiteful, single-minded and very hostile to the labour movement — but a good, tough, committed fighter for her own cause and capable of being an inspiring leader for her own side. Mrs Thatcher knows how to lead.

Jean Lane, a Women’s Fightback organiser during the miners’ strike, remembers how Paul Whetton responded to women organising.

On Friday 3 March Paul Whetton, miner, trade union militant, socialist and Workers’ Liberty collaborator, died aged 66. It was the 21st anniversary of the end of the great miners’ strike of 1984-85. John Bloxam remembers him.

The long history of Stalinism and the struggle against it encompasses all the problems of the international labor movement for the past thirty-three years Many articles, pamphlets and books—classics of Marxism—have been written in the course of this long struggle. It is the most important question in the world because it directly affects the struggle for socialism at every point.

Dear Maryam,

The organisers of the “March For Free Expression” (against political Islam) planned for 25 March are advertising you as a prominent supporter — alongside the Freedom Association, an extreme right-wing movement best known for its strike-breaking efforts during the Grunwick strike of 1977.