Workers' Liberty

“The student movement did not start with a single blow. At first it was just the students of Rennes who dared to bet that their strike would snowball, and who shut down their university, on their own for a week.

“It will be the same among the workers...”

By John O’Mahony

Throughout the second intifada, the revolt of the Palestinians against Israeli colonial rule, there could be seen a tragic entanglement, almost a tacit alliance, between Hamas on the Palestinian and Likud on the Israeli side. Together they made impossible any progress out of the conflict.

By Gerry Bates

Denis Donaldson worked as a British spy within the top echelons of Sinn Fein for 20 years. He admitted that at a press conference four months ago. Now he has been shot dead at the remote Donegal cottage where he lived.

by colin foster

28 March saw the biggest strike in Britain for decades. According to Unison and the other unions involved, over a million local government workers struck against the Government’s plans to cut their pensions.

Dumfries and Galloway: A mass picket of 300 people at the council offices in Dumfries. All council workplaces were affected, and 30 schools were closed. Everyone thought the day strike had been a success and was determined to continue with future strikes in order to win their demands. Elaine

UNISON health workers hold their annual conference later this month. As Nick Holden explains, they have a lot to discuss.

Some 30 Amicus members lobbied the March meeting of the Amicus National Executive Council (NEC) in protest at the sacking of three Amicus employees: Des Heemskerk, Jimmy Warne and Cathie Willis. The three were suspended from their jobs in Amicus in mid-September of last year. All three are leading members of “Amicus Unity Gazette”, the broad left grouping in Amicus.

NATFHE, the union which represents teaching staff in Further Education, has agreed to organise a two-day strike on 2 and 3 May. This is in response to the 1.5% pay rise offered for 2006-7. The strike takes place in advance of scheduled talks.

By a TGWU member

The TGWU Broad Left met on 2 April and discussed the proposed “super-union” amalgamation between the TGWU, AMICUS and the GMB.

Both New Labour and the Tories depended for their last General Election campaigns on millionaires giving them big loans under the counter. As for the Liberal Democrats, their 2005 accounts show £3.5 million of their £5.2 million income (other than public funds) from corporate donations. They got only slightly less in corporate donations than the Tories did, with £4.2 million.

From Tribune 27 June 1958

Peter fryer: “stopped from marching”

Some most unfortunate incidents marred last Sunday’s demonstration organised by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

The letters in this Solidarity feature all appeared in the Labour left-wing weekly Tribune in 1958. We think they conjure up the political world in which Trotskyists operated half a century ago.

By August Grabski

Click here for a French translation of this article.

On 16 February 2006 Stefan Piekarczyk died of cancer in Warsaw. Stefan was a socialist, a Trotskyist, a translator and an economist.

He was born in 1955 and grew up in a Polish family in Glasgow and there he joined a British section of the Fourth International (FI) — the International Marxist Group.

By Paul Hampton

“Control lies in the hands of the workers. This means: ownership and right of disposition remain in the hands of the capitalists. Thus, the regime has a contradictory character, presenting a sort of economic interregnum…

By Lindsey Collen and Ragini Kistnasamy of LALIT, Mauritius

IN the late 60s thousands of Mauritians living on Diego Garcia island were forced from their homes when all the islands of the Chagos Archipelago were dismembered from Mauritius by the British state to make way for an infamous US military base named, irony of ironies, Camp Justice.

By Pablo Velasco

Pakistan

Six Pakistani left parties and groups have united to form Awami Jamhoori Tehreek (AJT — the People’s Democratic Movement), which has the potential to become the fifth-largest political group in Pakistan. The AJT aims to contest the 2007 elections.

Officially reported as 500,000 to one million strong, with others putting the total at two million plus, the 25 March demonstration in Los Angeles against the Sensenbrenner (HR4437) immigration reform bill was by any standard a tremendous protest.

Since the beginning of the year Thailand has witnessed growing protests. This article, written by Danielle Sabai and Jean Sanukon on 20 March in Bangkok and abridged from International Viewpoint, explains the background.

In the last two issues of Solidarity we have been debating with Iranian socialists Maryam Namazie and Arashe Sorkh about political alliances against Islamism. We publish here a response from Maryam to left critics and a note from Arashe. Martin Thomas replies to Maryam.

Ewa Groszewska writes from Poland. Ewa is a member of New Left

“Free Belarus!” was chanted by students in Wroclaw recently. “There is no freedom or democracy there, the authorities deal with the opposition by using force,” they argued. At the same time French students of the Sorbonne University were being pacified by the police. A democratic country? And Polish students didn’t even think they could protest against the Labour Code...

By Martin Thomas

Secondary school admissions authorities in London are very pleased with themselves. Only about 5,500 Year Six kids across London have been refused a place at any secondary school they chose; only about 3,000 have no place at all.

By Richard Denton

The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill currently going through Parliament hides an alarming proposal. It gives government ministers power to alter any law passed by Parliament!

In the Hackney Central ward in London the AWL is fielding two "Socialist Unity" candidates on 4 May. Janine Booth is chair of the local Aspland and Marcon Estate Tenants’ and Residents’ Association. Charlie MacDonald works in the Jobcentre the ward.

The AWL went to the “SOS NHS” conference on 25 March. In view of the size of the crisis in the NHS, they were a bit disappointed by the attendance — around 250, about the same as the schools conference — and the fact that it was mostly health-service professionals, with few activists from local “save-our-hospital” campaigns.

York AWL has recently recruited two new members. One they met on their regular street paper sale. Another, a local AWLer first came across when he started a conversation with her on seeing her on a train reading Socialist Worker. Today, as I write, York AWLers are about to have a meeting with someone else who met them on a paper sale and said he was interested in getting active.

As Leon Trotsky once wrote, the revolutionary party is the memory of the working class. It is, it must be, also the memory of the Marxist movement itself. Documents, newspapers, reminiscences, carbon copies are the repositories of this memory.

By Daniel Randall, NUS NEC

The Annual Conference of the National Union of Students began on the same day as two of the most important pieces of industrial action in recent history in Britain and France. Unfortunate coincidence it may have been, but it did serve to nicely highlight how much NUS needs to change.

Nico Dessaux reports from the 1/2 April meeting of the National Co-ordination against the CPE.

THE meeting of the National Student Co-ordination against CPE gathered more than 300 delegates from 110 universities and colleges. As a delegate from the “Cross-Struggle General Assembly”, the labour movement liaison committee in Lille, I was allowed to stay as an observer for the whole debate. It began at 2pm and I left at 8am the following morning, at which point there were several votes still to take.

Yves Coleman and Nico Dessaux report on the 28 March day of action against the CPE [Contrat Première Embauche, the French government’s plan to cut job security].

As we go to press, the latest day of action in France against the government’s plans to cut job security for young workers on 4 April has seen an even bigger turnout than the huge protests of 28 March, which saw millions of workers and students demonstrate and take industrial action across the country.

Declaration of the inter-union committee of Loire-Atlantique (CFDT-CFTC-CGC-CGT-FO-FSU-SOLIDAIRES-UNSA-UNEF-UNL)

Following a meeting on 29 March, the regional organisations of eight trade unions and two student organisations celebrate the success of the mobilisation that brought together sixth-formers, students and public and private sector workers in a day of national, cross-sectoral strike action on 28 March.