Workers' Liberty

John McDonnell MP spoke to Solidarity about the campaign for a Trade Union Freedom Bill

Some of us have been working for trade union reform for five years. We have lobbied for change from Labour, but it has been like crying in the wilderness. The official TUC response has been to point to the legislation the Labour government has introduced, to the rights that have been won.

Solidarity 3/92 is now online. Read it here.

The Trade Union Freedom Bill is being proposed to coincide with the repeal of the “Taff Vale Judgement”. What was “Taff Vale”?

The Trades Union Congress is campaigning for trade union freedom from the shackles of anti union laws. It is backing a Early Day Motion in Parliament, the Trade Union Freedom Bill. (EDMs do not get time to be debated in Parliament, but serve to “flag up” issues). The TUC has made the campaign the theme of the London May Day demonstration.

For two months growing mobilisation of French students and workers confronted the French government.

For two months, France’s right-wing government said it wouldn’t budge. It passed the CPE — a measure allowing bosses to sack young workers without having to prove any good cause — into law.

from UNISON United Left

Local Government workers across the UK have reacted with alarm and anger at the news that all further action in our pensions dispute has been suspended as of 13 April pending further talks with the Local Government Association to conclude in June.

By Sacha Ismail

In the run up to May Day, Iranian socialists and labour movement activists in the International Alliance in Support of Workers in Iran have launched a new call for international solidarity. The statement puts forward a clear “third camp” perspective against both US war threats and Iran’s theocratic dictatorship, in refreshing contrast to the mealy-mouthed pro-Islamist position of much of the British left.

Message of Congratulations and Solidarity of the Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company on the victory of the workers, students and people of France. 11 April 2006.

The Euston Manifesto, launched on 29 March, proposes a “fresh political alignment” of “democrats and progressives” reaching “beyond the socialist left towards egalitarian liberals and others of unambiguous democratic commitment”. It claims to want “to draw a line between the forces of the left that remain true to its authentic values”... But against whom do they wish to “draw a line”, asks Pete Radcliff?

Much of the ostensibly “revolutionary socialist” left has fallen on its knees before the forces of reactionary anti-Western political Islam, hailing it as a progressive “anti-imperialism”.

by Donagh MacDonagh

In Dublin City in 1913 the boss was rich and the poor were slaves

The women working, the children starving, then on came Larkin like a mighty wave

April 23 marks the 90th anniversary of the Easter Rising, in many ways the defining event in modern Irish history. The Rising, its consequences and aftermath shaped the situation Ireland faces today. It offers important lessons for the Irish workers today against both imperialism and indigenous exploitation and reaction. Mike Rowley tells the story.

by Patrick Murphy, newly elected NUT executive member

The National Union of Teachers (NUT) conference, meeting in Torquay over the Easter bank holiday weekend, confirmed what serious left activists in the union have been saying for some time. The potential for a fight back against the government’s agenda for education exists, but we will not clear the roadblock of our right-wing leadership unless we rebuild and politically renew the left.

By a health worker

Delegates at the public sector union UNISON’s conference for health workers at the end of April gave Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt the silent treatment when she spoke to them. They then voted for the union to “find ways to take national industrial action against the cuts”. Activists must now campaign to ensure this action includes strike action. At the very least action could include an overtime ban, a refusal to do bank work and the withdrawal of good will, i.e. a refusal to do the unpaid overtime on which the NHS relies. The union leadership will now take legal advice. The rank and file need to gear up to organise a fightback.

On the day before the 28 March pensions strike for local government I was working in a Geography class. It was the last period of the day.

The TGWU and Amicus have responded to Peugeot’s announcement of the closure of its Ryton factory in Coventry by demanding “stronger” laws making it difficult to cut jobs, laws like those that exist in France.

There was no talk of direct workers’ action — action like the French workers’ strike which have put limits to the destruction of job security in France.

Now that the main public sector unions have capitulated on pensions — for the time being, anyway — the capitalist bosses are picking off smaller, weaker groups of workers at their leisure.

Four rail unions will begin balloting tens of thousands of their members for strike action if the bosses of the various infrastructure and operating companies fail to agree with proposals for saving pensions by 28 April.

In the council elections on 4 May the fascist British National Party (BNP) is standing 350 candidates, hoping to make a small breakthrough.

They appeal to those who feel themselves “despondent, depressed, angry, ignored, abandoned, forgotten, ripped off, exploited, overtaxed, unrepresented”. They say that the crisis in the Health Service shows “the profit motive outweighing patient care”, and denounce “private gain for public service”.

David Broder went to Bolivia during April as part of the Bolivia Solidarity Campaign delegation of British trade unionists.

In Solidarity 3/90 I argued that while Evo Morales has failed to deliver what the masses demanded during the gas nationalisation protests of last summer, the trade unions and social movements have failed to come out strongly enough in criticism of the new Bolivian president.

In the last council by-election in my ward, in Islington, north London, I voted for the Independent Working-Class Association.

In Solidarity 3/89 David Broder started a discussion on animal testing and the broader issue of “animal rights”. Here Clive Bradley and Janine Booth take issue with David. His reply and other debate can be found at: www.workersliberty.org/node/5802

Sweat-free campus campaigners at Queen Mary College in east London have won a great victory.

The college council has committed itself to making Queen Mary the first “living wage campus” in the UK.

Brie and Diane from the Living Wage Action Coalition are visiting the UK at the end of May and start of June. They will be speaking at various events including the student activist school at Sussex University on Saturday 27 May.

By Laura Schwartz

Recently I attended the United Students Against Sweatshops conference in San Francisco.

A series of US student initiatives that link worker struggles to student solidarity now form the biggest protest coalition on US campuses since the Vietnam war. As Dan Katz argues, this practical, effective movement should inspire UK students and show a way forward to home-grown initiatives like Students Against Sweatshops and People and Planet.

Police shot and killed two workers, another was crushed to death in a melee, and over 40 others were wounded, most by gunshots, when authorities launched an assault to expel striking workers occupying the SICARTSA steel mill in Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan, Mexico on 20 April.

A number of actions (marches, rallies, student walkouts and strikes) are planned on 1 May. Huge protests, demonstrations and rallies in many cities across America in the last two months have given birth to a national immigrants’ rights movement.

The Socialist Unity campaign in Hackney Central — where AWL members Janine Booth and Charlie MacDonald are standing — isn’t just about winning votes. We want to help working-class people in Hackney organise to fight back against attacks from their employers, their landlords and the government. And there are certainly plenty of attacks to fight.

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.