Workers' Liberty

We are against academic and other boycotts against Israel.

By Mike Rowley

ONE of the most grotesque aspects of last month’s local election campaign was the media frenzy about “foreign criminals” being released from prison. If the gutter press is to be believed, the streets of Britain are teeming with rapists and murderers who have been let out of prison solely due to the extreme leniency of the government.

By a NATFHE conference delegate

THE further and higher education lecturers’ union, NATFHE, met for its last conference on 27-29 May. On 1 June NATFHE merges with the Association of University Teachers to form the University and College Union (UCU). The backdrop to the conference was the bitter dispute in universities which started with a national strike in March, followed by a marking boycott and work to rule.

By Mike Fenwick, UNISON

Trade union leaders in the TUC have welcomed the Government’s White Paper on pensions, published on 25 May.

Only the week before, the TUC had set out its “bottom-line” five tests for the White Paper. Even on a generous reading, the White Paper passed only one of the five tests.

For the first time, a major union has put down a marker for the forthcoming Labour Party leadership contest.

At its conference in Bournemouth on 21-26 May, the Communication Workers’ Union voted to support, in the forthcoming Labour Party leadership election, only candidates who support the principles of trade union rights as outlined in the proposed Trade Union Freedom Bill — and who are committed to keeping the Post Office in 100 per cent public ownership.

An exhibition of paintings by the internationally renowned Indian painter M F Husain was recently closed for “security reasons”. The announcement by the exhibition hosts, Asia House, the was a reaction to a protest by the so-called “Hindu Human Rights Group”.

By a Unison member

At the conference for health workers in Unison back in April, delegates voted for a vibrant national campaign against the cuts in the NHS. The lumbering machinery of the union is now slowly starting to move. It supported the 11 May lobby of parliament, originally called by the Royal College of Nursing and there is now some mention of a national campaign on Unison’s website!

By Joan Trevor
There’s nothing like rumours of two ambitious politicians from the same party slugging it out in the backrooms to put the voters off politics.

Open warfare would be far better, where the public could judge whether there were actually differences of political substance between the protagonists or whether they were just fighting over when Buggins’ turn to be the king of the castle begins.

Brie Phillips and Diane Foglizzo from the US student Living Wage Action Coalition (pictured above with Laura Schwartz of No Sweat) have been on tour with No Sweat. They have been touring UK campuses promoting campaigns for Living Wages for all campus workers.

The second Education Not for Sale activist gathering on 27 May saw sixty or seventy student campaigners converge on the University of Sussex Students’ Union to discuss issues ranging from top-up fees to the demand for a living wage.

By Paul Hampton

The Venezuelan Unión Nacional de Trabajadores (UNT) congress, held on the weekend of 25-27 May, broke up in acrimony, with two distinct tendencies holding separate plenaries by the end. The congress was the first the confederation has held since it was founded in August 2003.

By Peter Tatchell

Russian gays have won an important moral and political victory. Yuri Luzhkov said a gay pride parade would never happen while he was Mayor of Moscow. But Moscow Pride did happen, on 27 May, despite the Mayor’s ban, police arrests, and violence from neo-fascists, right-wing nationalists and Orthodox Christian fundamentalists.

South Africa

Hundreds of thousands of workers in South Africa supported a one-day general strike in protest against job losses on 18 May.

By Tom Unterrainer

DRIVERS working for NCT in Nottingham struck for 24 hours on 27 May in the first of a sequence of actions planned for consecutive Saturdays. The first strike saw the city’s bus system grind to a halt as TGWU members picketed the main depot in a solid day of action.

By a CWU conference delegate

AT the postal section of the CWU conference (21-6 May) the plans for tackling Allan Leighton’s attempts to push the liberalisation agenda further in Royal Mail were discussed, but at General Conference which deals with the whole union the issue arose in motions on policy and politics.

By Pete Keenlyside, CWU Postal Executive (personal capacity)

THE CWU has given notice to Royal Mail management that if acceptable progress has not been made on a range of outstanding issues within the next four weeks, a ballot for industrial action will be implemented among the entire CWU membership in the business.

By a pcs socialist caucus member

THE annual conference of the civil service union PCS, in Brighton on 7-9 June with group (sector) conferences on 5-6 June, will debate an emergency motion from the union's Executive to "welcome" the pension agreement made earlier this year.

By delegates to the conference of further and higher education lecturers’ union natfhe

A resolution calling for an academic boycott of Israel was passed at our conference [on 29 May] passing by 106 votes to 74 (with 21 abstentions). The debate and vote reflects the less than perfectly democratic make-up of NATFHE conference — it is made up of delegates from regions, not branches. Nonetheless this was a very poor decision.

THE quote above comes from Ring Lardner Jr, the famous writer and member of the Hollywood Ten — who were convicted in 1947 of criminal contempt for refusing to cooperate with the House Unamerican Activities Committee. The ten were imprisoned for a year for their defiance.

In fact, Lardner was one of the few who did respond to a question put to him. The question of course was whether he was or had ever been a member of the Communist Party. To which he replied “I could answer the question exactly the way you want, but if I did I would hate myself in the morning”.

If a North Korean mathematician wants to come to a conference in Britain, we will be happy to discuss maths with her; we will not demand that she repudiates her state’s constitutional claim that North Korea is a socialist paradise on earth.

rail

On Tuesday 6 June the rail unions RMT and TSSA will report the results of their ballots for industrial action over pensions. Their demands, covering all railworkers outside the London Underground, are for pensions to be maintained, worker contributions limited to 10.56%, the Railway Pension Scheme to be open to all railworkers, and the Scheme to be simplified into three sections in place of the over 100 sections which have proliferated since privatisation.

By Faz

Ali Hili is the founder member of Iraqi Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender UK, a group of asylum seekers who having fled Iraq, are now reporting on the sharp increase there in homophobic beatings, torture and murder. The group is in contact with an underground network of LGBT people in Iraq’s main cities of Baghdad, Najaf, Karbala, Hilla, Duhok and Basra, who are risking their lives to report on the violence.

by Martin Thomas

Now, so say the US and British governments, the USA can hand over to Iraqi troops in Najaf, and the British can step back in Maysan province, in Iraq’s south.

George Bush has now been moved to concede some "mistakes" in Iraq. The US has now begun to investigate a massacre that, according to all indications, was not just a "mistake", but — like torture in Abu Ghraib — a logical and predictable product of the general brutality and arrogance of the US occupation in Iraq.

In December 2005, the US House of Representatives passed the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Reform Act of 2005 (known as HR 4437), a harsh immigration reform bill designed to punish the 12 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States illegally.

In this excerpt from her speech on the “Spartacus Programme” of 1918, the Polish-German Marxist leader Rosa Luxemburg argued for socialism and revolution as the only alternative to capitalism and barbarity of war. Luxemburg was murdered alongside her comrade Karl Liebknecht by right wing troops under the direction of a Social-Democratic government in January 1919.

Andy Newman of the Socialist Unity Network argues for the left to focus on social issues to undermine the BNP. (Abridged from Andy’s original text)

by Matt cooper

The 1950s saw a revival of interest in “folk” music in Britain and the USA. Folk revivalism in Europe has a long heritage going back to the early nineteenth century and was largely allied to nationalist movements.

David Broder attended the “real world” launch of The Euston Manifesto in Islington on 25 May.

The following statement is being circulated by the Worker-communist Party of Iran. We publish it here to further debate.