Workers' Liberty

According to a report in the Guardian of 11 July, profiteers will grab maybe £10 billion this year in VAT fraud in Britain.

by Sean Matgamna

Among the stories of the Anglo-Irish War of Independence (1919-21) and the Irish Civil War (1922-3) which I grew up listening to my mother tell was the story of the shooting of the last three of 77 Republican prisoners of war killed by the Free State government, in the last days of the civil war, in our town, Ennis. One of the three was her cousin.

Images accompanying this story: Newsline of 9 April 1983, page 8 and page 9; Labour Herald caricature of Begin. And click here for the text of the Newsline editorial of 9 April 1983 and Ken Livingstone's accompanying comment.
A drunken Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, leaving a party, accused an Evening Standard journalist of being the equivalent of a Nazi concentration camp guard.

BY Gerry Bates

Dick Turpin, the highwayman, rules — OK! Or is it The Joker from the Batman comics, the playful larceny-obsessed lunatic who delights in having his armed gang inflict his fantasy-addled, power-mad pranks on those he robs?

Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people in the territories it occupied four decades ago has long been an international obscenity.

Once more a senseless small-scale Palestinian guerrilla action against Israel — this time not an attack on innocent Israeli civilians, but on Israeli soldiers — has triggered enormously disproportionate Israeli action against Palestinians; the deliberate destruction from the air of bridges and other parts of the infrastructure on which any hope of a Palestinian return to anything like normal everyday life depends.

By Nick Holden

When the government placed an advert in the Official Journal of the European Union offering contracts for private companies to run and manage Primary Care Trusts throughout England, they didn’t expect that there would such a speedy outcry.

The leadership of the health membership in Unison (the Health service group executive — SGE) will next meet on 19-20 July. Unison activists and branches need to pressurise them to get on with carrying out the policies agreed at Unison health conference back in April. Let us remind them that it is their responsibility to:

By Ruben Lomas

Foundation Hospitals, handing over schools to businesses, giving employers control of curricula in Further Education — no corner of the public sector or welfare state is safe from the Blairite project of subordinating every aspect of public life to the needs and drives of the market.

1. Join Keep Our NHS Public. There may be a local group near you, but if not, why not find out if there are other members locally and talk with them about starting a local group? Contact the campaign at www.keepournhspublic.com

By Martin Thomas

According to the Iraq Freedom Congress, a grouping initiated by the Worker-communist Party of Iraq, oil workers in southern Iraq are planning a strike which “aims to bring security and build a free and democratic society in Iraq”.

by Cathy Nugent

On 10 July the government announced a further 850 troops for Afghanistan, bringing the UK total to around 4,500. UK troops have been increased gradually since the beginning of the year, as part of an plan which will see all troops, including US troops, under the control of NATO.

On our front page we report the huge sums pocketed by the rich through tax avoidance, tax evasion, tax fraud — and the straightforward continuation of the tax cuts for the well-off introduced by the Tories in the 1980s.

By Pete Radcliff, Derby University UCU Secretary (personal capacity)

July 17 will see the close of the University and College Union's ballot on its recent higher education pay deal - the deal for which the March-June industrial was suspended, despite only a 0.01% increase on a previously rejected deal.

Ten thousand NUJ, BECTU and Musicians' Union members in the BBC are due to be balloted on strike action over the Corporation's plans for pay, pensions and job cuts.

By a railworker

As we go to press, the RMT has announced that it will be taking strike action against Network Rail. Action will commence with a 24-hour strike between 21 and 22 July, with a 48-hour strike the following week, between 27 and 29 July. Let’s hope that the members aren’t led back down the hill this time...

Central London Communication Workers' Union has produced a document in response to the issue of jobs in the telecoms industry being "offshored", with the aim of promoting a debate in the CWU and broader workers' movement. Below a CWU member discusses the issue raised by the document. For the document itself, or more information, email secretary@cwucentrallondon.org.uk

As Solidarity went to press, the deadlocked negotiations between Royal Mail and the Communication Workers' Union over pay looked as if they would end not with the issue of ballot papers for a national strike but with a deal. What mixture of management concessions and union capitulation this will entail remains to be seen.

By a GMB member

The GMB called off its planned five-day strike at Asda Wal-Mart depots at the end of June, after getting an agreement on collective bargaining from the firm.

By Colin Foster

IT is eighteen years now since the last open and direct challenge to the ever-more-right-wing leadership in the Labour Party. We have paid a very high price - in lack of overall political perspective for struggles on different issues, in demobilisation of activists, and in the growth among the general public of the idea that all politics is a waste of time — for those 18 years of deference.

Following a successful lobby of Parliament on June 27, the John McDonnell-initiated ‘Public Services Not Private Profit’ campaign looks as if it may have the potential to cohere the various trade union-orientated anti-privatisation campaigns into a single fight-back against the Blair government’s assault on the public sector.

By Sacha Ismail

In a speech to the City of London on 20 June, Gordon Brown committed himself to “retaining an independent nuclear deterrent”. A Brown government, in other words, would spend tens of billions of pounds on a weapons system whose use would necessarily mean tens of thousands of deaths and which exists for no reason other than to bolster British imperialism’s prestige and power to terrorise.

By Reshma Stephens

THE government’s review of energy policy, whose recommendations were announced on 11 July, will undoubtedly provoke widespread hostility on the left - but perhaps for the wrong reasons.

BY David Broder

On July 1st activists working to solidarise with the Iraqi labour movement held a conference in London to discuss the prospects of workers in Iraq and what can be done over here to help the struggle against the US/UK occupation and political Islam.

BY SOFIE BUCKLAND, NUS NEC (PERSONAL CAPACITY)

At this year's NUS conference, despite the left's invocation of the militant student struggles in France, the right-wing of the union succeeded in overturning NUS's policy on education funding and introduced a policy in favour of means-tested grants.

BY Vicki Morris

FRESH from his PR appearance on the BBC, President Vladimir Putin of Russia is preparing to host the leaders of the new free world at the G8 summit at St Petersburg (15-17 July).

BY Paul Hampton

THE Mexican elections on 2 July were fixed in favour of the conservative candidate, according to a host of reports by observers.

Felipe Calderón of the conservative National Action Party (PAN) has declared himself the winner with 35.88%. But the main challenger, Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the liberal nationalist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), given 35.31%, has said a fraud has been committed. The old ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) came a distant third.

BY ALAN PORTER

Evo Morales' MAS party has won 51% of seats in elections for a new Constituent Assembly, leaving him well short of the two thirds majority needed to pass legislation. This is problematic for his government, since the whole point of a Constituent Assembly is to rewrite the constitution.

Indonesia

Trade union rights may be curbed in new special economic zones (SEZs) in Indonesia’s Riau Islands, according to press reports.

I WAS glad to see Solidarity celebrating the 150th anniversary of Freud’s birth in Thomas Carolan’s article (3/93) and Lynne Moffat’s rejoinder (3/95), though I feel there are problems with both their positions.

THE last issue of Solidarity contained a brief report on the amnesty suggested by the government for those in the UK without proper documentation. The report was uncritical of the suggestion and implied that it was a progressive move.