Solidarity - articles before 22 November 2002

Robert Howard-Perkins

It is with great sadness that we report the unexpected death of Rob Howard-Perkins. Rob died in December following a short illness. He was 35.

Rob joined the civil service after leaving school in 1987, working at Stepney and then City Social Security offices. He joined the union immediately and it was not long before he was playing an active role in CPSA Hackney and Tower Hamlets branch. Rob also served on the CPSA DHSS Section Executive Committee and was a member of both Socialist Caucus and the Broad Left. Outside the Civil Service Rob was active in the Labour Party, Socialist Organiser and several anti racist campaigns.

Will the Islamists take Saudi Arabia?

David Osler visited Saudi Arabia recently and looks at the Orwellian picture behind 'our friends in the Midle East'

George Orwell himself probably could not have thought up a name as archetypically Orwellian as the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. But that is the name the police go by in Saudi Arabia, and their control of public space is almost total. Riyadh is what the fictional 1984 looks like in the actual 2002.

What are the 'social forums'?

By Michaela Collins

The first World Social Forum was called, in January 2001, to coincide with the World Economic Forum, which was taking place in the luxury Swiss resort of Davos.

The WEF is essentially the representatives of global capitalism deciding among themselves how to run the world smoothly in their own interests.

Thousands of anti-capitalists

Michaela Collins continues her analysis of 'social forums' by looking at the European Social Forum and how it differs from the World Social Forum

In Solidarity 3/14, I looked at the origins of the World Social Forum, which has met twice in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The WSF, I concluded:

  • is anti-neoliberal rather than anti-capitalist;
  • blurs class contradictions in a north/south, developed/developing world dichotomy;

Is George Galloway MP a 'mouthpiece' for Saddam Hussein?

From Solidarity 3/4, 29 March 2002

By Sean Matgamna

The House of Commons is a strange place, governed by its own sometimes incomprehensible rituals.

In the early 1990s the Unionist MP Ian Paisley was suspended from the House for shouting "liar" at a minister who denied that the government was having secret talks with Gerry Adams and the IRA. Everybody knew that what Paisley said was true: secret talks - ultimately they led to the Good Friday Agreement - were taking place and those who denied it were, indeed, liars.