Workers' Liberty

Chan Ying reports from Hong Kong on the eve of the sixth anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre (4 June 1989).

The Chinese authorities are once again harassing and arresting journalists, intellectuals and dissidents. Wang Dan, the student leader of the 1989 events, has been arrested again. He has gone into a hunger strike. Wang had already served his prison sentence, although he has been under constant surveillance ever since his release. This time he is one of 27 signatories to a letter petitioning the government to launch a full inquiry into the ’89 events. Another signatory, Ding Zilin, assistant professor of philosophy of Beijing’s Chinese People’s University and mother of a June 4th victim, has been kept under surveillance since March 1994, after publishing an article about her work in compiling June 4th victims. She has recently been threatened by the authorities even though she has not been involved in any form of illegal or underground activity. More than 40 activists have been detained in the last two weeks.

By Martin Thomas

In France’s municipal elections, on 11 and 18 June, the fascist National Front won control of its first big city, Toulon, in southern France.

It also won two smaller cities, Orange and Marignane, and generally scored well though patchily.

By Liam Conway

On Thursday 22 June the Labour Party unveiled its a policy document on education: Diversity and Excellence. The report recommends the preservation of grant maintained schools (renaming them “foundation” schools), thus perpetuating the two tier-system of education the Tories introduced with their education reforms. The same document says does not recommend any increase in funds for education. This is, as one old-style Labourite, Roy Hattersley, has said, nothing short of a “repudiation of the principle of comprehensive education”. (See next page).

By Colin Foster

According to Alexander Ivanko, a UN spokesperson in Sarajevo, “the Bosnian Serbs are calling most of the shots. I’m sure there are some shots they are not calling. I just can’t think of them at the moment”.

By a BT engineer

Apart from general statements assuring the bosses that there will be “no return to the ’70s”, the Labour Frontbench has not been keen to spell out what, if anything, they will do to remove the legal shackles imposed on the unions by the Tories.

By Joan Trevor

Greenpeace scored a big victory over international giant Shell in the Brent Spar affair. Shell had got government permission to abandon a 20 year old oil installation at sea, despite many scientists saying it would cause terrible environmental damage. But they had to abandon the plan after bad publicity, and a boycott by drivers of Shell petrol stations.

John Major’s decision to resign as Tory leader and stand for re-election, challenging his critics to “sack me or back me”, is desperate rather than brave. Major probably faced a leadership election in the autumn anyway: this way he goes out to meet his enemies in an aura of resolution and leader-like purposefulness.

Fifty years ago the Labour Party won an overwhelming victory in the general election that followed the defeat of Hitler.

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge has now signed Mumia Abu-Jamal’s death warrant. They plan to kill him on 17 August and thus barbourously to satisfy the racist cops who continue to campaign for his death and the blood lust of those who elected Tom Ridge as governor. Time is running out for Mumia Abu-Jamal. Time is short in which to lodge the protests and mount the pickets that may make the difference between life for Mumia-Abu Jama and a horrible death at the hands of the hired killers of the state of Pensylvania.

350 library workers in Sheffield have been on all-out indefinite strike since 5 June over the council’s threat to remove enhanced pay for weekend work, breaking national conditions of service. All workers in the Council’s leisure department face the same threat, resulting in a pay cut of up to 7% for some of the lowest paid workers.

Many socialists believe that we should deal with the Islamic fundamentalists now recruiting among Asian youth in Britain — notably Hizb-ut Tahir — by a policy of “no platform” for such bigots. We reprint an excerpt from Dave Landau’s argument in Jewish Socialist no.33 and a response by Mark Osborn

As we go to press, RMT and ASLEF members on British Rail and London Underground are balloting for a series of one day strikes over pay.

The RMT wants a 6% rise. ASLEF — the train drivers’ union — want “a substantial increase.”

By Brian Roberts

It now seems certain that the long-running NHS pay dispute will come to a head this autumn. UNISON is set to ballot for strike action during August, over the government’s “1% plus local bargaining” pay offer. A host of smaller staff organisations are likely to fall in line behind them.

By Tony Dale

The conference of the public sector workers union, Unison, held in June, was a mixed affair. Important left resolutions supporting the minimum wage and full employment were passed.

However, most of what the right-wing leadership wanted was voted for by conference. The left was defeated on the anti-union laws. There was a rallying behind the leadership, under fire from the Labour leadership after supporting Clause Four.