Solidarity 100, 20 October 2006

500 march for migrants’ rights

22 Oct 2006

By Karen Johnson and Becky Crocker Around 500 people gathered at the Imperial War Museum at midday for the 7 October demonstration called by the Athens European Social Forum. Workers, activists and people from migrant communities were demanding freedom of movement and the right to stay. The South London route was deliberately planned through areas where migrants live, to show direct solidarity with migrants who feel vulnerable and isolated as a result of the government’s immigration policy. The demonstration was made up of a mixed crowd, including immigration campaigners, trade unionists...

Keep up the pressure to free Ahmed Batebi!

22 Oct 2006

Following the threat of protests when former Iranian president Muhammad Khatami visits St Andrew's University to receive an honorary degree on 31 October, jailed Iranian student activist Ahmed Batebi has been temporarily freed. When it became known that Khatami would be visiting St Andrew's, activists from Education Not for Sale and Scottish Socialist Youth issued a statement calling for solidarity with Iranian workers and students against both the Islamic Republic and the US's threats of war - and promising protests. This received widespread press attention, and quickly a majority of the NUS...

Organising in the unions

22 Oct 2006

The next month sees two important trade union events for socialists who want to organise for a fighting labour movement. The first is the RMT-sponsored conference for a “national shop stewards’ movement” on 28 October; the second the Respect-initiated “Organising for Fighting Unions” conference on 11 November. Supporters of Solidarity and the AWL will be attending both events, but our attitude to them is different. The “shop stewards” conference has been pushed for by sections of the RMT union and that shows there is eagerness to go beyond semi-syndicalist (and highly limited) militancy to...

Keep the Army out of politics!

04 Oct 2006

It’s a bit like your cat starting to talk to you. You’d be too surprised to bother about whether or not he made sense, was logical, spoke grammatically. The big thing would be that this was The Cat That Talked. With General Sir Richard Dannatt, chief of the General Staff, too, it doesn’t matter whether or not he spoke sense about Britain’s policy and prospects in Iraq. The big thing here is that this is the serving Army commander who talked politics against the elected British Government. Who publicly counterposed his political opinion and judgement on a major matter of policy to that of the...

SSP conference and independent working-class politics

01 Sep 2006

Stan Crooke reports from the Scottish Socialist Party conference which took place at Glasgow Caledonian University on 7-8 October. “Three hundred years ago next year, the English ruling classes and a section of the Scottish ruling classes began the colonisation of Scotland. The Scottish people lost their democratic rights. Since then, Scotland has been plundered. It bankrolls the Westminster Treasury. And it provides young men to die overseas.” This was how a member of the “Pro-Independence Platform (Temporary)” began his speech motivating a pro-Scottish independence motion at the Scottish...

Pornography and censorship

25 Aug 2006

The government intends to make viewing and possessing so-called “violent pornography” (much of it distributed over the internet) a criminal offence. Sofie Buckland discusses some of the current debate over pornography and issues of censorship. In feminist circles today talking about pornography, except in the exclusively negative sense, can get you into trouble. It is seen as being deliberately provocative. Addressing the subject in online discussion forums and elsewhere, I’ve encountered Stalinist-style shutting down of debate, with lots of personal abuse. And no one from the pro-censorship...

Iran

05 Mar 2006

On 16 September Iranian riot police attacked a gathering of carpet makers in the northern coastal city of Babolsar. They arrested around 40 and injured a number of others. According to reports from the Worker-communist Party of Iran, workers of Farsh e Alborz (“Alborz Carpet”) had gathered in front of the factory when the police arrived, firing tear gas and shots into the air and beating up the workers in baton charges. Several hundred workers of this factory lost their jobs, following the company’s closure last winter. Despite promises by employers and the local government, the factory has...