Workers' Liberty

Following the 1884 Berlin conference where the big powers carved up much of Africa and distributed the parts among themselves, the Spanish state claimed a protectorate over a large part of what is now known as the Western Sahara.

William Morris made a distinctive contribution to the development of Marxist ideas, for example on the nature of work and on the vision of a classless, communist society. But arguably his most significant contribution — and certainly one with great contemporary relevance - was his conception of a socialist ecology.

In October 1908 industrial workers who were union-sponsored students at Ruskin College in Oxford founded what they called the League of the “Plebs”. Former students who had returned to their jobs as miners, railwayworkers, textile workers and engineers, supported them.

The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty plans to stand against the Labour Party’s deputy leader, Harriet Harman, in the next general election. Harman is MP for the working-class constituency of Camberwell and Peckham in south east London.

120 people attended the RMT-organised meeting ‘to discuss the crisis in working-class political representation’, held in London on 10 January. The meeting agreed unanimously that workers need a new political voice, but could not agree on when — or, at least, on the next steps to create one.

Former Scottish Socialist Party leader Tommy Sheridan’s appearance on Celebrity Big Brother is a pretty depressing business.

Beyond boob jobs — how might the credit crunch affect women? is a recent article on The F-word (a feminist blog) by Carolyn Roberts. The writer makes an observation that I found true when researching this topic — that there is pretty much nothing written on the potential impact of the crisis on women.

The financial crisis, offering nothing in the way of hope for working class people in Britain, also gives the British National Party dangerously big opportunities. Predictably the far-right party have been very vocal about what they can gain out of the thousands of job losses and financial insecurity of workers.

Recently I took part in an international webchat conference organised by activists, mainly in continental Europe, under the banner of the “international students movement — emancipating education for all”.

In Greece, the fires of December have burned out, the students returned home for the holidays and, for now, the streets are quiet. But the underlying grievances that propelled thousands of youth and striking workers into clashes with the state remain, so 2009 looks set to be another turbulent year.

Kate Ahrens has been on the National Executive Council of Unison for two years and is now standing for election again as part of a joint left slate. She represents workers in the union’s health sector and has been in the forefront of the pay battle. Kate is also a Workers’ Liberty member. Solidarity spoke to her about her hopes and plans for the union and the left.

Nominations have closed in the election for general secretary of Amicus/joint general secretary of Unite. The choices are not inspiring:

At the beginning of the year, RMT London Underground Cleaners’ Secretary, Clara Osagiede was disciplined on trumped up charge of gross misconduct by her employer, the contractor, ISS. Another RMT rep, Mary Oboakye was sacked because, while she waited for the tube-train doors to open, she rested her eyes, injured in an industrial accident two days previously — for which she was unable to take more time off work because she would have received no sick pay.

One of the most startling experiments in physics, in terms of the results it produces, is the “double split” experiment. Many of us will have carried out this experiment in a school laboratory.

In December a group of students, University workers and local trade unionists gathered outside Balliol college to protest against the poverty wages cleaners, porters and other low paid workers receive there.

As Solidarity went to press, there was speculation the Government would delay its expected 15 January announcement on whether it would allow a third runway at Heathrow, amid mounting opposition from a variety of sources.

The last two months of 2008 saw a huge wave of struggles in Ireland, with protests by students, pensioners and teachers against attempts by the Irish government to make the working class pay for budget short falls in the current economic crisis.

National military service, abolished in Britain in 1960, is still compulsory in Israel. From the age of 18, Israeli-Jewish men are legally obliged to serve three years in the Israeli Defense Force, whereas women must serve two.

Australia may remind you of a lot of other movies – westerns, safari movies, even cartoons, since so much of the characterisation is overblown, even clownish.

In the Gaza demonstrations, rational, nuanced, coherent politics has been eclipsed in an eruption of Arab and Islamic chauvinism that is only in part to be accounted for by the horror at Israel's onslaught on Gaza and a possibly healthy gut identification with the Palestinians and their organisations.

First, the Government semi-nationalised the banks. Now, it is quarter-nationalising the everyday process of trade credit, with the announcement on 14 January of Government guarantees for some £20 billion on loans made by banks to firms for "working capital", i.e. the cash they need to be able to pay wages and bills before their sales income comes in.

Israel's offensive in Gaza is in the tradition of the US-British slaughter of Iraqi conscript soldiers retreating from their occupation of Kuwait at the end of the first Gulf war in 1991. An American soldier described that as "like shooting fish in a barrel". So in Gaza now.

Thousands of jobs are being cut each week. Two recent struggles show that even when bosses are determined to shut down operations, workers can still fight back.

Review of "Che: Part One"

This is a war film with a political backdrop. The action follows the revolutionaries’ landing in Cuba in December 1956, their trekking covertly through forests, taking of military bases, gaining support of the locals, street-fighting in Santa Clara to being days from taking Havana in January 1959. (The taking of Havana will come in Part Two).

According to the website of the Certification Officer, the government official responsible for registering trade unions and employers' organisations, the payments made to the general secretaries of th

“An individual, a group, a party or a class that is capable of ‘objectively’ picking its nose while it watches men drunk with blood, and incited from above, massacring defenceless people is condemned by history to rot and become worm-eaten while it is still alive. On the other hand, a party or a class that rises up against every abominable action wherever it has occurred, as vigorously and unhesitatingly as a living organism reacts to protect its eyes when they are threatened with external injury — such a party or class is sound at heart.”

L D Trotsky, February 1913 (On the Balkan Atrocities)

What Israel is doing in Gaza now is the equivalent of a group of self-righteous cops taking shots — with a bazooka — and lobbing hand grenades at individuals scattered through a dense crowd in a market place from which all the exits have been closed off. The worldwide outrage is perfectly justified.

The world economic crisis took a sharp turn for the worse in September 2008. Some of the Marxist economists who had discussed the crisis in our first series of interviews, March-July 2008, have commented again. No.2: Fred Moseley.

February's national elections are coming 18 months early. They were set in motion in September when Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced he would resign to fight corruption charges.

Every now and again, American workers issue a blunt reminder to the bosses, and to themselves, that the steady and moderate tone transmitted by their nation's great public-relations dream-machine can never fully lull them to sleep.