Workers' Liberty

They messed up earlier in the year, in September, but armed with lessons and nerved from their recent successes in Manchester and Leeds, the English Defence League (EDL)/Stop Islamisation Of Europe (SIOE) and fellow travellers are due back in Harrow, north west London, on Sunday 13 December for another go at the central mosque.

Popular pro-democracy protests have once again flared up in Iran on 7-8 December, with state authorities clamping down hard on activists — many of them students — by using arrests and violent repression.

As Nick Griffin announced his Parliamentary candidacy in Barking and Dagenham, Solidarity spoke to Dave Landau, an independent socialist and anti-fascist campaigner active in the Redbridge & Epping Forest Together campaign.

The English Defence League staged one of their largest demonstrations to date in Nottingham city centre on 5 December, drawing up to 500 of their members.

A presentation by Indian Marxists Jairus Banaji and Rohini Hensman, from Ideas for Freedom winter 2009, a weekend of socialist debate and discussion hosted by Workers’ Liberty on 28-29 November.

On 27 November Ed Maltby attended a small protest in front of the Polish Embassy in London in solidarity with workers and trade union activists who have been sacked from the Cegielski factory in Poznan.

Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed. Joseph Stalin

In Britain genealogists can be found in your local library. In Russia they can end up behind bars. This was one of the many illuminating and worrying facts in John Sweeney’s brave but flawed documentary (Stalin’s back? BBC2, 2 December) about the way Stalin’s reputation is being rehabilitated by the current Russian regime.

Sometimes struggles come along that help us learn, or relearn, many basic and valuable lessons about what it means to be a working-class activist engaged in the fight for socialism. The struggle that took place on the Isle of Wight in summer 2009 to prevent the closure of the Vestas wind turbine blades factory was such a struggle.

Members, supporters and friends of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty gathered in London over 28-29 November to discuss “How to fight capitalism”. With sessions ranging from introductory discussions on Marxist ideas to in-depth debates on the capitalist economy and its future, the weekend was geared towards re-arming and equipping revolutionary socialists with ideas for the battles to come.

Migrant workers in France have stepped up their campaign of strikes and occupations. Nearly 6,000 workers are now involved in a strike wave that has spread from Paris out into Oise and Orléans, demanding rights at work, regularisation papers, and a fairer system for regularising migrant workers.

Barack Obama’s decision to send a further 30,000 US troops to Afghanistan, coupled with a (conditional) commitment to begin withdrawing troops in 18 months’ time (a political concession to Democrats and an increasingly war-weary American public) has been described as a “gamble”. That puts it charitably.

Our members on London Underground are balloting on whether or not to to take action to improve a pay deal from management — an offer of 1.5% this year and 0.5% next. The ballot result is due on 21 December.

Following two 24 hour strikes, cleaners who work on Eurostar trains and for Carlisle Cleaners have won

The election for the General Secretary (GS) of the civil service union PCS has begun. AWL members in the PCS are recommending a vote for Mark Serwotka, the present incumbent. Our recommendation for such a vote is not because we are not uncritical of him; on the contrary.

Royal Mail management in London have started to make small concessions to postal workers, agreeing in some units to “re-sign” jobs — that is, to allow workers to choose which tasks to sign up to. Previously management had been unilaterally allocating duties.

The Copenhagen conference on 7-18 December will be a disappointment on a gargantuan scale. Whatever agreement is reached next week, it will not turn the tide in time to significantly reduce emissions.

On 14 November, just as the government was introducing “Work for your Benefit” pilot schemes, members of twenty-three different groups from around the UK met in Manchester to share information and plan resistance to government welfare reform.

Local community campaigners in the Hyde Park district in Leeds recently occupied the site of a school building in an attempt to save it for their use.

In the university and higher education sector 800 jobs have already been lost. 600 jobs have already gone in further education colleges. Across the two sectors, a further 5,000 jobs are under immediate threat, the great majority in higher education. But these cuts represent only a “first wave” of likely cuts. As the recession bites, we can expect more.

The University of Sussex Students Union is due to hold a second referendum on whether to implement a boycott of Israeli goods in SU outlets. The boycott policy was passed by an earlier referendum at the end of October by a margin of 562 to 450. However, a group of students has now gathered the 150 signatures required to reopen and rerun the vote.