Workers' Liberty

By John Bloxam

However weak the opposition, Galloway clearly got a big boost from his performance in front of the two US senators on 17 May.

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By Vicki Morris

The French electorate certainly gave president Jacques Chirac a bloody nose on 29 May when they rejected by 55% to 45% the proposed European constitution.

Trotskyist literature that deals head-on with organised religion is a rarity. This article is something of an exception. This review by the American socialist James Patrick Cannon of a novel, Moon Gaffney, by Harry Sylvester, followed Sylvester in portraying the social and mental world of Catholic Irish-America. It is taken from The Militant (the paper of the American Socialist Workers Party), 14 June 1947.

By John O’Mahony

Ridley Scott has done fine work such as the parable about creation, Bladerunner. His Kingdom of Heaven is a film about the Crusades (a series of Christian invasions of Muslim Palestine a thousand years ago), about religious wars and the clash of Islamic and Christian cultures.

By John Strawson

(John Strawson is a lecturer at the University of East London, and also teaches at Birzeit University in the occupied West Bank)

The AUT [Association of University Teachers] proposal to boycott Israel has raised a great many issues: the right to education in Palestine, academics’ role in ending the Israeli occupation, Zionism, anti-semitism and academic freedom. For the past ten years I have been associated with Birzeit University through the European Consortium that supports the Institute of Law. This involves some academics, mainly in Belgium and Britain, who have been assisting in the teaching on a law masters program and increasingly becoming involved in research collaboration.

By Steve Cohen, No One is Illegal

Victories in the struggle against immigration controls do not come easy or often. Usually the onward march of controls seems endless and remorseless. So we should treasure successes when they happen. And one such success has been against the YMCA.

• No Sweat Steering Group

• London No Sweat Public Forum
• Art-Music-Politics (AMP)

By Pat Murphy

Less than one month back in power, and New Labour has it sights on a fresh enemy. Popular opinion, so distrustful of politicians and leaders, is being encouraged to work out its frustration and discontent on a new public enemy number one. The latest anti-social scapegoat is…..young people.

By Mark Osborn

On 26 May, a special conference of the Association of University Teachers voted by a four-to-one majority to overturn the “targeted” academic boycott of Israeli universities which the regular conference of the union had narrowly agreed on a snap vote, without debate, in April.

By Houzan Mahmoud, on behalf of the campaign to support students in Basra against Islamic repression

The first student congress since the US-led invasion will be held in Iraq on June 15th, 2005. Student committees set up in December last year have been working hard under extremely dangerous conditions to organise students and create a progressive student organization to defend the rights and freedoms of young people in Iraq.

By Mike Rowley

The government of Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak claims an 83% “yes” vote on a 54% turnout in its constitutional referendum last week. This will allow opposition candidates to stand for the presidency against Mubarak, but only if they are selected by the dictator’s own oddly named “National Democratic Party”.

By Mike Sanders

Marxist activists from across the country met over the weekend 21-22 May for the conference of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty. The major debates were on Iraq, “Rebuilding the labour movement”, and the work and purpose of the AWL.

By Janet Burstall

John Howard has been the Liberal Prime Minister of Australia since 1996. Last November he won not only his third term as Prime Minister, but also, for the first time, a majority in both houses of the Parliament. From that position of strength his government is preparing to introduce a string of anti-union legislation.

Privatising the vote

It’s only once every four years that we get a say in how the country is run, so you think the powers that be would run the election efficiently, wouldn’t you? Well, no. The ease of committing postal voting fraud is now well known, with reports of thousands of postal votes suddenly appearing from small areas. But even the most basic mechanics of voting were sometimes screwed up.

How long can the Galloway-SWP alliance in Respect last? Galloway appears to have little respect for his main partners, the organisation which after all provided the bulk of the foot-soldiers for his victory in Bethnal Green and Bow.

By Maria Exall, CWU Executive (pers cap)

The intertwined issues of pensions and retirement age will be on the agenda at this year’s Communication Workers’ Union conference. The Post Office schemes are not in the frame for the attacks curremtly happening in the rest of the public sector, but the threat is still there. There will be a call for ballots for strike action if any attempt is made to reduce benefits or increase the age that members are entitled to claim their pension.

Josh Robinson reviews Jim Motavalli, ed., Feeling the Heat: Dispatches from the Frontlines of Climate Change (New York and London: Routledge, 2004)

This selection of essays reprinted from E/The Environmental Magazine demonstrates three things beyond any reasonable doubt. The first is that climate change is taking place right now. The second, that industrial and domestic burning of fossil fuels has environmental consequences that go beyond the effects of greenhouse gases. The third, that continued climate change is likely to have wide-ranging and devastating effects, on a huge but unpredictable scale.

By Sacha Ismail

George Galloway’s performance in front of a US Senate committee charged with investigating Iraq’s former oil-for-food programme has been hailed as a triumph by both his mouthpiece Socialist Worker and substantial sections of the bourgeois press.

An open letter to Sue Blackwell, leader of the AUT pro-boycotters

“There has been a massive and well funded campaign against us and incredible pressure put upon members in the run up to this debate.” Sue Blackwell on the defeat of the academic boycott of Israel, in the Guardian, 27 May.

Stan Crooke looks at the background to the recent slaughter of up to 500 people by the Uzbek government during demonstrations in the eastern city of Andijan.

The Uzbek government claims that “only” 169 people were killed by troops in Andijan. Ten of the dead are police officers they say, the rest were all Islamic militants. However a local pathologist reported seeing more than 500 corpses in a makeshift morgue in Andijan. Human rights organisations have also put the figure of civilian casualties at about 500. And an Uzbek opposition party has compiled a list of more than 700 people it says were killed after troops moved in.

By Mick Duncan

The American billionaire Malcolm Glazer, has succeeded in his bid to take control of Manchester United, causing a huge backlash among the soccer club’s supporters.

By August Grabski

About 10,000 workers demonstrated on 19 May in Warsaw, organised by the OPZZ (the former Communist trade union) and the trade union Solidarity 80.

David Broder reviews Machuca

Machuca is a Chilean film, on limited release in the UK, therefore I’ll depart with convention and tell you what happens at the end.

More than 2,000 Indonesian garment workers have staged a strike to protest at their ill-treatment and unpaid overtime fees. The workers of Katexindo Citra Mandiri have been on strike since 14 May 14, according to the National Front for Indonesian Workers Struggle (FNPBI).

By Les Hearn

Opposition to nuclear power has become a shibboleth to some on the left, its birth tainted by the original sin of the atom bomb. But the idea of nuclear power to help cut emissions of “greenhouse” gases has recently gained more support, including from a few environmentalists.

A month before the big Make Poverty History demonstration in Edinburgh on 2 July, the movement has been hit by a row about the wristbands it sells, for people to wear to show support, being made in non-union, low-wage, sweatshops.

By Mike Rowley

Very early on 4 May a group of activists from Oxford went down to Southampton Airport. Not, alas, to catch the 6.30 flight to Paris but to prevent an asylum seeker from being forced onto it against his will.

Thousands of Nicaraguan rural workers have been camping in front of the National Assembly for over two months to demand job security and justice for the victims of the pesticide Nemagon.