Workers' Liberty

Sixty five years ago, on 20 August 1940 Leon Trotsky was struck with a fatal blow from an ice-pick by an agent sent by the CPU, Stalin’s secret police in the USSR. Here, Trotsky’s partner for four decades Natalia Sedov Trotsky tells the story of Trotsky’s death. The article was first published in the Fourth International in May 1947.

Read the articles here.

Political-Christianists, against the teapot religion, Daily conspiracy, BBC bais, Transco in the dock

News from working-class struggles around the world...

On demonstrations in the 1960s, it was common to hear marchers chanting “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, we will fight and we will win”, in honour of the Vietnamese Stalinist who led the fight against US occupation. The best sections of the left replied with their own rhyme — Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh — how many Trots did you do in?” They were referring to the mass murder of the Vietnamese Trotskyists by Stalinist forces in 1945. Sixty years on, the massacre has largely been forgotten.

It was in the fight against the Moscow Trials that so many many American radical intellectuals learned to understand the modern communist state and movement. Most of them became friendly to the Trotskyists; a few even joined their ranks. But even though none of them remained Trotskyists for long, they took this insight with them for the rest of their lives. So did others during this stormy period. Still others gained this insight during the Hitler-Stalin pact. And still others were to require it only after the sanguinary suppression of the Hungarian Revolution, years later.

The following article — an excerpt from Leon Trotsky’s “New Course”, written in December 1923, delineates the fundamental characteristics of the Bolshevism which Trotsky advocated and defended against the encroachment of Stalinism.

News and views from inside the student movement...

“Solidarity strikes must be made legal,” wrote Tony Woodley in the Guardian on 15 August. His comment came after workers at British Airways had staged a walkout in support of Gate Gourmet catering workers, summarily sacked by bosses who wanted to replace them with cheaper more flexible workers. Woodley was absolutely right.

Cathy Nugent reviews Panorama, BBC1, 28 August

A socialist perspective on some great poems throughout history...

PCS in the London Department of Work and Pensions has finally resolved to ballot members for strike action over the threat of job losses.

New Zealand goes to the polls on 17 September to elect a new government. A close look at the parties shows that, from a working class point of view, there remains nothing to choose from between Labour and the opposition National Party. For instance, Labour, worried by slipping support,have announced a vote-catching policy of cancelling interest on student loans. Yet the accumulated student debt of $7 billion is a result of “user pays” policies introduced by Labour in the 1980s and pursued and extended by National Party through the following decade.

At the end of August 250 Eastern European workers, picking strawberries for S&A Produce at Brierley, near Leominster, organised a road blockade in protest at their dreadful pay and conditions. S&A employs 1,500 migrant workers under the UK’s seasonal agricultural workers scheme which allows Eastern Europeans to come to Britain to work for a limited period. It is a huge operation, planting more than 20 million strawberry plants every year.

Clive Bradley reviews Lost, Wednesdays, Channel Four

A wry look at the ins-and-outs of the left...

On Friday 2 September, thousands of trade unionists will converge on Bristolto demonstrate in support of victimised Rolls Royce Amicus convenor Jerry Hicks.

A series of protests took place over the weekend in protest at the Government’s announcement that it plans to begin deporting “failed” asylum-seekers back to Iraq. Protests in Scotland, Wales and English cities with a large Iraqi population including Nottingham, Cardiff and Sheffield, Manchester, Birmingham and London also highlighted the Government’s plans to cut benefits for Iraqis who do not return home, in an attempt to drive them out of the UK “voluntarily”.

After several attempts to delay a decision, talks to agree a new Iraqi constitution broke down this week as a result of the Sunni minority’s rejection of a federal Iraq. The trade unions have registered their protests that the proposed constitution does not recognise the right to strike, or the rights of women (giving power to Islamic courts through shari’a law).

The article in Solidarity 3/78 (“Should socialists support gun control”) suggests that socialists should be in favour of the right for individuals to carry guns because the working class needs to be able to defend itself against both police violence on an everyday basis and against state violence during a future revolutionary situation. But supporting workers’ right to self-defence should not immediately lead us to demand that the UK should follow the US in making guns freely available to every consumer.

In the 18 September federal election, Die Linke.PDS, Germany’s “left party” is set to make big gains. This is against a background of workers’ anger at an unemployment rate of over 10% and cuts in social welfare by the incumbent SPD Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder. Schröder is far behind the conservative Christian Democrat (CDU) candidate Angela Merkel in the polls, although it is likely that neither will be able to form a coalition with an overall majority, forcing them into a “grand coalition” together.

On 10 August the international catering firm Gate Gourmet sacked some 670 workers, mainly Asian women, at Heathrow for “illegal strike action”.

Gate Gourmet had brought in 120 “seasonal workers” despite planning a restructuring “…that was likely to see hundreds of full-time staff fired” (Financial Times briefing, 23 August). Laying off permanent staff whilst hiring temporary staff was obviously a move to casualisation and seasonal working.

I fully support the Socialist Caucus within the PCS in its fight over job losses. However there is one area of PCS membership where I’d fully support job losses. This is among that major sector which works for the immigration service.

In 1884 Ernest Belfort Bax, one of the pioneer British Marxists, wrote a long series of articles on the Commune in Justice, the paper of the first British Marxist group, the Social Democratic Federation. In the last two issues of Solidarity we have published an abridged and adapted version of Bax’s narrative and also incorporated a few pages from a mid-1880s Socialist League pamphlet, written by Bax and William Morris. This is the final instalment.

China faces a huge wave of protests which may push the regime into a serious political crisis.

This year, John Howard plans to bring in anti-union legislation more drastic than former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher ever attempted in one instalment, and arguably more drastic than the sum total of the whole long series of laws introduced by Thatcher’s government through the 1980s.

By Bob Carnegie and Martin Thomas

Two campaigns in suport of asylum seekers threatened by Britain's repressive laws.

The left in Israel/Palestine (those, broadly on the left of the peace movement) have expressed a mixed reaction to removal of Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip. For some it signalled a little hope. An important taboo over the status of Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories has been broken, they said. Maintaining the settlements in the West Bank — they are much more widespread there — might no longer be sacrosanct, in the eyes of broad Israeli public opinion. Those hardliners who fought against the pull-out in Gaza have been shown to be isolated.

As predicted well in advance, A-level pass rates rose this year, continuing the trend of the last 23 years. To read some of the right-wing newspaper coverage, you'd be forgiven for thinking everyone had passed with four A grades; in fact, the proportion of entries resulting in a pass grade (A-E) rose just 0.2% from 96%, with only 2% of pupils gaining 3 or more A grades.