Workers' Liberty

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

There are times when politics is in flux, when resolute action, or, alternatively, gutless inaction, shapes the future. Now is such a time.

Tony Blair’s “retirement agenda”, what he wants to do in his last period as prime minister, is thoroughly reactionary.

Solidarity 3/87 is now online. Read it here.

By Chris Ford and Pat Markey

Over 300 people attended the conference on working-class political representation sponsored by the rail union RMT on 21 January, and another 100 or so were unable to get in because the hall at Friends Meeting House in London was full.

by Sacha Ismail

“Scandal-hit Lib Dems in free fall” was a typical newspaper headline this week, as the fall out from the sex scandal surrounding ex-Liberal Democrat leadership contender Mark Oaten damaged the party in the polls. Yet the Lib Dems’ do have a substantial, although mostly passive, following among leftish youth.

By Bryan Sketchley

After years of union decline in New Zealand, at the hands of anti union labour governments and a concerted effort by the big business Round Table to take advantage of business friendly legislation, a recently formed union has made impressive headway in organising low paid and previously non unionised workers.

The Zanon tile factory in Neuquen is one of many “recovered” factories in Argentina – factories taken over and run by the workers. Faced with pay cuts and redundancies – and then no pay at all – the Zanon workers occupied and began to run the factory. They are coming to Britain to discuss their experience with activists here.

By colin foster

The new leadership of the Fire Brigades Union has launched a big campaign to mobilise firefighters to defend their pension rights. The FBU is organising a round of district mass meetings, in early February.

The Zanon tile factory in Neuquen is one of many “recovered’ factories in Argentina – factories taken over and run by the workers in the last five years, in the wake of capitalist economic collapse in the that country. Here the workers tell their story.

By Laura Schwartz

The US based student campaign United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) has groups in almost 200 universities and has dominated student politics on US campuses since it was founded in 1997. USAS campaigns have ensured on campuses all over the US that workers are paid a living wage and collegiate apparel is no longer made in sweatshops.

By Mark Osborn

As Solidarity goes to press the Palestinians go to the polls in the first parliamentary election since 1996. 1.27 million Palestinians are eligible to vote and commentators predict an 85% turnout, with Hamas and Fatah closely contesting the election on 25 January.

by Martin Thomas

According to one American journalist in Baghdad, writing to US academic Juan Cole, “The current security situation here has gotten much worse since the elections... Shiite death squads roam the city at night (in police and army uniform no less) dragging all the male members of a Sunni family out into the street and executing them in front of their women folk. Sunni insurgents (not in uniform) do the same to Shiite families in areas claimed as theirs”.

USA

New York’s bus and subway workers, who shut down the US’s largest transit system for three days last month, have voted down the contract they were offered by seven votes.

The election of leftish governments in Latin America continues with the recent Presidential victories of Morales in Bolivia and Bachelet in Chile. Other left candidates are likely to win in Mexico, Brazil and Venezuela this year.

Religion: learning through struggle is not enough

Two different and connected aspects of David Broder’s article in Solidarity 3/86 need to be challenged.

Les Hearn contributes to our debate about nuclear power

Earth’s climate has changed many times throughout its four billion year history and it seems beyond doubt that it is changing once again. But this is the first time that a single species has been responsible for the change.

Ruben Lomas reviews Peter Ackroyd’s The Romantics, BBC2

The French Revolution — although it was a bourgeois revolution — also saw ordinary working people organising collectively, producing their own propaganda, literature, publications and staking their claim for a society in which those who produce wealth also have some control over it.

Gerry Bates reviews The Pauline Conspiracy by Peter Burton

The history of Christianity is irretrievably myth-ridden. Little is known about Jesus as a historical figure. The early Christians had as little scruples as later Stalinists about inventing things they thought would serve their cause.

FV reviews Gay Muslims, a Channel 4 documentary

This insightful document began with the producers telling us that, of the 200 gay Muslims they approached to participate, only five were willing to go before the camera. The experiences of those brave individuals make it clear why the others stayed away.

Recent political developments in France have mainly concerned the presidential election that will take place in May 2007.

That seems a long time off, especially when, already in power, there is a right-wing government hell-bent on making the French economy more competitive by making it more flexible — undermining workers’ rights and cutting wages, looking for ways to boost private business at the expense of public services.

The wealthy’s way of giving birth —

courtesy of the NHS

Described by NHS bosses as, “an income generating” idea, the Jentle midwifery scheme — where women are guaranteed one-to-one regular care … for the price of £4,000 — is a step towards a two tier NHS pre-natal service.

by Stan Crooke

According to the Guardian (23 January), Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt is to call for an end to the so-called “hand out culture” in the NHS, and to demand that financial management be given a greater importance than clinical objectives.

By Pat Murphy, Leeds NUT

The Government is facing its biggest and most powerful revolt yet over the Education White Paper “Higher Standards, Better Schools For All”. Around 100 Labour MPs have signed up to an alternative White Paper which dispenses with key sections of the original.

Terminal 5 strikes

TGWU, GMB and UCATT members building Heathrow’s Terminal 5 struck on Friday 20 and Monday 23 January in their battle over bonuses with contractor Laing O’Rourke — despite claims in the bosses’ press that the action was being called off following a settlement.

In Solidarity 3/86 (12 January) we printed an article about the forthcoming elections for the General Executive Council of the TGWU. The article was wrongly attributed to Tom Cashman, who is standing in that election.

The Department of Work and Pensions London Regional Committee of the PCS union has issued the following statement and is appealing for support from other trade unions.

By Mary Partington

There seems to be a renewed interest in feminism among young women. The FEM 05 conference held at Sheffield University in November attracted at least 200 young and student women — although the event’s complete lack of politics meant that most of them went away none the wiser.

By Mike Wood

On Monday 16 January Nick Griffin, leader of the BNP, and Mark Collett appeared at Leeds Crown Court charged with inciting racial hatred.

By Mike Rowley

In last year’s multi-party presidential elections, the first such in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), the oldest and largest political-Islamist organisation in the world, did not stand a candidate.

“I soon had occasion to become convinced, by experience, that the old bourgeois functionaries sometimes have a broader viewpoint and a more profound sense of dignity than Messrs. ‘Socialist’ Ministers.”

Leon Trotsky, after his expulsion from Norway by the country’s Labour government in 1937.

The “IS tradition” of the 1960s, which members and old ex-members of the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP) cherish, was in fact largely taken from the Independent Labour Party in its last years.