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Develop a culture of solidarity
Crime waves and gun battles sell newspapers. If you believe the media, we live in a war zone, terrorised by feral children and gangsters. Such press coverage is, in reality, a libel on working-class areas. Politicians just love the momentum this gives them to parade their "toughness" again.
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By Jim Byagua
Trying to keep up with the almost daily reports about Charles Clarke and the Government's student funding review body's vacillations over tuition fees isn't easy. The discussion and headlines about the introduction of top-up fees - which would allow institutions to charge massive fees and exclude working class students from going to the more prestigious universities - have now shifted slightly.
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By Sacha Ismail
As the left campaigns against a US war on Iraq, we should not ignore recent events in Iraq's eastern neighbour. Since the start of November, thousands of students at universities across Iran have taken part in pro-democracy meetings, rallies and demonstrations, by all accounts causing widespread panic among the rulers of Iran's Islamic Republic.
These are the largest such demonstrations since July 1999, when an enormous wave of student protest combined with working-class militancy to shake the regime to its foundations. Now, increasingly dissatisfied with the record of Iran's "liberal" President Mohammed Khatami, students are calling for the release of political prisoners and the lifting of the death sentence passed against academic Hashem Aghajari.
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By a postal worker
OUR superb victory in defeating the privatisation of Cashco (workers responsible for handling cash) shows what can be done when the union fights properly. In the face of a 95% vote in favour of strike action amongst Cashco members and CWU leaders threatening to spread the action, the Government ordered Royal Mail Group management to halt the sell off. We must now ensure that the campaign is stepped up against the Post Comm proposals - stamp price increases and post office closures - and the fight against job cuts in Royal Mail.
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By Janine Booth, Political Officer, London Transport Region RMT (personal capacity)
A MAILING from the rail union RMT to its members on the Tube has explained, over two pages, that the PPP is about to happen on London Underground and that the union will continue to fight for workers' interests once it is in place.
The other way of putting this is: RMT has given up the fight against privatisation.
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Alan Turvey reports
To coincide with the European Union summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, in mid-December, at which ten eastern and central European states were admitted to membership, thousands of mainly young people demonstrated in the bitter Scandinavian cold - in the main not against "the EU" or "Europe" as such, but against "the capitalist EU".
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Principles are indivisible
The Alliance for Workers' Liberty does not expect to be liked for it when, confronting the dominant politics and prejudices of the left and the pseudo left on the Jewish-Arab conflict, we drive wedges into painful contradictions.
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Way back in the 1990s, a small group within the US Establishment started arguing for the USA to go to war against Iraq - people like Paul Wolfowitz, now Assistant Secretary for Defence. They knew that the USA's calculations after its 1991 war with Iraq over Kuwait had proved wrong. The US had thought some pliant general or other would sooner or later push Saddam out, but none had. (Since the USA wanted a united Iraq for that pliant general to take over, it was those calculations that made them let Saddam Hussein crush the post-war rebellions by southern Iraqis and Kurds. They had no objection to Saddam using "weapons of mass destruction" then!)
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From Solidarity 3/21, 11 January 2003
George Bush uses "war on terror" to restart "Star Wars"
Just before Christmas US President George W Bush announced that the United States military would actively deploy land and sea based anti missile defence systems - commonly known as "Star Wars".
Mark Catterall looks at the background
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From Solidarity 3/21, 11 January 2003
At a meeting in December, activists from range of organisations, including the socialist Pakistan Labour Party, decided to set up an Anti War Committee in Pakistan.
The meeting was called partly in response to the domination of the religious fundamentalists in the opposition to American aggression. The same fundamentalists have at one time or another made alliances with US imperialism. The Committee wants to counter support for the fundamentalists.
A full report is available at
www.labourpakistan.org
