AWL conference 2004

AWL May 2004 conference document on Iraq

IRAQ AND US WORLD POLICY Additional motion to update to 17/04/04 1. We condemn the US military action at Fallujah and elsewhere, which has resulted in many deaths - in Fallujah 600-700, many of them non-combatants. 2. But we reject the idea that what we are seeing is an ‘uprising of the Iraqi people’. It is an ‘uprising’ by specfic, reactionary political movements. 3. We oppose both the guerrilla resistance in Fallujah and the Jaish al-Mahdi of Muqtada as-Sadr. These are reactionary, fascistic forces. 4. We are for building solidarity with all democratic, working class movements against both...

"If not us, who? If not now, when?"

The 2004 conference of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty took place on 8-9 May in London. Daniel Randall reports. The year since AWL's last conference has not been an easy one. The millions mobilised on anti-war demonstrations have scattered, leaving life in the labour movement still low. We have seen the SWP liquidate the Socialist Alliance in favour of building the Respect Unity Coalition behind George Galloway; and the vast majority of the left collapse into classless, false 'anti-imperialism' over Iraq, ignoring the demands or even the existence of the new Iraqi workers' movement. The AWL...

Reply to Bruce on the June elections

In June we should say something like: keep out the BNP and the Tories. Vote socialist or Labour. Fight Blair - build the LRC. 1. If we had concluded, as the Socialist Party has, that the Labour Party is finally, totally, completely and irreversibly dead in working-class politics, then of course we would abstain where we could not stand independent working-class candidates. We would also call on the unions to disaffiliate, and dismiss the current moves for an LRC as a pointless dead end. We do not. 2. Thus in principle we can say: we're voting Labour because Labour still, despite everything...

Motion on AWL branch-building

1) We need to turn the AWL more towards face-to-face political activity. 2) Events like the European Social Forum and the Iraq war protests show the development of a new milieu of radicalised young people. 3) The limited revival of trade unionism is important, not so much because it will let anyone quickly recruit large numbers of established trade unionists to revolutionary Marxist activism, as for the possibilities it gives of expanding our trade union work and for convincing radicals that an orientation to the working class and the labour movement makes sense. 4) Our rate of recruitment...

Class, union, party

1. The Labour Party is still what Lenin called it in 1920, a bourgeois workers' party. In the last decade, there has been an enormous shift within this contradictory phenomenon towards its bourgeois pole. 2. New Labour differs from Old Labour in these respects. The trade union share of the vote at Party conference and of direct and indirect representation on the National Executive has been substantially cut. The role of both Annual Conference and the National Executive in the affairs of the Labour Party has been changed qualitatively. Essentially, they no longer control Labour Party policy, or...

Amendments on the Labour Party

Amendments on the Labour Party to various conference documents, from Bruce R. 'CLASS, UNION AND PARTY' Add new 3(a): "There has been a considerable erosion in traditional working class support for Labour, particularly amongst young people. Symptoms include the increase in electoral abstention, particularly in inner-city areas, and the growth of the BNP." RESPECT COALITION Rewrite para. 18 to read: "In the GLA and euro-elections, we can neither support Respect against New Labour nor New Labour against Respect. If Respect is standing on a watered-down non-socialist platform, the New Labour...

Motion on hijab and French law from Mark S

Motion for the AWL AGM 2004 Proposed by Mark Sandell 1. The hijab, veil and burkha are public expressions of the ownership of women by men, fathers, husbands, brothers, laid down in muslim teaching, socialists should oppose it. 2. We do not support state bans on adults self abuse but to confuse that with the case of schools is wrong. 3. Most of the left and many liberals in Britain have focused on opposition to the French ban on the veil in school while ignoring the issue of girls in British schools being withdrawn from sex education and sport and a regime of 'multi culturalism' in many...

Vogon spaceships and the dinner party Plan

Response to 'an Independent workers focus' document By Gerry B Sigh! When I saw this document I sighed. Here we go again Another MT document, full of good things but no way of prioritising them, a document you feel harsh for criticising because it means well. And can you stand up at conference and call for a vote against it? What is the point? It won't make any difference either way. And that is the point. What does it do to an organisation to vote through a pointless document? What goes on in the heads of the membership, when they put up their hands after being told (as last year) 'If you...

An independent workers' focus

Draft document for AWL conference 2004 1. A new radical generation is emerging - piecemeal, fragmented and diffuse. The evidence is: a. The continuing "new anti-capitalist" mobilisations. Most lately: i. The G8 Evian protest in June 2003 drew up to 100,000 people; ii. The European Social Forum in November 2003 drew over 50,000 people; iii. The No Sweat campaign has built up thousands of contacts. b. The big anti-war demonstrations of early 2003, and their sequels, not in a big continuing organised campaign, but in a large diffuse milieu, manifested at the 20 November 2003 anti-Bush...

Comments on Mark S's motion on the hijab

(and an alternative motion) from Martin T 2. We do not support state bans on adults' self abuse but to confuse that with the case of schools is wrong. Some "confusion" or blurred edges are in the nature of the case. The French row about the hijab is centred in lycées (16 to 18 year olds), though some 13-to-15 year-olds in collèges have also been involved. Teenagers should have some adult rights. In fact I can see a stronger case for banning the hijab for adults (teachers) in schools than for banning it for students. By the way, while our general bias is for the liberty of the individual to do...

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