Youth

Young members of the RMT met in London on Saturday 5th April for their annual conference. Guest speakers informed young members about the wider political context of their union work. A speaker from The Cuba Solidarity Campaign was questioned on what Cuba will be like after Castro, about the US blockade and what role a union such as the RMT has, considering there are no independent trade unions in Cuba to receive the RMT’s solidarity! Unsurprisingly, the speaker insisted that all trade unions in Cuba are elected and independent of the government. Hamish from the PCS gave a history of trade...

AWL members will be attending the 2008 conference of the Socialist Youth Network (youth section of the Labour Representation Committee ) and proposing the following motions. For more information, to come with us to the event or to support one or more of our motions, email chrisjmarks@hotmail.com The conference is at University of London Union, 10-4pm, Saturday 29 March. Fight to restore and extend working-class political representation SYN recognises that the decisions taken at the 2007 Labour Party conference in Bournemouth have disenfranchised the affiliated trade unions and CLPs, robbing...

Interview with Amaria Gacemi – sandwich maker and CGT rep at the striking Grand Littoral Carrefour supermarket in Marseilles Red: How did the strike start? Amaria: On the 1st of February, there was a national strike of supermarket staff and the shop was closed. We held a general assembly with nearly 200 workers, and we voted to carry on the strike indefinitely, with our own local demands. But management slammed the door in our faces, they would only say to us, “this is a national matter, we can’t do anything ourselves”. They said that there were only 30 strikers out of 586 workers, but if that...

From binge drinking and the problems associated with it, to privatisation, the dumbing down of education and low paid, “flexible for the bosses” work, life under New Labour has a bit of everything bad for working class youth. At work, millions of working people are paid a pittance, and the younger you are the worse it is. To add insult to injury the Tories, the government and the media have stepped up the crude cultural bigotry about youth, while competing to find the best solutions to their bad behaviour based on developing ever more coercive interventions. There seems to be no end to the...

Due to engineering works, the Docklands Light Railway will not be running on 19 April. A rail replacement service is operating, but the best way to get to Cyprus DLR station seems to be to get the Jubilee Line to Canning Town and then the (very regular) 474 bus. An introduction to Marxist ideas, organised by the Alliance for Workers' Liberty 12-7pm, Saturday 19 April 2008, University of East London Docklands campus (next to Cyprus DLR) Sweatshop labour, soaring inequality, privatisation, war, racism, destruction of the environment, women's oppression... why is the world like it is? And how can...

August: when Summer broke, sudden, soon, Although I scarcely saw that then, Or knew enough to recognise plain ruin; August: the biting frost allready in the wound, Settled, Spreading; August: guilt-sapped, love-torn, hate-clogged, Needing defeat as the dying need a death: And then this everlasting unforgivingness; August: too deep identity with sorely pressed oppressors, Whose unexpected old guerrillas broke the front, And my half-formed new skin; August: new blooming fire engulfed, Almost put out, Run underground, banked, buried; August: when what was lost had scarce had time to be, That...

By Sofie Buckland, National Union of Students executive (pc) It is, unfortunately, a cliched way to begin an article about left-wing youth, but students and young people in and around the AWL will be very busy this term. Our comrades will be intervening in freshers' fairs and organising meetings at universities and colleges around the country. We want to be a pole of attraction for students attracted to revolutionary socialism but put off by the classless “anti-imperialism” of the SWP, say, or the bland opportunism of the Socialist Party. What marks out Workers' Liberty meetings, like our...