Workers' Liberty

I attended the first ever Social Forum in Kiev, Ukraine. Called by a coalition of Ukrainian independent trade unions and left wing groups for 1 and 2 May 2008 it included speakers from trade unions, and the anti-fascist movement, and special guest Dashty Jamal, an Iraqi trade unionist and refugee rights campaigner.

If new runways at Heathrow, Stansted, Edinburgh and Birmingham airports are built, they will generate more greenhouse gas emissions, which will further contribute to global warming. We should oppose the expansion of Heathrow and other UK airports as part of our working class socialist strategy for preventing dangerous climate change.

Solidarity’s current debate about the future of the nuclear industry appears to be an argument at cross purposes. Martin Thomas, Les Hearn and others have argued that nuclear is not as dangerous or as lethal as some other energy sources like coal. If only we had a planned economy under workers’ control without a £70 billion Trident replacement project in the pipeline, then nuclear would be a good idea.

Since October last year, London No Sweat, has been holding regular pickets of Tesco stores in the East End, exposing the exploitation that lies at the root of Tesco’s bumper profits and focussing particularly on workers’ struggles in Bangladesh.

The Olympic spectacular in August this year is likely to be another step on China’s march towards great power status. For sure the media will marvel at the incredible stadia, the clean streets of the capital and the immensity of the country.

So spare a thought for the workers on Beijing’s Olympic construction sites,

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union conference in San Francisco has passed a motion “calling on unions and working people in the US and internationally to mobilize for a “No Peace No Work Holiday” on May 1, 2008 for 8 hours to demand an immediate end to the war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan and the withdrawal of US troops from the Middle East”.

On 5 March, a 300-plus strong general meeting of UCL Union passed a motion proposed by socialist activist Sham Rajyaguru, president of UCL’s Stop the War Society, to ban the Officer Training Corps, University Royal Navy Units, University of London Air Squadron and all other military organisations from freshers’ events and other union-sponsored events, union premises, and student-run media. Now the right of the union has responded by suspending left-wing General Secretary Sam Godwin.

March 17 1968. 20,000 gather in Trafalgar Square for a rally and march to the US Embassy in protest against the US war in Vietnam. The Square is full of the flags of the National Liberation Front (the “Vietcong”), who, only weeks previously had launched the Tet Offensive that had taken a largely rural guerilla war into the cities of Vietnam, getting as far as the gates of the US Embassy in the capital Saigon.

Respect Renewal MP George Galloway has been far from sympathetic to the case of Mehdi Kazemi, instead choosing to spew homophobic bile and defend the Iranian regime. Showing his complete contempt for human rights and democracy, he has levelled the ridiculous accusation that people campaigning against the deportation of Mehdi Kazemi are “the pink contingent of imperialism” — even though the protests are against our own government.

From Education Not For Sale

On 5 March, a 300-plus strong general meeting of UCL Union passed a motion proposed by socialist activist Sham Rajyaguru, president of UCL's Stop the War Society, to ban the Officer Training Corps, University Royal Navy Units, University of London Air Squadron and all other military organisations from freshers' events and other union-sponsored events, union premises, and student-run media. Now the right of the union has responded by suspending left-wing General Secretary Sam Godwin.

The opinions of William Morris on what we now call ecology are important in any assessment of him as a political thinker in his own time.

Morris was a political activist, and although his personal life was informed by his socialist politics, he did not see lifestyle or consumer behaviour as a substitute for political action.

Morris was more coherent when commenting more concretely on housing under socialism. In The Housing of the Poor, an article published in Justice, (19 July 1884), he wrote:

Morris apparently disliked urban living before he became a socialist, and he appears to have carried over this attitude into his socialist activity. In an early article in Justice, entitled Why Not?

On transport, Morris was even more a prisoner of his time.

Morris had less to say of contemporary relevance on energy, which is hardly surprising since renewables were barely even dreamt of when he was politically active.

One of the great myths about Morris is that he was hostile to technology.

Another of Morris’ contributions to Marxism was his positive conception of work under socialism. Not for Morris - as for his contemporary Paul Lafargue – the right to be lazy.

Perhaps Morris’ most significant breakthrough was to identify working class action and the socialist movement more generally as the essential social agents in protecting the environment.

Morris held to a materialist appreciation of the connection between human productive activity and the ruination of the environment.

Morris had read Marx’s Capital in French by 1884 – an authorised English edition was still to be properly translated at this time.

Sometime in 1882, William Morris decided he was no longer a radical and began to associate himself explicitly with socialism.

Morris made his name as an artist and as a poet, and his commitment to conservation was expressed through his work.