Solidarity 112, 18 May 2007

Mansour Ossanlou is a leader of the Syndicate [Union] of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company (Sherkate Vahed). He was arrested and imprisoned in December 2005. Following huge national and international pressure Ossanlou was released in August 2006, but rearrested in November. He has since been released on bail and is awaiting trial on the charge of “propaganda against the state” and “engaging in activities contrary to national security”. This is from an interview with the Iranian Workers Bulletin in April 2007. Full version is at: www.iranianworkersbulletin.org /IWB/Issues/NEWS12.pdf On...

Farooq Tariq, general secretary of the Labour Party of Pakistan, a significant revolutionary left group which opposes Pakistan’s military regime, its US backers and political Islam, was arrested for four days earlier this month. Tariq was one of a larger number of people arrested in connection with the protests against military dictator Pervez Musharraf’s sacking of the independent minded chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Choudhry. Anti-government strikes have paralysed Karachi and other major cities. A different kind of political threat has also been seen — on 15 May a suicide bomber killed 25...

Richard Preece discusses the recent anti-government demonstrations in Turkey Much mainstream liberal and centre-right reporting on the crisis in Turkey has portrayed the debate as being a kind of “clash of civilisations in one country” between “Islamists” (or even “Muslims” according to others) supporting the ruling Adalet ve Kalk¦nma Partisi and “secularists” supporting the army and the opposition Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi. On the other hand, sections of the left seem to be tending towards the totally boneheaded view that the hundreds of thousands on the streets of Istanbul and Ankara, and the...

Steve Cohen reviews February House by Sherill Tippins (Pocket Books) Gypsy Rose Lee was perhaps the ultimate post-modern stripper — in an age when modernism wasn’t yet derided. She never took her clothes off. She was famous for this in her working lifetime (the 1940s) and immortalised for it in the Stephen Sondheim/Jule Styne musical Gypsy. What is virtually unknown is her cultural and left-wing political commitment. She non-stripped whilst singing: “When I lower my gown a fraction, And expose a patch of shoulder, I’m not thinking of your reaction, I’m not even feeling colder. I’m thinking of...

By Barry Finger “That is the mentality which sees socialism in the far distance and is really chained to the idea that what workers want is a higher standard of living, ‘a full dinner pail’, ‘peace’, ‘full employment’. All he has done is to hold fast to the existent, making it tolerable by patching up the holes. That is the next stage of socialism. Shachtman is that type complete. The opposition, the socialism that lies in the struggle and overcoming of Stalinism is beyond him. But that does not exhaust the type. At the other end of its scale is Trotsky. He holds fast to another type of...

Izzy Turnball asks (Solidarity 3/111) can the AWL, in this paper and at events, make its political language simpler, so that people such as herself with particular disabilities (dyslexia) or a lack of political background feel more at home. The answer is yes, in some particular ways, but not necessarily through the medium of the paper alone. We do strive to have a mix of articles, so that there is always at least some things that are accessible to everyone. We can and should weed out jargon. Comrades should not “talk in initials”. If there is an obscure historical event or personality written...

Three letters responding to Sacha Ismail’s “Peter Tatchell and voting Labour” (Solidarity 3/111). Political contradictions The specific issue of whether or not to support Tatchell clarifies a number of positions upon which the AWL’s line in the past has been something of a fudge. Sacha says that “If Tatchell were standing as part of a socialist and working-class coalition (such as the old Socialist Alliance), or even perhaps as an ‘ecosocialist independent’” then the AWL would be in a position to support him. In the meanwhile socialists in Oxford East should vote Labour, because Tatchell is...

Solidarity 3/112. Download the pages, as pdfs, here (click on "read more"), or read it on this website by clicking here . Page 1 . Trade unionists refused a vote on Labour leadership: cheated! Page 2 . Shelter and the housing crisis. Ireland and abortion. Gaza Page 3 . New Labour cheats workers; No left candidate in deputy race Page 4 . Industrial news Page 5 . Scotland after the 3 May elections Page 6 . International campaigning Page 7 . Italian left: end of an era. Turkish demonstrations are about freedom Page 8 and page 9 . Thirteen years of Blair: making "Labour" serve the rich Page 10...

BY Sacha Ismail Across Iran, workers seeking to celebrate May Day faced harassment and violence from the Islamic Republic’s security forces. In Tehran, at an official, state-sponsored rally, Alireza Mahjoub, the head of the “Workers’ House” labour front used by the government to control workers, was interrupted by chanting workers and could not finish his speech. Seven thousand workers then left the stadium and attempted to march into central Tehran, but were attacked by the security forces and forced to disperse. In the Kurdish capital Sanandaj, workers had requested permission to march but...

By Helen Shaw A seventeen year old Irish woman has won a High Court battle in Dublin to be allowed to come to Britain for an abortion. The woman, known only as “Miss D”, was told in the fourth month of her pregnancy that her foetus had failed to develop properly and is suffering anencephaly, which means that a significant part of the skull and brain are missing. Babies born with this condition are expected to live a maximum of three days. Abortion is illegal in the Republic of Ireland except for cases where the mother’s life is threatened by a medical condition or she is a suicide risk because...