Workers' Liberty

The enthusiasm among the progressive wing of the Democratic Party for Barack Obama, a compelling writer, an inspiring speaker with a story that seems to define the American experience, is understandable. Indeed, the symbolic significance of an African-American so close to the presidency in a country whose politics is so fundamentally scarred by racism cannot be underestimated. This enthusiasm seems to have upturned the usual justification on the part of progressives and leftists for voting Democratic. No longer is the zeal for the DP based primarily on the abhorrence for the Republican administration; no longer is the justification offered defined largely in the negative, by the nature of the reactionary opposition.

Trevor Evans is a professor at the Berlin School of Economics, and has also worked in Nicaragua and other countries. He has written especially on the interrelation between finance and capitalist crises. He spoke to Martin Thomas.

Inflation increased by one-tenth from May to June. The leap from 3% to 3.3% is the largest increase since 1997. The increase prompted Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, to write to Chancellor Alistair Darling explaining that the “rise can be accounted for by large and, until recently, unanticipated increases in the prices of food, fuel, gas and electricity”. No kidding Mr King!

The activist left, being heavily concentrated in city-centre areas with relatively copious public transport, may be liable to underestimate the impact of fuel price rises.

Even in Britain, probably the majority of the working class live in outlying areas of cities and in small towns: they have no choice but to drive a car to get to work. About two-thirds of all journeys to work in Britain are made by car.

Rising inflation and the government policy of wage cutting by keeping wage increases below inflation, is reviving active, militant trade unionism.

Workers are being faced with the choice to either fight or docilely let their living standards be forced down by a government whose pandering to the rich was a already, even before it adopted a policy of “fighting inflation” by cutting the real wages of low paid workers, a scandal and an obscenity.

David Davis, the ex-Tory MP soon to stand in a by-election for his own constituency on a platform of opposing 42 day detention without charge and defending civil liberties, is a hard-line right-winger. He supports the restoration of the death penalty. He has voted repeatedly in Parliament against lesbian and gay equality: against the repeal of Section 28, against an equal age of consent, against adoption rights. He voted to cut back women's access to abortion. He wants to abolish the minimal protections of the Human Rights Act.

This is abridged from a statement by the International Socialist Organisation Zimbabwe written before MDC candidate Morgan Tsvangirai withdrew from the election, and followed by a postscript concerning the withdrawal. It is worth restating our opposition to the comrades' electoral support, however critical, for the MDC; we printed a critique in the last issue of Solidarity and hope they will reply when they are able to.

Drivers who work on a contact for Shell Oil were offered a 14% pay increase over two years after four days of strike action. The increase may be worth 9% in the first year and 5% in the second, taking average annual earnings to £41,750 — it’s not clear because contracts are due to be renewed in a year.

The left in Britain is in crisis. Recent years have seen the tensions caused by this crisis tear through the Socialist Alliance, the Scottish Socialist Party and Respect. Other projects have been even less successful.

The Memory of the Dead, better known as Ninety Eight, one of the best-known of Irish Republican songs, was first published in Thomas Davis’ paper, The Nation in 1842. It was written overnight after its author John Kells Ingram had spent an evening arguing Irish politics and history with a group of fellow Protestant students at Trinity College Dublin. Ingrams dared to speak of 98!

Who fears to speak of Ninety-Eight?
Who blushes at the name?
When cowards mock the patriot’s fate
Who hangs his head for shame?

(full poem)
From May to September of 1798 the power of Britain in Ireland was threatened by fierce rebellion. The rising had the character of a forest fire. It was rarely clear where the main centre was. When any significant source of unrest was identified and attacked it appeared that the real danger lay somewhere else.

George Bush’s visit to London on 15 June was an opportunity for socialists to take advantage of large scale opposition to the actions of the American and British governments’ both abroad and at home. Unfortunately, the demonstration held by the Stop the War Coalition was as politically vacant as previous ones. Instead of highlighting wider issues of global capitalism, the only subject on the agenda was the war in Iraq.

These are bad times for the Socialist Action group. Not only did the defeat of Ken Livingstone mean the loss of their sinecures at City Hall, their front group “Student Broad Left” has now almost disappeared. In an attempt to shore up their position, SA have hit out at their erstwhile allies in the SWP.

The 21 June Socialist Worker, an issue geared for the SWP’s anti-BNP demo in London, was full of establishment anti-fascism, claiming that the BNP are not a “respectable” party and calling for an apolitical cross-class front against fascism. To this end, the paper included an article about the “hidden story” of West Indian people fighting for the Allies in World War Two, as “revealed” by a new Imperial War Museum exhibition.

Chris Marks reviews Dispatches (Channel 4, 23 June)

In 1968 I was a 14 year old student at a posh school in the centre of London. Events of that year did not pass unnoticed even among the sons of the bourgeoisie. The film If made an impression and, even if we didn’t machine gun our teachers, there was at least one organised protest there demanding the right to party unconstrained by school rules on Saturdays.

If you’ve been listening to the Radio Four’s series, 1968, a selection of old radio news broadcasts from each day of that year, you will know that it has got quite exciting (as exciting as Radio Four gets), covering events and France over the last two months.

Well over a hundred people attended the "Save Our Services in Lambeth" meeting hosted by Lambeth local government Unison on 11 June, and agreed to launch a Public Services Not Private Profit campaign to unite the various workers' struggles and anti-cuts initiatives currently taking place in the borough.

Education Not for Sale, an anti-capitalist student alliance in which Workers' Liberty students are involved, held the first meetings of its new steering committee on 8 June. It was attended by activists and student union officers from institutions around the country, and was characterised by lively discussion on a variety of issues.

Unite against Fascism (UAF), the SWP-run anti-fascist coalition backed by several unions, called their first national demonstration in a long time on Saturday 21 June in central London. But the demonstration, organised at only just over a month's notice, was very small, with less than 3,000 people.

In June both the RMT and Unison conferences passed motions in solidarity with Palestinian and Israeli unions and supporting dialogue rather than boycotts.

On Thursday 26 June, over 700 London Underground cleaners organised by the RMT union, who voted 98% in favour of strike action, will take on multinational cleaning companies ISS, ICS, Initial and GBM in a 24 hour strike. This will be followed by a 48 hour strike from 1 to 3 July. With no cleaners at key depots and stations, the health and safety risks of running a railway without cleaners could paralyse the Tube.

Solidarity 3.134

Imagine a foreign politico-military encampment in the capital city, covering an area roughly equivalent to the whole space between Parliament Square, Charing Cross, and Buckingham Palace, or the offices round Whitehall plus St James’s Park.

At the recent Communication Workers’ Union conference, there was a motion calling for the CWU to campaign to reverse the decision of the 2007 Bournemouth Labour Party conference to ban all political