Workers' Liberty

The massive state involvement in desperate social action on behalf of the capitalist classes to avert the collapse of their financial system is making the basic case for working-class socialism more forcefully, unanswerably, and urgently than it has been made for a very long time.

In moments of desperation, capitalist governments reveal themselves. Take these two examples: Alistair Darling’s prognosis for the British economy and the recent bail-outs of US mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Darling’s admission that the economic crisis will be worse than most people thought, his slashing of growth forecasts and comments about voters being “pissed off” with New Labour paint a pretty picture of the turmoil at the heart of government.

This academic year will see a review of the £3,000 cap on top-up fees, most likely resulting in new government policy of allowing universities to set much higher variable fees. Much more than anything New Labour has done so far, this will mean a move towards a US-style system of pretty much unrestricted free markets in higher education.

Yet the Blairite-led National Union of Students plans, pretty much, to do nothing.

You don’t have to be a financial genius to understand the following rule: increase your prices and you increase your profits. Even better if your competitors do the same, then there’s no risk of you losing business. And so it is with the big three energy companies. Shell, BP and British Gas all employ legions of economists to maximise their profits but in this instance the PR people play a more important role.

UNISON: activists in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are angered by news from the national office on progress on pay negotiations.

Steve Hedley is a candidate in the election for RMT London Regional Organiser. As the RMT in London is facing a big political and industrial fight against Tory mayor Boris Johnson and a potential Tory government intent on breaking the union and imposing pay cuts, this an important election. Steve spoke to Tubeworker, the bulletin produced by AWL tubeworkers.

On Friday 5 September the NUT Executive voted unanimously for a new strike ballot to continue our campaign for decent levels of pay. The ballot will open on 6 October and close on 3 November. our last ballot sought support for only a one day strike, despite an earlier decision by the Executive to go for discontinuous action. This time union members will be asked to support discontinuous action so we will not be restricted to a one-off protest strike. That is very good, though a lot of time and momentum has now been lost.

About one hundred student activists attended the Student Stop the War meeting on 6 September — not a bad turn out, but unfortunately that was the best thing about the meeting.

Most of those present were from various socialist groups with the SWP — who organised the event — in abundance. The politics promoted by the SWP were very far from socialist, and the meeting failed to develop any real strategy for action.

The fragmented left faces a new situation in the light of the blocking off of any possible challenge to Brown through the Labour Party; the failure of Respect; and the Socialist Alliance and the rise of the BNP. The Convention of the Left is an attempt to bring together those on the left opposed to the Labour government’s attacks on the working class and to debate and formulate alternative anti-capitalist strategies. Initially there will be a five day event in Manchester from 20-24 September running in parallel with Labour’s own conference.

At a recent NUS training event held at York University, Craig Cox, the newly elected education officer at the University of Nottingham, claims his sign reading "Bring back slavery" was simply a wind up.

Treasurer Michael Costa and Premier Morris Iemma resigned from the New South Wales Labor government on Friday 5 September. Fundamentally, it was a victory for the huge vote at the New South Wales Labor State Conference in May against their plans to privatise electricity.

The second meeting of the “Checks and Raids” strategy group of the Campaign Against Immigration Controls was on Sunday 7 September. Activists, many new, discussed the situation facing migrant workers in London, with 150 workplace raids happening a week, where hundreds of workers are harassed by immigration officers and the police. Many have been detained and deported. Thousands more are now fearful of these raids.

An appeal from Education International (the international confederation of teacher trade unions) and the Swedish teachers’ union.

Farzad Kamangar, a 33-year old teacher and former trade unionist from the Kurdistan Province of Iran, is at risk of execution following the ruling issued at an unfair trial.

Born in London in 1757, William Blake lived through both the American War of Independence and the French Revolution, and witnessed the vicious repression in Britain after these events by the ruling class. Although a deeply spiritual, religious, man, he was nevertheless appalled by the condition of his fellow human beings and laid the blame squarely on the twin evils of Church and state.

Review of The Duchess

The reviewers said it would be pants (bloomers?) and so it was in the main. I went to see it because I’m a sucker for costume-drama feminism. And really, if the story had been told as it should have been, I would have been appalled, moved... something other than bored and slightly irritated.

Review of Her Naked Skin

This is the first play written by a living woman to be staged at the Olivier (National Theatre). It is a love story set against the backdrop of the suffragist struggle of the early 20th century.

Responding to Sean Matgamna’s dicussion piece in Solidarity 3/136, “What if Israel bombs Iran”.

Perhaps the most positive development at the TUC congress was the formation of a new Trade Union Co-ordinating Group, led by left-wing MP John McDonnell and bringing together the RMT, PCS, NUJ and FBU

As the new term begins, teachers will be discovering the full extent of the chaos and incompetence which plagued this year’s SATs tests. They face the arduous task of reviewing returned scripts and considering whether to spend precious time and money on the appeals process.

Nadia Mahmood of the Worker-communist Party of Iraq discussed current developments in Iraq with Martin Thomas from Solidarity

Comrade Machover: You are someone for whom I have long had a certain regard and even affection. I regret that you have chosen to join in the bizarre heresy-hunt, entirely Stalinist in conception, purpose, and execution, around my discussion article “What If Israel Bombs Iran?”, Solidarity 3/136.

The lynchpin of the SSP’s politics is its call for an “independent socialist Scotland” or a “Scottish socialist republic.”

The USA's attempt to get a "State of Forces Agreement" that would give the US military open-ended powers as a virtual parallel government in Iraq has failed. Negotiations between the USA and the Iraqi government are now around formulas which call for US troops to be out of Iraq's cities by June next year - there are currently 16,000 within Baghdad, for example - and all US combat forces to be out of Iraq by 2011.

Examining Gilles Kepel's comprehensive history, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam (Harvard University Press).
"Left-leaning Arab intellectuals have traditionally regarded the [Muslim] Brothers as a populist movement... [with] similarities to the workings of European fascism during... the 1930s...
"In the eyes of leftist intellectuals, both among Muslims and in the West, Islamist groups represented a religious variety of fascism...