Solidarity 026, 20 March 2003

by Paul Hampton More than 100 people attended a conference about Brazil at the School of Oriental and African Studies on Saturday 8 March. It was called because of the interest in Brazil following the victory of Lula, the Workers' Party candidate, in a Presidential election last year. The main discussion centred around why Lula's government has been so conservative in its economic policy so far, and whether it has broken (or will break) from the neo-liberal policies of its predecessors. Kucinski, a member of the communications department in the government, defended the PT's position, while...

by Patrick Yarker Norwich No Sweat celebrated International Women's Day outside the city's Gap store, petitioning against sweatshop labour and for independent trade union rights for garment workers. People were glad to hear about the campaign, and in particular its focus on building solidarity with workers around the world. Several new contacts for the campaign were made. The action ended with a bizarre conversation inside the store between a No Sweat activist and the store-manager, who admitted that she had been told by her bosses not to answer any questions. Did she know where the item of...

Mick Duncan , Secretary of No Sweat, describes some of the No Sweat actions that took place on International Women's Day in solidarity with women sweatshop workers everywhere. Elvis called for "a little less exploitation" outside NikeTown in central London on Saturday 8 March, the Transport and General Workers' Union blocked Regent Street with their open top bus and scared children with an evil Mickey Mouse banner. The manager of Gap hid from No Sweat protesters led by 13-year-old Jess, and we all danced badly (including Puma's security staff) to the Rhythms of Resistance samba band outside...

Jane Clarke from the Bedfordshire FBU spoke to Jill Mountford just before the union's conference on Wednesday 19 March The strength has been the membership, ordinary firefighters and fire control operators, who voted overwhelmingly, nine to one, in favour of strike action for better pay. The people who do a difficult and stressful job, for a wage that is not enough to keep a family on, have remained the strength of this dispute. The weakness has been the tactics employed by the FBU leadership. Early on John Prescott urged the FBU leadership to "talk not walk". This was more than just a throw...

By Frank Higgins One hundred and thirty seven Labour MPs voted against the Government in the House of Commons, on 17 March, opposing a US-British war with Iraq without United Nations approval. There have been other revolts against the New Labour government during its six year history, but nothing remotely like this. During the near-decade when Blair has been unchallenged dictator of the Labour Party, the MPs, with a few honourable exceptions like John McDonnell, Alan Simpson and Jeremy Corbyn, have acted like mindless robots responding to the commands of New Labour's spin-liars. Now, for the...

A powerful international labour-based movement for democracy and international solidarity can defeat both George W Bush's war for oil and Saddam Hussein's bloody dictatorship. In the immediate term, we want to consolidate a democratic, secular and internationalist pole in the British anti-war movement. We want to build a visible alternative to the orientations in the movement that are expressed in the Cairo Declaration-which through its slogans, such as "solidarity with Iraq", conflates the peoples of Iraq and its vile government-and in link-ups with the Muslim Association of Britain-which is...