Solidarity 039, 23 October 2003

Democracy in the Socialist Alliance Platform meeting Saturday 8 November, 11.30 to 3.30, United Services Club, Gough St, Birmingham Over 50 members of the Socialist Alliance met in Birmingham on 13 September 13th and agreed to hold a further meeting within two months to organise a political platform to re-establish democracy within the Socialist Alliance. The meeting is called by the National Executive members who initiated the Sept 13 Open Forum (Lesley Mahmood, Declan O'Neill, Martin Thomas, Steve Godward and Marcus Strom) and two members nominated by the Open Forum (Pete Radcliff, AWL and...

On 16 October, council workers and postal workers in London made a demonstration of workers' solidarity in action not seen for many years. Two different unions, organising in different industries, struck together, on the same day, for the same demand: an increase to £4000 in London pay weighting. This simple, uniform demand has the potential to unify a vast range of workers, in a way that pay disputes do not usually do. The Tory anti-union laws, kept in force by New Labour, make solidarity action unlawful, and thus vastly weaken the union movement. But even those laws could not ban different...

Fiona Monkman, a member of Islington Unison and of Unison's National Executive Committee, spoke to Solidarity about the London local government workers' strike for increased London weighting on 16 October. On Thursday 16th the action held up. Some of the picket lines were not as strong as they've been on previous one-day strikes, but in terms of people not going in to work the support was good. Now the GMB [another union organising local government workers involved in the London weighting claim] is discussing what they will do next - maybe re-ballot. The Unison local government strike...

Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon was quick to reject the "Geneva Accord", published on 14 October as an outline for peace in Israel-Palestine. And a vehement speech in the Israeli parliament was not enough. He followed up on 20 October by three large bombing raids on Gaza. Hamas and Islamic Jihad have promised to respond by more suicide bombings in Israel. And so the terrible spiral continues, the main result being pauperisation, atomisation, and mass casualties among the Palestinian population of the Occupied Territories. Hypocritically, in his parliamentary speech, Sharon counterposed the...

The pamphlet Arabs, Jews and Socialism, now long out of print, collected the articles which appeared in Solidarity's predecessor Socialist Organiser during a prolonged reassessment of the Jewish-Arab conflict. Beginning with support for a "secular democratic state" in all of pre-1948 Palestine, we finally concluded that this was a utopian proposal behind which sheltered a virulent Arab chauvinism. The only way forward was through two states, an independent Palestinian state side by side with Israel. The pamphlet contained an exchange on the question of "what is Zionism?", an issue discussed...

It really is extremely bloody. Quentin Tarantino's previous films featured occasional acts of grisly violence (an ear being removed, someone's head getting blown off by accident), but these were both occasional and primarily psychological in their impact (e.g. in Pulp Fiction , you don't actually see Marvin's head exploding, just the blood splattering the back windscreen). The first part of the two-volume Kill Bill , by contrast, features ultra-graphic violence in virtually every scene, and the expectation of it leaves you on edge throughout. Those who liked Reservoir Dogs , Pulp Fiction and...

Pornography: The Musical, Channel 4 Stealing and gratifying other people's sexual desires in return for money have only ever appealed to me, and then not much, when I've been really broke. Both strike me as being dangerous, uncomfortable and one of them - stealing - possibly immoral. To judge from Pornography: The Musical the "money factor" is the biggest reason people work in porn. But it's not the only one. "Everyone's got a vocation in life... this is what I was meant to do. I love the career, I love the industry," says one woman. Of course, that could be bravado. A handful of women - and...

Man Booker Prize winner, by DBC Pierre (Faber) DBC Pierre is the nom de plume of Mexican-Australian Peter Finlay. The DBC stands for "Dirty But Clean" which neatly sums up Finlay's debut novel. It is a clean story because it is very moral story about truth, justice and all that. Vernon is a teenage boy falsely accused of shooting dead sixteen high school students. He has to prove his innocence in a crazy world and a small town world of Martirio, Texas. A small town under the pressure of a fame brought to it by a hundred media hacks digging and dishing the dirt about the tragic killing. As...

George W Bush, who will make a state visit to Britain from 19 to 21 November, does not represent the people of the USA. He represents the super-rich who have gained from his huge rounds of tax cuts. This year he has cut $99 billion from the USA's taxes. About half of all households in the USA will get no gain at all from these tax cuts, or one of less than $100 a year. Almost all the gain goes to the well-off. Seventeen per cent of the total tax cut goes to just 0.13% of the population. This year's measures centre on cutting the tax rate on dividend income for people who own shares in...

[This is an expanded version of the article in the print edition of Solidarity] From 12 to 15 November, around 40,000 "anti-capitalists" will descend on Paris for the European Social Forum. Martin Thomas provides a guide to some of the main strands in the anti-capitalist movement A is for ATTAC, the biggest "movement for another globalisation" in France, which has a large international network. It has a considerable overlap with official politics, for example in the French Socialist Party. But some revolutionaries are active within it. ATTAC France was launched in June 1998, following a call...