Solidarity 047, 4 March 2004

RMT tells Network Rail: 'Hands off jobs and pensions!'

Network Rail is waging a concerted attack on its workforce. The Government expects our gratitude for getting Network Rail to end contracting-out and bring infrastructure maintenance in-house. Even some union leaders have repeated the spin that this is some form of renationalisation. But the truth is that it falls well short of a genuine return to public ownership, and in no sense means that Network Rail is a 'good employer'. Below are excerpts from a leaflet from RMT's South Wales & West Regional Council, giving details of the attacks, and proposing a fight against them. NR Chairman Ian...

RMT: Tube workers strike on 12 March

By a Tubeworker RMT members employed on track and signal maintenance by Metronet on the London Underground will stage a 24 hour strike from 6 am on Friday 12 March. RMT members employed by Metronet on track and signal maintenance on London Underground voted by 5 to 1 to strike in support of sacked colleagues. Eight workers have now been sacked. The sacking arose after empty beer cans were found in a mess room. Responding to the vote Bob Crow General Secretary of RMT said: "There is not a shred of evidence that the men had been drinking. The company must stop conducting a witch hunt and...

Laws, repression, poverty, unemployment - Help Iraqi workers beat these blows

Polish-British activist Ewa Jasiewicz , who has just returned to the UK after spending over nine months in Iraq, is speaking round the country on the new workers' movement in that country. The following is a short extract from a report by her on the emerging trade union movement. Immediately following the fall of the dictatorship, activists from the Iraqi Democratic Trade Union Movement (a highly respected underground workers' organization active since 1980) established the Federation of Iraqi Trade Unions, the biggest and most authoritative network of trade unions in Iraq. These unions...

Against the occupation? Yes, but: With the workers, not the "resistance"!

Whichever precise component of the so-called "resistance" in Iraq which was responsible for the atrocities on 2 March, it reveals the character of this movement. According to Iraqi officials 271 people have been murdered in bomb attacks on participants in a Shi'a religious festival in Baghdad and the holy city of Karbala. Perhaps a million Shi'a had flocked to Karbala, the first time in decades it has been possible for the festival of Ashura to be observed. The attacks were calculated to cause the largest number of civilian casualties. The "resistance" consists, in the main, of old Ba'thists...

Post-modern, pre-rational?

'How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the World: a History of Modern Delusions' by Francis Wheen This book comes with a fluffy duck on the cover and a recommendation from Nick Hornby, so I expected to find it dire. Fortunately my expectation was confounded. This is a sustained political polemic from one of the most talented polemicists alive. The book covers the last twenty-five years, starting from the two catastophes of the election of Margaret Thatcher in Britain and the return of Ayatollah Khomeini to Iran, cataloguing the many competing and complimentary forms of irrationality which have...

The new economy of terror

Modern Jihad: Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks by Loretta Napoleoni This book looks at the filthy-dirty business of the funding of modern "terror" organisations. If there are differences in the roots of and political outlooks of these groups - between for instance the Tamil Tigers and Islamic Jihad, between the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and al-Qaida, Napoleoni is not much interested in them. She quite explicitly sets out to write an "economic analysis" and to avoid political concepts. This, she says, is a new way of looking at the problem. I don't know about...

Bolsheviks and Islam part 2: Sharia law

Click here for Part 1. Click here for Part 3. Gerry Byrne continues an examination of the relationship between the Russian Bolshevik Party that made the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the Islamic subject states of the Tsarist empire they inherited. What, if anything, can it teach us about socialists' relationship to Islam today? The issue of Sharia law, religious education and the veil is a highly charged one currently, so for socialists to be able to point to the actions of the first workers state on the issue can be a powerful argument in support of whatever position they put. But here, as I...

No Sweat News in brief

Indonesia: textile workers' victory No Sweat discusses Iraq workers' solidarity Women's TUC fringe meeting No Sweat steering group Play Fair Olympics campaign Indonesia: textile workers' victory A significant breakthrough has been made by workers at PT Kahatex Sweaters in Bandung, Indonesia. 537 workers were illegally locked out in May 2003 for demanding they be paid the minimum wage. The company has agreed to re-employ all of the locked-out workers. Two hundred and ten workers have said they wish to be re-employed and the company has agreed work will restart by 1 March. The remaining 287...

The writing on the wall

Can't work, must work Profits up, wages down Cashing in! Iraqi gold Hands off the US! Can't work, must work Andrew Smith, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, has continued to live in the Blackbird Leys, a working-class area of Oxford, despite being a high flyer on a salary of £125,000 a year. Well, good for him. But I wonder how his neighbours feel about his Tory sanctimosity about "eroding the dependency culture", etc, etc. "What people here really believe is that people who need help should get it, but those who can work should work," says Smith. The problem is that Smith also...

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.