Solidarity 064, 6 January 2005

Debate and discussion: Politics not charity

The last issue of Solidarity (3-63) argued that charity appeals like Bandaid cannot stop world hunger. But does charity do any good at all? The answer to that is yes, to an extent, if you have an immediate need that it meets. And does charity do any harm? Sometimes. For instance Bob Geldof says he just wants to feed people, and would work with “the devil himself” to do it. And he has done! For example in the 1984 Ethiopian famine, the regime stopped food going to certain areas. The Mengistu regime used aid against people, as a pretext to round people up into camps. As many people died in the...

Supermarket sweep

Liam Conway reviews Shopped by Joanna Blythman In the 1960s, about 80% of UK grocery and meat shopping was done at local grocery shops and butchers. Now about 80% of it is done at the four main supermarket chains of Tesco, Sainsbury, ASDA and Morrisons. These four aim to mop up the other 20%. And it’s not just grocery shopping they’re after... ASDA is the biggest clothes retailer, through its George label, in the country. Tesco, the biggest supermarket chain, controls 12.5% of all UK retailing. Its chief executive, the £3 million-a-year Terry Leahy, says “that leaves 87.5 per cent to go after”...

Chinese workers strike

A group of female workers have been on strike since early December at a Japanese wireless phone factory in Shenzhen, which supplies giant American retailer Wal-Mart. The New York Times reported on 16 December that production had stopped in the Uniden Factory, which employs 12,000 workers, mostly young women from poor interior provinces. Before going on strike, workers had drawn up a list of grievances, including dissatisfaction over low wages and abusive working conditions. Wal-Mart has recently been in the media spotlight when Chinese authorities insisted that the retail giant allow its...

Iranian garment workers march for backpay

More than 200 workers from the Iran Pars Garment factory marched from the city of Rasht (northern Gilan province) to the Iranian capital Tehran in a dispute over backpay. The workers have not received their salaries for the past seven months and Gilan Workers’ Union demands for government action have proven fruitless. Overdue wages have become routine in Iran in recent years as the government has not enforced laws and regulations concerning workers’ wages and benefits. Generally it has sided with factory owners, and clamped down on workers’ protests. In another dispute, workers at Khorram...

Al-Qaeda and those who will come after

Cathy Nugent reviews Al-Qaeda: the true story of Radical Islam by Jason Burke (Penguin, £7.99) Despite its tabloidesque sub-title, Burke’s book is an extremely lucid, balanced and useful account. It is especially useful because it brings together summaries of most of the events, myriad roots of, and religious and political background to the rise of Al-Qaeda and groups like it. It would have been easy to write the “true” account, which sets out to scotch the myths of the bourgeois press about the war on terror. But this book is much more than that. A few aspects of what is a hugely convoluted...

Signal workers’ strike called off for new deal

Strike action by London Underground signal and line-control staff which threatened to disrupt New Year services was called off when their union, the RMT, made a deal with management. The deal has to be voted on but it will give signallers and line-control staff a 35-hour week from July, and staged increases in pay, according to the RMT, to between £31,450 for an ordinary signaller and £44,000 at the top end of the line-control scale by July 2007. There is also no longer any threat of job losses — one of the big impetuses behind the dispute. Also, rostering will remain subject to local...

Bangladeshi garment workers demand job security

Hundreds of garment workers from different parts of Bangladesh held a massive rally on 1 January to mark the end of the Multi-Fibre Arrangement (MFA). Under the Multi-Fibre Arrangement (MFA), garment products from countries such as Bangladesh enjoyed quota free access to US and European markets. But the MFA was phased out on 31 December as part of a global agreement with the World Trade Organisation. The rally was organised by 24 national trade union federations from the country’s garment sector. Unions fear that a large number of garment workers may lose their job due to the expiry of the MFA...

Debate and discussion: Galloway’s sexist tripe

I knew something was rotten at the core of Respect but, as a Nigerian, I had no idea how awful its leader, George Galloway, was until I read his book I’m Not the Only One which Solidarity reviewed a few months ago. I suppose I should have followed the recommendation of the review and not started the book, because I have never read such sexist and national-chauvinistic filth in all my time. Obviously I oppose the Tories, New Labour, and the capitalist press, but when Galloway targets his female opponents with such phrases as “Air-headed blow-dried telly-dollies”, “fragrant rose” or describes...

Cambodian garment workers protest over factory closure

Cambodian police broke up a protest by 100, mostly female, garment workers on Christmas Eve. The workers were protesting over the closure of their factory. Riot police kicked some of the women after they refused to end their sit-down protest, but there were no arrests. Some 600 workers lost their jobs when the Ho Hing garment factory closed in November after new orders dried up. Cambodia’s garment sector employs 300,000 workers, most of them young women who earn about $45 a month and face an uncertain future after export quotas known as the Multi-Fibre Arrangement guaranteeing access to North...

Archive: The Trotskyists and Israel, 1948

Introduction The document reprinted here was a statement put out by the Palestinian Trotskyists on the eve of the declaration of Israel on 14 May 1948 and the invasion by the armies of five Arab states, some of them under the command of British officers, that followed. On one level it is a splendid statement of working class internationalism thrown into the howling gale of Arab and Jewish nationalism that dominated Palestine. On the level of immediate politics, it is a mixture of ultra-leftism and economism. But what is most striking about it is the startling degree to which it differs from...

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.