Solidarity 075, 23 June 2005

Possible privatisation of Royal Mail, and the union’s link to the Labour Party, were the big issues at the General Conference of the Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) in Blackpool from Sunday 12 June. On Sunday the Executive’s emergency proposition, calling for a strategy to defeat privatisation and a review of the Labour link at conference 2006 if privatisation happens was narrowly passed. The alternative was a demand to withdraw from the Labour Party in November 2005 if the Government will not give a restatement of its commitment in the general election manifesto to keep the Post Office...

By Amina Saddiq For three weeks in May and June Pakistan saw an upsurge in class struggle, with the military regime forced to seize physical control of the country’s state-owned telecom corporation and arrest over a thousand telecom workers in order to force through its privatisation plans. The Employees’ Union has now signed a deal with the government allowing privatisation to go ahead, but a rank and file organisation of telecom workers is still opposing the privatiation. A strike started in May at the Pakistan Telecommunication Company (PTCL) against plans to sell off 26% of the corporation...

How low can the “left” sink? It appears that these days belief in a “World Jewish Conspiracy” is not enough to get one “No-Platformed”. Instead, if you make the right noises on Palestine, you might even get invited to speak. The SWP has invited the jazz musician Gilad Atzmon to play at Marxism 2005 and on 17 June he addressed a meeting on “Deconstructing Zionist Identity” at the Bookmarks, the SWP’s bookshop. Here are some extracts from an article “On Anti-Semitism” on his website: “Zionists complain that Jews continue to be associated with a conspiracy to rule the world via political lobbies...

By Paul Hampton The voices of African workers have been missing from the recent media frenzy about Africa. Even on the left the general picture of Africans is of passive victims of disease and malnutrition in need of charity. This conception is completely wrong. The political and economic situation for African workers is generally very difficult, but their militancy and organisation is an inspiration that deserves our solidarity. And the working class in Africa is no privileged caste but the crucial agent of progress on the continent: both for reducing poverty, for improving democratic rights...

By Colin Foster On the evidence of the EU summit of 15-18 June, France’s “no” is leading not to the “social Europe” which many “no” voters wanted, but to a hobbled Europe. Many aimed their “no” at the neo-liberal consensus visible in the draft European constitution, but it turned out to be an unintended “yes” to those capitalist interests, just as neo-liberal or more so, who want to slow down European integration. Workers in France would have done better to refuse both the “yes” and “no” options which Jacques Chirac offered them, and instead to turn to fighting for a socialist Europe by...

Only a radical programme can now stop climate change from impacting dramatically, disastrously, on our world. No such programme will be on the table at the G8 Summit, from any of the governments, even from those like the Blair government who claim to take a lead on cutting “greenhouse gas emissions”. Socialism is about the creative participation of the mass of the people in political and economic life, and lasting solutions to climate change and other ecological problems can only come out of rich, democratic discussion. That said, there are at least four major areas in which socialism could...

As you rightly note (“What’s wrong with ASBOs?”, Solidarity 3, 74), the Anti-social Behaviour Act has had some vile consequences. While working in a night shelter I was appalled by the way that the act is being used to persecute the homeless. The act gives police the power to disperse any group of more than two people within any area in which they believe “that anti-social behaviour is a significant and persistent problem”. This can include public parks. I have repeatedly seen people arrested and prosecuted for doing no more than sitting quietly on a bench. Their crime? That they were a group...

Dan Katz read Q by Luther Blissett alongside Frederick Engels’ The Peasant Wars in Germany Thomas Munzer: “The masters are to blame that the poor man becomes their enemy.” It’s time to take down that copy of Engels’ Peasant Wars that you always intended to read, but never got round to. And here’s a nice way to do it – reading Engels alongside the novel, Q. Engels’ book, written in 1850, shortly after the defeat of the German revolutionary movement of 1848-9, looks for parallels with the peasant and plebeian rebellion of the early 16th century. Engels is concerned to note how the middle strata...

Louise Gold reviews Last Rights , Channel Four Set in urban London, and the closed rooms of 10 Downing Street, Last Rights is a film that brings the seriousness of political corruption to street-level Britain. It depicts how an average inner city teenager catches a glimpse of the cynical, arrogant and dangerous plans law-makers could make if we let them; the reality behind all the personable speech-making and hand-shaking of the Government. The point is to show how the teenager, Max, can make a far greater impact on the system than he thinks, the system that has him down as apathetic and...