Solidarity 077, 21 July 2005

Carrie Bickers (letters, Solidarity 3/76) criticises the government’s proposed ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces on the grounds that it is a poorly disguised way of “compelling the individual smoker to give up”. From the fact that the proposals would not affect smoking in private homes she leaps to the bizarre conclusion that they make no attempt to protect people from passive smoking. She is right that a side effect of the ban will be a reduction in “industry volume” and an increased quit-rate. And she is right to be suspicious of what looks at first glance like another infringement on...

I do not agree with many of your positions but I found your article on the bombings in London very good, above all the passage: “Political Islam has its own roots and its own logic, and cannot be dismissed as just the ‘bitter fruits"’ of evil US and British policies, any more than Nazism could be dismissed as just the ‘bitter fruits’ of the US/ British/ French carve-up of the world after World War one, requiring no special condemnation or opposition in its own right.” This line of argument has helped me sharpen my own critique of “Islamic” terrorism. In this context I found the following...

Much of Maria Exall’s article, “Secularism and religion in a global age” (Solidarity 3-77) was concerned with filling some of the gaps in Soldarity’s coverage of religion and politics — for instance she outlines how trends within Christianity (as well as within Islam) seek to counter and provide an alternative to the “modern world”. On that level much of what she said was fair enough. Elsewhere Maria says she wants to question prevailing wisdom. However on some of her points she fails to draw conclusions, or state clearly what she herself is for. I’d like to address two of the points she...

This article by Gideon Levy is taken from the liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz. It gives a vivid picture of life in Gaza. If you would like to know what the Israeli occupation and life under it looks like, go to its “employment office,” several hundred meters past the Erez checkpoint, on the outskirts of the large prison of Gaza, from which Israel is supposed to disengage in a few weeks. Maybe you will also see here where the next wave of terror is growing. On the burning sand, around the iron gates, among the piles of garbage, dozens of the unemployed are strewed. A broad field of human...

News from working-class struggles across the world. India Half a million Indian tea workers are on indefinite strike demanding better wages and conditions. The strike has stopped work in the West Bengal’s 350 tea plantations, including in the famous hill district of Darjeeling for more than a week. Tea workers’ unions say they will not accept the productivity-linked wages that the Indian Tea Association has demanded. Unions want the daily wage rate in Bengal to be doubled and other bonuses paid. Workers are also planning road blockades on the highway that connects India's north-eastern states...

Activists from the GMB and No Sweat protested outside the Eritrean Embassy in north London on 14 July in defence of three jailed Eritrean trade union leaders. Tewelde Ghebremedhin (chair of the Food Workers Federation), Minase Andezion (secretary of the textile workers' federation) and Habtom Weldemicael (leader of the Coca-Cola Workers Union) have been detained without trial or charges. The labour movement campaign internationally is being co-ordinated by the International Union of Foodworkers (IUF). To help the campaign to release these men, download the petition and factsheet from www...

The international conference of “No One Is Illegal” on 25 June called for an international day of action on Saturday 1 October against immigration controls. Everyday the apparatus of detention and deportation become more brutal. Each year the rights to benefits, work and vital services for migrants and asylum seekers are reduced. Each year new legislation targets places further restrictions of rights of entry to more people. But each day resistance grows. Migrants’ organisations are linking up across Europe and across continents. Some trades unions have are organising and representing all...

Dita Sari, a leading socialist, trade unionist and anti-sweatshop activist in Indonesia, looks at how women and migrant workers are faring in Indonesia today. For some time now, the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America have been experiencing what is referred to as the feminisation of poverty. For centuries, colonialism encouraged backwardness in technological and human resources, inequality and a poor quality of life. Capitalism, which on the one hand opened the door to liberation and cultural enlightenment for women, at the same time exploits them. In the past and now, women are the...

Solidarity 3/77 is now online. Read Solidarity 3/77 here ; and read Solidarity 3/76 here