Solidarity 089, 9 March 2006

Trade unions:clear out the rot - Labour: evict the fat cats!

by Gerry Bates Is Tessa Jowell guilty of personal corruption? She is not, it seems. But what a courrpt, vile bourgeois world this affair highlights — a world a million miles from the lives of working people. Jowell is a “Labour” government minister. Her husband, David Mills, is an international lawyer. He specialises in helping rich people find loop holes in tax laws and any other laws they find inconvenient. One of his clients is Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi, who is by some accounts, the richest man in Italy. Berlusconi is on the extreme right in politics. Berlusconi is, allegedly, the...

USA: states vote to ban women’s choice

By cathy nugent On 24 February South Dakota federal lawmakers voted to ban all abortion except when the life of a woman is at stake. In doing so they deliberately began a battle which will probably go all the way to the Supreme Court and may end in abortion being made illegal across large parts of America. South Dakota’s state legislature was followed by that of Mississippi state, which has also voted for an abortion ban, but with exceptions to be made for women who have been raped and for victims of incest. The South Dakota law would make it a crime for doctors to perform an abortion...

Argentina: fighting the Catholic ban on abortion

Andrea D’Atri, a professor at the Argentinian national university of La Plata, is active within the Argentinian women’s group Pan y Rosas (Bread and Roses). She spoke to AWL about her campaign. What is the current situation for women in Argentina? Until recently feminism in Argentina was relatively weak and very middle-class. After the economic crisis of 2001 and the social movements that emerged in response, feminist groups have politicised and radicalised. In particular, women have begun to mobilise around the issue of abortion rights. Abortion in Argentina is illegal under any circumstances...

A call for solidarity with Iranian women

An International Women’s Day statement from iranian feminists For International Woman’s Day the women of the “Campaign for Abolition of all Misogynistic Gender Based Legislation and Islamic Punitive Laws in Iran” have planned a daring protest which will start from Frankfurt on 4 March and end on 8 March in front of The Hague international court. This march will bring together activists of the Iranian women’s movement in exile as well as hundreds of other Iranian men and women who have joined hands to protest 27 years of repression against the women in Iran by the Islamic Republic of Iran. The...

An unswerving fighter

Throughout the strike, pit villages were twinned with the labour movements in towns and cities throughout the country, and there was a constant flow of activists between the two. One of the towns the North Notts strikers were twinned with was Basingstoke, and Paul and his comrades spent a lot of time with socialists and activists from there. Alan Fraser, who had himself been sacked for union activity in the local post office, was then chair of Basingstoke Labour Party and a supporter of Socialist Organiser. In my eyes Paul was a working class intellectual, a Marxist and unswerving fighter for...

An open letter to Neil Kinnock

Paul Whetton wrote this as a delegate to Labour Party conference in September 1984 Mrs Thatcher is tough, nasty, brutal, spiteful, single-minded and very hostile to the labour movement — but a good, tough, committed fighter for her own cause and capable of being an inspiring leader for her own side. Mrs Thatcher knows how to lead. There is no double-talk from Thatcher about the miners’ strike. She is out to beat us down and crush the NUM. She leaves her supporters in no doubt about that. When Thatcher denounced “violence” she doesn't feel obliged to be “impartial” and denounce the police as...

Equality in the struggle

Jean Lane, a Women’s Fightback organiser during the miners’ strike, remembers how Paul Whetton responded to women organising. The need for the organisation of working class women to change society, became common parlance for men and women throughout the strike, changing forever how many women saw themselves and how men viewed them. Wife into comrade, women changed their role from housekeeper to picket, speaker, traveller, poet. Paul, from the beginning, was very clear on the importance of the role of Women Against Pit Closures. They were what kept Notts, and arguably the strike itself, going...

Paul Whetton, Trotskyist Notts Miners Leader In the 1984-5 Strike

On Friday 3 March Paul Whetton, miner, trade union militant, socialist and Workers’ Liberty collaborator, died aged 66. It was the 21st anniversary of the end of the great miners’ strike of 1984-85. John Bloxam remembers him. On 3 March 1985, the National Union of Mineworkers delegate conference voted 98 to 91 to return to work without a settlement, but as a still-intact union. Paul lobbied against the return, arguing with other left wingers that the strike should continue until 700 sacked miners got their jobs back. Having been out-voted, however, he was part of the disciplined return to work...

Who spoke out against Stalin?

The long history of Stalinism and the struggle against it encompasses all the problems of the international labor movement for the past thirty-three years Many articles, pamphlets and books—classics of Marxism—have been written in the course of this long struggle. It is the most important question in the world because it directly affects the struggle for socialism at every point. It is the most terrible story in all history, for the companions of Lenin, whom Stalin murdered, were truly the advance guard of humanity. They were the noblest and the best history has yet seen. We weep for the...

A letter to Maryam Namazie

Dear Maryam, The organisers of the “March For Free Expression” (against political Islam) planned for 25 March are advertising you as a prominent supporter — alongside the Freedom Association, an extreme right-wing movement best known for its strike-breaking efforts during the Grunwick strike of 1977. It may be that you are unaware of this, and the organisers have enlisted your support by misrepresentation or misunderstanding. In any case, we urge you to withdraw. We should not let the cause of “free expression” be appropriated and defined by the class-warriors of the bourgeoisie, and activists...

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