Solidarity 091, 6 April 2006

CND: The CP steward, the priest, and the political banner

From Tribune 27 June 1958 Peter fryer: “stopped from marching” Some most unfortunate incidents marred last Sunday’s demonstration organised by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Members of the Labour Party, including many who had come down specially from the provinces, were marching behind the Newsletter’s banner, which bore the slogan “Industrial action — black the H-bomb and the rocket bases” and were shouting the slogan “No work on H-bombs, no work on rocket bases.” A similar contingent had marched all the way to Aldermaston behind the same banner and shouting the same slogans. Some of...

Trotskyists, Stalinists and the Anti-Nuclear Weapons Movement in Britain, 1957-58

By Sean Matgamna The letters below all appeared in the Labour left-wing weekly Tribune in 1958. We think they conjure up the political world in which Trotskyists operated half a century ago. The story they tell is a simple one. There was great agitation and fear of nuclear annihilation in Britain and in other parts of the world. Peace was kept between the two great world powers, the USA and Stalinist Russia, by “the balance of terror” — the knowledge on both sides that if nuclear war breaks out, its opponent can destroy its cities as the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been...

Stefan Piekarczyk

By August Grabski Click here for a French translation of this article. On 16 February 2006 Stefan Piekarczyk died of cancer in Warsaw. Stefan was a socialist, a Trotskyist, a translator and an economist. He was born in 1955 and grew up in a Polish family in Glasgow and there he joined a British section of the Fourth International (FI) — the International Marxist Group. At the end of 1970s Stefan came to Poland to study. He was one of the most important people (along with Ludwik Hass) in rebuilding Trotskyism as a political current on the Polish left. He was active as a left journalist in the...

Workers’ control and socialism

By Paul Hampton “Control lies in the hands of the workers. This means: ownership and right of disposition remain in the hands of the capitalists. Thus, the regime has a contradictory character, presenting a sort of economic interregnum… “In a developed form, workers’ control thus implies a sort of economic dual power in the factory, the bank, commercial enterprise, and so forth. “If the participation of the workers in the management of production is to be lasting, stable, ‘normal’, it must rest upon class collaboration, and not upon class struggle. Such a collaboration can be realised only...

Home again, for a visit, after 40 years

By Lindsey Collen and Ragini Kistnasamy of LALIT, Mauritius IN the late 60s thousands of Mauritians living on Diego Garcia island were forced from their homes when all the islands of the Chagos Archipelago were dismembered from Mauritius by the British state to make way for an infamous US military base named, irony of ironies, Camp Justice. On 30 March 2006 a group from amongst the people originally forcibly removed were taken by ship to visit their home islands and tend the graves of their ancestors. The British Government chartered a ship to take a hundred of the Chagossians for this brief...

Workers' news round up

By Pablo Velasco Pakistan Six Pakistani left parties and groups have united to form Awami Jamhoori Tehreek (AJT — the People’s Democratic Movement), which has the potential to become the fifth-largest political group in Pakistan. The AJT aims to contest the 2007 elections. The parties in the AJT are the National Workers’ Party (NWP), the Labour Party Pakistan (LPP), Awami Tehreek (AT — People’s Movement), Pakistan Mazdoor Kissan Party (PMKP), Pakistan Mazdoor Mehaz (PMM — Workers Front) and Meraj Mohammed Khan Group (MMKG). The AJT has announced a campaign against growing militarisation and...

Two million on the streets in LA

Officially reported as 500,000 to one million strong, with others putting the total at two million plus, the 25 March demonstration in Los Angeles against the Sensenbrenner (HR4437) immigration reform bill was by any standard a tremendous protest. The proposed bill will make being an undocumented immigrant a felon and criminalise anyone who offers non-emergency assistance to undocumented workers and their families. It was in essentials a march for the “illegals” — people who live and work in the US without legal status (the majority from Mexico and central America) — to be given rights...

Corruption crisis in Thailand

Since the beginning of the year Thailand has witnessed growing protests. This article, written by Danielle Sabai and Jean Sanukon on 20 March in Bangkok and abridged from International Viewpoint, explains the background. Thaksin Shinawatra, Prime Minister of Thailand and one of the country’s most important businessmen, is at the centre of the storm. He came to power with his new party in the elections that followed the major economic crisis of 1997. Under his authority, the big businessmen of the capital succeeded in dominating the political life of the country, running it in the service of...

Should we ally with free-marketeers?

In the last two issues of Solidarity we have been debating with Iranian socialists Maryam Namazie and Arashe Sorkh about political alliances against Islamism. We publish here a response from Maryam to left critics and a note from Arashe. Martin Thomas replies to Maryam. I find the criticism of being allied (!) with or even in coalition with the rightwing because some loathsome rightwing organisations also had speakers at [25 March “march for free expression”] quite astounding. The march wasn’t organised by the rightwing, had a very sensible statement of purpose, and many other good speakers...

The shallow “democracy” of the free market

Ewa Groszewska writes from Poland. Ewa is a member of New Left “Free Belarus!” was chanted by students in Wroclaw recently. “There is no freedom or democracy there, the authorities deal with the opposition by using force,” they argued. At the same time French students of the Sorbonne University were being pacified by the police. A democratic country? And Polish students didn’t even think they could protest against the Labour Code... Such a lack of awareness is due to the fact that people in Poland believe that “flexibility” gives them a chance to find a job. Students in Poland are so soaked...

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