Solidarity 192, 9 February 2011

Organising at work: "we have to take action ourselves"

I’m an electrician and work for an electrical company in the North West. There are 40 of us working here and we travel all over the area. Three years ago we had no union rep and only a handful of people in the union; this was down to the way the previous shop steward was treated. He eventually left the company. With no rep or any kind of organising it became a workplace were everybody just looked out for themselves, laughing at the managers’ unfunny jokes but turning a blind eye when people seemed to lose their jobs with no good explanation. People in the workplace were those who had been...

Religion, race and class in Israel

Two Workers’ Liberty activists — Louise Gold and Rosie Huzzard — who were on a recent delegation to Israel and Palestine reflect on Louis Theroux: Ultra Zionists , shown on BBC2 in early February, and the first episode of The Promise , a drama based in 1940s Palestine and modern day Israel and the West Bank, Channel 4, Sundays. Louis Theroux is well known for his “faux-naif” and “hands-off” journalistic approach, and this continues to be his tack in this most controversial of settings — time spent in Jerusalem and the West Bank with the ultra right-wing Jewish settlers, and those who support...

Brotherhood is a threat

In this paper we have warned against the Muslim Brotherhood as a force which could confiscate the revolution in Egypt and turn it into an Islamist counter-revolution. In the Financial Times of 1 February Ed Husain presented a reasoned argument against our assessment. Husain is not a “cultural relativist” who thinks that the Muslim Brotherhood is fine for Egypt because “it’s their culture” and that secularism, democracy, and women’s rights are only for “the West”. He is not a flabby liberal who responds to any powerful force, like political Islam, by advocating soft deals. He is a former...

Can clerical fascists turn social-democrat?

There is no historical precedent for the transformation of a fascist movement into something akin to a mass social democratic organisation. Yet although the Socialist Workers’ Party would never state things as explicitly as that, this is effectively the claim it makes about the trajectory of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. Given the revolutionary events in that country in recent weeks, the validity of such an assessment matters massively. While the Muslim Brotherhood has not led the protests, it was at the time of writing among the opposition groups in discussions with the regime. So significant...

Algeria: "link democratic and social demands"

President Bouteflika announced some liberalisation measures after riots over the price of food in January in which five people died. But protests have continued. A man tried to set himself alight during a protest outside Algeria’s Employment Ministry for “a decent job for every Algerian” and unemployment benefit equal to half the minimum wage. The protest was organised by a group called the National Committee for the Rights of the Unemployed. The government has banned a rally planned for Saturday 12 February called by the Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD: no relation to the Tunisian RCD)...

Egypt: "Workers must form committees"

Tamer Fathy, International Relations Secretary of the Centre for Trade Union and Workers’ Services, spoke to Solidarity about the new union federation in Egypt. On 30 January, union leaders and worker activists met to form a new federation. It adopted the broader demands of the revolutionary movement, but its main focus is the creation of new independent unions that are responsive to the workers. To give you a taste of the official unions — the leaders of these unions were quoted in the newspapers saying that no workers would go on these demos, but also calling for union officials to monitor...

Egyptian workers start to move

In Egypt, Tahrir Square has become a symbol for grass-roots democratic organisation, with mass movements holding daily plebiscites on strategy and programme, with an unquenchable thirst for political discussion, and a vibrant sense of the power of ordinary people when they lose their fear. Local communities, in the absence of the police, have organised their own defence. There have also been some instances of workers taking over their workplaces and beginning self-management. Left-wing Egyptian blogger Hossam el Hamalawy (who is close to the British SWP) told an interviewer: “I received a...

Tunisia: new government tries to calm revolt

In Tunisia, strikes are continuing, notably in transport, the national airline and among agency workers. Workers at the national radio station are protesting against the appointment of new management without any kind of negotiation or consultation. There are reports that during the height of the revolution, many enterprises came under effective workers’ control, with managers being sent on “holiday” by workers. The fall of the Ben Ali dictatorship has created a breathing space for Tunisian politics. Political forces can operate more-or-less openly. Meetings can be held and political...

To the Barricade!

The student movement, with hundreds of thousands of school students walking out of classes to demonstrate against cuts, has thrown whole new layers of school and college student activists into activity. Suddenly, thousands of students are examining their political ideas and looking for ways of becoming politically active. Through the prominent role that many Workers’ Liberty activists have played in the student movement and the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts, as well as in local trade union anti-cuts groups, we have been coming into regular contact with many of these new student...

Egypt: a new workers movement is born

As Solidarity went to press on 8 February, workers at the centre of Egypt’s economy, in the Suez Canal Company at the cities of Suez, Port Said, and Ismailia began an open-ended sit-in strike. Over 6000 agreed that they would not go home at the end of their shift, but hold the workplace until their demands against poor wages and deteriorating health and working conditions met. The strike will stop one of the world’s biggest shipping routes, and cause huge losses to business if it continues long. Such battles are inseparable from the democratic revolt on Cairo’s streets. Denial of political...

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