Solidarity 197, 16 March 2011

The unstable stand-off between the Sunni Muslim monarchy and mainly Shia opposition demonstrators in Bahrain broke down over last weekend. The mass protest movement demanding democratic reforms erupted over a month ago. Alarmed, the state backed off — temporarily — following the killing of seven protesters in a failed clampdown. On Sunday thousands of protesters attempted to enter the financial area of the capital, Manama. The police reacted with great violence, shooting with rubber bullets, tear gas and live rounds. There was also fighting at the University of Bahrain in the southern city of...

Martin Thomas spoke to Falah Alwan ( FWCUI), Toma Hamid (WCPI in Australia), and Mansour Razaghi (Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union in Australia who has been in close touch with the Iraqi unions) about recent protests in Iraq. FA: On Friday 4 March there was a very rough curfew imposed by the authorities to stop people from attending the demonstration in Tahrir Square, Baghdad. But despite that around 15,000 attended. It lasted until 5.30pm and after that they started shooting the demonstrators. One of our comrades was injured by a bullet, and another one was injured in Samara...

Student union elections are currently taking place at universities across the country. Following the wave of student action last winter, there have been many more left slates of candidates, organised by anti-cuts activists, though the cooling of the political temperature has meant relatively few victories. There have been some bright spots, mainly in London, such as the left’s victory at traditionally conservative Royal Holloway, and a decisive takeover of UCL Union by the left after two years of building a powerful anti-cuts base. In many universities where left candidates did not win, they...

On 8 March, International Women’s Day, a few hundred women and their male supporters gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to demonstrate for women’s rights. The demo had been well publicised. Billing it as a Million Women March was over-optimistic, but the organisers wanted to echo the calls for a million man (person?) march during the campaign to oust Hosni Mubarak. And there certainly should be a million person march for women’s rights in Egypt. Egyptian women face many of the same problems of women around the world and particularly in developing countries; but they have additional problems...

Tories in Essex have voted to spend up to £8 million evicting more than ninety Traveller families from a site at Dale Farm in Crays Hill. The decision was made by Basildon Council on 14 March at a packed meeting, despite opposition from Labour and Lib Dem councillors. There have been legal battles over the site since the first families occupied the area in 2001. Opponents said the decision, which commits a third of the council's annual budget, could lead to more job cuts and make children and elderly people homeless. Bailiffs will begin to clear the site after a 28-day legal order is imposed...

"Yes to Libya", not "no to the USA" is one of those strange articles that the AWL produce due to a confused position on imperialism. Imperialist powers, like Britain, are pushing for a no-fly zone for an obvious reason to control Libya's oil. It is absolutely clear that we as socialists should oppose this. It is also absolutely clear that we should support the Libyan rebels and working class of Benghazi and Tripoli in opposing Gaddafi. An imperialist imposed no-fly zone would certainly not be in the interests of the Libyan revolution or freedom for Libya's workers and poor- it would help an...

In a recent episode of his weekly radio programme – broadcast from Dubai, where he was holidaying in the “One and Only Royal Mirage Hotel” – Galloway explained his dilemma. “Somebody said to me in the hotel breakfast room this morning, here in Dubai: ‘Well, your friend’s getting a hard time in Libya.’ I asked him just exactly what he meant by that. And it seems that he’d confused his Arab dictators. Either that or he’d confused me with Tony Blair, who is of course Gaddafi’s new best friend.” (1) Galloway tells the same anecdote on the “Respect” website: “Last week at a breakfast in Dubai, an...

And so, after weeks of negotiations behind closed doors the dirty deed has now been done. The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and the Socialist Party Scotland (SPS) have thrown in their lot with George Galloway in order to create a new electoral bloc for this year’s Holyrood elections. Fortunately, there is a Holyrood election rule which limits the name of political parties to six words. Otherwise, the bloc’s title would have been even more cumbersome than its chosen name: “George Galloway (Respect) – Coalition Against Cuts” (most easily referred to as: Galloway and Co.). An alliance between the...

Jean-René Chauvin died on 27 February 2011. Thus the number 201627, tattooed by the Nazis on his forearm when he was deported in 1943, will no longer testify to the barbarism of the past century. Jean-René Chauvin had survived time spent in several concentration camps (Mauthausen, Auschwitz, Buchenwald), places where forced labour should finish you off in a short time. Escaping from exhaustion, illness, the deadly fights for a crust of stale bread and even an assassination plan fomented by the Stalinist cadres of one camp, Jean-René carried out the battle of memory, notably in producing his...