Solidarity 034, 10 July 2003

By Nicole Ashford So, did Alastair Campbell sex up that dossier? It's a question that brings to mind oft-quoted lines about the Pope and bears. Come on. Alastair Campbell is paid to sex up Government information. That's his job. The idea that on this occasion, with public opinion split on the war and Tony Blair desperately needing to win round his own MPs, Campbell sat back, put his feet up and tossed the dossier back with a "Looks fine to me" is laughable. If you want evidence for the Government's behaviour, look no further than ex-minister Lewis Moonie. He turned up on the "Today Programme"...

Tom Belton assesses the future of football finance After the abolition of the maximum wage, the Bosman Ruling, the Premier League, millionaire sugar daddies, and the collapse of ITV Digital, football fans could be forgiven for thinking that they had seen it all, but three weeks ago the football world witnessed an event that could spell the advent of an era that no one anticipated. Step forward Roman Abramovich, billionaire oil tycoon, Russian State Governor and proud new owner of Chelsea Football Club. Abramovich is one of the world’s elite capitalists. Ranked by the Sunday Times as the 49th...

Organise the rank and file By Colin Foster The broadside condemnation of Blair's New Labour government by the RMT railworkers' union conference this week (29 June-4 July) is a welcome jolt to the labour movement. So is the probable decision, soon, by the RMT's Scottish region to affiliate to the Scottish Socialist Party. But where we go from here depends on what rank-and-file activists and socialists, in the RMT and other unions, make of it. RMT activists have been jolted free from their previous automatic, laid-down-by-rule tie to backing New Labour in elections. They should now take an...

It might be wishful thinking on our part, but it looks like someone is putting the politics back into Pride. The organisers of Saturday's parade (26 July) are reminding people about the history of lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and trans people in the UK - see the Pride Parade website - and asking them to dress up to reflect it! Pride's recent incarnation, Mardi Gras, has been mainly about hedonism-the pursuit of it, anyway-and buying things. These are great fun. But in the sexually warped, homophobic world we live in rather more is necessary: LGBT pride is essential. And much more is possible: the...

A young Solidarity supporter shares his impressions of the SWP’s Marxism 2003 conference Opening rally Tommy Sheridan told everyone how well things were going in Scotland, didn't address any criticisms of the SSP, kept sounding like he was going to call for the SA to turn into some kind of party, but kept stopping short of it. A couple of other speakers, then Trevor Ngwane who gave a really good summary of campaigning activity in South Africa. Next up, Chris Bambery who hoped that in Iraq “fingers crossed the outcome will be the same as Vietnam” and it would “sweep away… the Zionist state, all...

By Gerry Bates When we read about some terrible thing in the past, we ask ourselves: “Why did they let it happen? Why didn’t people do something about it while there was still time?” Take the Irish famine of the 1840s, an event which affected the ancestors of the many millions in Britain who are of Irish descent. While blight destroyed the staple food of the poor, the potato, other food was exported out of Ireland to be eaten by people who could afford to pay for it. Millions were allowed to starve. It was mass murder perpetrated by the property owners who had the power to do something, but...

The discussion in Solidarity about the trade union relationship to the Blairite Labour Party raises general questions about the relationship of trade unions to working class politics. As a contribution to the ongoing discussion we reprint an article which Leon Trotsky wrote in 1923 in a discussion about French syndicalist politics. In France the pre-1911 trade union federation (the CGT) had stayed strictly aloof from the Socialist Party and from politics developing a theory of self-sufficiency of the trade unions for the winning of working class liberation from wage slavery and the...

By Patrick Murphy, Secretary Leeds NUT On 17 July up to 1,800 Leeds teachers will take part in a one-day strike in protest at the compulsory redundancy of 12 colleagues. The strike comes after a ballot in which 81% of members who took part voted in favour of the action. There are also 29 support workers at risk of redundancy, but they have not been called out on strike. The redundancies are due to take place on 31 August. Unless the local authority secures alternative employment for four NUT members by 15 July the strike will go ahead. The number of redundancies has been reduced through...

I have to confess that I was not exactly thrilled when a big, middle-aged, shaven-headed bloke came up to me in a pub in Burnley after I’d been out campaigning for the Labour Party at a recent council by-election and asked me what I thought Labour ought to be doing about “the biggest problem facing Burnley”. I prepared myself to hear a rant about asylum-seekers and asked him what he thought the biggest problem in Burnley was. I was somewhat surprised when he replied that the problem was the Nazis/BNP and the way that Labour was pandering to racism. We had a very amicable discussion in which I...

By Joan Trevor Six high-school students are being court-martialed in Israel for refusing the draft. Their defence rests on the idea that they are conscientious objectors (CO). If they are unsuccessful, they face long prison sentences. Many such draft refusers have already sat in military jails for hundreds of days for the crime of refusing. One of the six students is a pacifist, pure and simple, the others have refused to serve in the Israeli Defence Force because it is making life hell for Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. They are being supported by the Shministim (Hebrew for “high...