AWL conference 2007

Full-time union officials: defeated amendment 6.3

Delete paragraphs 6, 25, 27, 28 and 30 and insert: "The group needs a proper debate on union organising". ( The conference voted to insert "The group needs a proper debate on union organising", but not to make the deletions. For the preamble to this amendment and to amendment 6.1, click here ) . Paragraph 6 reads: This means, generally, going for jobs in those sectors where there is a higher level of class combativity in the workforce, a higher level of union activity, a greater political life in the union, and/or an already-established nucleus of AWL people in the sector and in the union. So...

"Solidarity with the Iraqi workers against both the US/UK forces and the sectarian militias" (document 4.0)

Since US and UK troops conquered Iraq in April 2003, the country has slipped further and further into gangster chaos, and, since early 2006, into outright civil war. The USA's perspective in 2002-3 was that a short, sharp military blow would shatter Saddam Hussein's regime, and after it Iraqi society would generate a reliable, world-market-friendly government with no more trouble than that with which more-or-less parliamentary, IMF-friendly, WTO-friendly governments emerged in Eastern Europe after the fall of Stalinism. This new Iraqi regime would, in turn, give a powerful impulse to the...

"Troops out": defeated amendment on Iraq (4.1)

To replace all of the part of the existing document between the words "A victory for the Sunni-sectarian resistance..." and "...Iraq can be a democratic and secular country" In the face of the carnage brought on by the invasion, occupation and ensuing sectarian conflict, the Iraqi workers' movement must seek to build itself as an active element of social change. Its slogans must be oriented towards cohering the working class as an united, independent force fighting for democracy and liberation. In an Iraq in which the population overwhelmingly opposes the presence of troops and favours their...

"Organise women interested in socialist-feminist ideas and the AWL" (document 3.0)

1. We will undertake a programme of education in the group around the history, theory and politics of socialism and feminism/socialism-feminism over the next year. This will begin with the Socialist Feminist dayschool on 21 April. We will collate and make available on our website reading and background material related to our own history, record and programme on these issues. 2. We will follow up on the successful Feminist Fightback conference and march for abortion rights with other campaigning activity on abortion rights. This might be: some direct action, a dayschool (especially explaining...

"Maintain and strengthen the AWL's open revolutionary socialist political profile": document on the Labour Party (5.0)

A. 1. John McDonnell's campaign for Labour leader is the first attempt since the Benn-Heffer campaign of 1988 to propose, on a wide, public, national level, a working-class political alternative to the Blair-Brown policies of anti-union laws, privatisation, marketisation, warmongering, and squeeze on civil liberties which have stifled the labour movement in politics for over a decade now. We support the campaign. The question is, how can we "build on" it? 2. The fact of the McDonnell campaign, and of our involvement in it, does not in any fundamental sense contradict or negate the basic...

"For a change in orientation": defeated motion on the Labour Party (document 5.1/5.2)

1.This resolution calls for a change in orientation by our organisation. 2.The organisation must address the working class and the working class movement as it actually exists and struggles. 3.Labour remains the mass party of the British working class. 4.It is now what it has always been: a bourgeois labour party i.e. a bourgeois political machine sitting on top of the working class movement. 5.The fundamental strategic task of Marxists is to break the hold of the Labour Party parliamentarians and the trade union bureaucracy over the working class. This struggle to renovate and revolutionise...

Restarting our women's work

This background document for the AWL 2007 AGM includes a restatement of the immediate history of the modern women’s movement and our own history. Much of this has been said more comprehensively elsewhere (The case for Socialist Feminism, Comrades and Sisters ). Some of it is individual opinion, raising points for discussion. It also summarises our recent debates (abortion rights, hijab). It is an attempt to refamiliarise ourselves with the political ideas and point up areas for further discussion, to help us restart our work in this area. There are gaps. There is nothing here about the basic...

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