An injury to one is an injury to all

Volume 3 No. 124 10 January 2008 S& WoORlKiEdRS’a LIBrERiTtY y 30p/80p

Since 2005 the Unite union in New Zealand has run a “Super Size My Pay” campaign focussing on fast food and coffee shop workers. Starbucks workers have gone on strike. Unite has won wage increases for young workers. An organiser from Unite will be touring the UK in February to tell us how they did it. More, page 3. How young workers can organise NZ unionist’s tour will tell how it’s done turn to page 3 2 NEWS US: pick-the-millionaire time

BY SACHA ISMAIL like the 44 million Americans with no health insurance, let alone tackling the deep and grow- UNDREDS and even thousands of ing inequalities of US society. enthusiastic supporters have turned out In any case, even genuinely left-wing Hat rallies and actions for the various Democrats like Jesse Jackson and, today, candidates in the “primary” elections currently primary candidate Dennis Kucinich, are underway to select the two main parties’ candi- supporters of a bourgeois political party that is dates for the November 2008 US presidential an essential part of the machinery through election. It is a striking contrast with the now which the US ruling class maintains its political almost universal apathy surrounding elections in power. Socialists cannot support any the UK: even if Gordon Brown had allowed a Democratic candidate, because doing so means contest for the Labour leadership, can you imag- giving up on the task of building an independent ine crowds of thousands turning out to support voice for the US working class. him? In the primaries, the US unions have func- The reality behind the crowd scenes in the tioned as clients of the various Democratic US is, however, far from democratic. In place of candidates (the public sector union SEIU, for the kind of membership-controlled, more-or-less instance, supports Edwards, while the local democratic, class-based party that the Labour government union AFSCME supports Clinton Party (to a certain extent) used to be, both and the firefighters’ union supported Conneticut Republicans and Democrats are not only almost senator Chris Dodd). In November, they will all identical in policy terms, but function as politi- line up behind whoever the Democrats eventu- ally select, but the relationship will be essen- cal cartels through which different factions of Barack Obama the American ruling class manipulate the public. tially the same. What is needed, above all, is for (Even Britain’s bourgeois parties are more instance, Clinton’s most senior adviser is Mark pushing the same agenda for the same compa- a significant section of the labour movement to democratic in how they function.) Through Penn, a corporate PR man whose clients have nies. There’s no difference.” break with the Democrats and client-patron these two parties, public funding of them and included Shell, the Argentine junta and Union Although he is to the left of Obama and politics, and to establish a democratic party of the primary system, the state and big business Carbide in the wake of the thousands of deaths Clinton, however, Edwards is clearly part of the its own. are strikingly intertwined. its negligence caused in Bhopal in India. same corporate elite. Contrary to myth, there have been many proj- The degree of control from below exercised There has also been a certain amount of fuss His working-class background (his father was ects for workers’ representation in the United in the primaries is almost zero: this is a process about John Edwards, the former North Carolina a millworker and his mother a postalworker) is, States – from Henry George’s trade union-spon- in which an atomised electorate picks from a list senator who was John Kerry’s vice-presidential of course, irrelevant here, except in so far as it sored campaign for mayor of New York in of millionaires whom corporate funding has candidate in 2004. Edwards finished second in brings into relief the platinum-spoon upbring- 1886, which Engels hailed despite its inadequate allowed to get a hearing in the corporate media. the Iowa caucuses (the first primary of 2008), ings of most US politicians. Edwards is himself programme as a step towards working-class This is true of both parties. In the case of the beating Clinton into third place with populist a millionaire, a former corporate lawyer who, in political independence, to the Farmer-Labour Republicans, it goes without saying; in the case rhetoric about ending poverty and reclaiming addition to notoriously spending $400 on a hair- Parties of the 1920s and the political discussions of the Democrats, it should go without saying, American democracy from control by the cut, earns many hundreds of thousands consult- in the new industrial unions of the 1930s. All but doesn’t, due to the demagogic, populist rhet- corporations. In terms of his critique, Edwards ing for companies, including private equity firm these initiatives remained in embryo or died oric through which sections of the party main- is willing to be quite radical: Fortress Investment. In 2006, the latter paid him quickly, in part due to the inadequate (or in the tain their support from the US unions. “I have seen the seamy underbelly of what $479,000 as a consultant; in 2007, the press case of the 30s, treacherous, Stalinist) politics of The British liberal press has made a big fuss happens in Washington every day. If you’re reported that it owned part of a company the socialists involved, but they show there is about how the Democrats’ candidate for presi- Exxon Mobil and you want to influence what’s responsible for preying on poor home owners, nothing “exceptional” about the US. dent will almost certainly be black (Barack happening with the government, you go and including by foreclosing on the homes of many Nor is this just ancient history. In 1996, an Obama) or a woman (Hillary Clinton); but hire one of these big lobbying firms. This is Hurricane Katrina victims. Edwards divested independent Labor Party with over two million neither represents even the kind of “rainbow what you find. About half the lobbyists are and spent a lot of his own money to create a affiliated trade unionists was established, but it coalition”, left-populist politics which fuelled Republicans, and about half the lobbyists are fund for those who had lost their homes, but the failed to break completely with the Democrats Jesse Jackson’s insurgency in the 1984 Democrats. If the Republicans are in power, the contrast is instructive. and eventually withered. Reviving such initia- Democratic primaries. The corporate connec- Republican lobbyists take the lead, passing the Unsurprisingly, then, Edwards’ policies are a tives is the key task for socialists, and all those tions and unambiguously pro-corporate politics money around. If the Democrats are in power, left-leaning version of the standard Democratic who want to see something more like real of both Obama and Clinton are well known: for the Democratic lobbyists take the lead. They’re fare. They go nowhere near solving problems democracy in the US. Labour and Tories race to attack benefits

BY DAVID BRODER Gordon Brown told viewers of the BBC’s just a half-hearted imitation of their own idea could be better spent on strengthening the insti- Andrew Marr Show that New Labour’s plans to that what people on incapacity benefit really tution of marriage. AVID Cameron has launched a fresh get people to work were “far more revolution- need is not benefits but… training. But it is not our only argument that benefit offensive against single parents, unem- ary” than the Tories’ suggestions. “Today the Indeed, this row serves as part of a gener- claimants really are unable to work, or that Dployed and disabled people with plans issue is people don’t have the skills, even when alised attempt to undermine the welfare state. maybe they don’t much like living on a to force them into work. The Tory leader’s there are 600,000 vacancies in the economy… The Tories have also proposed compulsory pittance. We also contest the idea of compul- proposals include making the unemployed the next stage is not what the Conservatives are (privately or voluntary-sector organised) sory employment, when most of the jobs out participate in “community work”, penalties for talking about but giving people the skills to get “community work” projects for those on JSA there are alienating, tedious and badly paid — those who turn down “reasonable” job offers into work.” for two years and removing JSA for up to three why should anyone have to do a demoralising and cutting the number of people receiving Rather than presenting the Tories’ plans to years for those who turn down three job offers. job where they get bossed around for £5.50 an incapacity benefit by 600,000 over the next five slash incapacity benefit by billions of pounds as The bourgeois parties’ “welfare into work” hour? We oppose any plans which make bene- years. an outrageous attack on the ill and disabled, agenda is a thinly veiled attack on the disabled, fits dependent on claimants’ willingness to At the heart of the Tories’ plans is a vast New Labour claim that the Tories’ plans are are scapegoating them for ‘wasting money’ that work. overhaul of the incapacity benefit system, which caters for 2.6 million ill and disabled people, most of whom suffer from either mental disorders or musculo-skeletal diseases. Further curbs on freedom of assembly Writing for the News of the World, David Cameron claimed that “I don’t believe that BY REUBEN GREEN Gordon Brown wants to “harmonise” punch of the complex and confusing array there are nearly half a million young people in police powers to control marches and of arrestable laws. Bascially the police can Britain with a disability which prevents them T comes as no surprise that Gordon demonstrations across the UK. That will arbitrarily break up any protest, up to and from doing any work at all. What we have is a Brown’s comments about freedom to mean extended current police powers in including leafleting on a high street! culture of despair, where kids grow up without protest have turned out to be doubles- most recent Public Order Act (1986) that The devil will no doubt be in the detail any idea that for our society to function every- I peak and spin. The government is apply to marches so that they cover all of the new legislation and we should all one has to pull their weight if they can.” In currently consulting — via a webpage! — assemblies. At the same time he wants to pay attention and oppose any extension of order to get these people to “pull their weight”, on Sections 132-138 of the Serious strengthen police control around police power over the right to assemble. Cameron suggests a reassessment of incapacity Organised Crime and Police Act (SOCPA) Parliament Square, so that marches as Equally, the existing powers need to be benefit claimants which will force some onto (2005), which ban unauthorised protest well as assemblies can be banned. The challenged politically and also broken in the lower-rate Job Seekers Allowance (JSA), an within one square kilometre of Parliament. state already has a raft of powers to practice by organized popular movements. “allowance” received dependent on actively The consultation is being presented as a control, restrict and ban dissent in the We also need to advocate positive seeking work. Conveniently, Cameron says that move to repeal the draconian laws. But the form of the Public Order Act, The programme of civil liberties, free speech, these cuts will raise the £3 billion necessary to way the questions are posed in the consul- Terrorism Act, ASBO legislation and vari- freedom of assembly and demonstration. fund his “helping hand” for married couples. tation suggest that is actually an attempt ous bye-laws. See www.indymedia.org.uk for details of But it is not just the Conservatives who are to bring in far greater police powers in Protestors since the 2005 G8 protests in the Freedom of Assembly Day of Action, stressing the need for people with mental disor- relation to “public order”. Scotland — when many current police 12 January. The “consultation” closes on ders to get a crap job on the minimum wage. powers were tried out — have felt the the 17 January. WHAT WE SAY 3 How to organise young workers

NE of the most visible impacts phone, and car as the “traditional” union of capitalist globalisation has organiser would. Obeen the massive expansion of The experience of the IWW in New low-paid (and often semi-casual) jobs York in organising Starbucks workers is in the service sector. This “precarious” one the AWL — through campaigns in employment — in bars, restaurants, which we are involved, such as No Sweat nightclubs, hotels, fast-food chains, — is trying to build on in the UK. Their supermarkets, high-street retailers, call successes stem from building unions as centres and elsewhere — means long fighting bodies. This approach is a million hours, barely-legal wages and unsafe miles away from the mainstream unions’ working conditions. Young people fill way of organising — attracting members these jobs. by being providers of cheap insurance and According to a recent TUC survey, credit cards. workers between the ages of 16-24 The most inspiring international exam- make up nearly a third of the total ple comes from New Zealand, where the workforce in hotels and restaurants in Unite union (no relation to the UK union the UK (migrant workers and women of the same name) ran a “Supersize My of all ages are other significant groups Pay” campaign in 2005, focusing on fast- in this sector). Young people take these food and coffee-shop workers. The jobs because they are readily available; campaign was high-profile and dynamic high staff turnover means employers and succeeded not only in organising the are almost constantly recruiting. The first Starbucks strike in history but also in frequently part-time nature of the work winning significant wage increases for (either at weekends or in the evenings) young workers in Auckland. means that young people at college or What defines this campaign — and university can fit them in around their campaigns like it — is a spirit of militancy studies. And the semi-casual nature of and of building unions as weapons work- the work means that no formal training ers can use to fight their bosses. It rejects or qualifications are required; workers any notions of “partnership” with the can more-or-less start work the day bosses. It overcame the timidity and iner- they’re told they’ve got the job. tia with which so many UK unions are Clearly, these young workers — in a gripped. economically significant and expanding Between 10 and 18 February, AWL sector, and faced with some of the members active in No Sweat will be help- worst exploitation around — are in dire ing build a speaker tour around UK cities need of collective organisation. And yet featuring Mike Treen, a Unite activist, and it is often in these sectors and amongst Axel Persson, a French CGT activist these groups of workers that British working for Quick (similar to Wimpy), to trade unions are weakest. The average discuss how labour movement activists in age of a trade unionist in the UK is still Britain can replicate at least the spirit if 47. not the precise format of previous How should the revolutionary left campaigns. respond to this situation? Some Some labour movement bodies in the activists argue that a straightforward and, ultimately, building a workers’ some success in organising fast-food UK are already taking steps towards this “anti-globalisation” perspective is movement strong enough to eradicate workers in companies like McDonalds sort of work; in Yorkshire, the TUC Youth required; if Wal-Marts, Starbucks, capitalism altogether. and Pizza Hut. It has led strikes in Forum and the Regional Young Members’ Subways, McDonalds, Carphone McDonalds franchises in Paris and Activist Committee of the GMB are Warehouses and other retailers weren’t Strasbourg, winning victories because it discussing organising young workers in cropping up left, right and centre in our adopted a grassroots organising approach bar, nightclubs and call-centres. This is cities then the problem wouldn’t exist. The Super Size My Pay rather than viewing a traditionally anti- positive, but small groups of activists This response is utopian. Even if we campaign was high profile union employer like McDonalds with concentrated in one or two localities could (by demonsration and persuasion and dynamic and succeeded incapacitating trepidation. cannot sustain large-scale campaigns. For alone) “turn the clock back” and eradi- in organising the first “Syndicalist” groups like the IWW can such campaigning to be successful in the cate global corporations, would the Starbucks strike in history. also be learnt from. Although some long-term, it needs the organisational High Street of the past, of small IWWers talk of building “revolutionary infrastructure and collective strength of “family” shops, be free of exploitation? unions” outside of the existing labour big unions like the GMB and Unite behind Unlikely. Small and local business are movement, and we would not agree with it. often equally if not more exploitative In the here and now, revolutionaries that, they have at least had the courage to AWL members and other revolutionary than bigger employers. need to agitate within the labour move- attempt to organise workers in workplaces activists in the trade union movement Rather than opposing the expansion ment to force it adopt a serious organising in areas that mainstream trade unions must act now to catalyse a currently of global capitalist corporations in the strategy for low pay workplaces. would not touch. They will do things like dormant labour movement into action. We name of defending local capitalism(s), There are plenty of lessons to be learned sending in organisers to get jobs in the hope the No Sweat week of action, includ- we should see their expansion as a site from international struggls. areas they’re trying to organise, rather ing the speaker tour, can help do that. for struggle, for fighting exploitation In France, the CGT trade union has had than just turn up outside with suit, mobile • More details: www.nosweat.org.uk Editor: Cathy Nugent www.solidarity-online.org [email protected] 4 INDUSTRIAL NEWS same time constantly turning the funding screw, PRISONS we could see workers in more and more of these organisations being forced to mobilise and defend themselves. Prison officer We must support Shelter workers in their Workers organise fight to protect their pay and conditions, and strike ban keep a close eye on this sector for signs of further life, as the point where voluntary sector IN response to the impact of August 2007’s 12- workers start to play a much more significant hour strike, Justice Secretary Jack Straw role in class struggle may not be long away. against immigration announced plans for a strike-ban for prison offi- cers on January 8. Tabled as an amendment to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill, the LOCAL GOVERNMENT measure will be discussed in Parliament as controls Solidarity goes to press. The decision to reintroduce a strike-ban Equal pay fight contradicts its repeal in 2005, when David BY BECKY CROCKER continues, there will be no more raids, and if the Blunkett replaced an all-out “reserve power” BIRMINGHAM city council has upped the ante training exposes the system as unworkable, banning striking with a “voluntary” no-strike in its battle with its staff over equal pay, by maybe there will be no more raids at all. agreement, due to expire in May 2008. The seeking to impose new contracts which mean PUBLIC meeting on 10 December 2007 In the second half of the meeting, Javier Ruiz Prison Officers’ Association gave 12 months drastic pay cuts thousands of workers and was part of the build-up to the No One from the T&G’s Justice for Cleaners campaign notice of withdrawal from this agreement in longer hours for thousands more. is Illegal Trade Union conference spoke about the points-based migration system May 2007, and New Labour are clearly attempt- The council claims that its goal is equal pay A ing to replace it with a renewed ban before then. against immigration controls. that will come into effect in March. The new between men and women, but is quite transpar- Javez Lam from the GMB, who has law will sort workers into categories ranging Although socialists don’t regard prison offi- ently using this as cover for an attack on the supported Chinese families following the from high-skilled to to the Tier 3 lower skilled cers as workers, or the Prisons Officers’ workforce. Many women, as well as male, Morcambe Bay cockle pickers disaster, spoke workers. Employers will have to prove that they Association as a normal trade union, this move workers will suffer pay cuts if it is successful — about organising the Chinese workers in Soho. have tried to find cheap labour from the native is a strengthening of New Labour’s anti-trade some by as much as £6,000 a year. No wonder He said that many migrants come to this coun- labour pool before importing foreign labour. union laws and should be opposed. 70 percent of workers have either formally try focused on finding a wage and a place to They will have to register with the government rejected or decided to ignore their new live. He noted with regret that immigration is and prove that they are good importers and contracts. often not the first thing on their minds, and that exporters of migrants before being allowed to SHOP WORKERS This struggle has been simmering for some this pragmatic approach has left the political police the status of their workers themselves. time, with 1000-plus rallies outside debate about immigration in the hands of the Each worker from outside the European Union Birmingham town hall. The council unions, racists and the government. will need a certificate of sponsorship from an Bonus cuts strike Unite, Unison, GMB and UCATT, will rally The raids in Soho last October saw immigra- employer to enter the country. Once here, there again on January 12, supported by council tion officials burst into Soho, arresting 49 will be measures to make sure that people go SHOP workers have been on strike in Berlin workers from across the UK. If they can win a Chinese people in one day. Of those, four have back again, such as partly paying workers in (and other parts of Germany) — a number of settlement which guarantees equality while been freed, 10 were immediately removed and their country of origin, or holding bonds for supermarket chains, department stores, the protecting workers’ wages, terms and condi- the rest are still in detention. In response to the them in their own country. biggest bookshop chain, and also H&M. tions, it will be a big step forward in clarifying raids, the Chinese community invited the head The importance of the law is that it places The employers want to abolish the bonuses the labour movement’s current confusion over of South East immigration to Soho to explain responsibility for policing immigration in the for late and Sunday shifts — 20% bonus after equaly pay. To do that, however, strike action himself. From 3-5pm, every shop was closed as hands of the employers. The Trade Unions are 6.30pm Monday-Friday, 50% bonus after 8pm, will be necessary. over 2000 workers went on strike and filled the in a key place to fight this system as part of 120% bonus on Sundays and public holidays, • Rally to support Birmingham council streets, waving placards to greet the immigra- their fight against their bosses. The meeting’s 20% bonus on Satudays after 4.30pm. These workers: 12 noon, Saturday 12 January, outside tion officials, to show the strength of feeling discussion, however, highlighted that the current bonuses make up a lot on top of the basic pay. the Council House in Market Square. within the community. union movement is not fit to fight these meas- When abolished, a full time worker would lose Following appeals from Chinese employers ures. The laws will come into effect on March 180 Euro per month (or the equivalent in time). that the immigration system was too complex 1st. It would be wonderful to think that unions The union have attempted to hold talks with TUC for them to police, the immigration service is accross the country could go on strike to defeat the employers since January. They refuse. The now providing training on how to check papers. these laws. But the anti-union laws, the lack of union are also demanding a 6.5% pay rise (on In the first training session, workers organised understanding about these issues amongst rank top of the retention of bonuses). to ask awkward questions that would expose the and file workers, the reluctance to take any kind Unpaid overtime system. By the end, the immigration official of militant action from the unions’ leader- was agreeing with them that the system could ships.... leads to a depressing picture. But that is action not be defended and he told them that the why it is important to promote the Trade Unions SHELTER Against Immigration Controls conference as A TUC investigation has found that the Chinese community should organise to change number of workers working unpaid overtime the laws! Somone from No One Is Illegal asked much as possible amongst rank and file work- ers. The conference will hopefully not just be a increased by over 100,000 in 2007, with the Jai whether this training colludes with the total topping the five million mark. system of immigration controls, but Jai was one-off event, but part of a process of organis- Workers vote ing workers together for this important fight. On average each of these workers loses a clear that the workers are using this as an for action staggering £5,000 a year, which means that a opportunity for resistance. While the training total of £25 billion worth of overtime work TGWU/Unite members in the homelessness goes unpaid. To put it another way, five charity Shelter have voted by an overwhelming million workers are putting in an average of 87% to reject a raft of proposed cuts to pay and over seven unpaid hours each week conditions, in favour of a strike ballot. The TUC has calculated that if all this over- To summarise the worst of what the organisa- time came at the start of the year, the first day tion’s management are proposing: workers would get paid would be Friday 22 • Immediate downgrading of one third of February. It has declared this date ‘work your frontline advice posts by £3,000. proper hours day’, calling on workers to have • Removal of pay increments currently worth a proper lunch break and go home on time. around £2,500 over three years. • For more details see www.workyourprop- • Extension of the working week from 35 erhoursday.com hours to 37.5 hours. • Introduction of new, disastrous, working practices which would effectively create a two HEALTH or three-tier workforce of housing advisers doing the same jobs, and leave Shelter as an unprincipled lapdog of the government funding Karen Reissman agencies. campaign Since the first of the proposals were announced in May last year, the union has seen WORKERS in Manchester’s Community and a massive increase in membership and a huge Mental Health Services, who struck last year drive to organise, resulting in two massive against the victimisation and sacking of their indicative ballot outcomes, pushing the union Unison branch chair, SWP member Karen further and further towards industrial action to Reissman, have now returned to work — but fend off the cuts. are building a political campaign for her rein- UNDER ATTACK FROM IMMIGRATION CONTROLS! While charities, NGOs and other so-called statement. TRADES UNIONS AND COMMUNITIES FIGHT BACK! not-for-profit organisations are not traditionally On 11 December the branch unanimously thought of as particularly useful for left activists carried a motion advocating a campaign includ- Conference, Saturday 29 March 2008 to work and organise in, large national charities ing a Unison delegation to Health Secretary like Shelter, with its £48m annual turnover and Alan Johnson, pressure on Unison-sponsored 10.30am at The School of Oriental and African Studies, London workforce of almost a thousand could buck this MPs and a one day strike on 5 February so that trend. The current climate in the voluntary the whole branch can attend a lobby of WORKSHOPS • PLENARIES • DISCUSSION sector is one of increasing managerialism, with Parliament in London. a class of self-seeking executives flitting in and As the motion puts it: “This raises issues of plus creche and stalls out from the private sector to introduce the rot national significance relating to trade union of corrupt, wasteful corporatisation to these rights, the right of freedom of expression and Called by Finsbury Park Branch of the RMT Union and supported by Central organisations and to climb the fat-cat salary the defence of the NHS.” This is a crucial strug- London GMB, Ilford & Romford AMICUS/UNITE, Bolivian Solidarity Campaign, ladder to Six Figure City. gle. Please get your branch or other organisation Equadorian Movement in the UK, No One is Illegal, Papers for All With a large number of charities in Britain as to support it — visit www.reinstate-karen.org big as Shelter or much bigger (Barnados, to find out more. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION E-MAIL [email protected] NSPCC, NCH for example) and the New • For the full text of the resolution, see Labour government looking increasingly to www.workersliberty.org/node/9733 contract with the “third sector” while at the PUBLIC SECTOR PAY 5 Resist the 3-year public sector pay cut!

BY COLIN FOSTER N 2008, public sector workers across the board face three years of real wage cuts. IThe Government is determined to limit public sector pay rises to around 2%, and wants to clamp that limit in to three-year deals, while inflation (RPI) is still running at 4.2%. How can public sector workers reinvigorate the idea of trade-union solidarity across different trades and unions on this issue? The public services union Unison estimates that since April 2004 the accrued increase in local government pay stands at 11.4%. Over the same period prices have risen by 12.5%, and average earnings across the whole economy by 13.4%. Local government can not be untypical of the public sector. Now the Government wants to set the wage loss in stone by insisting on three-year deals — at a low rate — for local government and health, and civil service sectors, this year. In local government and health, a wish from the employers for three- year deals was already flagged up in 2007. In the explanations from Unison union leaders about why they support the “Public Review Body” for health workers, that Body is supposed to have the virtue of being “independent”; but now it has been told by the Treasury to deliver a three year formula. On Sunday 16 December AWL members from different public sector unions discussed strategy. This is a summary of conclusions, subject to corrections, amendments, and additions. It has been updated with new information received since 16 December. Our first conclusion is that we should not get buried in the details and limits of feasible string-pulling to elicit action from the different public sector unions. The AWL’s primary task is (as Marx put it) “in the various stages of development which the struggle of working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through... always and everywhere to represent the interests of the movement as a whole... to sector, and against multi-year deals which unions fight (or don’t fight) separately. Civil service bargaining units differ — there point out and bring to the front the common ensure that only a fraction of workers can At present, even within Unison, health and are 241 of them. Most settlement dates are interests of the entire proletariat independently move each year, so that the full strength of the local government pay both run from April to between April and August. Many have multi- of all nationality...” — rather than to pull unions is deployed together. At present the March, but the two sections don’t put claims in year deals, on different cycles. Teachers are strings on which we (as yet a relatively small Treasury gives its remit for civil service pay, at the same time, and they don’t give the September (it used to be April, but shifted a organisation) do not have much pulling power its budgets for health and local government, Government and employers a common few years back). Further education is July. anyway. etc., in a coordinated way each year, but the timescale to respond. One of the ideas that AWL activists have Basic, unifying, long-term demands Teachers closest to action IFFERENT sections of the public sector have different pay structures, different negotiating systems, different D HE pay review body (STRB) sent to one-day strike. After the Government's delay, Government is allowed by delay to come to detailed concerns. That sort of “sectionalism” the Government on 26 October its any action will certainly be later than that. appear an "accomplished fact", that will is inherent to wage-bargaining under recommendation on a pay settlement If the NUT Executive sticks to its policy undermine mobilisation. capitalism. It can be mitigated, but not T to run for three years from September 2008. as discussed up to now, then the NUT will NUT pay policy is for an increase of 10% abolished at will. As Karl Marx put it: “The (The three-year term was already in place ballot for action. The earliest possible action or £3000, plus reduction of differentials cry for an equality of wages rests... upon a before the Government’s recent announce- will be late February, after half-term, which through such things as establishing a "single mistake, is an insane wish never to be ment). The Government, unusually, has is around the second week of February. spine" for the pay structure. It is not clear fulfilled...” taken a long time about responding. There is still, of course, a danger that the what the exact demand will be over which In the AWL conference document of 2006, Theoretically the Government can accept the right will oppose action when it comes to the members may be ballotted for strike action. we concluded that: “Each AWL fraction STRB recommendation or pay more or pay crunch, or that Sinnott will limit the action The demand is on the Government as the should make sure it is visible in its union and less. According to NUT general secretary to a one-off one-day protest. AWL will press body which decides teachers' pay, although sector as the advocate of... a class line, which Steve Sinnot, speaking at an NUT Divisional for it to be discontinuous action, and at as there exists no procedure for the union to in the present situation revolves around two Secretaries’ meeting on 9 January, the quick a tempo as possible. That might mean negotiate with the Government over pay. main themes, levelling up pay and conditions Government has to go public on the report two strikes before the end of term (just NUT conference is at Easter (weekend of and organising the unorganised”. by the end of January at latest. before Easter), and further strikes from 23 March). Motions have already been In the public sector we should argue for The EIS (Scottish teachers’ union) has April. submitted from branches. In January coordination beyond practical things like dates accepted a three year deal of 2.5%, 2.5%, NUT activists say: branches vote on which motions to prioritise, of ballots. The basic touchstone should be a 2.3%. Teachers in England will almost • The union has done a lot of campaigning i.e. get to the actual conference floor. Then campaign for above inflation pay rises across certainly be offered less. in the schools on pay; in February they consider amendments to the the sector (i.e. a “sliding scale of wages” NUT Executive policy is to ballot for • Teachers in the schools are more prioritised motions. agreement) and an agreed minimum wage. discontinuous strike action if the agitated about workload issues than about Because of this schedule it is common We have to politically rearm as well as help Government does not grant an increase pay, but will probably respond to the chance practice to submit “holding motions”, with to reorganise and renew the trade union catching up with inflation. The left won a to express a national protest by strike action the sharp edges of their content being movement. We argue for standardised pay rises narrow majority, on the Executive, against over pay; supplied by subsequent amendments. There matching and beating inflation, against both general secretary Steve Sinnott, to make it • It would not make sense to delay NUT is a holding motion from the left with regional bargaining and “performance-related “discontinuous action” rather than a single action in 2008 in order to increase the (oddly) a call for a ballot on action over pay pay”. one-day strike. chances of coinciding with other sectors. If “before Christmas 2008”; obviously it will We also argue for unions to work for a Sinnott had pencilled in 30 January for a the pay settlement announced by the have to be amended. common settlement date across the public 6 PUBLIC SECTOR PAY

raised within PCS is that the union should “It is hoped that this will coincide with a 2008, since it has had a three-year pay deal The motions will be circulated early in seek disputes over the Treasury remit, i.e. the NUT ballot”. imposed in November 2007 (backdated to 1 January, and amendments have to be in by 15 overall guidance the Treasury gives to the That applies to England; Wales, Scotland, July). February. 241 bargaining units. Why not extend that and Northern Ireland have different DWP workers struck on 6/7 December The question of deadlines and tempo is idea outside the civil service? Of course, we negotiating structures. The other against that imposition. No further action has important because in 2007, talks on both are not strong enough to win it this year, but complication is that, according to UCU: “The yet been announced beyond an overtime ban health and local government pay dragged on we will never be strong enough to win unless Association of Colleges (AoC)... negotiates from 8 to 21 December, but it is possible. for months after the settlement date in April, we start arguing for it sometime. with UCU and other recognised trade unions The union’s official stance now is: despite the Government making it clear that Of course, any general theme we argue to produce recommendations on pay and “PCS has demanded that management it would talk about only minute marginal isn’t going to supersede the actual union conditions for individual colleges to adopt... withdraw the second and third years of the 3 adjustments. claims, which in most cases other than for Pay can vary considerably between year offer and commence immediate negotia- Ballots were held in the autumn; health local government are already in. But, in the colleges”. tions on making the offer acceptable. workers accepted the Government deal, and background of what we say about on specific “In summary, the AoC’s final pay “PCS urges management to take up the local government workers voted against deals, we have an overarching commitment recommendation is: offer of talks offered by ACAS”. strike action on their offer, largely because to levelling up wages and conditions - • 2% on all salaries and allowances from 1 The biggest pay settlement within the civil many workers preferred to get money in their including for the “private sector” workers August 2007 service to come up in 2008 is in Revenue pockets immediately, from the back-dated within the public sector, that is, contracted- • A further 1% from 1 February 2008. and Customs (HMRC). A three-year pay element of even a poor pay rise, rather than out workers such as ancillaries, cleaners, and “A national conference of FE branch settlement there ends in June 2008, and a get nothing immediately and stick out for so on, who are often a lot worse off than representatives from across the country, held new settlement is due from 1 July. HMRC what the union leadership told them was only public sector workers. in October 2007, said that the offer was workers have the highest union density in a slight chance of a slightly better deal later. So: sliding scale; minimum of £8 an hour; ‘insulting’, and amounts to a pay cut”. the civil service, and (unlike some other Despite that, many health workers are bring contracted-out workers onto public- According to UCU insiders, on candid sectors of the civil service) sizeable reported to be dissatisfied and angry with the sector pay and conditions; common assessment the UCU’s position is weak. The economic clout. pay deal, even if they voted for it. settlement dates; no multi-year deals. AoC formula has already been imposed by PCS is balloting between 7 and 23 January There is also the question of agitating and many colleges; union organisation in the for strike action in HMRC — not over pay, organising among ancillary (contracted-out) colleges is weak; the top union officials do but over jobs, and specifically over closures workers for them to be lifted up to NHS pay Fight now! Don’t wait! not want action. of rural offices. If HMRC workers strike, it rates. Again, one AWL member working in will probably be on 31 January, a date There is a “framework agreement” N 2007, AWL put much emphasis on Further Education reports that her college chosen as the busiest day of the tax year. nationally which says that some contracted- organising local public-sector union management usually takes the AoC’s figure Last year PCS called two one-day strikes, out staff should get NHS rates. But it is not Isolidarity committees, where possible as a “maximum” for pay in the college. The on 31 January and 1 May, over jobs but also an enforceable agreement. NHS Trusts have through Trades Councils. pay settlement date in the college has been for national pay. However, after 1 May the to volunteer the money to contractors to Rebuilding and reviving Trades Councils is shifted to 1 January, and the college bosses’ Exec went for a lengthy “consultation exer- uplift the pay a key task. But we would deceive ourselves line this year is that they won’t even consider cise”, and then for a further “consultative AWL activists in Unison in have if we suggest that local solidarity committees making any offer at all — still less the full ballot”. Once the ballot returned a clear succeeded in getting the Trust to pay part of are the key lever to get coordinated union AoC figure which UCU has called majority for further national action, the Exec the deal, but not as fast as it should be. The action in 2008. “insulting” — until the end of January. (on 1 November) suspended all such action Union branch has recruited well out of it. We cannot rely on the national union However, a ballot and action alongside the on the grounds that the Government was Some other places (Aintree, East London) leaders to coordinate action. The experience NUT could get a significantly better turnout allegedly showing some signs of movement have had strikes and won the full deal. Many of 2007 shows that, however much they talk than action by the UCU on its own. in negotiations. have done nothing. about it, they are reluctant to do anything to In Higher Education UCU has accepted a However, since Left Unity won control of The problem is that the setup now requires bring it about. In their discourse, coordinated the PCS Exec in 2003, pay inequalities in local Unison branches to run local campaigns action remains a good idea for an ideal future the civil service have increased, and the on this issue, and many branches are simply moment unlikely to arrive — and sometimes, Unison leaders have promised number of different bargaining units has not up to it - because of lack of activists, or an excuse for not doing anything now, short increased. because of lack of interest in the conditions of that ideal future. a faster tempo on pay in A new approach is needed to reverse that of the contracted-out workers. The Observer of 16.12.07 reported: “The 2008, for both health and trend. Despite ancillary workers having been TUC will launch Speak Up for Public generally the backbone of NUPE Services in London on Tuesday to campaign local government. It remains Health organisation in the Health Service before the against the government’s target of 2 per cent to be seen whether they will merger that formed Unison, the union has pay rises across the public sector, resulting in waged no systematic campaign to organise deliver. NISON Health has submitted a claim pay increases below inflation for hundreds of and win improvements for the ancillary for the next settlement, due in April, thousands of workers”. It reads well, but in workers. for: reality this an ongoing campaign which had a U We should argue for Unison to campaign • scrapping Band 1 (the lowest pay band); lobby of parliament last January. The TUC settlement for 2006-9. for an enforceable national agreement to get • an “above inflation” pay rise for all; website gives no indication of any further contracted-out workers NHS rates, and to • a cut in working hours from 37.5 to 35. action, or indeed of any campaigning beyond launch an organising drive among The pay rates are set by an official Pay bland press releases. Civil service contracted-out workers on that basis. Review Body which will report in February. Thus we want rank-and-file link-ups across EXT up is the civil service. AWL The Government can then decide on a unions and sectors to put pressure on the activists in the PCS suggest that if settlement higher or lower than the PRB leaders and to mobilise independently. Local government school teachers do go ahead with recommendation. In 2007 the Government But there is a Catch-22 here. In anything N discontinuous action, and even more so if decided to “stage” the PRB’s 2.5% HE relevant Unison committee has like current circumstances, even modestly further education lecturers go with them, that recommendation, i.e., in effect, to reduce it proposed a claim (from April 2008) for lively local solidarity committees, like the will create a basis for arguing in the PCS for to 1.9%. a 6% increase, with a minimum wage one in Leeds this autumn, will draw in T the union’s campaign for “national pay” — There was a debate at last year’s Unison of £6.75 per hour. The committee is due to workers outside the diehard left only when i.e. for levelling up to common rates across Health conference about the PRB. We argued finalise the claim in January. there are signals of ferment or activity over the civil service’s 241 different pay bargain- for Unison to support collective bargaining Unison local government conference is 15- pay in those workers’ unions. In other words, ing units - to be refreshed or resurrected. for all health workers, but the conference 16 June, and the deadline for motions to it is for local rank-and-file link-ups to gain life AWL members in the PCS have won decision was for all health workers to be 22 February. The amendments deadline is by there has to be already at least some ferment policy at PCS conferences that the union brought under the PRB. April, but there is no need to wait that long in a number of different sectors, roughly should take action over the “Treasury remit” Unison leaders have promised a faster to know that the Government will not simultaneous if not actually coordinated. - the budget envelope which the Treasury tempo on pay in 2008, for both health and willingly offer more than about 2%. The It is not possible to get that ferment by gives each February as guidance to all civil local government. It remains to be seen Government has already set its local first forming the cross-union local service bargaining for the coming financial whether they will deliver. government budget for 2008-9. committees. The call for local solidarity year. The union has not done that. The health Pay Review Body is due to We need motions that mandate Unison to committees will “go live” when there is that AWL PCS activists suggest that the tactic report in February. We need motions from ballot immediately then (in June, i.e. on the more-or-less simultaneous ferment. for 2008 might be, if the teachers take Unsion branches to the Unison Health same deadline as we are proposing for Coldly considered, as one PCS activist put discontinuous action, to press for PCS to Service Group Executive as soon as PRB health) if there is no satisfactory settlement it, the tasks of fighting for coordinated union revive or resuscitate its national campaign reports, insisting that the union make by then. action on public sector pay in 2008 are by action alongside the teachers. The demands on the Government to vary the A significant warning to local government “incredibly difficult”. The strongest section demand of the action would be for national award upwards and to reject a multi-year workers about the intentions of Unison of public sector workers, the postal workers, pay bargaining, national pay rates, harmoni- formula. officialdom comes from the probation sector. have been taken out by a (bad) multi-year sation to those rates within three to five The top Unison officials have made it clear Unison members in probation are part of the deal; the unions generally are in a worse years, and increases at least matching infla- that they will want to “respect the integrity of local government “service group” of the shape after the setbacks of 2007. tion for all workers. It would be understood the PRB”, i.e. accept any Pay Review Board union, although their pay is entirely separate, Nevertheless, there are some openings and that the immediate concession that might be finding straight away, if only the negotiated by Unison and Napo (the signs of life; and in any case, it is our task to won on this would be an increase in the Government will pay it in full. But it is probation officers’ union) more or less develop and argue a political line which — “Treasury remit” to allow movement towards already clear from the Government’s general directly with the Treasury. They have just even if it can’t win a majority, even if we those objectives. policy, and from the Government’s NHS come out of a three year pay deal, and a calculate in advance that it has no chance of PCS conference is 19-23 May, in Budget plans, that the Government will not claim is now due for April 2008. winning a majority — can educate those Brighton. Branches must submit motions by willingly pay more than about 2%, and will In November there was a national workers we can reach in a class approach. 6 March. PCS has no provision for branches instruct the PRB to propose and three-year activists’ forum, the first in five years, where amending motions. deal. pay was discussed. Issues which need to be raised at the Unison health conference comes soon The union full timer argued strongly for a Further education conference include union action to secure after, 14-16 April. There is a left-wing pitiful claim and another three-year deal. HE lecturers’ union UCU is common settlement dates for different motion on pay in from the East Midlands, An AWL activist presented argued that co- advocating common action with the bargaining units and opposition to multi-year demanding an uplift of bottom pay rates, etc. ordinated action should be the priority, and NUT. UCU reports: “Branches are T deals. rather than a plea for the “independence” of for that reason the union should only now preparing for a national ballot of FE The different pay bargaining units in the the PRB; a call on the Government to over- consider a one year pay deal. members on taking industrial action... The civil service have different settlement dates rule PRB and uplift higher; and demanding The full-timer confused people (apparently intention at this stage is to look to ballot and different spans of multi-year deals. the Service Group Executive ballot for successfully) by talking about co-ordinated members in January to reject the pay offer The Department of Work and Pensions industrial action in support of this dispute. action whilst actually advocating going for a and take industrial action in the following (DWP), the most militant section in the The motion sets a deadline of June for three year deal which would be negotiated month. “civil service”, is somewhat “out of it” for moving to industrial action. very soon i.e. taking the section out of any INTERNATIONAL 7 France: a draw in the first round

Following the upsurge of action by French railworkers, students and others in October and November last year, a group of young AWL members and contacts visited the city for thee days in December. We joined up with two Workers’ Liberty members who are currently teaching in Paris as part of their university course. As well as learning about the ongoing struggle, we revived our ties with sections of the French revolutionary left. In the process we gained valuable ideas about the way forward for socialist activists in Britain. Sacha Ismail reports.

Y the standards of Britain, at least, the class struggle in France is at a high pitch. BFollowing his election last year, conser- vative president Nicholas Sarkozy immediate went on an offensive against the unions, with anti-strike laws for “essential services” such as public transport and attacks on the pension represent both members and non-members, and Scenes from last rights of the relatively small number of workers many non-members will take strike action. At December’s protests who retain a “special regime”. (In 1993, private the same time, there is more of a tradition of against Sarkozy’s plans sector workers suffered a major cut in pensions minority strikes, and of workers taking action provision; in 95 a huge wave of strikes and organising independently of their union prevented the extension of this attack to the leadership. In 1986, for instance, a three week British workers is a crucial task for socialists in public sector, but between then and the defeat of rail strike took place (and won) completely the period ahead. further strikes in 2003, the ruling class gradually independently of the rail section of the CGT 2. One reason why the French working class got most of what it wanted, but a some workers (France’s main union federation). There are has better maintained its fighting capacity is the were exempt.) obvious disadvantages here, but it is undoubt- presence of relatively large numbers of social- Both these struggles have pitched the rail- edly easier for workers’ to take and escalate ists in its ranks. Example: the LCR comrades workers, one of the best organised sections of action even if their union bureaucracy is hostile. who we spoke to said that there are something the French working class, to the forefront. Easier — but the pressure and inertia of the like 300 organised revolutionary socialist rail- Several of the socialists we spoke to stressed bureaucracy still plays a role. In the 2006 strug- workers in France, including more than 100 in that, in take on the railworkers, Sarkozy’s gle, all the major unions, the national student the LCR (LO has a strong base in many indus- government has a dual purpose. The first is to union UNEF and the leadership of the trial sector, including on the rail). The equiva- open the door to a further series of generalised Communist and Socialist Parties demanded — lent figure in Britain cannot be more than 30! attacks on pensions and other social rights (one sluggishly, hypocritically, but nonetheless — the The same is true among many groups of work- comrade used the analogy of the special regimes withdrawal of the CPE. That provided a frame- ers and among students. The LCR’s youth being a small plug preventing a mass of water work in which workers and students felt confi- section, JCR, has three hundred activists in rushing through); but the second is to confront dent to take action: an inadequate framework universities and several dozen in schools, some- and break one of the vanguards of the French for going further to challenge and overthrow the thing which no group in Britain can hope to working class. government, but a framework. This time, in match. In October and November, railworkers, contrast, the CGT, UNEF and especially the This implantation is a material factor in the gasworkers and others carried out major strikes Socialist Party range from unclear to downright strength of the French working class. The and demonstrations, using General Assemblies treacherous and in league with Sarkozy. As a French left has established it by a patient orien- (AGs) to organise the struggle. There have also result, it has been more difficult for action to tation to workplace and union struggles, and by been strikes by teachers, civil servants and other snowball. a willingness to reach out beyond the existing groups of workers under attack. The back- structures of trade and student unions (in part, ground is the events of 2006, in which mass Y the time we visited France, the unions admittedly, because both, particularly student student and school student occupations and were in negotiations and action (both unions, are much weaker in France than in AGs, backed by a rising tide of workers’ action, Bamong workers and students) was (one of our delegation was a young AWL rail- Britain). This helps to establish a virtuous circle: forced the withdrawal of the CPE, a deeply fizzling out for the time being. While were we worker, which meant a very fruitful discussion during the current struggle, the LCR’s profile unpopular attack on young workers’ rights. This there, national rail and Paris Metro strikes took and plans for joint activity in the near future). has meant a steady stream of membership appli- time too, the student movement has clashed place, but because most workers regarded these We met members of Lutte Ouvrière’s minority cations from railworkers. with the government, though their struggle is a as token actions manipulated by the union lead- tendency; a comrade from the rather strange but 3. The French left is in ferment. Since the different one: opposition to the government erships to support negotiations, and not as a interesting group Le Militant, which unites a 2002 presidential election, the LCR has grown University Reform Law (LRU), which moves serious blows against the employers and number of Trotskyist activists in the Socialist rapidly, particularly among young people, prob- French universities further down the road government, they were poorly supported. Party, the Communist Party, the LCR and no ably doubling its size. In the 2007 election, its towards privatisation. Meanwhile, most of the university occupations other group; and a leading activist from the candidate, the now very famous Olivier While very impressive indeed, both workers’ had dispersed for the holidays. One French Reseau Education Sans Frontieres (Education Besancenot, received more than two million and students’ actions have been relatively weak comrade described it as the end of the first Without Borders Network), a left-wing votes, many times more than the candidate of compared to the CPE struggle. In the case of the round and a draw - but one which could have campaign against the deportation of children the Communist Party. The LCR now has a rela- students, only a minority of universities and a been a victory if not for the actions of the union and families. Last but not least, we discussed tionship with many thousands of activists who few schools have taken action, compared to the leaders. quite a bit with the Yves Coleman, editor of the want to fight the bosses and their government, great majority of universities and a large and We did visit one of the last occupied journal Ni Patrie Ni Frontières, and attended a and recognition from many tens and hundreds growing number of schools in 2006. campuses in Paris, and participated in a thou- number of public meetings. of thousands more. Meanwhile, while there is mass support for the sand-strong student demontration. Of necessity, There is no space to go into detail here, but a This is, obviously, very different from the railworkers and others striking to defend the however, most of our activity involved discus- few observations: situation in Britain: but that is because the special regimes, the strikes have not burst the sions with individuals and groups of activists. 1. There is a lot to be learnt from the French French left has made different choices. The bounds of sectoralism and union legality in the We met with a number of activists from the labour movement and left. One thing our trip LCR (and, previously, LO) have grown not way they did last time. Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire, including was useful for was disabusing us of the notion through Respect-style opportunism and stunts, A bit of explanation about the French labour youth from its left-wing Democratie that French workers, students etc simply burst- but by a basic focus on ideas of class struggle movement. In France, only a small minority of Révolutionnaire tendency, two members of its ing with fantastic, explosive militancy: this is and workers’ representation. workers are in a union (currently 9%); workers political bureau (one from DR and one from its far from being the case. Nor is the deadening only join if they want to be activists. The unions leading majority) and a small group railworkers weight of bureaucracy absent from their move- HE LCR is currently making propaganda ment. Nonetheless, the French workers have and attempting to launch a campaign for never suffered a crushing defeat as the British Ta new “anti-capitalist” workers’ party — working class did in the 1980s; and they have and, while there is much to criticise in and won some big victories (1986, 1995, 2006). many questions to ask about all this, it is very Class struggles in France different from the foul populist swamp into While it will, probably, take a long time to create a fully revolutionary labour movement, which the British far left has collapsed. (When I there is no reason why our movement in Britain asked a leading LCR member for his view on London AWL meeting cannot fight, win and begin the process of championing of George Galloway by their sister Thursday 24 January, 7.30pm rebuilding now. There is nothing in the water organisation the ISG he was obviously embar- which makes French workers more militant: and rassed.) The new party project may not succeed, The Union Tavern, 52 Lloyd Baker Street (corner with Farringdon the lessons from their struggles can be applied not least because the majority of Lutte Ouvriere here. Combativity against government and is taking a sectarian attitude towards the LCR’s Road), London (Kings X or Farringdon Tube) employers; drives to organise independently of appeal (the LO minority, in contrast, are, and against the union bureaucracies; mass, cautiously but definitely positive). But at least Come and hear a report back from the delegation of young AWL members who visited democratic forms of organisation such as the LCR, or some within it, are posing the right general assemblies — we should learn from all questions. France last month, and discuss how we can support and what we can learn from the these and much more. Equally, French worker • We had a great time in Paris, and plan to activists have things to be learnt from us. return some time in early 2008. If you would French workers' movement and left. Building strong links between French and like to come on our next delegation to France, get in touch: [email protected] 8 INTERNATIONAL Yes, independence for Kosova!

BY COLIN FOSTER amount to success for “imperialism”. The bombing must be stopped with Serbian troops still in place and free to continue their “ethnic OSOVA, formerly the Albanian-major- cleansing”. The SWP was vehement even ity province of Yugoslavia, is likely to against weaker-stomached NATO-phobes who Kdeclare independence in February urged that the “stop the bombing” slogan be 2008. The European Union, the USA, and coupled with a call for self-determination for NATO will support independence, despite the Kosovars. Russia (a longstanding ally of Serbia) block- How the Kosovars could have self-determi- ing UN approval for independence and declar- nation with the Serbian troops rampaging ing that independence will be “outside interna- across their country, the weaker-stomached tional law”. never explained. By the Serbian people rising That the people of Kosova should have their up against Milosevic? But that was not going right to independence respected is good, and a to happen in the same timescale (weeks and damning condemnation of those on the left days) in which the Kosovar Albanian popula- who backed Milosevic in the 1990s. Many tion was being “ethnically cleansed”, and it things about the way independence is happen- happened, in fact, only as a consequence of ing are bad. Serbia’s defeat in 1999. (Milosevic fell from Kosova was, in effect, a colony of Serbia power, after waves of popular revolt, in from when it was conquered from the decay- October 2000). In any case, the SWP was ing Ottoman Empire in 1912 — in a bloody having none of such equivocation. campaign that moved Leon Trotsky, then a Kosovar self-determination would “desta- war correspondent in the region, to denounce bilise the region”, the SWP said, in a plea for “Serbian imperialism” — until 1999. bourgeois stability somewhat incongruous Kosova was occupied by Italian and then by from such devout “anti-imperialists”. Besides, German forces during World War Two, but the Kosovars, or their leadership, were reconquered by Serbia at the end of the war. It “nationalist gangsters” (as Callinicos still puts is the one province of the old Yugoslavia for it: other nations have national rights, despite which there is no evidence of the people ever unattractive leaderships, but the Kosovars only having in their majority wished for, or at least have “gangsters”); and the Kosovars were so accepted, inclusion in the federal state. Its dispersed that self-determination was now impossible. population is about 90% Albanian. Kosovar refugees in Bosnia at the time of the Balkans war Despite Tito’s Yugoslavia engaging in seri- Milosevic was at fault? Maybe a tad, said ous talks with Turkey in the 1950s about the SWP. But we must remember, they “serbianising” Kosova by way of deporting bloody attempt by Serbia to restore its rule, ous chance that calm reflection and considera- insisted again and again, that Milosevic was the Albanian-Muslim population en masse to there is no alternative to independence. tions of practicality would have encouraged “not as bad as Hitler”. So that’s all right, then? Turkey, Kosova enjoyed a relatively benign Marxists who support the right of nations to the development of some modus vivendi in The backstop argument was that anyone era from 1974 to 1989, with great autonomy self-determination must regret that independ- the following years, with no doubt significant who failed to join the SWP’s “stop the bomb- within the Yugoslav federation. ence did not come earlier; and that, coming so disadvantage for the Serbian minority but ing” movement was “pro-imperialist” or “pro- In 1989, Kosova’s autonomy was late, it comes in such poisoned form. something less vile than the current segrega- war”. If the SWP’s line was for NATO to stop suppressed by the new Serbian leader Oppression does not make nations “good”, tion. the bombing leaving Serbian troops in posses- Slobodan Milosevic, who had risen to promi- or guarantee that oppressed nations cannot Arguably, the international supervision has sion of Kosova, that might be “anti” NATO’s nence in 1987 on a platform of Serbian chau- become oppressors. There are no “good” and made the discrimination even worse than it war, but it was certainly “pro” Serbia’s geno- vinism directed specially against Kosova. “bad” nations. On the contrary, the most justi- would otherwise have been. The Minority cidal war against the Kosovars. The SWP’s In the 1990s Milosevic’s chauvinism led to fied, the most heroic, of struggles for national Rights Group reports that the UN administra- line was “anti” NATO imperialism, but “pro” the break-up of Yugoslavia as Slovenia, self-determination often go together with tion’s response to complaints of disadvantage Serbian imperialism (as Trotsky had called it Croatia, and Bosnia successively broke away discrimination against or persecution of from one community or another has generally 87 years earlier). from Belgrade rule. In Croatia and Bosnia minorities within the territory of the oppressed been to “throw money at the problem”. For Apart from the pro-Islamist slant (dating there were bloody wars. nation. When Turkey won independence in the the big powers involved, of course, the sums from 2002: before that, the Muslim Kosovars Meanwhile there was a Serbian rule of early 1920s, Turkish forces drove out the required to swamp Kosova in international aid and Bosniacs were “nationalist gangsters”), all terror in Kosova. The Albanian population had whole Greek population of Smyrna (now are small change. So, Serbs can’t get treatment the elements of the SWP’s current “reac- to improvise a whole structure of underground Izmir), maybe half a million people. After at “Albanian” hospitals? Easy answer: build a tionary anti-imperialism” were thoroughly schools, hospitals, and so on. Cyprus won independence from Britain in “Serbian” hospital. In practice, there are no rehearsed in its agitation over Kosova. In March 1999 the big powers, nervous that 1960, the Greek majority on the island penalties and no risks of backlash for Kosovar The line of the AWL was not “pro-imperial- Belgrade’s heavy-handedness would spark discriminated against the Turkish minority. Albanians treating Serbs badly — nor even for ist” or “pro-war”, but one of advocating uncontrollable conflict in the whole region, That the Albanian majority in Kosova has Serbs treating Albanians badly, as they still do, consistent democracy. pressed Milosevic for an agreement to restore treated the Serbian minority — and, even in the small patches of Kosova where Serbs “We say that the axial issue is Kosova! The Kosova’s autonomy (the Rambouillet agree- more, the smaller Roma minority — badly are still a majority - and there is every incen- Kosovars have the right to make any alliance ment). since 1999 is therefore no surprise. Between tive for both communities being as militantly they can get, with NATO or with the devil, to Milosevic refused. The NATO powers June and October 1999, almost all the 50,000 “communalist” as possible in order to tilt the save themselves from destruction! But the left which had, in the name of stability, condoned Serbs then living in Kosova’s capital Pristina international supervisors their way. does not have to and should not follow them Milosevic’s oppression for the previous ten were forced to leave. However, things are as they are. The and mimic them. years, responded by bombing Serbia from 24 What is particularly poisonous is that, Kosovars are likely to get their national self- The left should not extend political credence March to 10 June 1999. (A much shorter despite Kosova’s development being super- determination, under tense conditions, and and credit to NATO. We cannot do anything NATO bombing campaign in September 1995 vised by big powers explicitly committed to with supervision by and protection from the other than condemn Milosevic and want his had forced Serbia into agreeing to negotiations safeguarding minority rights, and despite those European Union. The persecution of minori- defeat. Such defeat will not lead to the subju- on Bosnia which ended the war there: it seems powers pushing through anti-discrimination ties in Kosova should make us speak up for gation of the Serbs: Milosevic’s victory will that NATO hoped for something equally easy legislation which the Minority Rights Group the rights of those minorities. If the population lead to the annihilation of the Kosovars. That over Kosova). In response, Milosevic dramati- describes as being on paper the best in of Mitrovica, the area of northern Kosova alone is enough to determine our attitude... cally stepped up his drive to “secure” Kosova Europe, the persecution of minorities has only bordering on Serbia where most Kosova Serbs To say stop bombing now, without demand- by massacring or driving out the Albanian hardened and become more institutionalised live, raises the demand to secede to Serbia ing Yugoslavian (Serbian) troops out of population. since 1999. (which it hasn’t, as far as I know) it should Kosova, the arming of the Kosovars, and inde- Serbian forces killed at least 6000 According to a Minority Rights Group have the right to do so. But the persecution of pendence for Kosova, is to give up on the Kosovars; in 1998 and the first half of 1999, report, communal segregation is worse in minorities cannot make us deny the right to Kosovars. If bombing stops will the ethnic over 1.5 million Kosovar Albanians, maybe Kosova than anywhere else in Europe. The self-determination of the Kosovars any more cleansing stop? The opposite is likely to be 90% of the total population, were driven from Serbian and Albanian communities not only than that of any other nation. true - it will escalate. We say arm the their homes. have separate education systems — as they Kosovars! Nobody should trust NATO politi- According to Human Rights Watch, the did before 1999, of course, the Albanian cians, or NATO bombs and troops...” NATO bombing killed about 500 civilians. system being “underground” — they also have OWEVER, Socialist Worker has (Workers’ Liberty 55). Eventually, Milosevic backed down and separate health systems. That started when the denounced Kosovar independence. In Today we say the same. The national rights withdrew Serbian troops from Kosova. Since management of a hospital in the Serbian- HSW of 22 December 2007, Alex of the Kosovars are paramount. That does not 1999 the province has been under UN admin- majority area of Mitrovica stated in 1999 that Callinicos declares: “Kosova is a province of mean that we follow or mimic the politics of istration, though elements of Kosovar political they would have no Albanians in the hospital, Serbia”. Serbian law, and Serbia’s “right of the Kosovars’ leaders: we denounce their anti- institutions have been gradually introduced. and has escalated since then. conquest”, rank higher for him than national Serb chauvinism. We do not extend political On 17 November, the party of Hashim Kosovar Albanian chauvinists carried out rights! He denounces the US and the EU for credence and credit to NATO: we look at the Thaci, former leader of the Kosova Liberation “ethnic cleansing” of Serbs and Roma from “rushing to back a regime run by nationalist eight years of big-power control over Kosovar Army, a guerrilla force that fought Milosevic, many areas in 2004. gangsters whose independence may destabilise with a hostile eye. We are absolutely opposed won Kosova’s elections. That has put pressure Without the international supervision, it is a region that was torn apart by war less than a to the efforts by Serbia and its ally Russia to on the big powers to move rapidly. Former of course possible that after June 1999 the decade ago”. stall Kosova’s independence. Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari had submit- Kosovar Albanians would have tried to drive In 1999, the SWP gave 100% backing to ted a report to the UN in March 2007 recom- out their Serbian minority in an exact inver- Serbia against Kosova, by clamouring to “stop Links: mending independence. sion of what Milosevic had done to them. If the [NATO] bombing”. It made it clear that it www.workersliberty.org.uk/files/kosova.pdf Short of Kosova being ruled by the UN sparks of democratic scruple, or just fear of did not want the bombing to be stopped — as Dossier on Kosova in Workers’ Liberty forever, or what would be an extremely reprisals from Belgrade, had restrained them eventually it was stopped — by Serbia with- www.workersliberty.org.uk/files/kosovaintro.pdf in the heat of that moment, then there is a seri- drawing its army from Kosova. No, that would Introduction to that dossier SOCIALISM 9

Iraq: a quiet patch in the nightmare

BY MARTIN THOMAS that criminal charges can brought against him ment to increase electricity and water supplies, from Iraq, and al Qaeda will throng the streets for organising a murder gang with “mortar to create a few more jobs, and to make the Iraqi of the USA’s cities”, that sort of thing. N my last summary article on Iraq shells, grenade launchers and other weapons” army more solid. It may open up what His argument is shaky in parts, because it (Solidarity 3/117, 13/09/07) I wrote that the stored in a house next to his home and allegedly American politicians have hinted at as their depends heavily on the idea that “the unprece- IBush “administration now seems to have no used by his guards. Dulaimi denies responsibil- preferred way out: a military coup, setting up a dented is unlikely”. Governments in the Arab strategy but to bash on and hope it can keep ity for the house. “soft” military dictatorship, which the USA world have mostly been very stable for decades things relatively under control until it hands The Accord Front is a “soft”-Islamist bloc could keep sufficient distance from to deplore now, and “power vacuums in Arab societies over the mess to another US presidency in including the Iraqi offshoot of the Muslim but to support. tend to be filled rather quickly”. But the state of January 2009”. Brotherhood which, of all the Sunni Arab politi- A move which may symbolise Iraq’s militia- affairs in Iraq today is already unprecedented in And I suggest that it might achieve that cal forces, has on the whole been the most will- based political forces shifting to “softer”, the history of the region. Unprecedented things limited objective. “The tighter division of Arab ing to cooperate with the political structures set longer-term strategies is the recent decision of are already happening, so further unprecedented Iraq into Shia-only or Sunni-only neighbour- up by the USA since the 2003 invasion. Moqtada al-Sadr, leader of the Shia-Islamist things can’t be that unlikely. hoods — now separated off, in Baghdad, by The USA’s goal with its military “surge”, Mahdi Army, to take time out to study to win He may well be right, though, in his essential high concrete walls and checkpoints — should from early 2007, was to damp down Iraq’s higher clerical rank. But at present all substan- thesis, which is — though he does not word it tend to reduce the number of killings”. conflicts enough that the US-friendly Iraqi tive political stabilisation is speculation for the thus — that scuttling from Iraq would not be It has done so. The rate of killings remained government could acquire political solidity and future. catastrophic for US imperialism. US world high through to September, but two heavy- do some real social reconstruction. Even a limited dampening-down of sectarian power would take a blow with the scuttling, but weight US reports published in December — That hasn’t happened. As the Financial Times civil war should be good for the Iraqi labour not one it could not recover from, and arguably the Pentagon’s Measuring Security and Stability (07.01.08) summarises it: “The retreat of the movement. The teachers’ union staged protests less damaging than the cumulative drain of in Iraq, and the Brookings Institution’s Iraq armed movements does not appear to have been in December to demand pay rises and better blood, treasure, and prestige through an occupa- Index — detail a drop in violent deaths in accompanied by a corresponding increase in the security in schools. (The latest figures I can tion that not even the ardent “neo-conserva- October-December down to about the same authority and legitimacy of the Iraqi state. find, for April 2007, indicate that on average tives” now believe likely to yield any positively level as before the Samarra mosque bombing of General Petraeus has said that as al-Qaeda activ- 70% of Iraqi students stay away from school happy outcome. February 2006 set off slow-burning sectarian ity lessens in Sunni areas, ‘mafia-like’ criminal because they or their parents reckon it is not But what about the prospects for the peoples civil war. organisations... expand to fill the gap”. safe to attend). Generally, the labour movement and the working class of Iraq? “Temporary The lower level is still horrifying: about 600 still seems very harassed and on the defensive. chaos in the wake of a US pull-out is quite deaths a month according to the Pentagon, If the relative quiet takes the form of a tighten- likely”, writes Fettweis, cheerily. But that is not which almost certainly underestimates. The ing of control by local militias — mostly sectar- too bad. “A government — perhaps three — ian and political-Islamist — over their respec- will soon emerge... possibly in the wake of civil Brookings report tells us, for example, that 79% Solidarity with the Iraqi of people in Baghdad have had a family tive areas, it may actually make things worse for war”. (Notice that he does not suggest that the member or friend murdered or kidnapped; and labour movement against the labour movement than the previous chaos. existing Iraqi government could survive). “The that Iraq now has less than half the number of both the US/UK occupation Solidarity with the Iraqi labour movement new government(s) might resemble Iraqi prece- doctors it had before 2003, 17,000 having fled against both the US/UK occupation and the dents” — i.e., be like Saddam Hussein’s tyranny the country and 2,000 having been murdered. and the sectarian militias sectarian militias remains the indicated policy — “more than Washington would like” — more Conditions are nightmarish; but it is a quieter remains the indicated policy for socialists internationally. than Iraq’s people “would like”, too! — but In the winter 2007-8 issue of Survival, the there will be “stability”. patch in the nightmare. for socialists. What does this mean socially? The Pentagon journal of the International Institute of Strategic “It is not hard to imagine Iraq descending into report, which no-one can suspect of painting the Studies, US academic Christopher Fettweis has the kind of chaos that engulfed Algeria in the situation worse than it is, says bluntly that there published an article arguing that the conse- 1990s, where tens of thousands died during a have been only “minimal advances in the deliv- quences of the US “scuttling” from Iraq would particularly vicious civil war”. There will ery of essential services to the people of Iraq” In short, Iraq is quieter because it is more not be “catastrophic”. “mostly likely” be “ethnic cleansing until the like electricity and water, and that a major limit- tightly and tidily controlled by local mafias. The It is an important article for us to study. The various sides are able to come to an agreement, ing factor is endemic sectarianism in the Iraqi Pentagon report has 64% of Iraqis saying they brutality, arrogance, desire to use Iraq as a test- increased short-term regional tension and uncer- government. feel safe within their own neighbourhoods, but ground for “neo-conservative” follies, and tainty, and bitter domestic discord for a genera- The Pentagon report ventures no guess about only 34% thinking they can travel safely outside downright corruption of the US/UK occupation tion”. whether unemployment — generally reckoned the neighbourhood. has shaped the horrors of the last four and a half But “in the long run” there will be either around 50% — is decreasing, and Brookings The relative quiet may not hold through to years in Iraq. We have denounced that, step by “political accommodation or a civil war that reports it unchanged. January 2009, as Bush hopes. In April it will step, in Solidarity. eventually someone wins”. And what does it mean politically? Both the become constitutionally possible to set up a new But we have also argued for denunciation of In short, Fettweis claims only that there will Pentagon nor the Brookings report see little or autonomous “region” in the South on the model the sectarian militias, and opposed slogans like not be a complete political implosion of the no advance in the Iraqi government’s ability to of the Kurdish region in the north. Some Shia- “troops out now” which suggest that an unre- region, or unending full-scale civil war in Iraq. build a broad political base or to provide effi- Islamist groups strongly support a “region” strained battle for power by the sectarian mili- And he is probably right about that. But the cient civil administration. Their evidence is in covering a very large Shia-majority territory; tias would be some sort of “self-determination” “non-catastrophe” he expects would still be a line with the summary judgement of Joos others want a smaller “region” including only and a lesser evil than the status quo. On the catastrophe for the new Iraqi labour movement Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group Basra and two other provinces; yet others contrary: a lurch into full-scale civil war would and for the elements of democracy in secularism think-tank. oppose any “region”. The clash could turn be even more destructive of the labour move- in Iraqi society; and also, probably, for any “What Petraeus [the current US military violent. ment, of elements of democratic life, and of prospects of democratic self-determination for commander] has accomplished is a lull that is Even more explosively, a decision on the possibilities of self-determination, than the the peoples of Iraq, rather than their country sustainable through the American elections [in status of the northern oil centre of Kirkuk, current slower horrors. being bloodily torn apart. November 2008]. It’s not indefinitely sustain- claimed by both Kurds and Arabs, has been Does Fettweis prove that estimate wrong? His The prospect of the Iraqi labour movement able without political accommodation at the delayed from a previous deadline of 31 article, as far as I know, is the first reasoned asserting itself politically against both the occu- top”. December 2007, but only for some months. effort to argue the issue. As he comments, pation and the sectarian militias, uniting broad The failure of prime minister Nouri al-Maliki But the relative quiet may hold. In particular, mostly “those who support an immediate pull- sections of the population around it on issues to build a governing alliance of any strength has the sharp drop in recent months in US military out do not doubt catastrophe, but instead seem like privatisation, food supplies, housing, and been highlighted in events of the last few days. casualties — which ran very high in summer to be willing to live with the inevitable dire jobs, and shaping at least a limited democratic Powerful Shia politicians are seeking to get 2007 — probably makes “bashing on” sustain- consequences”. and secular self-determination for the country, is parliamentary immunity removed from Adnan able for Bush. Much of Fettweis’s argument proceeds by a difficult one. But it still not time to give up on Dulaimi, a leader of the Iraqi Accord Front, so In the longer term, even relative quiet should refuting the most extravagant predictions of it and opt instead for Fettweis’s “stability of the enable even an incompetent and corrupt govern- catastrophe by US right-wingers — “step back grave”! For a working class campaign against fascism

“Only one thing could have stopped our the limelight. They have been replaced by alone. A change in social and cultural attitudes Party over the past ten years and legitimises the movement — if our adversaries had understood slicker, populist political operators — people means that crude racism is not acceptable to a political message of extreme right-wingers and its principle and intentions and from the first like Sadie Graham and newly “media-friendly” majority of people. The fact that the labour the fascist BNP. day had smashed with the utmost brutality the Nick Griffin. But a new suit and toned down movement has never tackled racism in a consis- The BNP has built a base and made electoral nucleus of our new movement.” rhetoric do not make for a complete transforma- tent and wholesale way means that residual — advances in predominantly working class areas Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf tion. The still rumbling crisis in the BNP has but deeply held — racist attitudes are there to where the wilful neglect and attacks of this publicly exposed the true nature of the group. be exploited. government find concrete material expression. “To bar the road to fascism, to bar it once With each side in the dispute calling the other The BNP does this by conflating very real Child poverty, inadequate housing, homeless- and for all, it does not suffice that workers “Nazis” and “extremists” the liberal media and working class concerns with the presence of ness, insufficient public services – from health oppose it physically at demonstrations; it does anti-fascist news sources have had a field day. minority and immigrant populations. They through to education provision – remain every- not suffice to denounce its infamies … Today we Few have paused to ask how such an organisa- claim to be defending the interests of an day realities in British society. Those in work defend ourselves against the rise of reaction, tion has built a base of support and grown so “indigenous population” who suffer from face poor conditions and pay. In the absence of but … to be efficacious this resistance must rapidly in so short a space of time. unemployment, poor housing, health and a combative trade union movement and the transform itself into a struggle for power.” The relative success of the BNP cannot be education services because “immigrants” are presence of a legal framework that militates Leon Trotsky, ‘Conversations with a Dissident isolated to a parting of ways with past fascist either given preferential treatment or “flood” an against the emergence of class-wide solidarity, from Saint-Denis’ political methodology. In previous periods of area in overwhelming numbers. Gordon Brown workers are effectively abandoned. Add to this right-wing resurgence where fascist groups rose recently jumped on this band-wagon when he the emasculated local structures of the Labour BY CHARLIE SALMON from the sewers, subjective as much as objec- shamefully promised the following to a meeting Party and wider labour movement — the tradi- tive circumstances played a part in flushing with the GMB union: tional means by which working people them away. In the 1930s and 40s Oswald “It is time to train British workers for the expressed their concerns and fought for change N the 2005 general election 192,746 people Mosley’s British Union of Fascists faced stub- — and we have a situation ripe for fascist agita- voted for the British National Party. Each of born, heroic resistance from working class and tion. the BNP’s 119 candidates received an aver- I Jewish organisations. In the mid-to-late Recent BNP propaganda — both locally age of 1620 votes. On local election polling Recent BNP propaganda Seventies, when the National Front could claim produced and in national publications – focuses day, 3 May 2007, the BNP received 292,911 a membership of 20,000 and managed to circu- focuses upon “explaining” the upon “explaining” the crisis in jobs, housing votes — a ninety-seven fold increase since the late five million leaflets in one year, mass polit- and public services. For instance, in an article year 2000. Over the last four years the BNP has crisis in jobs, housing and ical, community and cultural mobilisations — headlined “NHS at Breaking Point” the BNP doubled the number of councils where it not exclusively called by the Anti Nazi League public services. blamed the crisis in the NHS not on under contests seats and has quadrupled the number — drove fascists from the streets. Today’s anti- funding but on Polish immigrants who have of candidates. As of the last local elections, the fascist groups are a pale imitation of the past “poured” into Britain. Are the BNP lying when BNP held fifty council seats. and the absence of militant working class oppo- British jobs that will be available over the they point out problems in public services? No, Election results can tell us some things. On sition to fascism is a pressing concern. coming few years and to make sure that people but the spin they put upon such problems is the surface these figures show an increasing who are inactive and unemployed are able to political poison. An anti-fascist campaign that return on an ever increasing number of BNP get the new jobs on offer in our country.” either ignores such issues or focuses upon the candidates. They stand as evidence that given THE WORKING CLASS, LABOUR Had this statement appeared without credit “positive aspects” of society fails to address the the choice between a Labour candidate, a Tory AND THE BNP most people would assume it spilled forth from real questions and concerns of the working or whoever else, large numbers of people are HE enemies of British Nationalism the mouth of Nick Griffin, not a Labour Prime class. prepared to tick the box for a fascist. Election continue to parrot the claim that the Minister. Since 1997 this Labour government results act as a warning to working class organi- “TBNP is a ‘racist party.’ This claim is has pursued a hard-line policy of attacking sations that something is going on. They do not UNITE AGAINST FASCISM AND most often repeated because the BNP asylum seekers and immigrants. They are tell us what that is or how to combat it. unashamedly addresses itself to the issues and scapegoated by the right wing press and the SEARCHLIGHT British fascists have made great efforts to concerns of the indigenous British population, government reacts by issuing ever more dracon- transform themselves from a group oriented to and because it seeks to ensure that British ian policy statements. Rather than tackle head- NITE Against Fascism (UAF) and the street agitation, outright racism and anti- people remain the majority population in this on the racist myths spread by the Daily Mail Searchlight organisation — a group that Semitism, threat and intimidation into a “legiti- country.” (Is the BNP Racist? from the BNP and BNP, the Labour Party of Tony Blair and Uproduces a monthly anti-fascist maga- mate” political operation. Though they still lurk website) Gordon Brown has pandered to them. zine and runs some local campaign groups — in the shadows, the shaven headed, jack-booted, The BNP no longer appeals to working class This strategy has a duel effect: it gives politi- have major political faults. UAF is essentially a monosyllabic thugs have all but vanished from voters on the basis of outspoken race-hate cal cover for the very real failings of the Labour political coalition of the Socialist Workers Party and Socialist Action — a small Stalinist sect close to Ken Livingstone. It claims the support of most major trade unions and a variety of reli- gious organisations. The political foundations of UAF are built upon the SWP’s interpretation of the United Front tactic. Leon Trotsky outlined the basis and need for a united front as follows: “So long as it does not hold this majority [of the working class], the [revolutionary] party must fight to win it. The party can achieve this only by remaining an absolutely independent organisation with a clear program and strict internal discipline. That is the reason why the party was bound to break ideologically and organisationally with the reformists and the centrists who do not strive for the proletarian revolution, who possess neither the capacity nor the desire to prepare the masses for revolu- tion, and who by their entire conduct thwart this work … But it is perfectly self-evident that the class life of the proletariat is not suspended during this period preparatory to the revolu- tion. Clashes with industrialists, with the bour- geoisie, with the state power, on the initiative of one side or the other, run their due course. In these clashes — insofar as they involve the vital interests of the entire working class, or its majority, or this or that section — the working masses sense the need of unity in action, of unity in resisting the onslaught of capitalism or A section of the mural celebrating the Battle of Cable Street unity in taking the offensive against it. Any politics. In both cases the relationship between different wings of the Labour Party and the far- left (the CPGB in the 1940s and SWP in the 1970s) produced some very uneven outcomes. On the one hand the Labour right wing took a naturally conservative approach to such a campaign. Inside the unions they attempted to stem the influence of Communists and Trotskyists by restricting access to young members’ conferences, for example. The politi- cal methods of postwar Stalinism and the Socialist Workers Party alienated a good many activists. The current tactics of the BNP make a labour movement based campaign all the more important. It is not just a case of mobilising large numbers of people to protest against fascists but of providing political ideas and organisational structures to address working class concerns.

We need to encourage genuine non-racist action for working-class interests on housing, employment and welfare rights.

THE ANTI-FASCIST CAMPAIGN WE NEED

HE BNP characterises the current period as the start of a “quiet revolution”. They Tclaim to speak for a “silent majority” of people abandoned by the major political parties and excluded from the gains of wider society. As “Proud Nationalists” they defend the “indigenous” people of this country against the threat posed by “ethnics” and “reds”. Through hard work and a tactical change of direction the BNP has built serious local organ- isations that work hard to relate to local, work- ing class concerns. In areas where the Labour Party has all but collapsed and where trade unions have few organic links in communities, BNP branches can be the only political opera- tions relating to people’s concerns. In many Anti-fascist protests clash with police in Glasgow, 1991 areas the situation is desperate. We who oppose fascism do so primarily party which mechanically counterposes itself to the racist politics of the BNP and urge people to But the organised working class has played a because we value freedom: freedom of speech, this need of the working class for unity in vote against them — no problems here. Except central role in disabling fascist political initia- the freedom to organise and the freedom to action will unfailingly be condemned in the that this is all the leaflet has to say, and the man tives in the past. In the two periods where protest. The BNP’s freedom to operate is free- minds of the workers” (my emphasis). saying it is an outspoken homophobe — Sir British fascist organisations gained some dom to organise intimidation, as well as to Revolutionary socialists advocate the forma- Iqbal Sacranie. If anti-fascist propaganda fails prominence – in the mid-to-late 1940s and spread violence and race hate. We defend the tion of a united front to fight for working class to take up working class concerns, then it fails 1970s — trade unions lobbied, organised and free speech of those who fight for positive non- interests on the basis of unity between estab- the working class. mobilised their memberships against them. racist changes to society as well as the freedom lished working-class organisations. Trotsky Searchlight originates in a magazine The immediate post-war period saw the of traditionally victimised sections of our advocated such a tactic to counter the rise of published by Labour MPs Reg Freeson and emergence of small fascist propaganda groups. communities against the threat of fascist organ- fascism in Germany in the 1930s. In practice Joan Lestor in the 1960s. After the magazine In spite of Hitler’s defeat and a growing public isations such as the BNP. The BNP attempts to the SWP denudes the united front of its essen- folded in 1967, Gerry Gable — who remains a appreciation of the horrors of Nazi Germany, penetrate social movements and trade unions; tial working class orientation. For example: central figure in the group — maintained a these groups held street meetings, mass leaflet and to take elected positions as councillors. Q. Does UAF practically unite working small organisation. It eventually began publish- drops and agitated their politics at every oppor- They do this in order to foment division and class organisations? ing again in 1975, when the National Front tunity. The release of Oswald Mosley from racism as well as to identify their opponents A. If all Trotsky means by unity is getting became a significant presence. wartime internment in 1943 encouraged the and look for ways of intimidating them. We trade union general secretaries to sign a piece of The main activity of the group remains remnants of his British Union of Fascists on therefore advocate paper, then yes – but this is not what Trotsky collecting and exposing information on the far the offensive. • That the BNP should not be given any meant. For socialists, “unity” means a unified right with a focus on Britain. In addition to this An indication of the level of trade union recognition as deserving a place in any genuine and purposeful action. UAF “appears” when the important work — which seems to involve involvement comes from a collection of 302 democratic debate. SWP thinks it politically expedient to roll it out. maintaining a network of infiltrators — letters sent to the Home Office between • That all community organisations — but This means either turning SWP branches to Searchlight runs the “Stop the BNP” campaign January 1945 and December 1948. According particularly trade unions and councils — do anti-fascist activity at election times or turning group. to Dave Renton (a semi-official historian of their utmost to isolate and remove them from out leading members for protests and confer- Stop the BNP has a much healthier approach anti-fascist campaigning), of the 302 letters their midst; thus preventing them from using ences. There is no evidence of work towards to building local groups and relating to local asking the Labour government to act against any democratic façade behind which to organ- major mobilisations of trade union members. issues than UAF. For example, the “Keighley the Mosleyites, one third came from trade ise. No joint initiatives above the printing of T- Together” group ran a very successful, grass- union branches. “If we were to add the letters • That as far as possible BNP activities Shirts and balloons. No practical unity. roots response to BNP activity in their town. from groups of workers and socialist organisa- should be blocked by mass pickets and mobili- Q. Are socialists “politically independent” But the campaign materials produced by tions, from tenants’ associations and from indi- sations of local communities backed by the inside UAF? Searchlight leave a great deal to be desired. viduals rooted in working-class campaigns, the radical and trade union movement. A. It is not possible for the SWP to be politi- Where UAF has a rabid homophobe, Stop the proletarian aspect would represent a clear The BNP pretend to be a party of working cally independent without tearing UAF apart. BNP has Alan Sugar, who appeared in material majority” (Renton). class protest; at times even to be left wing crit- Sir Iqbal Sacranie — chair of the Muslim produced for the 2007 local elections. Alan The signing of a letter is hardly an indication ics of the Labour government. What is worse is Council of Britain (MCB) — was invited as a Sugar has nothing to say about poorly funded of militant anti-fascism — especially when the that many people vote for them believing this headline speaker to UAF’s 2006 national public services and attacks on the working letters in question called upon the Home to be true. We cannot allow the BNP to conference. Bad enough that the MCB has reac- class. “Hope Not Hate” is the main political Secretary to impose state bans on fascist continue to peddle this monstrous lie. tionary Islamist politics. Add to this Sir Iqbal’s message of Stop the BNP materials — rather groups — but post-war anti-fascism was not a It is an essential aspect of effective anti- appearance on Radio Four where he labeled than relating to real issues and offering working letter writing campaign. Fascism became a fascist campaigning therefore that we LGBT people as immoral, harmful and respon- class solutions, there is a preference for accen- central concern of trades council and shop • encourage genuine non-racist action for sible for spreading disease and you see just how tuating the positive. It is an inadequate response steward groups. They politically educated working class interests on housing, employ- far the SWP will go to “unite” people. For to the opportunism of the BNP in its current members on the dangers of fascism, encour- ment and welfare rights as well as them, the united front has no class content. phase. aged them to keep watch for activity and in • promoting non-racist democratic working Q. But the SWP has a record of working A rational response to the current phase of Birmingham formed an “anti-fascist league”. class organisations, such as trade unions, to hard against fascism. BNP activity must combine the sort of work The Anti-Nazi League (ANL) of the 1970s organise around such issues. A. This is true but the “work” they do is carried out by Stop the BNP — the creation of claimed the support of “30 branches of the We need a united anti-fascist campaign in politically bankrupt. The following appeared on grass-roots groups that campaign on local AUEW engineers union, 25 trades councils, 13 which a diversity of views are welcome but we a recent UAF election leaflet: “Far right issues — together with a serious work in the shop stewards committees, 11 NUM lodges, need to build a campaign that does not extremist groups are seeking to exploit the trade unions. and similar numbers of branches from the compromise the work of our constituent organ- traditional low turnout at local elections to TGWU, CPSA, TASS, NUJ, NUT and NUPE” isations and campaigns in taking up such make inroads on 4 May and have provocatively WORKING CLASS ANTI-FASCISM IN (Renton). Some unions set up their own issues. described the elections as a ‘Referendum Day campaign groups, for instance the NUM held a Such a campaign — mobilising the labour on Islam’. The MCB urges all people of good- THE 1940s AND 1970s “Miners Against the Nazis” conference in movement with consistent working class poli- will to vote in the 4 May elections to ensure 1979. tics — will not only challenge the threats and that fascist groups are comprehensively HE history of working class anti-fascism What these two examples show is the latent lies of the fascist BNP but go some way to re- defeated at the ballot box.” Nothing much in Britain is often hidden behind stories potential of trade unions to mobilise anti- educating our class with socialist ideas. wrong with this statement: it’s right to point out Tof mass street protests and rock concerts. fascist sentiment — to engage in working-class 12 COMMENTARY

My mum Defend Tommy Sheridan?

N mid-December of last year Tommy Birmingham Six), Gerry Conlon (one of the Sheridan, former Scottish Parliament Guildford Four), various leading figures in the Imember and leader of the Scottish Socialist Party (Godrich, Nellist, Bannister, the Socialist Party was arrested and charged with etc.) and the SWP (Rees, German, Bambery, perjury. etc.), a few dozen other names which mean In 2006, after the News of the World had nothing to anyone who does not know them carried articles alleging that he had engaged in personally, and John Palmer. extra-marital affairs and visited a swingers’ Even allowing for the fact that Tory politi- club in Manchester, Sheridan took the news- cians such as Jeffrey Archer and Jonathan terrorist paper to court and was awarded £200,000 in Aitken have been jailed for perjury, it seems damages after the jury found in his favour. fair enough to assume that there was an In the aftermath of the trial — which had element of “singling out” in the decision to seen leading figures in the SSP give evidence, launch a perjury investigation after the 2006 under protest and unwillingly, against trial. To that extent the campaign in defence of AST week my seventy year old Sheridan — the SSP split. Backed by the Sheridan has a point when it raises the charge mother, who walks with the aid Socialist Workers Party and the CWI (Scottish of a “witch-hunt” against Sheridan. of a stick, was deemed a secu- equivalent of the Socialist Party), Sheridan On the other hand, Sheridan has increas- L walked out from the SSP and formed ingly become a celebrity figure (performing at rity threat by a bus driver. The driver “Solidarity”. the Edinburgh Fringe, and running his own had already failed to stop for her once, In the Scottish Parliament elections held in radio show) with only residual ties to political yet was very quick to call the police 2007 the four remaining SSP MSPs lost their activism. And the split in the SSP was very when she tried to board the bus on her seats. So too did Sheridan and the other SSP much a product of Sheridan’s self-centred second attempt, using her stick to keep MSP who had left to join “Solidarity”. that a trial is pending place limitations on decision to initiate legal proceedings against the back door open. The News of the World lodged an appeal what the SSP (or anyone else) can say about the News of the World. Sheridan’s trial will Yes, it was naughty, and she should- against the verdict in favour of Sheridan. The Sheridan and the alleged perjury. therefore hardly be a case of “socialism on n’t have done it, but waiting for half police also began an investigation into “Solidarity” has responded to Sheridan’s trial”. an hour for a bus when you’ve recov- whether perjury had been committed in the arrest very differently. (But it must be a matter Sheridan is arguably entitled to some degree ering from a knee replacement opera- course of the trial. It was that investigation of some debate as to whether “Solidarity” can of sympathy, and maybe even support. Sheridan has not been charged with recklessly tion is not exactly a pleasurable experi- which culminated in last month’s arrest and be said to still exist: neither the CWI nor the charge. SWP now shows much enthusiasm for it, it splitting the SSP. He has been charged with ence. Watching it drive past you twice Sheridan’s trial is not expected to take place never attracted many ‘independents’, and not a committing perjury in a libel trial involving is painful. until late 2008. And the appeal by the News of few of those who did join it have since the News of the World. This isn’t just an everyday sorry tale the World, for obvious reasons, cannot be resigned.) But hyping up Sheridan as the latest social- of an inconsiderate driver and a heard until after completion of the perjury According to statements on the “Solidarity” ist martyr, in the manner of the remnants of disabled passenger. My mum wears a trial. website, socialists “across the UK and beyond “Solidarity”, makes no sense at all. headscarf; and in the current political In public, the SSP has dismissed last have come together to launch a campaign and Whatever the outcome of an eventual climate she has become a target for a month’s events as matters of little signifi- website in support of victimised… Tommy perjury trial later this year, it will not turn the whole range of prejudice and racist cance: Sheridan.” “Solidarity” is “prepared for one clock back. If Sheridan were to be found stereotyping. “The SSP notes the charging of former hell of a battle in 2008.” guilty of perjury, for example, it would not undo the split in the SSP and reverse the “You could be a terrorist” barks the member Tommy Sheridan with perjury. The The campaign is demanding “an end to the SSP is far more interested in campaigning to Murdoch witch-hunt” (presumably a populist SSP’s loss of its MSPs in the 2007 elections. bus driver. improve the lives of working people in way of saying that the charge against Sheridan A guilty verdict will not undo the damage “Do I look like a terrorist?” my Scotland… etc etc.” should be dropped), an end to the squandering which has been done already. mother asks. This seems a rather curt dismissal of the of public money on “the billionaire’s Sheridan’s trial, when it eventually takes Sniggers from driver and the three charging of such an important former member. vendetta” (a reference to the £500,000 spent to place, is sure to receive an equal amount of racist old ladies who have been most Sheridan was, after all, the party’s first MSP. date on the police investigation), and a public publicity. In fact, it is likely to be the media outraged at my mum’s petulant behav- His marriage ceremony was covered in the enquiry into the actions of the police, the legal event of the year (at least in Scotland). But it iour. party’s paper. His face adorned SSP t-shirts. establishment and the Murdoch empire. is difficult to believe that the credibility of the Their sniggers meaning that “yes Sheridan enjoyed tremendous popularity, and So far the campaign — which was launched left as a whole, after a week of mud-slinging actually you do; you look like one of the SSP “cashed in” (politically) on that just before Christmas — has attracted support in court, is not going emerge from the trial rather weaker than it was at the outset of the ‘them’”. personal popularity. from George Galloway, RMT General But the imposition of charges and the fact Secretary Bob Crow, Paddy Hill (one of the trial. “I’m tired of watching you lot break the law”, snipes one of the old ladies. “You’re being racist” my mother retorts, “I just wanted to get on the bus!” “Me a racist?” shouts the bus driver. “Well we shall see what the police have to say about that!” Hare Rama And so the police were called. They asked my mum for ID, and took her address and date of birth. “The bus driver said I was a terror- ist. She’s being racist!” My mum Hare Harrow complains to the police officer. “No she’s not!” The policeman snaps HE first state-funded Hindu faith school their more happy-clappy competitor in paving are Muslim, the chances are 0.75 per cent.” back. “That’s the terminology that’s in the UK — the “Krishna-Avanti the way for their own groups to run schools in The MCB also claim a “significant interest” used these days, love”. Tprimary school” — is set to open this the future — notably the HSS, the British among about 30 of England’s 115 independent My mum is confused, upset and September in Edgware, north-west London. front-organisation for the Hindu-Fascist RSS, Muslim schools to enter the state sector. angry for being treated like a criminal. The sponsor is none other than the the militia wing of the Hindu-nationalist BJP While other so-called socialists, including “Well I’ll close the case and put it International Society for Krishna in India. the SWP, have spent the last few years scup- down as a misunderstanding” says the Consciousness — aka the Hare Krishna move- The HSS is long established in NW London pering attempts to mount a campaign through ment. and has been given political cover by local the NUT against faith-schools in the name of PC. In 2000 the organisation was forced to pay Labour Party figures over the years. The RSS such “religious equality” — accusing left-wing A misunderstanding? A woman who out £5 million to more than 400 people who is responsible for the genocidal massacres of secularists of racism and Islamophobia — has spent two days crying in front of claimed to have been abused at 12 Hare Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, and the HSS is Solidarity and its supporters in the labour and her T.V, watching terrorist bombers Krishna schools in the US during the 70s and accused of raising money in the UK for the student movement have consistently argued for rip apart her native Pakistan is then 80s. While they seem to have cleared up their RSS using disaster relief charities. Cadres were the abolition of all existing faith schools herself accused of being a terrorist! A act since, the Hare Krishna is still widely evicted from my own former school in funded by the state and an end to all private misunderstanding? A woman who has considered to be a cult. Kingsbury a couple of years ago for using the involvement and profiteering in the education used London’s buses for forty years A spokesperson for ISKON disagrees, premises for military drill training. sector. and who today couldn’t board a bus describing it as a “young and exciting” move- About one third of the 21,000 state schools We are fighting for the rights of children to a without being subject to suspicious ment comparable to the Christian Alpha in England are faith schools, the vast majority secular education with teachers and children course. Well that’s a comfort! The school is Christian. Of the 48 that are non-Christian, 37 who might be socialist, atheists, of different glances and accusations of being already over-subscribed and there are plans to are Jewish, seven Muslim and two Sikh. 63 per cultural, political, linguistic and religious back- suicide bomber! open a second Hindu 4-19 year old faith cent of Jewish children attend Jewish schools. grounds — (relatively) free from segregation A misunderstanding? You could call school in Barnet — again under New Labour’s Tahir Alam, education spokesman for the imposed by parents and “communities” and it that. Or you could say it was a sign city academy programme. Muslim Council of Britain, said last free from doctrines that seek to demonise gay of the racist and bigoted times we are Perhaps the most worrying aspect of the September: “There are half a million Muslim people and oppress women and attempt to living in. emergence of these schools is the vocal and children at school in the state sector, but only a subjugate young minds to belief in God. Faryal Velmi opportunistic political support being given to handful of Muslim schools. If you are a ISKON by other Hindu organisations in the Christian child, you have a 33 per cent chance Robin Sivapalan area which are no doubt willing to support of attending a school of your faith. But if you REVIEW 13 Andrew Glyn, economist of the left June 30 1942 – December 22 2007

BY BOB SUTCLIFFE economist to join the fray, in 1984, N December 22 2007, Andrew [worked with us] to produce The Economic Glyn, left wing economist and Case Against Pit Closures” (a pamphlet Oprolific author of books and articles published by the NUM). John Moyle, the about capitalism, died of a brain tumour. last President of the Kent NUM has said of When Andrew began teaching econom- Andrew: “He will be greatly missed and ics at Oxford University in 1969, the capi- remembered for his intellectual inspiration talist world was experiencing major politi- and support of the working class. In the cal turmoil. Memories of the US civil great year long strike of 1984/85 his work rights movement were fresh, France’s and philosophy were of great assistance to political explosion of the previous May our rank and file miners and our women’s still echoed around Europe and workers in support group...” many countries were engaged in the most After the end of the strike, labour defeats active struggles for decades. multiplied and trade union membership In this atmosphere large numbers of and strength declined. By the turn of the Dumbing workers, students and teachers were radi- century Andrew was writing not about the calised and Andrew, already something of “profits squeeze”, which he had identified a rebel during his Etonian education, was in the early 1970s, but about what might to become one of the most influential of be called a “wages squeeze”. “The extraor- this new generation of socialist scholars dinary turnaround in the relative fortunes and teachers. From his base in Corpus of labour and capital over the past 30 or so Christi College, he was to spend most of years” is the major theme of his last book, down the Capitalism Unleashed: fincance, globalisa- the next 38 years teaching economics and writing critically about the recent history tion and welfare, the second edition of and present state of capitalism. As a which was published only weeks before his teacher he acquired a legendary reputation death. This book well exemplifies due to his infectious enthusiasm, bordering Andrew’s particular style as an economist at times on the euphoric, and to the fact — a critical perspective on capitalism, a legend that, as one student has put it, “he chal- masterly understanding and presentation of lenges your mind but not your dignity”. complex economic data, an exceptional One thread unites most of his books and ability to combine the techniques of articles: his interest in the way income and modern economics with the concerns of the classical economists, especially Marx, monotony and horror of Neville’s daily life. welfare are distributed under capitalism, BY AMINA SADDIQ and a readable, not overly technical, style Every day is a struggle: he must get up at both among individuals and between of writing. sunrise to maximise the time available to labour and capital – in other words the SMUG doctor, played by Emma He never lost sight of the idea that the him, check and fix the defences of his house, economic manifestations of class, a dimen- Thompson, gives a TV interview ultimate purpose of writing was political. about how she has adapted viral conduct experiments in search of a cure, care sion which is all too often absent from A conventional economics. In the 1960s he In Capitalism Unleashed, he analyses the for the dog who is his only companion, hunt bacteria to, in effect, cure cancer. Then, current instabilities in the world economy, behind the words “Three years later”, we see and scavenge for food and equipment, make emphasised the sharp rise in the share of sure he is home well before sunset, stay fit — income going to labour (the “profits as he says, not for their own sake but as the sunlit cityscape of New York — but a part of the “difficult task of devising poli- New York totally abandoned, no people, no and, most difficult of all, stay sane. The squeeze”) and warned that the capitalist logistical holes in the plot — okay, so he class would be impelled to use its political cies to advance the cause of egalitarianism traffic, its buildings falling into disrepair and which has taken such a bettering over vegetation sprouting up from the concrete. generates his own electricity, but how come power to reverse this trend. To defend its recent decades”. Another prominent social- This is the incredibly effective opening of I the water’s still running? — don’t really gains, the working class would have to ist scholar wrote in a letter to me after Am Legend, the new sci fi/horror film star- matter. It is the question of how, and whether, turn to a more aggressive form of politics. Andrew’s death: “Andrew was pretty close ring Will Smith which is the third adaptation a human being can maintain themselves in When the capitalist counter-attack came, to my ‘ideal’ of a committed intellectual”. of the 1954 novel of the same name, the such a grim and prolonged struggle that is in the forms of the Thatcher and Reagan Among Andrew’s many passions beyond other two being The Last Man on Earth interesting. governments, the attack on unions and the political economy were reading novels, (1964) and The Omega Man (1971). In this Unfortunately, about an hour in, the film spread of neoliberal doctrine, Andrew, as good movies and, most of all, jazz. He version, which moves the action from mid- begins to succumb to a number of Hollywood well as criticising it, seized the opportunity 70s California to NY 2012, we learn from viruses: action movie shoot ’em up battles, to play a significant practical part in the would constantly listen to recordings from flashbacks that the cancer cure virus mutated, mawkish sentimentalism, religion (I can’t resistance. During the historic miners’ his incomparable collection. A few days killing 90% of the human population; most of really expand on this without giving too strike of 1984–5 he went far beyond after the diagnosis of his illness, he those who survived became infected with a much away). These problems are, moreover, expressing solidarity and standing on confided in me that if he had not been an disease that made them something like implied in the changes that have been made picket lines; he used his economic skills to economist he would have liked to be a jazz vampires: feeding on the blood of the unin- from the book. produce a series of newspaper articles and pianist. fected, very difficult to kill but unable to live I’ve only just started reading I Am Legend, pamphlets which destroyed the Coal Whatever the loss to jazz, I am happy in sunlight. so I’m not sure, but it seems that there the Board’s economic arguments for pit that this did not happen. If it had, the left The result was the collapse of civilisation; “legend” referred to is how the infected think closures. would have lost one of its most original by the time the film opens, the protagonist, of Neville; here, predictably, it is about his Dave Feickert, former head of research and important intellectuals and I would Robert Neville, believes that he is the only legacy to human civilisation, his desire to of the National Union of Mineworkers, on probably never have met the most joyous, healthy human left alive, though he sends out save the world (while the infected are learning of Andrew’s death, recalled that affectionate and dependable friend that increasingly desperate broadcasts in the hope changed from rational but amoral beings to he was “one of the economists who went anyone could wish for. that someone will find him. (If a lot of this snarling CGI beasties). to the aid of the mining communities Bob Sutclife was co-author with sounds cliched: the novel was extremely This is not by any means a stupid film, and against the pit closures of the 1980s and Andrew Glyn of the book British capital- I’d highly recommend it, but it has been influential in terms of the zombie genre, the 90s. Their [these economists’] solidarity ism, workers, and the profit squeeze subject to the dumbing-down treatment. idea of a world-wide apocalypse due to was vital…With their help, we won cases (1972) Incidentally, part of what keeps Robert disease and explorations of vampirism.) against closure, but sadly the National • This obituary was written for Red Neville going is the philosophy he sums up The film’s first hour hits hard because, Coal Board — later British Coal — went Pepper magazine — www.redpepper.org.uk in a quote from Bob Marley: “The people against the lush computer-generated back- ahead anyway. Andrew, the first academic — and will appear there in the ground of the decaying city, it focuses on the that are trying to make the world worse never February/March issue. take a day off, so why should I?” 14 STUDENTS Will there be left unity in NUS?

BY SOFIE BUCKLAND, ENS MEMBER ON NUS diately release all detaine student, women’s and ENS Women stand for: SOLIDARITY labour movement activists, and call on all • A serious campaign to rebuild campaigning, NATIONAL EXECUTIVE (PC) working-class, student, left and anti-war political women’s groups on every campus activists and organisations in the UK for solidar- • Working with trade union women’s sections Areport on discussions between Education WITH IRANIAN ity with Iranian workers, students and women to organise a national demonstration for Not for Sale and Student Respect against the dual threats of US militarism and women’s liberation (published in a spirit of openness and theocratic-capitalist oppression. • High profile campaigns, including direct accountability) STUDENTS! action, on abortion rights and a living, equal epresentatives of the SWP/Student wage Respect met members of Education t the start of December, the Iranian • Consistent international solidarity - with Not for Sale on Sunday 9 December to SOFIE R government arrested over 40 left-wing grassroots women’s, workers’ and student discuss the idea, proposed by ENS and others, AIranian student activists. Some have movements, not with NGOs and ‘progressive’ of a united left slate for the six full-time offi- been released but many are still in prison. (A BUCKLAND FOR governments cer elections at NUS conference 2008. full update will appear in the next issue of • A Women’s Campaign that fights the I wholeheartedly welcome the decision of Solidarity.) Meanwhile, there have been a Blairite leadership of NUS, and stands with the SWP/Respect to participate in discussions. number of protests held in London, and British NUS WOMEN’S workers and students fighting the Brown However, the meeting highlighted a number of students and education workers have launched government. barriers to progress. this statement of solidarity. If you would like to OFFICER! If you want to see a Women’s Campaign that Among these are the SWP’s insistence that sign, or help our campaigning on this, email does all these things, whilst reinvigorating Respect must have at least half the places on [email protected] ince the takeover of the NUS Women’s debate and democracy within the women’s any such slate; their advocacy of including the Campaign by Labour Students four years movement, support Sofie! Get involved with the small and conservative Student Broad Left ago, the potential for student women’s campaign — [email protected] or 07815 group while excluding others including FREE THE DETAINED IRANIAN S 490 837 STUDENT ACTIVISTS! organising to lead an active, political regenera- Socialist Students; and — most problemati- tion of the women’s movement has been squan- cally — their bizarre and sectarian insistence s education workers and student dered. The campaign has the potential to reach that unity is impossible unless the slogans activists, we condemn the detention of out to thousands of women, as well as having “Troop out of Iraq now” and “Freedom for Don't Turn Back the Aover forty student activists by the relatively plentiful resources (staff support, a Palestine” are included in the joint programme Iranian regime since 7 December (16 Azar in budget and a fully-paid officer) with which to Clock on Reproductive for the slate. the Iranian calendar). This date has been a day build actions. However, the Labour women’s At a time when the NUS leadership are of student protest in Iran for many years; it is officers have been content to put the NUS Freedoms! attempting to undermine the very existence of now a symbol of Iranian students’ struggle Women’s Campaign logo on a few initiatives by NUS as a national student union, and a united against the theocratic-capitalist regime of the others, and do precious little themselves. Join the Feminist Fightback left is needed to oppose them more than ever, Islamic Republic just as it was against the dicta- The priorities of the campaign have looked picket of the Christian Medical this sort of sectarianism is particularly damag- torship of the Shah. good on paper — women at work, childcare and Foundation to defend the time ing. Activists were arrested in the run up to the abortion rights — but in practice these have lead limit on abortion and oppose The SWP comrades bent themselves into all day of action, and following the demonstrations to little other than meetings with NGOs or TUC sorts of contortions in order to argue that attacks on the reproductive and actions which took place in a number of bureaucrats, and motions calling on the govern- rights that women have won in questions including NUS democracy, the cities. Many are now reportedly being held in ment to do something. In fact, the campaign education funding campaign, direct action and Tehran’s notorious Evin prison and have been committee actively voted against direct action the last 40 years. an orientation to the labour movement are subjected to torture. on abortion rights, with Women’s Officer Kat purely secondary; that the anti-capitalist poli- This is just the latest act of repression dealt Stark claiming the time “isn’t right” as a justifi- Friday 25 Jan 4pm, tics, radical demands and militant tactics out by the Islamic Republic; it follows an cation for her casting vote. shared by ENS and Respect are essentially intense crackdown on the Iranian workers’ ENS Women have consistently opposed this 6 Marshalsea Road, SE1 1HL irrelevant; and that support for their particular movement and the brutal victimisation of lead- inaction, and the political lethargy of the London (nearest tubes slogans on Iraq and Palestine is the defining ing trade unionists such as Tehran busworkers’ campaign, leading the way with events like issue in the student movement. leader Mansour Ossanlou and Saqez bakers’ Feminist Fightback and the torchlit march for London Bridge and Borough Opposition to the occupation of Iraq and union activist Mahmoud Salehi. The Iranian abortion rights when our student leaders have solidarity with the Palestinians are, rightly, regime is acutely aware of the growing alliance refused to organise. With elections coming up, High Street) common ground, and should of course be between Iran’s workers’ and student move- it’s time to challenge Labour Students for included; but the idea that the SWP’s particu- ments; meanwhile it is using the threat of a US control of the campaign — ENS Women More: 07890 209 479, lar formulations are the only possible basis for attack to legitimise itself and step up its repres- member and NUS Executive Officer Sofie [email protected] or unity is so weird that it can only be intended sion of dissent. Buckland is standing for National Women’s www.feministfightback.org.uk as a means of preventing unity by excluding We call on the Iranian government to imme- Officer as a socialist feminist candidate. those who disagree with them, as some in ENS including members of Workers’ Liberty do. It is important to note here the fact that the Stop the War Coalition, led by the SWP, does not use the slogan “Troops out now”; and that in the past, for instance at the Stop the War A working-class alternative national council in Leeds in November 2004, the SWP argued against and prevented the adoption of this slogan. Similarly but even more tellingly, last year’s Student Respect to ‘green wash’ manifestos did not include “Troops out now” either! Members of a united slate would, of course, be free to make clear their own politics and BY A UNITE ACTIVIST tives. The ruling class will not be the main sustainability of humanity — we cannot leave raise their own slogans in their manifestos, victims of climate chaos, though it will be it to profit-mongers, a subservient state or speeches and campaign literature. However, N Sunday 13 January, activists from their policies that have caused it. elitist greens. The causes and consequences there is no reason why the slogans insisted on the labour and anti-climate change To take one example, the criticism made of of climate change do not exist outside of the by the SWP should be made a precondition for Omovements will meet in Nottingham aviation as a source of emissions has never divisions of class therefore the solutions agreeing a basic common programme. Look at to develop the Workers’ Climate Action taken into account those who work in the cannot either. it the other way round. A majority of ENS network. This network aims to fill a void industry. Actions neither seek to provide Workers’ Climate Action is an initiative members would certainly want to include an among those fighting climate change; to workers with alternative work nor tackle the begun by activists in Sheffield, which seeks explicit statement of support for workers’ and create unity of purpose and tactics between reasons of long hours/low pay, poor public to build a national network that will intervene other democratic movements in Iraq and Iran these often-divergent forces, with a purpose- transport and short holidays that ties people in labour and green movements to put — something which the SWP, to their fully working-class focus. into using this industry. Choice is the luxury forward ideas and action that match radical discredit — would no doubt oppose. How Looking at the numerous political of the rich; green activists must recognise this demands with practical solutions. Among would they react if we argued that unity was campaigns that my union runs, there is no before promoting consumer-orientated solu- other tactics, we will seek to mobilise work- impossible unless, for instance, “No to war, no mention of the environment or progressive tions to structural problems. It is not a ers in environmentally damaging industries to to the Islamic Republic — solidarity with policies that seek to slow or halt runaway surprise then that one Unite branch officer campaign for alternatives, help to steer Iranian workers, students and women” was climate change. Not content with simply turn- reported low morale due to constant to public climate change activists into dialogue with included in the joint programme? ing a blind eye, UNITE and GMB belong to a criticism of the role of aviation. workers, and to make their action united Despite their sectarian posturing, which we pro-aviation lobby group called ‘Flying The official energy and industry policy of against those causing this problem and hope SWP and Respect members will prevail Matters’ — in partnership with BAA, the main unions – most importantly Unite – towards solutions that seek new systems to upon their leadership to reconsider, the fact EasyJet, BA and the CBI. must be smashed and replaced by radical and another crisis born of limitless capitalist that the SWP/Respect sent representatives to Of course, they are attempting to look after worker-centred solutions to climate change expansion. discuss unity is clearly a positive step forward. the jobs of their members, but what is impor- that understand these problems and can fight We welcome all activists who want to be a We will be meeting again to discuss further tant is how they do that. Rank and file inside their industries with solidarity from part of a democratic and radical alternative to in London on Sunday 13 January. For more members should offer an alternative that is those outside aviation, power stations and elitism and greed. For more information information, get in touch: genuinely in the interests of the working class heavy industry. about the campaign and organising of the [email protected] and does not rely on their employers’ initia- One clear answer is to take action. Working Workers’ Climate Action network email people should fight for jobs and the long-term [email protected] IRELAND 15 The last days of the old order in Northern Ireland

Part seven of a series on the Northern the ramparts, so to speak, that was still vehe- Ireland crisis of 1969 by Sean Matgamna mently, if uneasily, alive for the Protestants. — the start of nearly 40 years of “The Alive for both the celebrants in the marches Troubles” — and the responses of the left. and other rituals of the Unionist Orange For earlier articles see www.workerslib- Order and the Catholics who watched, some- erty.org/node/9693. times fearfully. Those were the attitudes that led to the IGH above the Bogside, the Catholic explosion on 12 August 1969. ghetto that proclaimed itself in large Most of Catholic Ireland had won its inde- Hletters painted on the gable end of a pendence fifty years earlier, after a long house, to be “Free Derry”, Frank Roche and I series of rebellions — centuries of subter- stood, one night in September 1969, on the ranean agrarian warfare by peasant secret perfectly preserved ramparts of the gigantic societies like the “Whiteboys” and the stone fort — the walls around the old city of “Defenders” against savagely exploitative Derry — built at the beginning of the 17th English landlords, then by political parties at century to protect the Scots and English Westminster, and, finally, by the army of Dail Protestant settlers from the “wild Irish” Eireann (the Dublin parliament that had natives. seceded from Westminster in 1919), the first Catholic Derry had recently had to build its “Irish Republican Army”, who fought the own bulwarks of defence — against the occupying British forces in a two and a half Northern Ireland “Protestant state”. After a year War of Independence (1919-21). near-three-day long battle, in which the Most of the county of Derry was Bogsiders had defeated the Royal Ulster Protestant, but the Catholic majority in Derry Constabulary and crowds of civilian City and in a large swathe of territory on the Protestant youths who had tried to invade the borders of the Six Counties and west of the area, the Bogside had been barricaded off in Bann had been arbitrarily excluded from that a self-policed area. For two months, the Catholic-nationalist victory. Beaten down, Barricades go up at the junction of William Street and Rossville Street, 12 August Bogside, run by an improvised defence and included against their will in the organisation, the Derry Citizens' Defence “Protestant state”, they were treated there as in October 1964, had simply left the in the British Labour government, which Committee, would be a “no-go” area to the a menace to the state — which they were: Unionists to it. That was an “internal affair” openly demanded reform. They were spurred representatives of the Six-County state. As what else could they be? — and, therefore, as of Northern Ireland and for half a century the on by fear of more sectarian onslaughts by we looked down. the barricades were still up, second-class citizens. convention held that Westminster, which held the RUC, the B-Specials, and the Paisleyites. the recently-arrived British soldiers patrolling Derry, where everything was arranged as overall responsibility for Northern Ireland, In January and April 1969, Catholic barri- on one side, the defenders of “Free Derry” on if to blazon forth the realities of Catholic- did not “interfere” cades had gone up against the Six Counties the other. Roche and I were among the size- Protestant relations in Northern Ireland, was With local government power went patron- state. An editorial by John Palmer in Socialist able number of “volunteers” encamped at the engine of the Catholic revolt in 1968-9. age in jobs and housing. With a council Worker (on August 21, 1969, when Catholic Celtic Park, people who had gone there, Most of the young people of Catholic majority dependent on gerrymandered elec- Derry and parts of Belfast were barricaded belatedly as it turned out, to help the Derry had no hope of a job unless they toral boundaries, in a system where a vote off) depicted what they were groping Catholics defend themselves against police, emigrated. They rioted and demonstrated and went with the tenancy of a house, went a towards. Protestant communalists and expected inva- built barricades in the week that followed the built-in drive to deprive Catholics of council “In Derry in particular the Bogside has a sion by the British army. police attack on the 5 October 1968 civil houses and therefore also of local govern- real chance of holding out. The Derry people, Roche, a Trotskyist from the South, would rights demonstration. From them on Catholic ment votes. who are overwhelmingly anti-Unionist, were the following year lob a canister of CS tear Derry went into a state of chronic revolt This was a simmering revolt that had a never consulted about the Border. They were gas from the visitor’s gallery on to the floor against the city’s rulers and the Six Counties hopeless — even in some ways, among the forcibly co-opted into the Northern State…. of the House of Commons, to give the British sectarian establishment. Barricades against unemployed youth, a lumpen — quality to it. One day the people of Derry will take their MPs a taste of what their army was dishing the RUC went up there in January 1969, and It simmered and intermittently exploded in city from the Chichester-Clarks and the slum out in the Catholic areas of Belfast and again in April. Serious fighting between rage. Its natural political objectives — both landlords.” Derry. For that he would draw an 18-month Bogside youth and the Royal Ulster the nationalist objective of overthrowing They Catholics of Derry were groping jail sentence. Constabulary broke out in mid-July at the Protestant ascendancy and achieving national towards breaking away from the Six As we looking down at the sprawling slum time of the big Orange demonstrating season. self-determination, and the possible working- Counties. now sheltered behind its own improvised Apart from Belfast, Derry is Northern class objective of taking part in a root and The 6/26 County partition of Ireland was a “walls of Derry”, Frank, who had been Ireland’s only city. It has a Catholic majority branch attack on the capitalist system — curse on the Protestants within it as well as to silently contemplating the scene for a while, and stands on the border with the independ- were blocked. the Catholics. said suddenly: “You know what it reminds ent Irish state. The Catholic two-thirds of the The nationalist objective, to which almost Many elements entered into the social and me of? One of those scenes in Hollywood population was ruled over by a discrimina- all Catholics subscribed, was blocked by the political discrimination of which the Westerns, with the tepees of the defeated tory Protestant-majority city corporation, fact that in the Six Counties as a whole, the Catholics were the victims, very importantly Indians clustered down below, outside the whose control was based on open and blatant Derry Catholics were part of a minority — a a general scarcity of jobs and of material cavalry fort!” and seemingly unassailable electoral fraud. bespoke minority, so to speak, tailor-made by resources; ages of Catholic/ Protestant That neatly summed up the history of the For at least a couple of decades before those who designed the Six Counties animosity; and the inbred belief among the peoples of that area over the previous 400 1969 that fraud, and others in other towns, “Protestant state”. The possible working-class Protestants that the Catholic Irish were an years. I thought it caught everything — the had been the subject of an Irish and interna- objective (to which very few subscribed) was inferior people. sense of defeat and of being conquered and tional campaign of exposure (in the British blocked off by the fact that in Ireland, and in The things that kept it alive, that united dispossessed that was a living part still of the labour movement, for instance). But nothing the Six Counties intensely and actively, the Protestant-Unionists to defend and sustain it, consciousness of the Catholics, and the sense shifted. British governments, before the working class was bitterly split between were not only political differences and the of victory and of uneasy mastership, up on Wilson Labour Government that took office Catholic-nationalists and Protestant unionists. competition for scarce resources, but also, a Nothing had been done by political parties lot of fear. The Protestant-Unionists were a or groups to explore a possible democratic minority on the island. It had taken an armed modus vivendi between Catholic Nationalists near-revolt, and the credible threat of a real — with their ultimate aim of a united Ireland revolt, to keep them from being delivered by — and Protestant-Unionists who were deter- Britain to their age-old enemies as a minority mined to to remain united with Britain, or at in a Home Rule Ireland. any rate, determined not to become a power- The way the 26 Counties had developed less Protestant minority in a Catholic-major- into the “Rome Rule” which they had said ity all-Ireland state. Home Rule would inevitably be suggested to Since Gladstone’s first Home Rule Bill, in them that their fears and their efforts to avoid 1886, and in a different form, long before being a Protestant-British minority in a that, the political desires of Protestant Catholic-ruled Ireland had not been needless. Unionists and Catholic nationalists had They feared “betrayal” by London, and confronted each other as brutally hostile were on the look-out for it. They saw the forces for which there was no possible pressure for reform from London as the thin common ground. end of the wedge whose thick end would be This was “Derry of the burning zeal” (as an attempt to force them into a united the poet Thomas Kinsella called it). Without Ireland. They saw the Catholic mobilisations the taint of hyperbole, one might even speak for civil rights as Republicanism writ small, of “The Commune of Derry” – but of only but small only for the moment. Catholic Derry. It was by no means only the And they were not wrong in all of this, youth. The Catholics of all ages were unwill- though their own backlash speeded up and ing to go on as for the previous decades. intensified what they feared. They understood They were encouraged by the sympathy how things stood in their Six Counties RUC go up William Street, 12 August and outrage on their behalf in the media and “Protestant state”. The basic “civil right” the 16 IRELAND

Catholics lacked was national self-determi- There is talk of a curfew, but that would The supplicant promises God to do good in and furniture from their own homes. Police nation. And the Catholics were in the majority require either troops or extra police from future if only God will grant something begin to use CS gas. Soon the Bogside will be in large swathes of the state’s territory; for a Britain to enforce it, so it is not attempted. wished for now: peace! swamped with it. large part of them, it was not a case of being a The RUC reserve force, the B-Specials, an Neill Gillespie, an old quavery-voiced The fighting begins to spread outside Derry. minority inescapably interlaced with a major- all-Protestant militia, is mobilised on the Republican veteran of the Irish War of At Strabane, 14 miles from Derry, the RUC ity population. The Six Counties Catholics Shankhill to prevent further looting. Independence, also speaks. “If we are forced station is besieged. In Dungannon on the night outside of Belfast were an artificially created The reason why the Stormont government to fight, then let us in God’s name fight as of the 12th, clashes leave 30 injured. minority, an artificially severed section of the does not ask for troops — which have in the peace-loving men”. He will be the titular An eyewitness report by Joe Carroll in the majority population in the island. past been used for riot control in Northern Secretary in Derry of the breakaway nationalist Dublin paper, the Irish Press of 18 The logic of the demand for civil rights Ireland — is that British Prime Minister Provisional Republican movement a few August describes how the fighting started. formulated by the civil rights movement — Harold Wilson has said publicly that if months later. “Fateful stones thrown... despite the efforts and not too many links along the chain of Stormont needs troops to maintain law and Eddie McAteer, leader of the Nationalist of civil rights leaders like Hume and social-political development, either — was a order then the whole constitutional relation- Party, appeals to Dublin: “Help us if Derry McAteer”. After the first stones landed on the demand for the abolition of the Six Counties ship between Britain and Northern Ireland will erupts”. He hopes that “our watching brethren Apprentice Boys, “riot police with helmets and state. There were people at the heart of the be examined. The cost of troops is too high for in the South would no longer stand aside”. shields and clutching batons massed in several civil rights movement — the Republicans — the Belfast regime. They will be a last resort. “Tuesday may”, he says, “raise the curtain lines, confronting the Bogside youths across whose ultimate goals were Irish unity, and on the last terrible act of the age-long Irish steel barriers. who saw the civil rights movements and its Monday 4 August: Rival Catholic and drama”. “From 4.15 to 5.05 the police were show- mobilisations as a first stage in the overthrow Protestant mobs clash. Both sides petrol-bomb ered from close range with every type of of the Six Counties state. (Desmond Greaves, the RUC. On the same day, Bernadette Devlin Monday 11 August: the newspapers report missile, which they tried to ward off with their for example, the political guru of those who appeals to British Home Secretary James that prayers were offered up in chapels and shields, but they made no attempt to throw led the IRA up to the Provisional IRA split in Callaghan to put the RUC under the control of prayer-houses all over Northern Ireland. back. December 1969. saw it that way. See the British police officers. She wants the recall of Though nobody expected the scale of what “Most of those who witnessed the scene memoir of Greaves by one of them, Anthony the Westminster Parliament to discuss the situ- will happen, everyone expects a catastrophic must have felt rather sickened by the sight of Coughlan). ation in Northern Ireland. eruption of communalism from the Apprentice cursing youngsters firing literally lethal The candid Catholic-nationalist answer to Labour Home Secretary James Callaghan Boys march in Derry on the 12th. 15,000 are weapons at exposed policemen who, it must be those fears was: why shouldn’t we? What right sees “law and order” as the Belfast govern- expected to march. emphasised, at this stage made no attempt to have you to expect anything else? ment’s responsibility. Appeals are made by Stormont MPs and enter the Bogside proper... It was a tragic communal-national-religious The RUC says it blames “Trotsky-anar- Westminster Labour MPs for the Northern “This was a crucial episode because along antagonism, build in to the Six Counties, and chists” for the trouble in the Catholic Falls Ireland government to ban the march. The with myself it was witnessed by thousands of given a special intensity and intractability by area. Unionist government knows that a ban will be Protestants, both marchers and spectators, the artificiality of the state. That Northern In response to the clashes between the defied. An attempt to enforce the ban would with what mounting fury can be imagined. The Ireland should begin to break apart on 12 Protestants and the police, Bernadette Devlin lead to fighting. London, which had overall stoning was also carried out in defiance of August 1969 in Derry was in the very nature (who had been elected in April as Westminster responsibility for Northern Ireland, accepts the commands and appeals by civil rights stew- of the Six Counties. MP for Mid-Ulster), speaking at a PD meeting decision of the Unionist government. All the ards and the leaders mentioned earlier [Hume What follows is a stark outline of the break- in Enniskillen, appeals to the Protestant work- responsible authorities fatalistically hope for and McAteer]. down of the old order in Northern Ireland. ers who have been fighting the police to back the best. Nothing is done to avert the catastro- “The sequel was inevitable — a police the civil rights movement. Protestant workers phe. charge and the scattering of the youths — but should unite with their Catholic brothers and Thus Northern Ireland moves like a sleep- the escalation of the violence which also THE EVENTS OF AUGUST 1969 sisters against the Unionist government, she walker towards the general breakdown of 12- ensued was certainly avoidable, and could EFORE the general breakdown of “law says. The Government has shown its readiness 15 August. fairly be said to have precipitated the rest of and order” between 12 and 15 August to use police — “the armed wing of the Most of the social and moral authorities in the week’s tragic events. B1969, parts of Northern Ireland are Unionist party” — against Protestants as well Northern Ireland proclaim a fervent desire for “Having driven the Bogside youths back up already on fire. Serious clashes between police as Catholics. peace. William St, leading to the Bogside proper, the and Catholic youth had erupted in Derry on 12 Devlin notes the statement by the Protestant Dr Abernethy, Governor of the Apprentice police made a deliberate decision to make a July. Shankhill Defence Association that the “police Boys, says that he wants peace. John Hume, lightning charge down Rossville Street past the Not only Catholic Northern Ireland is are no longer the friends of Ulster Loyalists the independent MP for Foyle, wants peace. eight-storey flats which command the entry inflamed. The Protestant heartland in Belfast, and never can expect our help again”. The He says that the Apprentice Boys have a right into the Lecky Road, which could be described the Shankhill Road district, is disaffected too. naivety here is mind-boggling! The Shankhill to march, but it would be unwise for them to as a spur of the Bogside. Weekend of 2-3 August 1969: Shankhill Defence Association is led by the ultra- exercise that right. Northern Ireland is now in “Worst of all, the police made no effort to Road Protestants riot, fight police, and loot Paisleyite and lunatic John McKeague. the grip of a mechanism more powerful than deter or even discourage a pack of Protestant “Protestant” shops. pious hopes. extremists who followed on their heels, stoning The clashes start when police try to disperse Tuesday 5 August: Paisleyites storm the Catholic flats and such people as came within a crowd which has gathered around Unity Council Chamber in Lisburn. The newspapers TUESDAY 12 AUGUST range. Walk flats, near the Shankhill Road, which are print pictures of riot-gear-clad police and HE Apprentice Boys march begins, if “The police immediately retreated then to “Catholic”. streets littered with broken paving stones, and not quietly, peacefully. Trouble starts at the fringe of the Bogside, but in those few Petrol bombs are thrown at the RUC. A showing blackened patches from petrol T3pm. Catholic youths gather behind minutes the pivotal event of the rest of the seven-hour battle is fought on the Shankhill bombs. police barricades in William Street, at the week’s pattern of violence had taken place. Road, the heart of Protestant working class entrance to the Bogside, jeer and gesture at the The police had ‘invaded’ the Bogside and had Belfast, involving the use of water cannon, Wednesday 6 August: The Belfast marchers and the stationary lines of police, tacitly permitted Protestant thugs to form part baton charges, and riot trucks. The police, in Newsletter reports the results of a poll it has then throw stones and bottles at them. of the invasion. helmets and with riot shields and using long had taken: 90% want a ban on all parades. After a long period of this, 200 police and a “The news was a clarion call to the whole truncheons, baton-charge the crowd. “Intimidation” of Catholics living among very large crowd of Loyalists, led by an of the Bogside, and the handful of youths who There is extensive looting of “Protestant” Protestants and vice versa is already rampant armoured car and police jeeps, attempt an had defied their stewards’ appeals were now shops, from grocers to furniture shops. Kids in Belfast. The “Catholic” Ardoyne invasion of the Bogside. They are beaten back. joined by practically every man, woman, and hand out goods from the looted shops. Shops Tenants’Association says that it knows of 60 But again they attack. The battle that will rage child in the Bogside, in building and maintain- are set on fire. Catholic families forced out. for two days and ignite Northern Ireland has ing defensive barricades and ensuring an Both Ian Paisley and Major Ronald Bunting begun. enormous supply of petrol bombs... are jeered and booed when they appeal to the Sunday 10 August: a meeting is held in One newspaper quotes from a young “It has proved impossible to exclude Protestant crowd to go home. Celtic Park, Derry. John Hume and Eamonn Catholic fighter, shop worker Maureen Roche. violence and the Partition issue from the civil The mile-long Shankhill Road is like a McCann and others speak. McCann says that “They’ve had this coming for a long time. rights campaign not because, as Major battle zone, strewn with bricks; most shop the reason to oppose violence is that it will be We’ve had to put up with their bullying for Chichester Clark alleges, Republicans and windows are broken. Two cars and a van are the wrong sort of violence directed at the years”. Another youth agrees: “They’ve hooligans subverted the movement, but used as a barricade, and set on fire. The RUC wrong target, Catholics and Protestants. He believed that they can beat us up whenever because the Paisleyite element, seeing the use armoured cars to break the barricade. A pledges that if they get past Tuesday’s parade they want to, but that day is gone”. threat to Unionist dominance in the civil rights petrol bomb sets an RUC man on fire. Troops (12 August) he, McCann, will “never again be From the walls, Protestants shout abuse at movement’s legitimate demands, did every- have been brought in to back up the cops if associated with a united Catholic platform” the Catholics: “Fenian bastards”. thing in their power to pervert the campaign necessary, but they are held in reserve. (which is what the Celtic Park meeting was). Catholics dig trenches in the street to stop into a naked confrontation of violence and Over 20 RUC are injured, two seriously. In its own way, this is a sort of public prayer. police water wagons. They burn mattresses hate. Unfortunately they succeeded”.

WHERE WE STAND

ODAY one class, the working class, lives by selling partnership” and assert working-class interests militantly • A workers’ movement that fights all forms of oppression. its labour power to another, the capitalist class, against the bosses. Full equality for women and social provision to free Twhich owns the means of production. Society is Our priority is to work in the workplaces and trade women from the burden of housework. Free abortion on shaped by the capitalists’ relentless drive to increase their unions, supporting workers’ struggles, producing work- request. Full equality for lesbian, gay and bisexual people. wealth. Capitalism causes poverty, unemployment, the place bulletins, helping organise rank-and-file groups. Black and white workers’ unity against racism. blighting of lives by overwork, imperialism, the destruction We are also active among students and in many • Open borders. of the environment and much else. campaigns and alliances. • Global solidarity against global capital — workers every- Against the accumulated wealth and power of the capi- where have more in common with each other than with talists, the working class has one weapon: solidarity. WE STAND FOR: their capitalist or Stalinist rulers. The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty aims to build soli- • Independent working-class representation in politics. • Democracy at every level of society, from the smallest darity through struggle so that the working class can over- • A workers’ government, based on and accountable to the workplace or community to global social organisation. throw capitalism. We want socialist revolution: collective labour movement. • Working-class solidarity in international politics: equal ownership of industry and services, workers’ control and a rights for all nations, against imperialists and predators big • A workers’ charter of trade union rights — to organise, to democracy much fuller than the present system, with and small. strike, to picket effectively, and to take solidarity action. elected representatives recallable at any time and an end to • Maximum left unity in action, and openness in debate. bureaucrats’ and managers’ privileges. • Taxation of the rich to fund decent public services, If you agree with us, please take some copies of We fight for the labour movement to break with “social homes, education and jobs for all. Solidarity to sell — and join us! IRELAND 17

Where Nationalist Party leader Eddie the border. Large demonstrations take place McAteer had on the 10th called for 26 at the British Embassy in Dublin in outrage Counties troops to intervene, Bernadette at what was going on. Southerners cross the Devlin and Eamonn McCann issue a state- border into the border town of Newry and ment on 12 August appealing to London: join local Catholics against the RUC. “The riot which has taken place in Derry Rumours spread in Dublin among journal- today, and resulting violence in other areas ists that the Irish cabinet is divided and of Northern Ireland, show that Northern Lynch’s speech is a compromise — that at Ireland is ungovernable under the present least three Dublin ministers want the Irish constitution. Westminster must now act. army to move into Derry city and the other The barricades in the Bogside in Derry Catholic majority areas along the border. The must not be taken down until the Westminster three includes the future Taoiseach Charles government states its clear commitment to Haughey, himself one whose parents had fled the suspension of the constitution of Northern south in the early 20s. Ireland and calls immediately a constitu- Plain-clothes officers of the Irish Army are tional conference representative of sent to liaise with the Defence Committees Westminster, the Unionist government, the and the fighters in Derry, Belfast, and other Government of the Republic of Ireland, and areas, and to help coordinate them. all tendencies within the civil rights move- Lynch says he has “requested” the British ment. government to seek UN help. He wants either The situation in Derry at the moment is a joint London/Dublin force to control such that the people of Bogside are fighting Northern Ireland, or UN troops. off the combined forces of the police and the For a short while, the 26 Counties state, Paisleyites, who are operating as a single whose 1937 constitution lays claim to the Six unit. The police have already entered Bogside Counties territory, seems on the verge of with the support of the Paisleyites in defiance getting drawn into civil war and — probably of orders from senior officers. Therefore the — war with Britain. RUC is out of control and can no longer be The IRA attacks an RUC station in the considered as the force of law and order. The heavily Catholic area of South Armagh.with country is now in a state of chaos. petrol bombs. It is feeble enough, but a It is the responsibility of Harold Wilson small foretaste of the future. and his government, who should have acted On 13 August the Belfast government puts almost a year ago and who have repeatedly out a call on radio and TV to mobilise the RUC and Unionists go up Rossville Street 12 August been warned by ourselves and others of the 8000-strong armed Protestant militia the B- possible consequences of their deliberate and Specials. It is taken as a declaration of full- your pockets with stones and carry a petrol on merit alone. That there should be equal total inaction. It may well be of personal scale war. bomb in each hand. Then we will rush the protection for the law-abiding, and equal concern to Harold Wilson that, given his own In the Stormont Parliament, while the barricades”. retribution for the law-breakers. No other position in the Labour Party, he cannot take fighting is still going on in Derry, Northern Now Protestants begin streaming in to course is either possible or moral”. the political risk of intervening in Northern Ireland prime minister Clark describes what Derry to help the cops, with pick-axe He denies that there will be “retaliation” in Ireland. We consider the lives of Irish people is happening as a pre-planned armed upris- handles, helmets, and some guns. Some gun- the Bogside. “We want peace, not more important than the career of Harold ing, and bitterly denounces Lynch for “Eire’s fighting has started. vengeance... Wilson”. (Irish Press, 13.08.69). clumsy intrusion”; he accuses Lynch of And Catholics across Northern Ireland are “If the rioters withdraw peacefully to their “hooliganism”. starting to act to take the pressure off Derry. homes and observe the law, no attempt will Lynch’s speech encourages the Catholics, At least eight police stations are attacked, in be made to exploit the situation. I give this naturally, and must give some of them the Belfast, Dungannon, Armagh, Coalisland, assurance in the name of the Government and WEDNESDAY 13 AUGUST expectation that they will soon be rescued Dungiven, Dungannon, Enniskillen, and in the earnest hope that it may contribute to AOISEACH Jack Lynch appears on from their captivity in the Protestant state. It Newry. peace”. He was lying on that. Fighters, TV, making an emotional declaration gives Protestants the same idea. It is petrol on A steady stream of women and children among them Bernadette Devlin, will be on what is happening in the Six T the fire. flee over the border to Donegal. What will be jailed. Counties, and to warn that his government Coupled as it is by no commensurate a big movement of refugees has started. The Northern Ireland Civil Rights could not continue to “stand idly by”. “It is action, it is irresponsible to say the least. So In Armagh, the police station is under siege Association warns Chichester Clark that clear now that the present situation cannot be is the not dissimilar statement by Cathal for over 30 minutes. In Coalisland, a crowd unless police are withdrawn from the allowed to continue... It is evident... that the Goulding, chief of staff of a very shadowy forces its way into the police station, breaks Bogside immediately, civil rights meetings Stormont government is no longer in control IRA. He announces IRA mobilisation, and windows, and puts petrol bombs through will be held in “about 12 places” in the next of the situation. claims that the IRA is extensively active in them. 24 hours, in defiance of a ban. It is in effect a Indeed the present situation is the Northern Ireland. It isn’t. It is an extra dollop In Armagh, 400 youths march in protest at call for such demonstrations. inevitable outcome of the policies pursued by of petrol on the fire. what is happening in Derry. Paddy O’Hanlon, successive Stormont governments... The Irish The Dublin Fianna Fail nationalist paper, Nationalist MP for South Armagh, says that THURSDAY 14 AUGUST government can no longer stand by and see the Irish Press, comments: “Virtual civil war they want “to take some of the pressure off TIMES editorial, noting that all innocent people injured or worse... It is obvi- hit Derry in the wake of the Taoiseach’s Derry”. marches have been banned in ous that the RUC is no longer acceptance as speech when 500 cheering men, women and In Coalisland, 500 defy the ban on marches ANorthern Ireland, says that it should an impartial police force. Neither would the children, hurling petrol bombs and stones, and meet in the street. A couple of barricades have been done a month earlier. employment of British troops be acceptable, waving the tricolour and shouting ‘Up The are put up in Dungannon. “The folly of allowing the Apprentice Boys nor would they be likely to restore peaceful Republic’, charged RUC and B-Specials and In Lurgan, Catholic and Protestant crowds to trail their coats through Derry is now conditions — certainly not in the long term”. drove them out of the Bogside. But their face each other. Catholics put up barricades. apparent... He announces that he is moving the Irish place was taken by a strong group of Bottles and stones are thrown by both sides, “The reasonably-formulated political army up to the borders of the Six Counties to Paisleyites, who hurled petrol bombs and and a few petrol bombs from the Catholic demands, the non-violent demonstrations... set up field hospitals to receive refugees, stones at the jubilant Bogsiders”. side. Earlier, a crowd had gone to the RUC are all engulfed in something much more already streaming out of Northern Ireland. The left is in the forefront of the fight in station to protest at police actions in Derry. primitive and volcanic, tribal fears and The 26 Counties army is mobilised. Derry. The London Times quotes Bernadette In Enniskillen, stones and bottles are hatreds: this madness, as Chichester Clark Reserves are called up. They are moved up to Devlin telling a crowd: “I want you to fill thrown at the RUC, who have interfered with called it [on TV] last night”. an (illegal) meeting on the events in Derry. Frank Gogarty, chair of the Northern B-Specials are being mobilised to man Ireland Civil Rights Association, puts out a border posts and to guard the Waterside and statement: “The B-Specials are leading the Fountain Street Protestant areas in Derry. The Paisleyites. They are in tenders shooting Belfast Newsletter claims that people from indiscriminately. They are firing into people’s the South have taken over the town of homes. They are shooting all over the Newry. place...” He calls for demonstrations through- In Belfast, 200 people attack Hastings St out Northern Ireland. RUC barracks. One group sets up a barrier A statement from the Executive Committee across the Falls Road, at the Divis St junc- of NICRA calls for direct rule from London tion, and set it alight with bombs. Police and attempts to define what is happening. “It armoured cars smash two barricades. must be among the greatest ironies of Irish 100 RUC are on the Shankhill Road, history that parts of Northern Ireland are now guarding the connecting streets from the in open insurrection, demanding that the Shankhill to the Falls. British government directly intervene...” A big crowd marches down Falls Road, in The London NICRA calls on every “able- Belfast, and sets up barricades at the top and bodied Irishman to make himself available to at the bottom of the road. go to the North of Ireland for active service”. On TV, Northern Ireland prime minister Similar calls have gone out in the South. Chichester Clark tries to calm things by reit- This same day (14 August), at about erating his commitment to a civil rights 5.30pm, four hundred British soldiers take to reform programme, but declares that he will the streets to “replace the RUC”. The Belfast not shrink to summon “other than police aid”. government has decided to call on the main He is threatening the Catholics with the British state power. Contrary to Chichester British army. Clark’s threat on TV, the troops do not “Hooligan irresponsibles in our midst, attempt to enter the Bogside or to remove the whether they are Protestant or Roman barricades. The troops’ orders are to prevent Catholic, are a menace to our prospects as a rioters breaking out in the centre of the city. community”. About 200 armed B-Specials join the He hopes the riots will not be attributed to cordon around the Bogside. They are with- intransigence on the Government’s part. drawn on the night of 14 August and sent to “I take my stand upon these essentials — patrol Derry’s Protestant areas. Rossville Street, 13 August that houses should be allocated by need, that Bernadette Devlin says that “we are ready public jobs and appointments should be filled to negotiate with the British Army”. 18 IRELAND

She is quoted in the London Times as urging Army acted as an emergency scaffolding to people to fight “the black bastards”, the RUC. stop disintegration. The Belfast parliament To criticisms that an MP should not do such would be abolished by Britain in March 1972. things, she sends a message: “Tell them that I What opened in mid-1969 was a major did not go to Westminster to join their bloody revolutionary crisis. Analysing the experience club”. of revolutions, including Russia’s, Lenin had She demands of Harold Wilson: “call an defined three conditions necessary for a revo- immediate constitutional conference, and lution to take place. The old order is no settle the Irish question once and for all”. longer able to go on in the old way; the ruled, She tells the people of Bogside: “This fight or enough of them, are no longer prepared to is between the RUC and us. Defend the barri- go on in the old way; and an alternative to the cades to the last. Do not let them come in... old order is available. “The constitution should be suspended The Northern Ireland Catholics were no immediately. The British Army is no good. longer willing to go on in the old way, and The RUC should be controlled by British the old order could not go on in the old way police officers”. because of the Catholic revolt and Britain’s To Protestants she says: “This is us against commitment to reform. The great gap in the the RUC. The Protestants should join us in scenario was in relation to Lenin’s third working for a socialist workers’republic”. condition: what could replace the old order? She tries to persuade the fightern on the The working class was radically divided Bogside barricades not to disperse, and not to and in both its sections, Protestant and rely on the army. Catholic, politically and intellectually hege- She warns the crowd that she has talked on monised by “its own” bourgeoisie and petty the phone to Chichester Clark and asked bourgeoisie and their national-communalist whether the army is to replace or assist the ideas. RUC. The reply was, to assist them. There The workers in the South were powerfully would be conflicting understandings, between militant “on the job”, but in no political Belfast and London, on what that meant. condition to reshape society. The working Chichester Clark had also refused to guaran- class had no independent political organisa- tee that no-one would come into Bogside until tion to make proposals as to how the divided they had had a meeting. Devlin had stipulated people of Ireland, or of Northern Ireland, that they will only negotiate with the army if could democratically rearrange their affairs. the police keep out and the B-Specials are There was no possibility of a working-class disbanded. political force to fill the gap. She asks the crowd: “Do you still want to British troops in William Street, 14 August In neither of the national or communal sing, ‘We Shall Overcome’?” The crowd is groups was there a revolutionary socialist divided. Some boo, and some shout, “Back to force able to plausibly propose a democratic the barricades”. Most follow the “moderates”. goes on the streets of Belfast to relieve the days earlier, and call for British intervention. settlement of the “constitutional conflict” The crowd disperses. Paddy Doherty (a RUC and separate the fighters. The IS in Britain (forerunner of today’s SWP), (whether Ireland should be independent or mainstream Catholic, a future SDLPer), of the On the evening of the 15th, the Army enters with which Farrell is linked, had implicitly affiliated with Britain) and working-class Derry Citizens' Defence Committee, is carried the Falls Road. been calling for 26 Counties intervention. unity on the issues that had led to breakdown on the shoulders of the people, and leads the Catholic houses are burnt that night by The People’s Democracy statement is head- and the beginning of communal-national civil singing of “We Shall Overcome”. Protestants at Bombay Street (Falls Road area) lined in the Belfast Newsletter: “Suspend war in Northern Ireland. Later, soldiers and residents chat across the and Brookfield Street (Crumlin Road). After Stormont Junta”. The left in Ireland, such as it was, used barricades. whole Catholic streets have been burned down It reads: “The welcoming response for the political categories — pro-imperialism, anti- The British commander, Colonel Todd, in Belfast on the 16th the army enters the British troops in Derry has shown that the imperialism, sectarianism, anti-sectarianism, meets members of the Derry Citizens' Defence Crumlin Road area. In Belfast as in Derry the basic cause of the trouble there was the undis- British occupation, and so on — to obscure Association, and they agree a three-point army makes no attempt to force its way into ciplined and biased RUC. the fundamental issue, the nature of the peace plan. All B-Specials will be withdrawn the barricaded Catholic areas. Not content with provoking war in the Catholic-nationalist/ Protestant-Unionist from the area, and the RUC will be restricted According to the Scarman tribunal, 1,820 Bogside, the Ulster government, hell-bent on divide. to normal peace duties. In response, the families flee their homes in July-August 1969. self-destruction, has now put 8000 members of The left was solidly on the Catholic side, DCDA agrees to help maintain the peace. (On Over 80% per cent of the families are their murder gang — the B-Specials — on the the side of the Six Counties' oppressed of the Sunday 17 August, the Derry Citizens’ Catholic. Ten people are killed; 900 injured. streets. This vicious, undisciplined fascist previous 50 years and previous centuries. It Defence Association will set out its conditions 16 factories and 170 houses are burned down; band has already killed one man and wounded was right and necessary to be on that side. for dismantling the barricades. “We will a further 417 houses damaged by fire. several others within hours of their mobilisa- But the left shared middle-class Catholic- remain at war with Stormont until these Over the longer period from August 1969 to tion. nationalist ideas, changed only by re-express- demands are met”. The demands are: abolition February 1973, according to another estimate, ing them in the left’s own political language, of Stormont; disbandment of the B-Specials; between 8,000 and 15,000 families will move for instance, the “Trotskyist” notion that release of prisoners taken as a result of the as a result of sectarian intimidation. These are The left shared middle-class Ireland was experiencing, or could be made to recent disturbances and assurances that there the largest forced population movements in Catholic-nationalist ideas, experience, a “permanent revolution” in will be no prosecutions. Western Europe since World War Two. which the Catholic nationalist movement James Callaghan makes a statement to, so changed only by re- would grow over into socialism and working- to speak, accompany the troops: There will be expressing them in the left’s class power. THURSDAY 14 AUGUST, BELFAST no constitutional change in Northern Ireland own political language. From 1970 Northern Ireland would settle S Derry subsides, fierce fighting erupts without the “consent of the people of the into a long low-level communal conflict, half- in Belfast, where the army has not province”. smothered by the British state, and entwined Abeen deployed. Protestants take the There are hopeful signs too. On Wednesday It is intolerable that the people of the North with a Catholic-nationalist Provisional IRA offensive. A large crowd descends on the Falls 15 August at a 4000-strong mass meeting, should again be subjected to a reign of sectar- war against that British state. It was a hope- Road. They surge in the wake of the RUC, Belfast shipyard workers declare for peace, ian terror. Any government which would less and unwinnable war. The Provisional and the effect is of a joint movement, as in and stage a token stoppage at 4pm to show entrust law and order to this savage gang is IRA had no policy for the big Protestant- Derry. their “concern”. They pledge to keep sectarian unfit to rule. British minority but to subjugate it. Since Barricades go up in the Falls. The whole conflict out of the shipyards. Minister of The British government must suspend the they could not themselves do that, and civil panoply of RUC repression is thrown at the Commerce Roy Bradford addressed the meet- Stormont junta immediately if more lives are war could not but result in continued parti- Catholics, including one heavy machine gun ing. Alex [Sandy] Scott, chair of the shipyard not to be lost in Northern Ireland”. tion, perhaps with a smaller “Protestant able to penetrate through brick: a child is shot stewards, rejects the story that there has been The Irish Republican movement has sent a state”, the Provisional IRA were reduced to dead in his bedroom through the walls… fighting in the shipyard. 2000 workers, telegram to UN Secretary General U Thant, trying to force Britain to “persuade” the A few IRA men have guns and use them. Catholic and Protestant, at the Michelin tyre signed by Tomas Mac Giolla, asking the UN Protestant community into a united Ireland. There is one light machine-gun, used by a works, Belfast, also proclaim that they want to “intervene”. Things have settled down — or seem to middle-aged man who had dropped out of the peace. Eight opposition members — John Hume have — after the long travail, into the present IRA many years earlier. Lord Fenner Brockway, chair of the and others — walk out of the Stormont debate system of intricately structured bureaucrati- Barricades are thrown up, and defended as Campaign for Democracy in Ulster, calls for on the situation in Northern Ireland. cally organised sectarian power-sharing — a in Derry, with stones and petrol bombs. The suspension of the constitution, that is, for The British Army is now in control of secu- system that, though it is “better” than the Orange Belfast Newsletter reports: “Belfast direct rule of Northern Ireland from London. rity in Northern Ireland. In a few days it will Provo war, cannot but work to perpetuate the swept by bullets and flames. Machine-guns call in the guns of the B Specials for safekeep- communalism it enshrines in its workings, used in Belfast terror”. Monday 18 August. Armed groups have ing in special depots. It will have a short and therefore cannot but work to perpetuate Pubs are burned in Crumlin Road — one besieged the RUC station at Crossmaglen. honeymoon period. The barricades will not the division in the Irish working class. Catholic and one Protestant. Some factories There is a lorry-load of men, with guns, finally come down in Belfast until mid- What happens on the level of big events are fired, reportedly by Catholics. Four including sub machine guns. Hand grenades September — by agreement — and in Derry, such as those in Northern Ireland happens Catholics are shot dead by police fire: one are thrown through the window of the RUC again by agreement, in the second week of because, everything being as it is, it has to. In Protestant is killed by a shot in Divis Street. station. They are driven off after an hour. The October. retrospect what happens assumes the charac- Two people, one a Protestant and one a terrible future is already stirring in the womb. ter of inevitability. In fact, things that in retro- Catholic die, shot by civilians. And the fight- The Times (15 August) reports that the spect were part of an inexorable movement of ing is still spreading. “government here has been watching THE AFTERMATH given facts may have been in flux before they HE crisis that erupted in Derry on 12 Newry: attempts to put up barricades, fight- anxiously reports from the Republic of Ireland settled into the congealed jumble of facts that August, the breakdown of the Northern ing with the police. as rumours of large-scale IRA activity and make the event which in retrospect we see as Ireland state system, would be followed Portadown: Catholic and Protestant crowds Irish army manoeuvre swept the province”. T inevitable. after October — after the decision to abolish gather. Dublin’s Minister for External Affairs goes Could things, in the flux of 1969, have the B-Specials and a major gun battle by Dungiven — Orange Hall burned, and the to London to talk to Callaghan. gone differently? Were other things possible, RUC and British soldiers against Protestant courthouse, and the premises of the Ulster The left in Belfast is less prominent than in worse or better? That is the issue that lay at gunmen on the Shankhill — by a lull. Then it Bank. In Armagh, a Catholic is shot dead. Derry. Michael Farrell will later tell the histo- the heart of the dispute that began at the would erupt again, in old and familiar forms. 600 soldiers of the 26 Counties army (three rian of the People’s Democracy, Paul Arthur, September 1969 Conference of the In fact it would not be resolved for companies) have been now moved close to the that PD had only ten people mobilised in International Socialists (forerunner of today’s decades. Soon it became clear that the whole border with the Republic. Belfast at that time. On 14 August PD — SWP), and occupied the organisation for Northern Ireland system had been sapped and On the evening of 15 August the British Farrell and others — follow where Eamonn many months. We will explore that in the next undermined. From August 1969 the British army does what has been done in Derry — it McCann and Bernadette Devlin have led two article in this series. INTERNATIONAL 19

From back page what did Bhutto actually stand for? He was an inconsistent nationalist, and an economic It is most likely that a jihadist group is autarkist. A self-styled secularist, he also paid responsible for Bhutto’s murder — killed as a lip service to Islamic piety when the situation stooge of imperialism — although some demanded it. commentators (and not just Bhutto’s own As foreign minister in the dictatorship of supporters) have speculated about it being a Muhammad Ayub Khan, Bhutto took Pakistan collaboration with elements in the military. away from reliance on the US and that, in the The protests reflect a fierce, generalised oppo- political consensus of the time, gave him sition to Musharraf’s government over many “left” credentials. But Bhutto did that only to issues: rising unemployment and inflation, the form different client relationships — with alliance with the US, and, not least, the killing China for instance. of hundreds of civilians caught in the cross In 1970 Bhutto helped provoke a political fire of the military operation in the so-called crisis which led to the secession of tribal areas in the north of the country. Bangladesh (previously “East Pakistan”). He Farooq Tariq General Secretary of the backed the army’s murderous campaign Labour Party Pakistan describes the mood: “It against the secessionists, while being careful is a very volatile, unstable, unpredictable, to distance himself from the political regime explosive, dangerous, impulsive, fickle and which oversaw it. Later he made a hypocriti- capricious political situation.” cal peace with Bangladesh. Parliamentary elections due on 8 January As prime minister Bhutto nationalised many have now been postponed to 18 February. major industries. He did not do it to serve the interests of the workers, but to develop and HE assassination has left the western “modernise” Pakistan. powers worrying about how, and After their father’s death, Benazir Bhutto Twhether, stability is now possible in and her two brothers were, in the beginning at Pakistan. For the sake of stability, to keep least, committed to reform in Pakistan, i.e. a Musharraf in power, to compensate for the “modernising” state capitalism. Benazir spent disappearance of all popular support for his time in jail after her father’s death. For this party, the PML-Q, and to give a democratic she has been called, not unreasonably, brave. facade to the military regime, the US brokered But when she herself became prime minister a power-sharing deal between the military in 1988, she was not so brave. She did little by dictator and Bhutto. way of reform; she did provide employment to That deal was scuppered when Musharraf some of her supporters. She complained of declared martial law, arrested the Chief Justice being stymied by the military, but she did not Bhutto: was her reputation deserved? of the Supreme Court, and started locking up mount a campaign against them. She was unruly lawyers who wanted an end to such removed as prime minister 20 months later. things as the torturing of prisoners and trade The popularity of her party endured and she unionists who were fighting privatisation and was re-elected in 1993. rising unemployment. Back in power, she was able to do a little Benazir Bhutto thought twice about ending more... It is alleged that she and her husband her chance to get back into power by the back accumulated $1.5 billion. Bhutto tried to door but in the end she knew, if she wasn’t distance herself from her husband’s “business going to lose more middle class supporters, dealings”, but court cases continue. She also she had to take a stand against the crackdown. backed the Taliban in Kabul (at the time, the Apparently the US had given the green light US also thought the Taliban would bring that to martial law; as far as they were concerned it Why is all-important “stability”). was all going to be okay as long as Musharraf When her brother Murtaza began to kick up stood down as army chief (which he did); a fuss inside the PPP he was murdered by temporary martial law could still be part of a armed policemen. It is said that the decision to process to achieve “stability”. But what kind carry out the execution had been taken at a of stability were the US looking for? That very high — political — level; stories about remains unclear. Asif Zadari’s involvement continue to circu- Some US politicians had raised the alarm late. about jihadist groups getting power in In November 1996 Bhutto was again Pakistan and having access to the nuclear Pakistan ousted, this time by her own PPP President. button. But the Pakistani army is still, by a long way, the strongest physical force in the O Bhutto’s recent championing of country; the jihadist groups do not yet have democracy and agitation against corrup- countrywide mass support. Furthermore no Stion was entirely hypocritical. The PPP section of the military is going to promote the many not be a homogeneous entity —some of jihadists more than they do already. With its its members are human rights activists, myriad ties to industry, land and public utili- lawyers for civil liberties etc — but the ties the military needs to protect its institu- Pakistani workers and peasants need a tional predominance and keep the jihadists completely different kind of party to lead them and all other political forces in their proper exploding? out of this impasse. They need a party which place — subordinate. not only opposes dictatorship — such parties Musharraf’s regime continues to patronise are two a penny in Pakistan — but also stands jihadist and other Islamist groups (in Kashmir, for consistent democracy, freedom for the Plan A. As US officials told the Washington logical consensus (e.g. a single Muslim iden- Baluchistan and the North West Frontier nationalities, an end to economic exploitation, Post on 30 December, [we still want to see] tity) has only increased the ethnic and reli- Province) but only in order that they will back land reform, secularism and so on. “the creation of a political centre revolving gious divisions, taken Pakistan away from up their regime. In the case of the ruling It is therefore extremely important that trade around Musharraf.” Yes, but who the hell secularism, given succour to the various Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) alliance in unions and socialists in Pakistan maintain with? Islamist groupings and thrown its people the North West Frontier Province, they imple- independence from the “mainstream” politics. In the time-honoured feudalesque style the further into poverty. ment neo-liberal policies. The mainstream Unfortunately some leading trade unionists chairmanship of the PPP has been passed on Benazir Bhutto is now a martyr; her death Islamist group Jamaat i-Islami (part of the have attachments to the PPP and have publicly Bhutto’s husband Asif Zadari, who will act as has given the PPP feudal-capitalist base, and MMA in NWFP) are now calling for a boycott stated their belief in the party’s promises to a “caretaker” until his and Bhutto’s 19 year the dynasty at the helm of it, renewed status; of the February election. But their opposition reverse job cuts due to privatisation. old son Bilawal “finishes his studies”. Crown neither of these things are deserved. That may be more an opportunist bid to bolster More unfortunate still, the Labour Party of Prince Bilawal will then take over. But Bhutto was prepared to help Mushrraf and the their own base than a serious threat to Pakistan (LPP) has now joined the All Parties Zardari, who spent some time in a Musharraf Musharraf. Democratic Movement (APDM), a grouping jail facing multiple charges of corruption, The spectre of a jihadist nuclear holocaust is of some 20-plus parties, all of whom are hates the military dictator. not really the US’s main concern! Rather the boycotting the elections. In the past the LPP Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s last civilian prime US wants Musharraf's army to continue and The workers need a party had firmly rejected this catch-all political bloc minister, is also not well disposed to the man strengthen its policing role in and on the which not only opposes (it has and remains part of a leftist alliance). who ousted him from power in 1999. border of Afghanistan — more than ever as In December the APDM’s political complex- However his party, which is now contesting dictatorship but also stands the Taliban and Taliban-like militias become ion changed somewhat. Nawaz Sharif’s party the elections (after saying it would boycott stronger. for consistent democracy, and some of the religious fundamentalist them), may now be prepared to do a deal with Nonetheless the questions posed about the parties left. But the Islamist Jamaat i-Islami the party of military clients and sycophants freedom for nationalities, an future of Pakistan seem more fundamental (JI) remain! Other APDM groupings are which backs Musharraf, the Pakistan Muslim than they did just a month ago. Now people end to economic exploitation, nationalist, Stalinist etc. League-Quadi-i-Azam, PML-Q. This in order are asking: will Pakistan remain intact and is secularism and so on. The decision to work alongside JI, is to win a few seats in a rigged parliament; after Pakistan heading for civil war? surprising given the LPP’s strong record on all it could be his big chance to be a “come campaigning for women’s rights and stand for back kid”. USHARRAF faces a dilemma. If he secularism. The LPP seem to have thrown in Such are the average in Pakistani civilian US in order to pursue her own ambitions says rigs the vote on 18 February, as he their lot with the APDM because it is “anti- politics — its all about self-love, self-gain, a lot about the kind of politician she was and intended to on 8 January, there will dictatorship”, and being anti-dictatorship M self-advancement. The present situation is just where she came from. be further violent backlash. But if he does not seems imperative. But being anti-dictatorship another chapter in a depressing political rig the vote he will lose. As long as he stays in is not enough. history in Pakistan — of raised expectations ENAZIR Bhutto’s father, Zulfiqar Ali power the protests will continue, workers will However, socialists must still continue to followed by betrayal for the Pakistani workers Bhutto, was in power from 1971 until face more cuts and attacks as a consequence build solidarity with socialists like the LPP and peasants. Attempts made at “democratic 1977, when he was kicked out by the of economic fall out, Islamist violence on the B (and other small groups) and trade unionists, government” are followed by military rule. military take over of General Zia ul-Haq streets will increase. in the hope that greater dialogue and interna- And each successive attempt to hold Pakistan When Zia had Bhutto executed, he did not Yet, despite clear evidence that their strat- tional links will be of political help in the together by a political or manufactured ideo- destroy Bhutto’s reputation for radicalism. But egy is stupid, the US remains committed to difficulties they face. workers’ liberty & Solidarity 19 January conference BNP splits: don’t let them recover! BY JACK YATES

HE British National Party is in the throes of a major crisis, the root of which is the outspoken fascism of leading BNP Tmember Mark Collett. Mark Collett is notorious for appearing in two documentaries: Russell Brand’s “Nazi Boy” and an edition of Dispatches entitled “Young, Nazi and Proud” (see YouTube). Cllr Sadie Graham (head of “Group Development”) and party administrator Kenny Smith have been expelled for “gross misconduct” because they raised concerns over Collett’s behaviour to the membership and the wider public. But BNP leader Nick Griffin has firmly sided with Collett in this dispute. The Graham clique — styling themselves as the “Real BNP” and “party loyalists” — have gained the support of significant sections of the organisation nationally. It is widely acknowledged that Sadie Graham is one of the most competent, articulate and organised fascists in Europe. Through consistent groundwork, community organising and political opportunism she constructed a network of BNP branches, sympathisers and fund-raisers across the country. As champion of the BNP’s turn towards the “legitimate” big-time Graham was a significant personality in the party. Why Pakistan Her success in the East Midlands in particular, where she was elected as Borough Councillor for the village of Brinsley, was a model replicated across the country. The BNP intends to stand in the upcoming Greater London Assembly and Mayoral elections and is currently raising funds for the Euro Elections. Richard Barnbrook — a councillor in Barking and Dagenham and would-be London Mayor — is firmly in the Griffin camp but faces a split in the London organi- sation with many sympathising with Graham. But a destabilised and demoralised organisation does not make for an effective elec- toral machine. A humiliating defeat in London will further cripple the BNP and together with insufficient funds for a European challenge could force a reassessment of strategy. is exploding The BNP may decide to continue business as usual, tolerate the electoral defeats and wait for calmer weather. Griffin isn’t really interested in finding legitimacy through the electoral system but recognises that his much-hoped-for “nation- BY CATHY NUGENT alist revolution” won’t happen by magic — any type of “revolu- tion” requires a political base. Contesting elections and scrab- “The new Pakistani general [Musharraf], he’s just been elected — not elected, this guy took over office. It appears this guy is going bling for mainstream acceptance whilst creating an organised to bring stability to the country, and I think that’s good news for the subcontinent.” (George W Bush, 1999) political cadre creates this base. Or the BNP may return to the street fascism of the National N 27 December Benazir Bhutto, leader of the Pakistan People’s Party was assassinated, killed by a gunman who then blew Front. That would be attractive to many BNP members. But such himself and 21 other people up. The belief that Musharraf was responsible in some way for the assassination has led to a turn would be a turn to more confrontational tactics would see a Ocountrywide violent protests and riots; over hundred people have been killed. The government claim al-Qaida have taken further haemorrhage of support. responsibility for the assassination, but that is not widely believed. The dispute between Griffin and Graham has exposed the fascist underbelly of the BNP for all to see. We should act deci- Continued on page 19 sively to ensure that those who have voted for the BNP in the past or who may be considering voting for or joining the organi- sation in the future are exposed to the facts. The BNP has grown in the recent past not merely because of organisational initiative on their part but because of the Labour Subscribe to Solidarity! government’s continued attacks on the working class and the relative weakness of anti-fascism. Individuals: £15 per year (22 issues) waged, £8 unwaged. Organisations: £35 large, Any serious anti-fascist organisation should base itself on the concerns of the working-class, the labour movement and £22 smaller (5 copies) combine a critique of BNP fascism with criticism of this govern- ment and capitalism more generally. Name ...... Anti-fascists in the Nottinghamshire Stop the BNP campaign have started this work already. They have called a regional conference for 19 January with the aim of creating a network of Address ...... labour movement based campaigns. If you want any further information on the conference or anti-fascism contact Organisation ...... [email protected] or www.workersliberty.org/node/9734 European rate: £20 or 32 euros in cash. Send to PO Box 823, London, SE15 4NA. Cheques payable to • The kind of anti-fascist movement we need, see “Solidarity”. Or subscribe online at www.workersliberty.org/solidarity centre pages