Solidarity 025, 6 March 2003

Members of the PCS civil service union have voted 31,322 to 18,926 in favour of annual (rather than two-yearly) elections for their union's National Executive, and 28,190 to 22,053 for annual (rather than two-yearly) union conferences. The ballot results were announced on 28 February. These changes had been voted through by large majorities at the union's conference, but union rules required a membership ballot on them as well. The union's right-wing Executive, which has devoted most of its energies to court cases trying to oust, or at least to shackle, left-wing General Secretary Mark...

By Martin Thomas Over a hundred Labour MPs - not many fewer than voted against the Government on war in Iraq - have signed a House of Commons motion opposing New Labour's plans for "foundation hospitals". Under this plan, selected NHS hospitals will be given financial and operational independence as "not-for-profit" enterprises. Labour MPs say that this will create a two-tier Health Service, and shift back towards the "internal market" operated in the NHS by the Tory governments under Thatcher and Major. Back in January, 45 Labour MPs voted against the Government on this issue. All that Health...

By Mark Sandell Alan Johnson, the New Labour Minister for Employment Relations, used to be general secretary of the post and telecom union CWU. Johnson left the CWU after failing to sell Royal Mail bosses' agenda to his members. He was almost universally hated by the union's members by then. Labour's leadership paid him back for holding off a major national dispute before the 1997 General Election by imposing him as a candidate in Hull weeks before polling day. This piece of scum is the man Blair has chosen to deal with the unions. He seems to relish the chance to get his own back on workers...

By Mark Osborn Vietnamese and Chinese workers are being recruited to work in sweatshop factories in America's Pacific territories. Attracted by the promise of good wages, the workers find themselves trapped in brutal sweatshops to make designer clothes for the US retail market and where they are beaten and starved. Last week a court in Washington found one boss, Lee Kil-soo, from the Daewoosa Samoa factory guilty of human trafficking. Lee, who will be sentenced on 9 June, owned the factory, near American Samoa's capital, Pago Pago. It employed 251 immigrant workers from Vietnam and China in...

By Jim Byagua Five hundred students met on 5 March to protest outside Parliament as part of national walkouts/action against war. Around two-thirds of the protestors were school students. Initially we shouted slogans from behind police barriers, but then the fencing was pulled apart and the demonstration blocked the road by Parliament. After sitting down we marched towards Downing Street where people clung to railing and chanted against war by Blair and Bush. As police moved into to try to move the crowd away many sat down and linked arms. The police then dragged the protestors - some quite...

A powerful international labour-based movement for democracy and international solidarity can defeat both George W Bush's war for oil and Saddam Hussein's bloody dictatorship. In the immediate term, we want to consolidate a democratic, secular and internationalist pole in the British anti-war movement. We want to build a visible alternative to the orientations in the movement that are expressed in the Cairo Declaration-which through its slogans, such as "solidarity with Iraq", conflates the peoples of Iraq and its vile government-and in link-ups with the Muslim Association of Britain-which is...

What is the attitude of Marxists to "backward" and "underdeveloped" countries and peoples who are being assaulted, occupied, or colonised by a more advanced but predatory civilisation? No-one expressed it so clearly and so forcefully as Leon Trotsky: "What characterises Bolshevism on the national question is that in its attitude to oppressed nations, even the most backward, it considers them not only the object but also the subject of politics. Bolshevism does not confine itself to recognising their 'rights' and parliamentary protests against the trampling upon of those rights. "Bolshevism...

By Angela Paton The Scottish Socialist Party held its annual conference in Glasgow on 22-23 February, with numbers down to about 250 because of a move to a delegate system rather than "one member one vote". There were some outrageous moments, including a challenge to an abortion rights motion which called for doctors not to be able to object on moral grounds. This came from a small minority of men who were against a woman's right to choose, full stop. Some of the same men who wanted to vote against us being in favour of secular education. Clearly, there are issues of religion to address in our...

Rose and Mercy, two asylum seekers living in Glasgow with their children are facing deportation. They fled from Zimbabwe and Rwanda, where both had been raped while in custody. After arriving in the UK both women found they had been infected with HIV. The Home Office has refused to recognise them as refugees and wants to remove them. If Rose and Mercy are deported back to Zimbabwe and Rwanda. They could be killed by the forces that caused them to flee… or die from HIV, because there is no affordable treatment. The women's statement says: "We are women and children asylum-seekers from African...

New Labour circular: "Meeting our targets" Nobody does it better Boo hoo hoo From Leeds to, er, Kiev New Labour circular: "Meeting our targets" Congratulations to David Blunkett for ensuring Britain stays at the top of the jailing league. Coming in at 139 prisoners for every 100,000 of population in England and Wales, we have not only a higher rate of imprisonment for every other country in Europe but we've also managed to beat off some really stiff competition from the Saudi Arabians, Burmese, Chinese and Malaysians! David's now doing a marvellous job at getting the figures up. It's fair to...