Solidarity 025, 6 March 2003

Critical for the working class, critical of the left and frankly self-critical. Those were the essentials at the Alliance for Workers' Liberty (AWL) conference in London on 1-2 March. Paul Hampton reports. The purpose of the AWL's conference was to draw a balance sheet on the last 12 months' work, debate differences within the organisation and set out the main political lines of our activity for the coming year, and in these respects it was a great success. Some of these issues are certain to be debated further in Solidarity over the coming months. The opening session of conference discussed...

The Stop The War Coalition is calling for workplace walkouts and mass anti-war rallies at 6pm in town centres everywhere on the day war breaks out. It will also call a national demonstration the next Saturday. Organised working-class industrial action could really put the pressure on the Government to reverse it's policy on this war. It is what the Government most fears. It has already said it wants to ban firefighters' strike action in the event of war. If we can organise enough solidarity to make the FBU confident to defy the Government's ban and war blackmail, then we can check the war...

Labour Against the War is organising a "recall Labour Party Conference" - a delegate conference of Labour members and affiliates - on Saturday 29 March. Jill Mountford reports. Alan Simpson MP, Chair of the Socialist Campaign Group described the LATW initiative as a "battle for the soul of the Labour Party" at the press launch on Tuesday 4 March. Simpson urged members not to leave the Labour Party in disgust and despair at Blair's partnership with Bush and the Government's haste to war on Iraq. He argued that "No struggle is ever won by those who walk away from it." And invited people to join...

By Clive Bradley In Arbil, the capital of the Kurdish semi-independent enclave in northern Iraq, thousands demonstrated on 2 March against the prospect not of an American invasion, but a Turkish one. The Turkish parliament, where moderate Islamists recently swept to power, has voted against allowing American troops to attack Iraq from its territory. But Turkey remains an American ally and member of NATO, and there is much talk of Turkey moving into the areas established under US protection after the last Gulf war. Part of their aim, at least, would be to attack Turkish Kurdish guerrillas there...