Solidarity 026, 20 March 2003

by Martin Thomas The war is a time of ferment on the streets-and also of ferment among left-wing activists. The Labour Party has been thrown into crisis. It is no longer the Blairocracy it was-probably never will be again, even if the war goes "well" for Blair. Hundreds of disgusted activists are leaving the Labour Party. And, at the same time, opposition within the Labour Party has reached higher levels than for many years. Outside the Labour Party, the left finds itself bobbing in a flood of new people interested in radical ideas. What of the Socialist Alliance, the coalition that includes...

Jill Mountford spoke to Chris Jones, former chair of Merseyside FBU. On 19 March, the special conference of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) in Brighton rejected an "improved" offer from the bosses in their long-running pay dispute. Their leaders had been desperate to have a 16%-over-three-years pay offer accepted and had recommended settlement. Just a week earlier the bosses had made a similar offer, and this had been rejected by the leadership! The bosses' latest offer had reworded a paragraph relating to modernisation to allow both sides to claim some kind of victory. But delegates from...

By Alan Clarke This year's conference of the National Union of Students (NUS), 31 March to 3 April, takes place against a background of massive student anti-war protests. The issue of the war will certainly dominate the conference. Whether it will make it onto the agenda is another matter. The growth of student activism inspired by the anti-war movement has yet to filter through to most student unions. The ballot of union executives which determines what is debated at NUS Conference prioritised the old favourites such as 'Welfare' and 'Student Activities', pushing 'Internationalism' off the...

There are many sorts of pacifist: the recent votes in the Commons on war against Iraq have shown that. Many of those who opposed Blair will now "come on side" and support "our troops" like the Daily Mirror. In this article from early 1917 Leon Trotsky discussed the nature and limits of 'official pacifism' in the run-up to World War One, and counterposed to it socialist class struggle-the only force on earth with the interest and the strength to stop all war. William Jennings Bryan, mentioned in the article, was a politician connected with the more radical wing of the US Democratic Party...

By Sean Matgamna A couple of weeks ago Tony Blair tried to frighten opponents of George W Bush's war on Iraq by conjuring up the ghost of Neville Chamberlain, the pre-World War Two British Tory prime minister and "appeaser" of Hitler. Those who oppose war now, he said, when it is still possible to "take out" Saddam Hussein with little cost (except to the tens of thousands of Iraqi children and many other innocent Iraqis who will die in the US/British blitz) are in the same position as those who appeased Hitler through most of the 1930s, blundering towards World War 2. In fact, it is not the...

School students protests are now taking place every day. As we go to press, we have heard of a protest in Manchester 5,000 strong. Send your reports and pictures to us. Leicester On the morning of 7 March schools in Leicester walked out with everyone converging on the city centre. Around 1,000 walked out from maybe 10 schools around the county. About 500 made it to the city centre protests. The event was marred by heavy handed policing. The police declared the protest an "unlawful assembly" and tried to make the students disperse. At this point the police made an arrest. Many went to the...

Thousands of students in Australia abandoned school on 5 March to take to the streets to protest against any war against Iraq. The biggest crowd - about 10,000! - was in Sydney. Police estimate 7,000 turned out in Adelaide, 1,000 in Canberra and hundreds in Perth, Hobart and Brisbane. The Australian government - in defiance of public opinion - is backing the invasion of Iraq.

by Dan Katz Ariel Sharon's right-wing Israeli government seems set to build a massive, 20-metre high security wall, which will encircle a large part of the West Bank. The enclosed area-only a part of the West Bank-could form the basis for a future Palestinian semi-state, although Sharon denies that this is his intention. The PLO's Michael Tarazi has accused Israel of wanting to grab even more of the Occupied Territories, including good agricultural land, and to fully control future movements between Palestinian-controlled areas and Jordan. The Israeli government has also announced its...

In Israel the "war on terror" continues. It will do nothing to eliminate the criminal and condemnable suicide bomb attacks on Israeli citizens, but will likely only increase them. This "war on terror" now involves permanent curfews, demolition of Palestinian homes, extra-judicial killings of suspected organisers of the suicide bombings, daily Israeli army incursions into Palestinian areas, killings and maimings of Palestinians, including children, strangulation of the Palestinian economy so that there is a huge increase in reliance on aid and malnutrition among Palestinian children. Israeli...

A factory in Thailand which supplied Nike, Reebok and Adidas closed down, without warning, in October 2002. It owed its 350 workers $400,000 in back wages and redundancy pay. An international campaign began, calling on the Thai government to bring the owners of the factory to justice and to ensure that workers were paid all that they were owed. Warrants were issued for the arrest of the owners, and the government ordered that the workers be paid back wages. Workers held a three-month picket outside the Ministry of Labour, held demonstrations in front of Government House and the US Embassy, had...