Solidarity 036, 4 September 2003

On 9-12 September, the Excel centre in East London hosts DSEin - Defence Systems and Equipment International-one of the world's biggest arms fairs. And why shouldn't the fair come here? The UK is the world's second biggest arms exporter after all: in 2001 arms exports from the USA were worth $9,700 million, from the UK $4,000 million. Before the Kelly affair robbed him of much of his allure, our very own defence secretary Geoff Hoon was rumoured to be opening the fair. A comprehensive agenda of protest will greet the 1,000 exhibitors and 20,000 shoppers (see box), who will be guarded by 1,600...

It is now more than one hundred days since the Indonesian army launched its attack on the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), but there is no sign of an end to the incursion. Indonesian labour leader Dita Sari evaluated the the situation in a talk held in Jakarta on 14 August organised by the People's Lawyers Union. The prolonged political conflict [over Aceh] has its source in economic and social injustice created by the Indonesian government, beginning with the New Order regime of former-President Suharto, up until the current regime of President Megawati Sukarnoputri. Following the overthrow of...

By Joan Trevor The two main far-left groups in France, the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (LCR) and Lutte Ouvrière (LO), are debating whether to run a joint election campaign for the European elections in 2004. In the Euro elections of 1999 their joint slate won 5.2% of the vote, and LCR got two and LO three candidates elected to the European parliament. Can they repeat this performance? What would they gain from it? What would they risk? Is unity this time around even likely? I cannot predict-the question is the main topic at the meeting of the LCR Central Committee next weekend-but the...

In 1989 Mikhail Gorbachev was forced by the political and economic condition of the dying 'Soviet Union' to withdraw Russian troops from the Warsaw Pact countries. These Stalinist satellite states rapidly collapsed, the regimes overthrown by their own people. The collapse of the 'independent' Stalinist states of Yugoslavia and Albania, and the USSR followed. It was a demonstration of the power of workers and ordinary people to change history. The demise of the Stalinist system opened up a tremendous potential for independent workers' organisation. However this massive potential remains...

by Oona Swann THE FIRST WORKING CLASS MOVEMENT With turn-outs at elections at an all-time low and disillusion with politics rampant, it's odd to look back on a time when working people had no vote, when the vote seemed key to winning economic and social equality. The Chartist movement grew out of disgust at the failure of the 1832 Reform Act to extend the vote beyond the middle classes. The political system was openly corrupt, it was acknowledged that wealth and property conferred political power, not covertly as now, but by buying votes. In June 1836 William Lovett, Henry Hetherington, John...

Earlier this year, the Government's White Paper on higher education funding proposed to allow universities to set their own fees, with the upper limit raised from the current £1,100 to £3,000. What about the Labour Party manifesto commitment against top-up fees? No problem! Simply delay payment until after graduation, rename the proposal an 'individualised graduate tax' and watch opposition melt away. Alan Clarke looks at the prospects for a serious student and labour movement campaign against the plans. It is hard to overstate how disastrous the consequences will be if the White Paper is...

Sean Matgamna As a bald slogan, without further explanation, "for a workers' party" is meaningless. Half a dozen different people could agree that they are for a "workers' party" and then discover they all mean different things by it. What meaning this slogan has in a specific situation is given to it by how its advocates answer certain questions. Is what is being advocated a party in the sense of a programmatically defined Marxist party, or is it a broad mass trade union based party of the old Labour Party type? If the first, what are its politics? What are its roots and traditions? In our...

Martin Thomas To "campaign for a workers' party" means three things: 1. Setting out and grouping people round basic working-class political objectives-independent working-class political representation, a workers' government, a working-class "Third Camp" in international politics. 2. Arguing for working-class socialist unity, in the form of a new Socialist Alliance-a new regroupment of the left which rejects the SWP's hijack of the present Alliance and continues what that Alliance started out to do. 3. Developing a consistent policy in the unions to mobilise them against the New Labour...

Sean Matgamna When I advised Mark Osborn to try rereading the Solidarity editorial on the Middle East "Roadmap", which he criticised, I had in mind that he should reread it for political meaning. It now turns out that Mark's difficulty is with the plain meaning of words. I understand the words "to use force", or "to use a great deal of force", to mean physical force-between states, military force to overwhelm resistance, or the threat of it to compel compliance. "Use force" is a specific reference to something directly physical. The expression has a simple meaning, and a clear one. The words...

During the recent war on Iraq one of the components of the anti-war movement was "poets against the war". Groups sprung up in many countries. The website is still going and people are still submitting poems, some of these are better than others. Find it at www.poetsagainstthewar.org . The UK website features one by Paul Marsden MP. Fortunately there are more interesting ones than his. It includes, for instance, the following 8th century Chinese poem. Lament of the Frontier Guard By the North Gate, the wind blows full of sand, Lonely from the beginning of time until now! Trees fall, the grass...