Solidarity 044, 22 January 2004

Tax the rich, don't scapegoat refugees

In a recent Mori poll four out of 10 white people said they wanted to live in area with people of the same ethnic background. More older white people than younger felt this way. Any way you look at it, and even taking into account the smallness of the sample - just 1000 - the figure is shocking. It must reflect hardening attitudes to immigration, or specifically, towards asylum seekers, particularly among working class people. The same poll showed that the issue of immigration had risen up the list of people's concerns. It was the third most important political issue, after health and...

APPEAL: Help the Israeli refuseniks!

Dear comrades, The Refusers Parents Forum is an informal organisation of friends and relatives of Israeli Conscientious Objectors who have just been sentenced for a second year in military jail. They have refused to enlist in the Israel army (IDF) while it remains an occupation force. We have started a petition calling for the Government to free these COs. The petition text, details of the trial, their testimonies and all the background is available on our website. www.refuz.org.il The petition As we see it, your government is jailing [the COs] because of their convictions! These young men...

Haiti: the crisis and the workers

By Mark Osborn At the end of March a sweatshop union organiser from the militant Haitian trade union Batay Ouvriye will go on a speaker tour of Britain organised by No Sweat and the Haiti Support Group. Batay Ouvriye describes itself as "an organisation [of] factory unions and committees, workers' associations and militants, struggling for the construction of an independent, combative and democratic union movement, and to organise wage-workers, self-employed workers and the unemployed for the defense of their rights. "The organisation is an alternative to the traditional bureaucratic, corrupt...

Where can Iranian workers protest against all MPs?

By Yassamine Mather News about Iran in the Western press has been dominated by the sit-in staged by "reformist" MPs in the Islamic Majles [parliament] who are protesting at the Guardian Council's decision to ban more than 3,000 candidates in next month's elections. Although the banned MPs can all be classified as Shia and Islamist supporters of the religious state in Iran, the Guardian Council, led by the unelected supreme leader, Ayatollah Khameini has banned many of them as well a large of number of other candidates. In Iraq, the Shia clergy is keen on elections, but in Iran, where 25 years...

Recent workers' struggles in China

News of the class struggle will be easier to follow in English from now on, thanks to a monthly bulletin produced by the China Labour Bulletin. The online bulletin, produced in Hong Kong, is an excellent source of information on workers' struggles inside China, where over 200 million industrial workers produce a huge volume of clothes, trainers, toys and other products sold all over the world. Some recent examples of class struggle are summarised below. In November, around 10,000 workers from the Xiangyang Automobile Bearing Company in Xiangfan City blocked roads and railway lines across the...

No Sweat actions

London Chinatown New Year celebrations Valentine's Day - Solidarity with Mexican workers Dayschool Leicester London Chinatown New Year celebrations Petitioning for the Liaoyang Two Sunday 25 January, 10.30-12 noon Corner Shaftesbury Avenue and Gerrard Place Valentine's Day Solidarity with Mexican workers Petitioning and dressing up... Lewisham Clock Tower, Lewisham High Street 11am-1pm Dayschool Leicester Saturday 21 February, 12 - 5.30pm Secular Hall, Humberstone Gate, Leicester Including: Simon Jones Campaign video, Harvard University sit-in Video Discussions on Minimum wage campaign...

Socialist Alliance dumps "worker's wage"

"It's not clear what a 'worker's wage' means", said Alan Thornett, one of the concluding speakers for the majority at the Socialist Alliance Council meeting on 17 January. "If it's what my plumber gets, then even George might accept it". He urged the Council to vote down a proposal to have the Socialist Alliance argue for "workers' representatives on a worker's wage" in "Respect", the new coalition headed by "George" - George Galloway MP - into which the SWP and its allies are sinking the Alliance. The "worker's wage" was the unanimously agreed first of the Socialist Alliance's "priority...

Minority must take the fight forward

Martin Thomas looks at the history of the Socialist Alliance and of far-left electoral campaigns The Socialist Alliance in its present form emerged in the run-up to the May 2001 general election. It united almost all the activist left groups in England, and drew in some hundreds of unaffiliated socialists, to stand 98 candidates. A small "Socialist Alliance" - mostly local groups of the Socialist Party and some unaffiliated activists - had existed since 1992, but the immediate jump-off point for 2001 was 1998. In July 1994 Tony Blair had been elected leader of the Labour Party and quickly...

CPB: separate ways, but respectfully

The Communist Party of Britain voted at a special congress on 17 January not to join the "Respect" coalition. In its paper, the Morning Star, of 19 January the report of the congress sat under a puff for a "Respect" rally in Oxford with George Galloway, but that, in turn, was flanked by a piece about the Scottish Socialist Party's Tommy Sheridan demanding that Scotland's First Minister refuse a dinner invitation from the "despots" and "ruthless rulers" of Saudi Arabia. Galloway was on dinner-invitation terms with top people in the Iraqi dictatorship from 1994 to 2003, and says his Iraqi...

The life, times and politics of Ken Livingstone

Workers' Liberty London Forum: The life, times and politics of Ken Livingstone A debate Wednesday 28 January 7.30-9.30pm Room 2C, University of London Union, Malet Street, WC1 More details 020 7207 3997

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