Solidarity 075, 23 June 2005

I agree with nearly all your comments on ASBOs. Many people have been convinced that there is a massive problem with crime. Old people are afraid to go out of the house at night. As soon as people (particularly the elderly) see a group of young people, they think automatically they must be up to no good. I recently received a questionnaire from my local Council about crime and anti social behaviour. Rather than giving the answers they obviously desired from the questions asked, I said that something should be done about local planning policies which led to new houses being built in such a way...

David Broder had an exchange of views with Alys Elica Zaerin , chair of School Students Against the War. David: At the G8, SSAW will be using the slogan “fight poverty not war”, making the point that the US government spends billions more on war than on aid. But aren’t you missing the point that if debt is cut or more aid given to the Third World, it can still be squandered by corrupt regimes. Isn’t it more important to show positive solidarity with progressive forces like the workers’ movement, which can really end poverty? Alys: We are showing solidarity by going out on demonstrations — with...

By Chris Reynolds Why should Marxists want to narrow our appeal to “the workers”, enrolling people from other classes only to the extent that they rally behind the working class? Why not seek a broader unity of “ordinary people”? These questions are live among “anti-capitalist” activists, and on the left generally. Our starting point has to be Marx’s critique of political economy. Pivotal to that is the concept of abstract labour, or universal social labour — labour as the expenditure under standard conditions of a quotient of average labour-power. Abstract labour, according to Marx, is the...

By Mickey Conn The G8 Justice and Interior Ministers were welcomed to Sheffield from June 15-17, invited by David Blunkett when he was Home Secretary. Their stay shut down much of the city centre on several evenings, and some residents of the Nether Edge district had to use passes to get to their own homes. But many people wanted to protest about the minister and the governments pandering to racism by whipping up animosity to asylum seekers, about the arbitrary and intrusive imposition of ID cards and about their assault on trade unions and workers’ rights. The week began with an anti-war...

No Sweat is an activist organisation committed to making practical solidarity with sweatshop workers worldwide. We have run campaigns in support of workers producing for Puma and Nike in central Mexico (£2.50 per day), and stitching Levi’s jeans in Haiti for £10 per week. We have protested in support for Indonesian sweatshop workers slaving for Reebok and Adidas. We have worked with Iraqi trade unionists, raising money and support to help their new unions. We have protested to support Chinese trade unionists that have been jailed by the regime for organising strikes. And because we realise...

By Rhodri Evans One hundred and fifty trade Iraqi trade union activists — members of the General Union of Oil Employees, other trade unionists from the southern cities of Nasiriyah and Amara and Basra, and representatives of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions — came to a conference in Basra on 25-26 May to start organising a campaign against US-imposed plans to privatise the Iraqi economy. Shortly before the conference, the Beirut Daily Star had reported (17 May): “Iraq’s Industry Ministry plans to partially privatise most of its 46 state-owned companies as part of the government’s plan to...

By Martin Thomas Several socialist groups, meeting in Paris on 18 June, agreed on the project of an international demonstration, some time in the coming months, in support of the workers’ movement in Iraq. The idea is to have simultaneous demonstrations in many cities — Paris, Warsaw, Sydney, London... — on the slogans: “Against the occupation, against the Islamists, for workers’ rights, for a socialist republic”. General demonstrations against the military occupation of Iraq by the US and its allies are commonplace; but often they suggest at least implicit support for the Islamist and Sunni...

The sums spent by the world’s richest governments on aid and debt relief pale in comparison to the amount they spend on weapons. In 2004 — the sixth successive year in which global arms spending increased — the global total spent on munitions topped $1 trillion for the first time since the height of the Cold War. The amount spent on aid that year was $78.6 billion. The US alone spent $455 billion on arms, an increase from the previous year of 12%; its aid spending is about 4.1% of its total arms bill. It accounts for 50% of world arms spending, despite having only around 5% of the global...

Behind all the press and TV reports of new governments and constitutions, and bloodshed by both US/UK troops and Al Qaeda types, there is another story in Iraq. It is that of the new Iraqi labour movement, re-establishing itself in difficult circumstances. Iraqi workers have set up trade unions, evicted old Ba'thist bosses and new American contractors, won pay raises, campaigned to save jobs, demanded jobs or benefits for the unemployed, and resisted privatisation. On this diverse and lively Iraqi labour movement depend all hopes of winning a free, democratic, and secular Iraq. Iraq Union...

By Pablo Velasco The barricades in the Bolivian uprising have come down for now, but the struggle is far from over. For the past month Bolivia has been rocked by strikes, road blockades and street demonstrations, which forced president Carlos Mesa to resign on 6 June. Mesa had been in power since October 2003, when the previous president Sanchez de Lozada resigned after similar mobilisations. The new President, Eduardo Rodriguez, a supreme court judge, is likely to call new elections for later this year. The current crisis began on May 16 when the right-wing dominated Congress approved Mesa’s...