Solidarity 086, 12 January 2006

New York transport workers strike

Tube and bus workers in New York shut down the city's transit system in a strike that lasted 60 hours in the run-up to Christmas. The action, organised by the Transit Workers Union (TWU), was in response to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's (MTA) plan to attack pension rights. The MTA wants to either raise the retirement age, or to make new staff pay 6% pension contributions instead of the current 2%. Some 33,000 subway and bus workers - 70% Black, Latino, or Asian American - walked out for 21Ž2 days, returning to work on 22 December. The strike has won pay increases, a day off for...

Very "loyal rebel" fails to win SWP ranks

The Socialist Workers' Party's annual conference, which took place over the weekend of January 7-8, witnessed an event unprecedented in the last twenty years: a contested election. What's going on? The SWP's pre-conference bulletin No 3, contained an announcement from Portsmouth SWPer John Molyneux of his intention to stand for the group's Central Committee, on a platform mildly critical of the SWP leadership. Molyneux is an SWP member of longstanding, and his challenge was significant enough to receive a reply from the CC. At the conference, Molyneux's proposal that he be elected in addition...

This land is ours!

Rosalind Robson reviews Whose Britain Is It Anyway?, BBC2 Inequality of land ownership used to one of the major concerns of the early working class and socialist movements in Britain. It is still of great importance around the world, wherever people depend on the land for subsistence. Historically in Britain the right to access and use land (particularly land traditionally deemed to be for "common", i.e. universal, use) became extremely important when the "enclosure" of common land by the landlords took place, on a massive scale from the end of the 18th century. The landords claimed ownership...

Israel and the Palestinians head for the polls

By Mark Osborn "Sharon is still 'fighting for his life', between operation room and intensive care, but the myth-making is already going on at full speed", comments Adam Keller's alternative briefing, The Other Israel. "The overwhelming majority of Israeli commentators describe Ariel Sharon as the tragic hero stricken by fate while only halfway through with what should have been the apotheosis of his biography: the man of war ultimately achieving peace. He is compared with Ben Gurion and with the murdered Prime Minister Yitzhak RabinŠ The myth of Sharon the Peacemaker actually started from the...

The Islamic Republic Against the Iranian working class

By Yasmine Mather, Workers' Left Unity-Iran Although Iranians are well known for blaming foreign powers for all the country's social, economic and political problems, there is some truth in their resentment of the United States and its role in ensuring the survival of the clerical regime in Tehran and thus bringing about the presidency of the fascist Ahmedinejad. If it wasn't for the policy of "regime change" in Iraq and the disastrous war of the last three years, Iran's Shia rulers would not have retained power and strengthened their position in the region. Thanks to the US/UK occupation and...

The real struggle for liberation in Iraq

The following letter was sent by Pauline Bradley, the Convenor of Iraq Union Solidarity, to the Morning Star at the end of last year. A cut down version of this letter was published. It's very sad to see the anti war "left" so shallow and devoid of strategy and critical analysis. Like a huge number of people on the left today, I was in the SWP 20 years ago, but left after three years for many reasons. The Morning Star's editorial, front page and article about the "peace" conference on 10 December could easily have been published in Socialist Worker. Only once is the word "worker" mentioned, in...

A case study in centrism

In the last issue of Solidarity, Mordecai Ryan outlined the history of the ILP , the main British "centrist" organisation of the 1930s and 40s. Its nearest equivalent in Britain today is the SWP. As mud is a mix of earth and water so centrism is an unstable and almost always incoherent mix of bits of revolutionary Marxist political tradition and aspiration with alien, reformist, etc elements. But the elements incorporated in any given centrist organisation and the proportion of revolutionary Marxist to other elements vary from organisation to organisation and in a given organisation from time...

Haiti: Aristide supporters return to power?

By Dan Katz Haitian authorities have rescheduled the first round of presidential and parliamentary elections for 7 February. The polls, originally set for last November, have been postponed four times because of so-called "security and organisational issues". Thirty five presidential candidates and some 1,300 legislative candidates are set to run in elections which will be the first since President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was pushed into exile nearly two years ago. The Haiti en Marche newspaper suggests political reasons are factors behind the postponement: "informal opinion polls confirm the...

The sad farce of Galloway on Big Brother

By David Broder "Not since Ken Livingstone was giving out GLC grants has such a collection of loony tunes gathered under one roof. . . This is reality TV's nadir - or so we must hope." George Galloway on Big Brother, May 2004 "The contestants are desperate to appear on TV. . . sad, vulnerable people. . . Channel 4 is not just exploiting the contestants. It is debasing the viewers as well." Socialist Worker, August 2000 "Come May, people won't be deciding on whether to vote Respect or not on the basis of Big Brother." SWP Party Notes, January 2006 Channel 4 has once again shown itself to be...

Lessons of the Irish ferries dispute

By Sacha Ismail The bitter stand off between the workers and management of Irish Ferries last month, in which an occupation of two ships triggered a powerful wave of solidarity action, has been resolved. At the end of November, Irish Ferries unilaterally issued a 'proposal' to sack 543 directly employed seafarers and replace them with agency workers from Eastern Europe working 84 hours a week for £2.40 an hour. The ferries in question, the Isle of Inishmore and the Ulysses were occupied in protest by workers in Pembroke Dock and Holyhead in Wales. At the same time, solidarity strikes grounded...

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