Solidarity 097, 10 August 2006

An Israeli soldier — Staff Sergeant Itzik Shabbat — has refused to comply with an emergency order (Tsav 8) to report today for reserve duty in Lebanon. Shabbat said, “In my opinion, only this type of opposition that I've chosen will put an end to the madness that is going on now and will shatter the false feeling that the entire home front supports this unnecessary war that is based on deceptive considerations. Someone has to be the first to break the silence and it will be me. It is a shame that my order was signed by another Sderot resident, Defense Minister Amir Peretz.” Shabbat has refused...

Samir Adil, president of the Iraq Freedom Congress, a movement initiated by the Worker-communist Party of Iraq, spoke to Martin Thomas when he visited London in July. Oil workers in southern Iraq are planning to strike against the sectarian militias — the Iraq Freedom Congress is asking all its members to support it. The demands are: • Abolition of all contracts which include imposed privatisation. • The disbanding and expulsion of armed militias from Iraqi cities. • An end to the killing of workers by the armed militias in Iraqi cities. • Continued distribution of food rations. • Continued...

by Alan Porter On 1 August the Worker-communist Party of Iraq and related campaigning organizations staged a protest against state terror in Iraqi Kurdistan. That week forces of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, part of the Kurdish government, had opened fire on a picket line at the Tasloja cement factory in Sulimaniya. Early reports had indicated that the PUK had killed 3 and injured 13 of the workers, who were striking for a pay rise and the reinstatement of 300 sacked workers. Fortunately, it later became clear that the workers rumoured dead were in fact ‘only’ badly injured. Nevertheless...

NHS Logistics: strike ballot against privatisation Vote Yes to strike action and say no to profit from care After some months of delay Unison has finally decided to go ahead with a ballot for industrial action over the proposed privatisation of NHS Logistics. Set up in 2000, NHS Logistics provides the health service in England with a huge range of critical products - from food to needles and syringes, beds and dressings. Over the last few years it has won a number of awards for excellence and quality of service as well as putting money back into the NHS through efficiency and other savings...

Journalists at South Yorkshire Newspapers, owned by the Edinburgh Johnstone Group, are taking strike action to raise the paltry wages paid to staff on a number of local titles throughout the South Yorkshire region. The company which made a massive £150 million in pre-tax profit, and paid its chief executive £772,000, pays its journalists and photographers a pittance. Graduates start on £13,000 a year – a drop from the £25,000 paid in 2005. Even the most experienced journalists earn only 60% of the national average wage. They have been offered a raise of just 2.75%. Contact Johnston Press boss...

By an RMT member Network Rail operational staff have won a 35-hour week — but after an unacceptably long wait and at the price of being locked into a two-year pay deal. Workers will get 3.2% for this year and an inflation plus 0.75% increase in April 2007. In fact management agreed the 35-hour week a full five years ago, at which point the union should have piled on the pressure for NR to deliver without strings. But instead railworkers faced an insulting offer tying the shorter working week to pitiful annual rises and no progress on important issues like staff travel. Rightly, RMT balloted...

Around 50 people packed a meeting organised by Hackney TUC to launch a local campaign against the privatisation of the East London Line. The Line - which currently does not serve Hackney - is due to be extended in time for the 2012 Olympics, but will be sold off to private contractors. Stagecoach and National Express are amongst the list of "preferred bidders". Human rights lawyer Louise Christian - who represented the families of the victims of the Hatfield and Potters Bar rail crashes - spoke, as did Jerry Wines (TSSA Regional Organiser) and Jason Humphreys (local RMT rep for ELL staff)...

by Stan Crooke Tommy Sheridan’s libel action against the News of the World was really two trials for the price of one. One trial was the libel action itself, triggered by Sheridan’s decision to sue the News of the World for £200,000 over articles which the paper had published in 2004 concerning his private life. According to the articles, Sheridan had cheated on his wife, attended a swingers’ club, and engaged in group sex. The other trial involved the future of the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP). Sheridan won the first trial. By seven votes to four the jury decided that Sheridan had been...

Tommy Sheridan spoke to the Daily Record on 7 August. Sheridan told the paper that he might stand in the election for convenor, due in October. If he wins that election he plans to quit and demand a re-run based on one-member, one vote postal ballot, in order to strengthen his position. “There is no way I could be convenor of a party with its apparatus controlled by those who have tried to politically undermine me. I think the SSP stand on the precipice of either a great new beginning or virtual oblivion.” “...When a socialist takes on one of hte most ruthless anti-union and anti-socialist...

By an SSP United Left supporter Whilst Tommy Sheridan's victory in court undoubtedly strengthened his supporters’ position within the Scottish Socialist Party, the core issues of the fight remain the same. Sheridan’s victory, 7 jurors to 4, is surprising, since the evidence was mounting up against him as the trial progressed, we can only assume that the jury fell for Tommy’s conspiracy theories. Whilst a split now seems likely, with two completely different and contradictory versions of the truth being on offer, both sides still seem determined to fight for the heart of the SSP. Whilst tactics...