Solidarity 110, 19 April 2007

Members of the civil service union PCS will shortly receive ballot papers for the union’s national executive (NEC) and “group” (sector) executive elections. For the first time, members will have the chance to vote for a clear, class-struggle alternative to the Left Unity leadership in the form of PCS Independent Left. Since the election of Mark Serwotka as General Secretary in 2000 and the subsequent establishment of a Left Unity majority on the NEC, LU and its strongest component, the Socialist Party, have presented PCS as having a fighting, socialist leadership. In fact, the union’s record...

By a delegate The big step forward at the annual conference of the National Union of Teachers, in Harrogate at Easter, was the passing of a motion calling for united public-sector strike action on pay. Chances to push the union leadership into action on other issues were, however, missed. Performance related pay will be introduced in September. Conference had a motion calling for a ballot for “a programme of national strike action” against it. The Executive proposed to amend the motion so that it called on them only to consider national action, and only if additional PRP measures were...

By Mike Fenwick Healthworkers from around the country gather in Brighton on 22-24 April for Unison’s Annual Health Conference. After another turbulent year in the NHS it seems likely that the mood will be angry, but the key question remains, how can that anger be turned into action. It is now a year since Patricia Hewitt was greeted with boos and cheers after announcing it had been the NHS’s best year ever. However, last year’s conference decisions to organise national action to defend the NHS have come to little. All we’ve had is a lobby of parliament and a rather badly organised region-by...

By Jean Lane, Tower Hamlets Unison Support Staff at Central Foundation Girls’ School in East London won a dispute over redundancies just before the Easter holidays began. Last September the new Headteacher announced an intention to restructure the admin department and that this would be likely to lead to redundancies. Eleven admin workers were to lose their job and be made to reapply for another. Unison members asked the head for redundancy-avoiding measures such as direct assimilation. We were told no even before the new job descriptions had been written, on the basis of an excuse about job...

by a london underground worker London Underground have announced the closure of 40 ticket office with the loss of 240 jobs. Although 140 new jobs will be created to form a “special requirements team”, this hardly sweetens the pill of the savage ticket office job cull. The unions need to gear up for action straight away. Maybe it is too much to hope for that the clerical union TSSA will do anything more than write a stern letter, but perhaps some members will feel angry enough to demand real action: good luck to them. RMT has the potential to fight and defeat this attack, although it is...

By Joan Trevor The first round of voting in the French presidential election will be on Sunday 22 April; assuming that no one wins a majority then (and no one will) the second round will be two weeks later on Sunday 6 May. The likely run-off in the second round will be between right-winger Nicolas Sarkozy, recently interior minister, and the not very left-wing Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal. A repeat of the situation in 2002 when the National Front fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen got through to the second round is unlikely. In the campaign for the first round, those candidates that...

by Colin Foster In Iraq the USA is edging towards a war on two fronts. If that happens, the almost certain result will be another big lurch into further sectarian civil war and social chaos. Over the last four years, since April 2003, the US has mainly been fighting Sunni-sectarian “resistance” groups. Since April 2005 the US has been in alliance with Iraqi governments led by Shia Islamists. George W Bush’s new military “surge” in Iraq, since February, has mainly targeted Sunni militias. Now it looks as if the USA may simultaneously go to war with one of the Shia Islamist militias, Moqtada al...

By Stan Crooke Last weekend’s police attacks on anti-Putin demonstrators in Moscow and St. Petersburg underlined the extent to which the Kremlin is prepared to go in snuffing out all manifestations of opposition in the run-up to this year’s parliamentary elections and next year’s presidential elections. In Moscow around 2,000 demonstrators who gathered for a protest rally in Pushkin Square on Saturday were surrounded by 9,000 riot police. Police made 170 arrests, including former chess champion Gary Kasparov, who now heads the United Civil Front and the broader coalition known as “The Other...

Last weekend’s demonstrations in Moscow and St. Petersburg which were attacked by the police had been organised by “The Other Russia” (TOR), initiated by Garry Kasparov in 2005 and formally launched in 2006. TOR’s founding conference condemned Putin’s government for “the destruction of civil liberties and the cleansing of the political field.” The conference committed TOR to “freeing the country from outbreaks of prejudice, racism and xenophobia,” to “returning Russia to the democratic path,” and to “restoring the constitutional norms and the rule of the people.” The two central demands raised...

By Sacha Ismail London and Washington's favourite military dictator, General Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, has been in power since 2000 and “constitutional” president of Pakistan since 2002. This year, he plans to have himself re-elected for another five term, and is determined to crush anyone who gets in his way. The last month has seen a rising tide of protests sparked by Musharraf’s decision on 9 March to suspend Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, chief justice of Pakistan’s supreme court, and try him on charges of corruption. Beginning with lawyers’ strikes and demonstrations, this movement has...