Solidarity 152, 28 May 2009

This is an appeal by the Labour Relief Campaign launched by the Labour Party Pakistan. The purpose of the appeal to provide immediate help to some of the more than 1.5 million internally displaced people from the Malakand Division of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) in Pakistan. , The Taliban have taken over parts of Pakistan. They have threatened to occupy other parts as well. To pacify them, the government went into an accord with the Taliban in April 2009, imposing a so-called Nizam Adl (system of justice) in Malakanad. The Taliban then imposed medieval laws in the areas under their...

Activists from Nottinghamshire Stop the BNP returned to the streets in their campaign against the British National Party. Leafleting door-to-door in the Beeston area of Nottingham, a small group of anti-fascists found themselves on the same front steps as the BNP, who’d covered the area a short time before. The BNP material — a combination of glossy leaflets and a photocopied local newsletter — repeated the fascists core themes for the coming European and local elections: “Say to to EU rule”, “oppose mass immigration”, “house British people first”, “help pensioners not banks”. Wayne Shelbourn...

This month comrades in East London came home to find election material for the British National Party had been put through their doors. A leaflet was quickly drafted arguing that postal workers should refuse to give out BNP material on the basis of working class anti-fascism. We then took the leaflet down to the Bow delivery office to catch the morning shift. There was generally a very good response. Many workers have already refused to hand out the racists’ propaganda on the grounds of their agreement, which allows them to refuse to hand out what they consider “offensive”. This action came...

Sacha Ismail reviews the Tate Modern’s exhibition of paintings and sculpture by Liubov Popova and Aleksandr Rodchenko. “We must be consciously proud that we live in this great new epoch, the epoch of grand undertaking... We must break from the past because we do not believe in it any more, because its premises are not acceptable, and we will create the new ones.” Liubov Popova The Russian revolution did not just tranform political and economic relations. It penetrated all levels of society, including art and culture, producing a tremendous blossoming of visual art in particular. This...

By 19 May, 200 mainstream Labour Party figures had signed a letter to the National Executive urging it to “support the immediate removal of the whip from individual MPs who have brought the party into disrepute over this issue and allow CLPs [constituency Labour party] to trigger reselection ballots against them”. The National Executive that day decided to set up “a panel of NEC members... to interview any Labour MPs where there appears to be evidence against them. The panel will have the power to recommend to the NEC that MPs are not allowed to stand as Labour candidates at the next General...

28 May, the day after Solidarity went to press, was the last day of the RMT's ballot for strike action among 10,000 workers on London Underground and at Transport for London over pay, jobs and management bullying. The union is reballoting after management got the first ballot — which produced 84% for a strike and 93% for action short of a strike — ruled illegal under the anti-union laws. Activists expect a strong yes vote, particularly after management helped us out by going round and trying to persuade everyone that the strike is a bad idea! One highly positive aspect has been the creation of...

On 24 May, a crowd of five hundred rioted in Luton city centre, seeking out and terrorising people whom they thought were Muslims and attacking Asian-owned businesses. We carry a report in the centre pages of Solidarity 3/152 . The European Parliament election results will come out after this paper has gone to press. The fascist BNP may win a Euro-MP. If it doesn’t, it may well be only because it been gazumped by the richer UK Independence Party, which has run a high-profile campaign focused heavily on agitation against immigration. The economic crisis, the failure of the mainstream parties'...

More than five hundred “demonstrators” went on a racist rampage in Luton on Sunday 24 May. Orchestrating the mob — which clashed with police, attacked at least one local Muslim man and several businesses — were a team of balaclava wearing thugs. Two groups, “United People of Luton” (UPL) and “March for England” (MfE), called the demonstration in response to disruption caused by the clerical-fascist Al Muhajiroun organisation at a parade for returning troops in March this year. Both UPL and MfE claim to be non-racist and not aligned to any political party. Racist? Well the dividing line between...

In Solidarity 3/151 Sean Matgamna started a discussion on perspectives for the labour movement in the economic crisis. We continue the discussion in Solidarity with a (personal) reply to Sean’s articles by Cathy Nugent and a reply to Cathy by Martin Thomas. The other articles here are “observations” on issues of relevance to the discussion. Sean and other comrades have written other articles on this issue; these, a longer version of Cathy’s article and the policy in support of union disaffiliation from Labour passed by the current AWL National Committee can be found here . The issue will be...

In part 4 of his series on “Misunderstandings, misrepresentations, and lies about the AWL” Sean Matgamna gives an overview of the Trotskyist movement from the 1940s to the 1960s. Click here for part 2 of this article . Where does AWL come from? We started as Workers’ Fight, a group that emerged in 1966-7 as a response to the crisis of the British and international Trotskyist movement. In Britain then there were four main revolutionary left groupings. • The Socialist Labour League was far and away the biggest and most active. (It would later rename itself WRP, degenerate hugely, and collapse...