Solidarity - articles before 22 November 2002

Why "hate Israel" agitation is no service to the Palestinians (2002)

Right now, what are the most important political points about the Middle East conflict for socialists in Britain? To back Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation of the lands where they live. To demand Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Territories. To support those in Israel who oppose the occupation, and those who refuse to serve in the Israeli army in the Occupied Territories. To demand justice for the Palestinian nation - their immediate right to set up an independent Palestinian state, side by side with Israel, and the provision of sufficient compensation and aid to allow the...

Government plans to scrap national pay for teachers

From School Teachers Opposed to Performance Pay (STOPP) Education Secretary Estelle Morris has signalled the Government's intention to try and shatter the national pay structure for teachers. Thanks to the weakness of the teacher union leaderships, New Labour have already managed to introduce the divisive 'threshold' and annual target-setting through 'performance management'. From the outset, STOPP (School Teachers Opposed to Performance Pay) warned that PRP would be used to ration teachers' pay and set teacher against teacher. Performance pay would also damage education as teachers...

Afghanistan's peace that isn't

By Nicole Ashford On 8 September, 15 people died in fighting in the Afghan city of Khost. Precisely why they died is not clear. We do know the fighting had to do with a dispute involving a local warlord, Padshah Khan Zadran. One report suggests he feels aggrieved that he did not receive sufficient credit for his role in bringing down the Taliban. This is Afghanistan at peace. Three days earlier, President Hamid Karzai survived an assassination attempt by a margin of six inches. There are suggestions that the attack was masterminded by the warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a former Prime Minister...

Indonesia - Autonomy for Aceh!

The Indonesian regime and the military have drastically stepped up the repression in Aceh. The chair of the Acehnese Popular Democratic Resistance Front (FPDRA) has been abducted, probably by the military. The military have also scooped up 200 people in a raid. With the exception of a short interval of relative peace in 1999 and 2000, most parts of Aceh can be described as war zones. The death toll since the beginning of 2002 has risen to around fifteen people a day, most of them civilians. Clashes between the Indonesian armed forces and police and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) are virtually...

Globalising reformism

Paul Hampton looks at the TUC's report Globalisation: Myths and Realities This report seeks to give a labour movement perspective on the question, but misses the whole point about a working-class response to globalisation. The report points out that "globalisation" is a category used to explain a series of apparently contradictory phenomena, from poverty in the Third World, deindustrialisation in the West, and new technologies, to world production and trade trends. This is a fair point: except the report doesn't say that it is capitalism that should be the subject of the enquiry, and that's...

Surely We Can Do Better For Kids

By Janine Booth - From Solidarity 3/14, 11 October 2002 I live in a SureStart pilot area. SureStart is a government project to help children younger than four years old. But for many parents, kids and workers, it has been a frustrating experience. I will say before I start to rant that SureStart Queensbridge and Dalson provides some good services, and we would be poorer without it. My friends and I have benefited from classes, advice, and play sessions. We have a great little Toddler Art Club on our estate. But it was a battle with SureStart's administration to get it going, and therein lies...

The writing on the wall: Diabolical dialectics

It's certainly been a week for things turning into their opposite. "There is such a thing as society" ( now where have we heard that before? ) Oppressed Gentlefolk Not just toffs Everyone's favourite BISHOP And Fruitfully "There is such a thing as society" ( now where have we heard that before? ) "All fixed, fast, frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with his sober...

Euro: SWP want unity with "left" nationalists

By Martin Thomas Many socialists unsure on the euro say that the question for them is whether it is possible to make an internationalist campaign for "no to the euro" sufficiently strong that it will become not just a quirky adjunct to the Murdoch/Tory "no" campaign. In fact, I think, a genuinely internationalist campaign for "no" (as distinct from one run by people who, for the sake of self-delusion, make peculiar private "internationalist" interpretations of their "no" vote) is no more possible than a square circle. Whether I'm right or wrong about that, we now have new information. Even if...

Colombia: Workers protests meet savage repression

By Gerry Byrne Based on a report by Nathalie Alsop and Ramon Acevedo, members of the Committee for a New Colombia. On 16 September, only one month after Uribe Velez took office as President, over 800,000 people protested against the government's policies of war and repression throughout Colombia. The new Colombian government's programme includes: A labour reform that reduces wages and overtime A pension reform that increases the retirement age by a third The reduction of public sector salaries by 30%. These changes angered workers and their unions, who declared a day of protest and a 24-hour...

Ulster Unionist ultimatum

Powersharing faces decisive test By John O'Mahony Mark Twain famously said, on reading a premature obituary of himself, that reports of his death had been "greatly exaggerated". Frequent reports of the death of the Good Friday Agreement in the last four years have also been greatly exaggerated. It has survived crisis after crisis. It may not survive the crisis now shaping up. The Ulster Unionist Council decided on 21 September, to withdraw support for the Council of Ireland and from all cross-border bodies, and that unless there is IRA disarmament by 18 January 2003, the Trimble Unionists will...

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