The 2005 Labour Party
Conference marks a significant shift in the situation in Britain. It deserves careful study by Marxists and by every
trade union and Labour activist. It was chiefly marked by a sharp conflict
between the Party leadership and the trade unions
Anyone
who doubted the wider implication for civil liberties of Blair’s ‘anti-terror’
legislation need look no further than the Labour Party Conference in Brighton.
82-year-old Walter Wolfgang, who fled Nazi Germany in 1937, was roughly
manhandled out of the hall by a pair of heavies
The
recent announcement that the Provisional IRA had decommissioned all its weapons
has been drowned out by the blasts of the loyalist paramilitaries using theirs.
The Good Friday Agreement is dead. Instead of peace we have a dramatic increase
in extreme sectarian violence. More than ever the call for working class unity
in the struggle for socialism is the only answer.
Three Amicus members
of staff have been suspended
from their jobs in the union. All three are leading members of the
broad left that was instrumental in defeating the right wing and
getting Derek Simpson elected as General Secretary. No reason has been
given
for their suspension. It is obviously a politically motivated attack.
Please
take part in the campaign to get the three reinstated.
No
one union alone can successfully fight the present anti-union laws. But imagine
if the TUC were to lead a major protest against the laws in every workplace and
organised on behalf of 7 million union members a direct challenge to those laws
– that would have more effect than any number of seminars and workshops and
would put unions in a stronger position to win.
A leading member of Venezuela’s largest union, the National Workers
Union, UNT, will be present at the TUC, having been invited by the
National Union of Journalists and by Hands Off Venezuela. NATFHE will
move a resolution in support of Venezuela and the progressive policies
of the government of president Hugo Chávez, committing the TUC to work
with solidarity campaigns and to build links with Venezuelan trade
unionists.
The British government and the Metropolitan Police are now trying to
sweep under the carpet the brutal execution of Jean Charles de Menezes
on July 22. We must not allow this to happen. This young, innocent,
Brazilian man – an electrician by trade, just 27 years of age – is the
latest victim of the so-called “war on terror”, but also of the
undermining of civil liberties and the strengthening of the powers of
the capitalist state.
The recent
declaration by the leadership of the Provisional IRA that the armed struggle is
over has been reported in the media as an historic turning point and a
fundamental departure in Irish politics. In spite of the rhetoric, however,
there has not been one single step in the direction of a united Ireland. At least a section of the Provisional Republican
movement will now be feeling demoralised and betrayed. They and many others, especially
the young people who have just started to become involved in politics, will
want to know – what next?
The
dispute that erupted at the Gate Gourmet company in August is symptomatic of
what is really happening in the British labour movement. The strike of the Gate
Gourmet workers received strong support from the workers at British Airways who
paralysed Heathrow Airport and inflicted heavy losses on the company. The
class solidarity expressed in this dispute is an indication of what is to come
throughout the whole of the British labour movement.
Several months ago
there was a report in some British papers of an unusual speech by the Governor
of the Bank of England, Mervyn King. The speech gives a glimpse of a discussion
that must have recently taken place amongst the British capitalists, and which
the Gate Gourmet dispute is a direct consequence of. It is about the use of
cheap immigrant labour to drive down wages and worsen working conditions.