Solidarity 023, 6 February 2003

When Tony Benn Did a “Party Political Broadcast” for Saddam Hussein

It was predictable that the pro-war press would react with sharp hostility to Tony Benn’s eve-of-war interview with Saddam Hussein. The Spectator published a dollop of stale, badly-written bile by the Guardian columnist Rod Liddle. But socialists too have reason to be hostile to Benn’s enterprising trip to Baghdad. Benn sat across a table from the mass murderer Saddam Hussein and respectfully fed him questions designed to stimulate him into explaining his point of view. It was essentially a “party political broadcast” from Baghdad. Benn invited Saddam to speak directly to the people of Britain...

Who pays for the slump?

By Lucy Clement The record slump in the stock market provides gloomy evidence of the chaotic nature of the market economy. Since its peak of 6,930 in December 1999, the FTSE index of the UK’s top 100 shares has lost almost half its value and last week fell below 3,500, its lowest level since 1995. But while it may offer a chance to say to the more capitalist-minded “we told you so”, for many workers the latest falls on the FTSE and Wall Street are far from being good news. An increasing number of companies are responding to the falling markets by slashing pension provision for their workers...

How can we protect children?

In the second part of her discussion article about issues surrounding child pornography and paedophilia, Gerry Byrne looks at how society tries - and fails - to protect children To read Part 1 here Age of consent In the last issue, I looked at how the massively greater social weight of adults against children meant that adult-child sex can not but be abusive. The Age of Consent is a legal device that recognises this inequality in ability between adults and children to genuinely consent to sex. It is set at 16 in this country. An equal age of consent for heterosexual and homosexual sex has only...

Sharon seeks partners in crime

By Dan Katz Israeli Labour party leader Amram Mitzna has told Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that his party would not join a national unity government. He said that Labour’s decision was taken out of a sense of “national responsibility”. Senior Labour members agreed on Sunday 2 February that Labour could not join a government unless Sharon agreed to implement the platform Labour had promised its voters — evacuating the Gaza Strip, relocating isolated and illegal settlements, reassigning 1.5 billion shekels from the settlements’ budget to social portfolios, and completing the West Bank security...

FBU dispute: don't trust Prescott!

"It seems like we have been down this road before. I find it very hard to trust the Government and the employers… but I suppose we have to see what is on the table. I, however, don't believe that the Government want to find a reasonable settlement to this dispute...." That is what Gary Thorogood, Group Secretary, Southern Command Group 4 (eight stations in south east London), told Solidarity after John Prescott promised open negotiations with the Fire Brigades Union and the union suspended strike action for the next few weeks. Ross Neal, chair of London Region FBU, added: "As we stand the...

Bush's war is for oil not freedom

No to Saddam Hussein! No to war! Julie Burchill, paid to be controversial by The Guardian, attacks those "who thought that a population living in terror under the Taliban was preferable to a bit of liberating foreign fire. On this principle, if we'd known about Hitler gassing the Jews all through the 1930s, we still shouldn't have invaded Germany; the Jews were, after all, German citizens and not our business." Her history is not very impressive (the plight of the Jews - though not, yet, their gassing - was no secret in the 1930s, and war was declared when Germany invaded Poland, not because...

How not to break from Stalinism

Paul Hampton reports on the AWL-CPGB (Weekly Worker) day school on 25 January Opening the discussion for the AWL, Sean Matgamna said that the AWL wants a rational Marxist politics based on saying what is - facing reality squarely, calling things by their right names, basing ourselves on the logic of the class struggle. It is the tradition of Marx and Engels, continued by Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky. It is a tradition largely lost and forgotten after 1940, carried on halfway consistently by only a handful of Trotskyists around Shachtman and Draper. The "CPGB", which began 20 years ago as a...

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