Solidarity 029, 1 May 2003

The Scottish TUC conference unanimously voted to affiliate to the No Sweat campaign and establish links with the FNPBI in Indonesia. The motion was moved by Edinburgh TUC and seconded by Jim Swan from West Lothian TUC. It should now be easier to help trade unions and trade councils in Scotland to organise against the use of sweatshop labour, both here and internationally. Thanks also to delegates at NUT conference, held last week in Harrogate, for raising £160 towards No Sweat's work.

By Mick Duncan On Thursday 24 April a US court on the Pacific island of Saipan approved a $20 million pay-out to garment workers. The settlement will give compensation and back pay to 30,000 workers and set up an independent monitoring system to regulate wages, overtime pay, working conditions and living conditions at factory barracks. Saipan, about 3,800 miles southwest of Honolulu, is notorious for the use of cheap labour. Transnationals make clothes on the island for the US garment market. All but one of the 55 retailers and manufacturers involved in the Saipan garment industry signed the...

By Colin Foster What were the real reasons behind the USA's drive for war in Iraq? Two polar-opposite explanations have been discussed on the left. The first theory is that the USA's power has now become so huge that the US capitalist class realistically aspires to rule the whole world more or less directly, laying down the law for every country from Washington. The second is that USA is frantically trying to stall a decline in its world power. Specifically, that USA went to war in Iraq essentially to stop the world oil industry moving to trade in euros rather than dollars. Both explanations...

By Martin Thomas Everyone wants a relaunch. Everyone is dissatisfied with the Socialist Alliance as it is, and thinks something brighter and better should be possible, given the ferment around the anti-war movement and in the trade unions. That is the frame for the the debate at the annual conference of the Socialist Alliance, coming up on 10 May. The Socialist Alliance in its present form emerged in the run-up to the May 2001 general election. It united almost all the activist left groups in England, and drew in some hundreds of unaffiliated socialists, to stand 98 candidates. In our opinion...

The Australian Socialist Alliance meets for its second national conference on 9-11 May in Melbourne. The Australian Alliance was founded in July 2001. Its main components are the activist left groups: Democratic Socialist Party (DSP, Castroite), International Socialist Organisation (ISO, linked to SWP in Britain), Workers' Liberty and others. It has done a bit better than the English Alliance at recruiting unaffiliated socialists and establishing democratic structures, but its electoral scores have been poor. The May conference convenes among flux and crisis. A significant group of...

By Clive Bradley The United States administration has started to rattle its sabres at Iraq's neighbour Syria. Like Iraq, Syria is ruled by the Ba'th Party, though a different faction; they have been bitter rivals for decades. The Ottoman empire, of which Syria was part, was divided up between France and Britain after the First World War. Syria, along with Lebanon, went to France. A series of coups after the Second World War culminated in the 1963 seizure of power by the Ba'th Party. Faction fights spilled over into further coups-later in 1963, and eventually, in 1970, when a conservative wing...

By Clive Bradley The collapse of the Ba'thist regime in Iraq and the military victory of the US and UK is a substantial political triumph for Bush and Blair. But the disorder it has unleashed poses serious questions, both for the occupying powers, and for the Iraqi people. There is a political vacuum, yet to be filled. The US's plan was to remove Saddam and replace him with a government of their choosing-in the first place under retired US general Jay Garner (who is close to the administration hawks), but then moving to rule by Iraqis friendly to the US. But the first attempt to hold a meeting...

On 28 April, Saddam Hussein's birthday, Jay Garner presided over a meeting of those the US has chosen to 'represent' the Iraqi people, a first step, he says, towards setting up a government of Iraqis to replace the US 'interim administration'. When will the Iraqis be able to choose their true representatives in free and fair elections? In Saddam Hussein's time, the safest place to talk about politics was the mosque. So is it any wonder that the most organised political force in Iraq now appears to be religious? Nadia Mahmood of the Worker-communist Party of Iraq spoke to Vicki Morris about the...

One issue we did not cover in the interview is the importance of the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP). The ICP was first on the streets with its newspaper Tareeq Al-Sha'ab (People's Path) after the collapse of the Saddam Hussein regime. The headline was "The Collapse of dictatorship! Our people aspire to an independent and unified federal democratic Iraq". Before and during, the ICP opposed the war. In December 2002, when Iraqi oppositionists held a congress in London, the ICP refused to take up their offer of places. Their leader, Hameed Majid Mousa, said: "The proper way of convening such a...

by Pablo Velasco South Korean trade unions have forced President Roh Moo-hyun to scrap part-privatisation of the railways after threatening strike action. The Korean Railway Workers' Union argued that privatisation would result in mass layoffs, fare increases and cancellation of routes. Korean National Railroad (KORAIL) reported 219.5bn won (£116.6m) in net losses in 2002, blamed on poor management. The union organises 24,000 of KORAIL's 30,000-strong workforce. The government agreed at the end of April to retreat from its privatisation plan and made other concessions. It agreed not to operate...