Solidarity 078, 11 August 2005

Some points on Maria Exall’s article in Solidarity 3/76. What is secularism ? First of all, it is freedom of conscience. A secular state is one which doesn’t try to impose any kind of religious or political or philosophical thought. It is not “tolerance” or “equality between religions”, it is law guaranteeing the right of all to be religious in one way or another, or to be agnostic, or to be atheist — and the right to change your mind whenever you want! In a secular society the state doesn’t worry about what people are thinking, except when it poses a threat to someone : ie when a man is...

On 23 July Coventry UNISON branch held a national rally in response to the council’s plans to implement pay cuts of up to £6000 per year in the name of “Single Status” — equal pay and conditions for women. UNISON has attacked Coventry’s Tory council for funding wage increases for some workers with cutbacks on others’ pay, rather than lobbying central government for more money. Indeed, the execution of the Single Status plan is so flawed that the majority of workers losing out from the scheme will be women. For example, traditionally female-dominated jobs like secretaries face pay cuts of 26%...

Tesco stores across Britain and Ireland were picketed on 4 August in solidarity with two Polish agency workers sacked after protesting about conditions at a distribution centre in Dublin. The Polish workers, Radek Sawicki and Zbyszek Bukala, had complained not only that agency workers, many of whom are Polish, receive only 2/3 the wages of contracted staff, but that they are pressganged into rapidly increasing production targets. The Irish trade union of which Sawicki is a member, SIPTU, is taking the agency to court for exploitation. The Transport and General Workers’ Union announced that its...

TGWU and GMB members are also taking on exploitation by supermarket bosses at Morrisons in the UK. On 10 August over 8,000 of the chain’s distribution staff received ballot slips on whether to take strike action over Morrisons’ refusal to engage in meaningful negotiations. A particular point of friction has been job security, at a time when Morrisons is carrying out major restructuring of distribution after purchasing Safeway last year. The supermarket has told workers that it “cannot guarantee” any jobs beyond March 2006. Despite the precarious nature of its workers’ livelihoods, Morrisons...

By Daniel Randall Following the 7/7 bombings in London, the tabloid press has been full of righteous denunciations of “extremists” of all stripes. Fair enough, you might think. The belief that blowing hundreds of public transport users up is a good way to get a political point across is pretty “extreme”. Pav Akhtar, the Black Students’ Officer of the National Union of Students, told the Guardian on 20 July that the union was “working with [Universities UK] on their project to combat extremism on campus — including extremism related to political issues, animal rights, the BNP, homophobia and...

By Dave Ball There are estimated to be 11 million street children in India. This includes those who are on the streets in the day but return to a family or other home in the evening, as well as those who sleep on the streets. Worldwide there could be as many as 170 million street children. The April 2005 issue of New Internationalist (NI) (published on the web at www.newint.org) focussed on the issue, giving most of the space to street children themselves to tell their experiences and put forward their hopes in their own words. The magazine featured the words of children from Mongolia...

“The last exploit of the Fenians in Clerkenwell was a very stupid thing. The London masses, who have shown great sympathy for Ireland, will be made wild by it and driven into the arms of the government party. One cannot expect the London proletariat to allow themselves to be blown up in honour of the Fenian emissaries. There is always a kind of fatality about such a secret, melodramatic sort of conspiracy.” — Karl Marx, writing to Frederick Engels, December 1867. “The stupid affair in Clerkenwell was obviously the work of a few specialised fanatics; it is the misfortune of all conspiracies...

By Doug Russell On 3 August 95 test engineers at Rolls-Royce’s Filton plant in Bristol received ballot papers on whether to strike over the dispute resulting from the sacking of their Amicus convenor Jerry Hicks. Jerry Hicks has been a long-time union organiser at the plant, but is now being victimised after a three-day strike in June which successfully defended two fitters from being dismissed. Ian Waddell, Amicus’ national officer for the aerospace industry, said that “it’s difficult to see the dismissal as anything other than a cynical ploy to attack workers and the union”. Indeed, it seems...

The Communication Workers’ Union is holding a national mass meeting against privatisation, in the face of postal regulator Postcomm’s decision to open up all parts of the service to competition in January 2006, Competitors will be able to pick and choose which of the Royal Mail’s services they will offer, but strict regulation of Royal Mail will leave it weak in the face of competition, leading to job losses. The decision to allow this to happen was taken by Postcomm, which was created by the government in order to push through the Blairite privatisation agenda. Tony Benn said at a rally on 20...

By Clive Bradley The deadline for agreement on Iraq’s new constitution is 15 August, after which it should go to a national referendum. But as we go to press, it looks unlikely the various factions involved in the negotiations will have agreement by then. Iraq’s election in January of this year — the first in over 40 years — resulted in a parliament divided along sectarian lines, and dominated by the largest Shi’a party, which is close to Grand Ayatollah Sistani. The Kurdish parties are the second largest group. Sunni Iraqis, who were dominant from the time of British colonialism and under...