Solidarity 114, 28 June 2007

BAE Saudi arms affair

The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has launched a criminal inquiry into the dodgy business practices of BAE Systems, the worlds fourth largest arms supplier. The investigation will delve into BAE’s £40 billion Al Yamamah weapons deal with Saudi Arabia – signed in the 1980s – and the apparent ‘special arrangement’ with a member of the Saudi royal family, Prince Bandar. But why is the DoJ so interested in a deal between a British company and a Saudi royal? Why, if there are allegations of wrong-doing, are there no criminal proceedings here? It is alleged that Prince Bandar received secret...

Workers’ news round up

IRAN On 9 April 2007, Iranian security forces detained Mahmoud Salehi, under the pretext that he must liaise with prosecutors over arrangements for a May Day demonstration. Salehi, the former President of the Bakery Workers’ Association of the City of Saqez and a well-known labour activist in Iran, was told that he had been sentenced to one year imprisonment and a three year suspended prison sentence for organising for May Day 2004. After objecting to the illegal manner of his detention, Salehi was taken immediately to the Sanandaj Central Prison, not even allowed to contact his family, lawyer...

South African workers refuse to back down

BY Mike Rowley On 1 June, public sector unions in South Africa called a general strike of over a million public sector workers in response to a derisory pay offer from the government (originally 5.3%, creeping up to 6%, then 6.5%) that would be completely cancelled out by inflation. Public sector workers in South Africa are very poorly paid and have not had a pay rise in real terms for ten years. Nevertheless, COSATU, the main South African union federation, with 1.7 million members, which played a crucial role in the defeat of apartheid, has for all that time been in an alliance with the...

Pakistan: the struggle continues

BY Mike Rowley Pakistan is going through a period of heightened struggle against the military-based government of Pervez Musharraf. The current struggles began in earnest on 14 May when a general strike shut down Pakistan’s major cities, Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, Rawalpindi and Quetta. This followed two days of protests, some of them violent, against the attempt by the government on 9th March to suspend Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who had ruled against it, on unspecified charges. Nearly forty people were killed, mostly opposition supporters. The government authorised...

Pakistani socialst leader freed

Farooq Tariq, general secretary of the socialist group Labour Party of Pakistan, has been released from prison following his detention without charge by Pakistani security forces. Released on 19 June after a 16-day detention, Tariq describes his imprisonment as “one the of worst jail experiences I’ve had during my 30 years of political activism”. Tariq is also quick to point out that it was massive international pressure, not the benevolence of the government, which led to his release. The repression of over 600 anti-Musharraf activists began on 4 June, when police picked up activists from...

Unite on public sector pay!

By a PCS activist In his June 2006 Mansion House speech Gordon Brown promised to peg increases in the public sector pay bill to 2% over two years. It is symptomatic of his politics that he should assure an audience of rich men and women of his commitment to cutting the real pay of many thousands of public sector workers in this way. Public sector workers have to take pay cuts while the public sector paid out nearly £2 billion last year to external consultants — leading even the Tory Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, Edward Leigh, to comment, “.. a good proportion of [the pay out] looks...

Class and the city

Sofie Buckland reviews “Sex, The City and Me”, BBC2, June 17 I wasn’t expecting to much enjoy BBC2’s one-off drama about sex discrimination at a city bank, “Sex, the city, and me”. It was one of those programmes you only switch on after being faced with a Sunday night schedule barren of anything remotely entertaining. It’s hard to motivate ourselves, as socialist feminists, to get passionate about the plight of top city bankers being paid a bit less than male executives, or, in the case of Sarah Parish’s leading role, being hounded out and bullied for having a baby. Of course bourgeois women...

Singing for revolution

Amy Fisher reviews the centre for political song website, www.caledonian.ac.uk/politicalsong/song The Centre for Political Song, a website hosted by Glasgow Caledonian University, makes reasonably interesting reading — none of the traditional political songs are here, like the Red Flag or the Internationale, but instead lots of lyrics written to familiar tunes, by activists. In the current climate, around the anti-war, anti-Bush movement, the site can be forgiven for primarily hosting lyrics attacking Bush, Cheney and Rice in the most simplistic of terms (“Bush Whacked”, “Bush It!” and so on)...

Stop deporting Kurdish refugees!

International Federation For Iraqi Refugees (IFIR) and Coalition to stop deportations to Iraq (CSD Iraq) kickstart a campaign of action against deporting Kurdish Iraqi Refugees 22 June - 7 July IFIR in conjunction with CSD Iraq has organised a number of events across Europe to highlight the plight of Kurdish Iraqi Refugees across Europe. Several European countries have declined Kurdish Iraqi refugees’ claim for asylum, on the grounds that Iraqi Kurdistan is safe. Unfortunately this is not true— Iraqi Kurdistan is dominated by lawlessness; administrative and political corruption; oppression and...

Postal strike — a battle over the future of the Post Office... and the union

The impending battle between the postal workers and Royal Mail management is a political as well as an industrial battle. It is not only a fight over wages, in defiance of Gordon Brown’s public sector pay policy, it is also about the future of the post office and the entire parcels and letter delivery sector. The outcome of the dispute will shape the future of trade unionism in the crucial communications and logistics sector, and impact on the relationship between the trade unions and the Labour Party. This is a battle that Royal Mail bosses have been looking for. They have been predicting a...

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