Solidarity 123, 6 December 2007

Upon the election of Nicolas Sarkozy there was a strong current in the media — both in France and internationally — claiming that “things had changed”. Sarkozy, it was said, was the man who would cut back the “gluttonous” French state, “modernising” the economy by curbing the power of the unions and replacing the France of the 35-hour-week with a new more “flexible” culture that valued “hard work”. French workers had to prepare for Sarkozy’s onslaught. As we have seen with November’s rail strikes, university occupations and rioting in the suburbs, resistance to Sarkozy is deep-rooted. Some...

Ed Maltby met with Natacha, a member of the Trotskyist organisation Ligue Communiste Révolutionaire and a worker in the Austerlitz train station in Paris. She told him about the difficulties faced by the workers. “It’s tough. The unions are calling for a return to work during negotiations.” These negotiations will go on for three weeks (until 18 December), and “the government is offering nothing. They see that the union leaders have got the strike movement back under control. They’ve even withdrawn some of the offers of concessions they made us during the strike! We’re looking at a 20-30% cut...

Hugo Chávez, president of Venezuela, lost his referendum on constitutional reform by a tiny margin, with 4.5m votes against (50.7%) and 4.4m (49.3%) in favour. Chávez has accepted the results, saying that the proposals had not been approved “for now”, but that he would continue to struggle for his version of “socialism”. The right-wing opposition are of course cock-a-hoop, although they have not in fact made much ground. Compared with the 2006 presidential elections, the opposition vote only increased by about 100,000 votes. However Chávez has been knocked back, losing 2.8 million votes...

Gillian Gibbons, the teacher who was locked up by the Sudanese authorities for allowing her class to call a teddy bear Muhammad, said of her experience: “The Sudanese people I found to be extremely kind and generous and until this happened I only had a good experience.” She also expressed hope that news of her experience would not stop westerners from going to Sudan. She’s certainly right on the first account, and not being too unrealistic on the second. After all it’s the Sudanese people — the vast majority not fundamentalist bigots, not rich and not powerful — who have the most to fear from...

A critical exmaination of Joel Kovel’s eco-socialism as set out in his book The Enemy of Nature . That book has recently been updated and republished to include more emphasis on the effects of global warming, which Kovel argues has “become the defining issue of the ecological crisis as a whole”. Joel Kovel is probably the world’s best known eco-socialist. In 1998, he was the Green Party candidate for US Senator from New York and in 2000 sought their presidential nomination, losing to Ralph Nader. He is the editor of Capitalism, Nature, Socialism — a leading journal of green socialist politics...

In response to David Broder’s letter (Solidarity 3/122) , I should first make my position clear on the kitchen sink. I’m for it. Definitely. As to other things raised about or as spin-offs from my little letter in Solidarity 3/120... I mentioned the WAC’s opposition to “two states” in Israel/Palestine because Daniel’s article had been about resolving the national question there, not about trade-union struggles or elementary worker organisation. Daniel described WAC as “politically sharp”, and gave no such credit to the Histadrut or the Fatah-linked Palestinian unions. Just “two states” isn’t...

Reviews of Boy A (Channel 4) Who could forget the murder of James Bulger by two teenage boys, Jon Venables and Roger Thompson? That was Liverpool 1993. After they were released from jail, Venables and Thompson were given new identities and injunctions were taken out to protect them from reprisals. Blake Morrison wrote a fantastic and scrupulously objective book about the case. As If, told the story of the media and public hysteria of the time. Boy A, shown on Channel 4 (2 November), goes over the same social and emotional ground. Boy A tells the story of Jack, who was imprisoned for aiding and...

George Galloway was addressing a Whitechapel Respect Renewal rally on Sunday 2 December. According to the East London Advertiser it was “Muslim-dominated”. In that case a socialist message to such an audience could have been anything from fighting low pay to issues about council housing or fighting racism. But according to the Advertiser, and perhaps predictably, Galloway chose to spread a little religious fervour and to highlight the sanctity of his new organisation: “There’s one God, there’s one Respect”, he said.

Extracts from an AWL leaflet distributed at a regional meeting of the National Shop Stewards Network, held in Glasgow on 1 December. “In backing the Labour Party rule changes (to ban unions and CLPs from submitting motions to annual Labour Party conference), union leaders have effectively disenfranchised millions of trade unionists who remain organisationally affiliated to the Labour Party. The issue here is not just one of union democracy – i.e. the fact that none of the union leaders had a mandate from their membership to back the rule changes. The much more fundamental issue is that the...