Solidarity 136, 24 July 2008

The USA has admitted defeat, for now, in its attempt to impose a “State of Forces Agreement” which would give the US military the powers of a parallel government in Iraq for many years to come. Instead, the USA plans to get a more informal “memorandum of understanding” with the Baghdad government which will allow US military operations to continue for a while after their UN mandate expires in December 2008. But George W Bush will tip the task of getting long-term guarantees for the USA in Iraq into the lap of the next president. “In place of the formal status-of-forces agreement negotiators...

The two day strike by hundreds of thousands of local government workers [on 16/17 July 2008] has demonstrated that there is a real mood to defeat the government’s imposed pay cut. The two days saw some wonderful examples of the power workers have — closing many facilities, council offices and schools. In many places strong picket lines effectively stopped other workers, particularly GMB members, going to work and further heightened the impact of the action. Public support was generally in evidence as other workers recognise pay as a general issue and gave their support to some of the lowest...

The National Union of Teachers Executive met on 17 July and unanimously agreed a timetable for a ballot on discontinuous strike action as the next steps in the pay campaign. The ballot will start on Monday October 6th. Campaigning materials are being produced over the holiday and the strategy will be confirmed at a special executive on Friday 5 September. The battle over public sector pay seems likely to intensify rather than ease off in the months ahead. The Retail Price Index (RPI) reached 4.6% in June and even the government’s preferred measure, the Consumer Price Index (CPI), hit 3.8%...

The 16th and 17th of July was the first time I have ever been on strike and I picketed outside the council building where I work with a couple of other workers. My workplace has very few workers in a union and an even smaller number in Unison. So it was not surprising that lots of people crossed the picket line. Many of them said that they couldn’t afford to lose two day’s pay or that they were in the GMB. A few agency workers were visibly upset about having to cross a picket line, but said that they would not be called to work there again if they missed two working days. Many of my colleagues...

• TEACHERS: NUT members in two Leeds schools voted for strike and non-strike action in June in opposition to increased workload. One school was proposing an increase in teaching contact time of 1 hour every fortnight, the other 1 hour per week. Members voted for action by overwhelming majorities in both schools. The action was due to start on Tuesday 15 July with a one day strike and a refusal to attend any meetings outside of school sessions. We also named a second strike day in both schools in September to ensure that the management knew that we would not be deterred by the fact that this...

New Labour’s welfare reforms will force single parents, the disabled and sick and drug addicts to find work — or lose their benefits. As the economic crisis bites, jobs will become harder to find. The government has a solution. Force people onto cheap-labour “workfare” schemes. James Purnell. Any idea who he is? Try listing everything you know about him. Before now I’d have written: Blairite lick-arse, slicker than Hazel Blears; slimmer than John Prescott, some sort of arts responsibility... So I thought he was off-brief when I read the strap-line in his Guardian column which appeared on...

Those who do not know what the working class movement has done will not be able to imagine what it is capable of doing and will do in the future. Much of the real history of the movement is lost; it is one of the central functions of revolutionary socialists to act as the custodian of the memory of the working class and its movement. The history of the revolutionary German labour movement that went down to defeat before the Nazis in 1933 is a case in point. This article, which we publish in two parts, outlines the history of the German workers’ movement in the 15 years before Hitler...

HM Hyndman, writing towards the end of the nineteenth century thought that “supposing the time had been ripe in England, as many then believed, for a great social revolution, one important fact stood in the way of both the political and physical force revolutionists. In all serious upheavals, previous… London had taken a leading part… This was not the case in the days of Chartism”. The London Democratic Association (LDA) believed that it was in the metropolis “that the battle should be fought”; they knew they faced difficulties but they did seek solutions. The LDA’s stance is all but ignored...

Click here for the ensuing debate. An attack on Iran will most likely lead to great carnage in the Middle East, and beyond, as supporters of Iran resort to suicide-bombings in retaliation. There might well be large scale Iranian civilian “collateral” casualties. An attack would strengthen the Iranian regime and license a smash down on its critics, including working class critics, inside Iran. It would throw Iraq back into the worst chaos. Yet the plain fact is that nuclear bombs in the hands of a regime which openly declares its desire to destroy Israel are not something Israel will peacefully...

By Dan Katz The precise details of the on-going economic crisis can, at best, be the subject of informed speculation. But some general lines are clear. The Chancellor says he expects the crisis to be "profound", Ernst and Young says the outlook is "like a horror movie" and the Economist magazine comments, "Things can only get worse." As Marxists and activists our first concern is to consider the impact of the economic downturn on the organisation, consciousness and combativity of the working class. We aim to suggest policies and slogans that the left and the labour movement can adopt to give...