WHILE BROWN and Blair have been bickering about the euro, the jobs massacre has been picking up pace. 400 manufacturing jobs have been lost every day since the beginning of the year.
A total of 42,012 workers and their families have been thrown onto the scrap heap, all because this system cannot run without making working people pay. This slaughter is not just in the manufacturing sector but increasingly in the service and financial sector as well.
As Tony Woodley, the newly elected leader of the TGWU, says in an exclusive interview with the socialist this week (see page 10): "They (the workers) want a union that stops factories closing down and workers losing their jobs. Obscenely, workers are not even sacked over the phone any more, they get text messages. It's absolutely outrageous that we haven't got the same labour laws and protection as other working men and women in Europe."
The debate over whether it would be better for British capitalism to be in or out of the euro will not make a blind bit of difference to the economic problems and attacks on workers' jobs and conditions. The truth is that on the basis of an economy being run on capitalist lines then money will be invested wherever the biggest profits can be made.
The fight to defend jobs against the oncoming catastrophe will be both industrial and political.
Industrially the coming together of a new layer of left trade union leaders and a willingness to fight by working people will increasingly come up against the anti-union laws. These laws will have to be pushed to one side if they are not to be an insurmountable hurdle to working people acting collectively to defend their interests.
Just as important will be the political front. Tony Woodley dismisses the idea of a new mass workers' party as a "pipedream" and calls for workers to reclaim the Labour Party. However, the real lives and experiences of working people - job cuts, privatisation, low pay and a government that puts the interests of big business whether in Britain, Iraq or elsewhere before those of workers - mean that the tide is moving in the opposite direction, away from New Labour.
The campaign for a new party that can stand up for the interests of ordinary working people is gaining increasing support, and the unions, most of which are holding their annual conferences over the summer period, have a crucial role to play in ensuring that such a party is built.
THERE'S BEEN an emphatic decision to carry on the campaign and escalate the action to three days. The recommended dates are 18-20 June.
The workers know what the outcome has been at the other hospitals and there has been a slight disappointment that there's not the wide, united front that there was at the beginning of the campaign.
But equally there's a recognition that progress has been made at the other hospitals, sufficient for members to settle. There was no sick pay schemes in those three hospitals and now they've been established, on the back of the unified campaign across the east London NHS.
The mood of the meeting was quite strong, people's confidence has been raised by the successful two-day strike on 28/29 May.
There hasn't been any improvement on the offer of a minimum rate of £5 an hour, which we rejected. We met with the hospital trust last Friday and urged them to use their influence to resolve the dispute. And we've got a meeting scheduled with ISS Mediclean this Thursday, so we'll see what happens there.
A domestic's typical take home pay for a 37.5-hour week is £149.85.
A porter on ISS pay rates takes home £50-£60 a week less than a porter on NHS rates. The porters on the higher rates are solidly supporting the strikes.
"Sometimes the supervisors don't even bother to be on time to sign us out and open the door at the end of our shifts. They're supposed to be there at 8pm but when they're late we miss the bus. Then I get home at 9.40pm, which is ridiculous. So we're having more strikes, three days this time."
"We go to meetings and always hear: 'You're asking too much, we have to re-forecast our budget, reorganise, downsize, privatise'. They forget we are human beings and our needs are real. Today shows we're not just a statistic on the balance sheet."
"We're going to go out again for three days. We're working very hard here yet when you come in late you get sent home. We've got to go on strike to survive."
GORDON BROWN'S Commons statement on the euro, the world's biggest currency union, deliberately faced both ways. The government said it would try to "break down anti-euro prejudice", but it would not hold a referendum on joining as yet.
Brown said that only one of his five economic tests for Britain's entry had been met. Britain's money men - bankers, financiers etc. - think they would do better if they were in the euro, but the other criteria weren't reached.
12 countries with over 300 million population joined the eurozone in 2002. The capitalist European Union (EU) initiated the euro because of growing competition in markets and trade with the US-dominated North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Japanese-led Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN).
The eurozone is already facing huge problems, including one of Brown's unfulfilled criteria - the flexibility to cope with the divergences of individual nations' economic cycles.
In good times, the EU partially overcomes some restrictions on markets and trade between nations. But when the economy gets rough, splits appear. The eurozone tries to keep content many different capitalist governments who still face the inevitable boom and bust of the capitalist system, but at divergent times.
Already France has faced a mass uprising over pensions and other capitalist cutbacks but the euro makes it almost impossible for individual states to use currency measures to temporarily overcome difficulties.
Europe's stability pact is a tight restriction on governments, particularly those facing economic problems and combative class opposition. Even usually pro-euro states such as Germany are experiencing hard times with huge job losses and the threat of strike movements by angry workers. In or out of the euro, crises of capitalism will continue.
The capitalist anti-euro movement is often reactionary, Little Englander prejudice. The working class movement needs to put forward an independent socialist opposition to the euro.
Whether British capitalism joins the eurozone or not, the class struggle will go on. The first priority for working-class organisations such as the trade unions, is to fight back against these attacks and if necessary organise with others on a Europe-wide basis.
We are against the capitalist EU and the euro. But on the basis of workers' democracy and a voluntary federation of workers' states throughout Europe the basis could be built for a socialist union of European states, which could really meet the needs of working people.
THE US-led coalition forces occupying Iraq can't get the country's power supply going regularly nor can they create health and education services for local people.
But they can try to impose their insane job-threatening capitalist ideas on the country. They aim to privatise whatever they can as quickly as is feasible.
Tim Carney, senior coalition adviser to the Iraqi ministry of industry and minerals, says that dozens of state-owned industries are likely to be ear-marked for privatisation within the next year.
Before that, the occupying forces claimed they'd wait at least until they had an elected Iraqi government of some kind before privatising industry.
Now they say that the economy needs 'too much investment too rapidly' to worry about such niceties. Foreign ownership will be allowed - business interests from Saudi Arabia, Jordan etc have offered to lease, buy or create joint ventures with Iraqi companies.
Even the very pro-capitalist Iraqi National Accord warns that: "The Iraqi people would turn against privatisation if it was seen to be run for the benefit of foreign companies, especially if it was not being done by an elected government. Then the objectives of the coalition could be misunderstood."
Such fears may make the Americans think twice but the capitalist transformation of Iraq is one of the major "objectives of the coalition".
In just eight weeks since US forces seized Baghdad, Iraq's once sheltered economy has become a free-trade zone. The small minority of Iraqis with money to spare can buy TVs from South Korea, fridges from Iran or China and toasters from Germany.
Iraqi industry's outdated equipment can't produce good quality goods. Capitalist manufacturers and state-owned companies alike are feeling the pinch. If the US can't get away with direct privatisation, they may just leave it to the "natural" laws of capitalism to wreck Iraqi industry and make it ripe for privatisation and take-over.
On the other hand, they may just go gaily ahead with their privatisation schemes. Either way it looks bad news for Iraq's working class unless it fights back against global capitalism's plans.
STRIKES AND protest actions are continuing across France on a daily basis, against the Raffarin government's pension 'reform' plans. Following strike mobilisations of two million workers on 13 May and 1.5 million on 3 June, another major day of action took place on 10 June when the pension plans were presented to parliament.
Although the overall number on strike was less on 3 June than on 13 May, there were more private sector workers involved, and some cities, such as Marseille and Rouen, had their largest demonstrations yet.
In between these large actions there are strikes every day in many areas and sectors, such as in transport, health and education together with demonstrations outside town halls and offices of the bosses' organisation, Medef. Staff in many schools and colleges have been on continuous strike for up to two months; 3,000 schools and colleges took strike action on 5 June alone.
Under the movement's pressure, the government is postponing its education decentralisation plans. But education workers want them withdrawn completely, and still faced with government intransigence over pensions, cross-sector workers' protests are increasingly angry. A wide variety of initiatives - occupations and blockades of roads, transport depots and railway lines - are being taken.
In Rouen on 6 June, 800 activists built early morning bonfires to partially block roundabouts in the city's industrial area. They leafleted the long queues of traffic that formed, explaining why they were taking the action. Striking teachers handed out 'why I am late' notes for the drivers to give to their employers!
On 5 June, all 17 roads into Toulouse were blockaded by workers, bringing commercial activity to a virtual halt. On 6 June, 50 angry teachers at a college in Nantes held captive for two hours two representatives of the UMP, the right-wing ruling government party, who'd gone to officially open a new hall. "Their arrival was a provocation," a teacher explained.
The call for a general strike is loud and clear in trade union contingents on the demonstrations, but the union federation leaders have been desperate to avoid such a confrontation with the government. However, the pressure from below has now forced two of the main union federations - FO and SUD - to belatedly back the call for a general strike.
The need for an indefinite united public-private sector general strike is urgent, as the government is standing firm in the face of actions by different sections of workers on different days, interspersed with one-day more united mobilisations that have not yet involved a majority from the private sector.
Although the mood and determination of a layer of activists has hardened, this is unfortunately alongside signs of fatigue and disillusionment by others caused by the union leaders' strategy of disparate, drawn-out action.
A general strike, carefully prepared for by the rank and file strike committees and the union leaders, is the next step needed in the movement and the only sure way to win a fast victory and force Raffarin to withdraw all his 'reforms'. Without a general strike, the outcome of this widespread struggle is in the balance, though with important experiences being gained along the way.
THE DEFENDANTS in the Lewisham Day X Detainees case, Rene Bravo, Marcela Massingnotti and Karl Debbaut appeared at Greenwich magistrates court on 4 June. The most serious charges against Socialist Party member Karl Debbaut of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and affray, were lowered to assault on a police officer.
This effectively ensured that he, Rene and Marcela, would not be able to exercise their right to trial by jury but would have to be dealt with by the magistrate.
However, the police officer, who was allegedly assaulted, is now in Iraq and won't be returning for up to eight months!
A number of independent witnesses; workers from Lewisham Town Hall, people at the bus stop where the incident happened will testify in court that the whole incident was provoked by the brutality of the police against young, peaceful and lawful protesters.
Karl, Marcela, and Rene are due to appear at Greenwich again on 2 July. An international campaign is underway to have the charges against the Lewisham Day X Detainees dropped. Seven protesters in the Czech Republic with flags and leaflets have already picketed the British Embassy in Prague about the detainees!
Support this campaign to drop all charges against Lewisham Day X Detainees.
To send a donation towards the cost of the campaign or to get more information, leaflets, petitions etc. write to: Justice for the Day X Detainees, 34A Kender Street, New Cross, London, SE 14 5JG or ring Simon on 07939 665 698 or Carlos on 07971 026 297.
We won because working men and women in this country are desperate for change. They're desperate to see trade unions acting like unions again. They're desperate to see the trade unions and government starting to deliver on the priority issues at the workplace.
The priorities are improving the minimum wage, which is a poverty pittance wage at the moment; protecting pensions, where companies have stolen £19 billion of pension surpluses over the last 12 or 13 years. But now they want to walk away from pension schemes or have our people pay double or treble for the privilege of staying in the scheme.
Workers want a union that stops factories closing down and destroying their jobs. Obscenely, workers are not even sacked over the phone any more, they get text messages. It's absolutely outrageous that we haven't got the same labour laws and protection as other working men and women in Europe.
What I have said consistently as a national negotiating officer - I'm not a bureaucrat - is for us to start to focus our time and money on fighting back. Workers are frustrated at seeing union leaders who are too close to the fat cats in the government and the government too close to the fat cats in business - both forgetting their roots.
My priorities are to refocus my time and the union's time, money and effort into trying to improve life for working men and women at the coal face.
I've said that my intention is to call a summit to combine and co-ordinate with other like-minded trade union leaders in order for us to co-ordinate the pressure. I'm not for breaking the link with Labour. Why should we anyway, it's our party? It's the party that's been highjacked by the middle classes, we shouldn't walk away from it. We've got to use our influence.
Some time these people running the party will realise they don't just need our money and they don't just need our organisation - there's still over eight million trade unionists in this country - they actually need working men and women to start voting for them again, when they've got real opposition. We've got to be there to pressurise and demand, to try and convince the government to stop listening to big business and start listening to their traditional supporters.
I haven't been elected to be an MP or Prime Minister, I've been elected to fight back industrially in the workplace. But you can't win all these improvements just industrially, that's why the Labour Party was created. So I'm not promising to change the world but I'm promising to try.
First of all don't have selective amnesia. I've negotiated an awful lot of money for manufacturing industry which we would never have got off a Tory government. The Tories wouldn't even talk to us for 19 years. They wouldn't even meet me, as the chief negotiator for the car industry, at all.
I've negotiated £80 million off this government for manufacturing - it's not enough, it's a pittance. But it's not that they've done nothing, they just haven't done enough because they're too closely wedded to listening to big business, to the rich and the powerful. And that's why we've got to exert our influence and our power by any means possible.
There are people in Scotland with their own Parliament and their own budget who've voted for the Scottish Socialist Party and others. And we've seen in Wales a vote for Labour candidates who didn't preach New Labour policies.
I don't see the trade un-ions being a focus group. The trade un-ions are far greater than that. Too many trade union leaders are looking for political patronage and are not fighting back for the members. If we get trade union leaders who understand what the priorities of life are we might start to try and make a difference.
No I think it's a pipe dream. We don't need a new party, we need to reclaim our old party.
email [email protected]
or write to The Socialist Postbag, PO Box 24697, London E11 1YD.
THE BATTLE over the political fund at this year's UNISON conference is crucial. UNISON pays well over £1 million a year to the Labour Party and the trade union movement has paid a colossal £250 million to Labour since 1979, when the Tories came to power. But what have we got in return?
Working people and trade union members have faced a diet of cuts and privatisation, while New Labour has kept Thatcher's vicious anti-trade union laws intact. It's not surprising that members are increasingly opposed to the union handing over £ millions to New Labour.
That's why in 2001, UNISON conference voted for the Socialist Party resolution calling for a review of the political fund, so the funds should only be used to support UNISON members' interests.
But the national executive have arrogantly ignored the membership's wishes and have put forward a report which only proposes renaming the Affiliated Political Fund the Labour Link.
The union has banned the debate on the call for a ballot of all the membership on whether they wish to fund New Labour. Also banned is the debate on the establishment of one fund to be able to support other candidates and the proposal to create a third fund which can support candidates other than New Labour.
The Socialist Party clearly believes that New Labour has turned its back on ordinary working people and broken the link, not the union. And as such we believe that UNISON should no longer fund New Labour. We do believe that there should be a single, democratic political fund which is able to support other candidates which generally defend the interests of UNISON members.
But more than this the Socialist Party calls on UNISON to call a conference of trade union activists to launch a new workers' party. That is why this year we call for a ballot of the whole membership on whether they wish the union to fund New Labour.
If the union bureaucracy continues to block the wishes of the membership in allowing genuine changes to the political fund, when it comes to the political fund ballot which the union will have to hold in 2005, under the Tory laws, we believe that many members will see that as a vote on funding New Labour or not. We would understand members who voted no in order to stop feeding the hand that bites us.
THE left swing amongst rank and file trade unionists was a factor in public sector union UNISON's national executive council (NEC) elections.
Three Socialist Party members, Roger Bannister (North West), Jean Thorpe (East Midlands) and Raph Parkinson (Reserved Seats) comfortably held their positions, as the hard-left grouping increased from nine to fourteen members. Socialist Party member Glenn Kelly, standing for one of the national local government seats, was narrowly defeated (by 19,316 votes to 20,866) as was Adrian O'Malley, standing for one of the national health seats.
Socialist Workers Party (SWP) member Mark New (Health Service Group) lost his seat but a new SWP member Bea Belgrave gained one of the Reserved Seats to join Yunus Bakhsh (Northern Region), the other SWP member currently on the NEC. But another left NEC member, John Owen, lost his East Midlands seat.
Left gains in the elections were Ann MacMillan Wood (East Midlands), Fiona Monkman and Jon Rogers (Greater London), Carol Dutton (North West), Kate Ahrens (health).and Jessie Russel (Southern).
In the Cymru/Wales Region the former (right-wing) NEC members all lost their seats, although they have not been replaced by left-wingers.
In December 1997 Dave Prentis, then the deputy general secretary, proposed a report to the NEC that initiated the witch-hunt against socialists in the union. Responding to the accusation that the report was a sledgehammer to crack a nut, Prentis told the NEC: "It may be, but if you don't back this report it will be too late, they are after your seats!"
These results show what a waste of time the witch-hunt has been as far as saving the political skins of UNISON's right wing and how little time ordinary members of the union have for Prentis' witch-hunting antics!
THE CIVIL service union PCS national executive (NEC) elections, which run from 6 June to 4 July are as important as any election in the history of the union.
The Socialist Party is part of a 'democratic front' standing against the right-wing 'moderates' who have a majority of the NEC at the moment.
It was this extreme right-wing group who attempted to block the election of Mark Serwotka, when he was democratically elected general secretary and tried to remove powers from Janice Godrich, the elected president of the union.
The 'moderates' have well-documented links to shadowy state organisations, both nationally and internationally and their defeat in the election will sweep aside a massive stain on the British trade union movement.
Their attempts to block the democratic decisions of the membership cost the union over £400,000 in legal and associated costs.
They have shown no interest in defending or advancing the interests of PCS members, some of whom earn only just above the level of the minimum wage and have to claim state benefits to get by.
The union has been involved in some titanic battles over the past few years, not least the safety screens issue that involved 60,000 members on intermittent national and local strikes lasting over 12 months.
It was the Left-led sections of the union that led these strikes often in the face of sabotage by the right-wing NEC. Socialist Party members have a proud record of leading sections of the union and if the left win, will continue to play a decisive part in the leadership.
Janice Godrich president and NEC. NEC candidates: Mark Baker, Chris Baugh, Marion Lloyd, John McInally, Rob Williams and Danny Williamson.
ELECTRICIANS WORKING at Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester, a major prestige project for the city council, started to take strike action a few days ago.
Steve, the local shop steward, has just been made redundant. He stood up for a fellow worker also fired by the management. "We want the right to be consulted. We want to stop unskilled workers doing electrical work, in contravention of national health and safety legislation and our national agreement."
Their employer, DAF Electrical, refuses to negotiate with the TGWU, the union electricians are organised in. They increasingly use unskilled workers to do skilled electricians' jobs, for as little as half the skilled rate, despite skilled electricians being the cheapest in the European Union.
It puts workers at risk, skilled and unskilled alike and the company does not even pay wages on time.
But the resolve of the trade unionists has been strengthened, says Steve: "The support from the Manchester public and from fellow trade unionists has been overwhelming, I've even got cheques coming in from other electricians.
"Whole branches are getting involved, from ours as well as other unions. We had a donation this morning from the PCS. This is happening all over Britain, not just this site. The resolve amongst younger trade unionists has been great, we will broaden the campaign out to other workplaces."
Manchester Socialist Party also gives full support to this campaign. For information about how to make donations contact: 07813 456 831.
"AT LEAST Dick Turpin wore a mask when he robbed the drivers" reads the strike placard at South Yorkshire First's main Sheffield bus garage.
Over 1,500 bus drivers, all transport union, TGWU members, went on strike for three days last week for better pay and conditions. They will strike again on 17,18 and 19 June. A 1,050-70 vote rejected a revised, supposedly improved, offer - mainly because of the strings which would mean drivers paying for their own pay rises.
This comes after years of the company tightening the screw on drivers' conditions. 42 drivers left the job last month alone. "Would you be abused, threatened and gobbed at for £5.36 an hour?" one driver asked.
It's not like the company can't afford it. Last year South Yorkshire First made around £10 million profit, about a quarter of First Group's total profit. Their offer amounts to about £1 million. "So where's the other £9.1 million going?" another driver asked. The answer is fat cat pay increases.
The First chairman's salary has gone up 59%. Another director gets £510,000 a year and was given £18,000 for a Range Rover. "His car cost twice as much as I earn a year" one driver said.
This same director's pension is worth £2.85 million, yet First workers have had to pay extra to maintain their pensions.
The strike is 100% solid. One striker walks five miles to the picket line every morning (no buses). With the strikes set to run into a second week, the mood is determined to win the £6-an hour claim for starter-drivers (currently £5.36), rising to £7 after two years (currently £6.49 after four years.)
ANY TRIUMPH Blair hoped for after the Iraq war is vanishing rapidly. The accusations of Blair lying about weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) have now revealed antagonisms between the intelligence agencies and the government that go beyond the Iraq war.
It is over eight weeks since the end of the war and chaos still reigns in Iraq with no water or electricity, few hospital facilities, continuous killings of both US troops and Iraqis and 'democracy' a long way off the agenda.
In the last two weeks it has been shown that Blair's main reasons for going to war were not backed up by any convincing intelligence data - in other words he lied.
This was particularly the case when Blair asserted that Saddam could use WMDs within 45 minutes of an order given and that these weapons were a threat to other countries.
The only evidence backing this up was a claim by an Iraqi defector which was not corroborated and flies in the face of all other evidence.
The intelligence services, armed forces and Hans Blix, Chief Weapons Inspector for the UN, have all distanced themselves from Blair's assertions.
The Intelligence and Security Committee, which will look into the allegations, is appointed by and accountable to the Prime Minister and meets in secret while the Foreign Affairs Select Committee has limited access to information. A Liberal Democrat motion calling for an independent judicial inquiry is not an alternative as a capitalist judge cannot be impartial. The motion anyway was defeated by 98 votes with only 11 Labour MPs voting against the government.
The socialist calls for an inquiry run by representatives of working class people - the ranks of the trade unions, community organisations, other democratic organisations as well as representatives from the mass peace movement with powers to investigate all areas.
John Reid, Leader of the Commons, spoke of "rogue elements" within the security services who are leaking damaging material on Blair. However, it is clear that leading elements within the intelligence are unhappy with their material being used by Downing Street to draw false conclusions to justify war.
The security services are a law unto themselves with huge powers and, even though the state is seen as united in propping up the capitalist system, different wings do disagree on tactics and on this occasion how to deal with a rogue Prime Minister.
Reid is correct in saying that in the past the Intelligence Services have plotted against Labour governments whom they perceived were threatening their system. However, this government has done their bidding.
These revelations and obvious disquiet among the intelligence services and other wings of the ruling class towards Blair is most likely a warning. Blair can blatantly lie to the working class about such scams as PFI but in the last analysis he is representing the interests of big business and is not supposed to deceive them.
When Blair talks of invading other countries such as Iran and North Korea, he provokes warnings from capitalist writers against following Bush on another adventure.
Divisions have always existed within the major capitalist governments about whether to attack Iraq and now that the outcome of the war is bringing huge problems they seek to wound and rein in the pro-war elements.
Blair and New Labour are not out of the woods yet on this issue. So far we have seen criticism of Blair in the national press, from the Tories and Liberals as well as the intelligence services.
This will be as nothing compared to the anger of our class when they fight back against this lying government.
THE JOURNEY along George Bush's 'road map' to a Israeli/Palestinian peace settlement hit an obstacle when Palestinian militias attacked an Israeli army checkpoint in Gaza, last Sunday.
The attack was co-ordinated by three Palestinian militias - Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades; the latter being a part of Palestinian president Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement. It was their message to the US-backed Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, rejecting his call for an end to the Intifada (the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation which started in October 2000) and to their guerrilla campaign.
Abbas has pledged to resume talks aimed at securing a ceasefire with the militias but Hamas has rejected truce talks, accusing him of selling out Palestinian national rights. (It is rumoured that Hamas was close to agreeing a ceasefire until Israel forces assassinated two Hamas militants last week.) They say their armed actions is resistance to the Israeli occupation, although they do not exclude civilian targets from their attacks.
Moreover, the rocket attacks and the targetting of Hamas and other militia militants by Israel armed forces is making the attempts of Abbas to get the militias call a ceasefire even more unlikely.
After the Gaza attack Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon was quick to announce that the Israeli government would block a move towards a Palestinian state unless there was a "cessation of violence". But Sharon, despite his hardline, right-wing views, was pressured by US secretary of state Colin Powell at the recent Aqaba summit to continue the road map "even in the presence of violence".
This has angered his Likud party whose anti-road map faction, which includes finance minister Benjamin Netanyahu, heckled Sharon at a party conference for defending the road map, despite his insistence that he rejected the right of return of (four million) Palestinian refugees.
The US administration, while backing the Israeli government with billions of dollars and military hardware, is also aware that Abbas is in no position to risk confrontation and a possible civil war with the well-armed militias (Israel having effectively destroyed the Palestinian Authority's security apparatus).
Bush, by promoting the 'road map', wants to diminish Arab and Muslim anger over the role of US imperialism in the Middle East, which has focused on the issue of Palestinian national rights.
Ongoing instability in the region is threatening capitalism's investment markets and its wider geo-political interests.
Many suspect that Sharon while sucking up to his US patron is quietly happy to see Abbas squirm in his dilemma since this renders the prospect of a 'viable' Palestinian state by 2005 redundant.
After all, of the 100 plus Israeli settlements built on the West Bank over 60 were constructed after Sharon was elected prime minister in 2001. The likely number of 'wildcat' settlements facing dismantling by Sharon is a mere 15. Moreover, the Israeli government is pressing ahead with its giant 'security fence' which bisects much Palestinian terroritory and incorporates many settlements into a 'greater Israel'.
Since the collapse of the Oslo peace accords and the second intifada over 3,000 people have been killed, including 2,300 Palestinians and over 700 Israelis. Palestinians have suffered the economic costs of occupation with mass unemployment and increasing poverty. 25,000 who hold work permits in Israel are regularly halted from crossing the border.
The bulldozing by Israel Defence Forces (IDF) of Palestinian homes and orchards and the sealing off of towns and villages by IDF checkpoints, adds to the daily toll of humiliation and oppression. These factors propel many young Palestinians into becoming suicide bombers.
Meanwhile, inside Israel, the cost of the war is perpetuating and deepening the longest recession in the country's history. In a bid to make the working class pay for the capitalist crisis, finance minister Netanyahu is cutting public spending; making workers redundant and cutting wages, as well as privatising state-owned enterprises.
Capitalism and the imperialist powers have no real answers. The failure of the 'peace process' over the last decade has produced a deep scepticism amongst both Palestinians and Israelis over the road map plan. Their failure makes the task of building a socialist movement amongst both Israelis and Palestinians all the more vital and urgent.
MORE THAN one million workers in 18,000 workplaces all over Austria, a third of the entire Austrian workforce, took industrial action on 3 June - the country's biggest strike since world war two.
Austria came to a complete halt. It was the third time within weeks that the ÖGB (Austrian trade union federation) had called for a day of action against the attacks on the pension system planned by the right wing ÖVP-FPÖ government of chancellor Schüssel.
The length of the strike action varied from complete 24-hour stoppages to more limited strike actions in some workplaces.
On the front line of the struggle, as on the 6 May strike, were public transport and railway workers, as well as the major formerly nationalised chemical and steel industries in Linz. Likewise, 250,000 public sector workers, including workers in schools, kindergartens and universities, and hospital staff and council workers, went on strike. Airport, bank and postal workers also took action, as did employees from the social and pension insurance. Even the police and gendarmerie joined in the protests!
In the major cities demonstrations, road blockades and protests were organised. In Linz, workers from the major industries joined together in a 10,000 strong rally in front of the Landhaus, the regional government. In Graz there was a demonstration of construction workers. At the BMW works in Steyr 2,000 workers took part in a protest.
THE ANGER against the cynicism of the government is overwhelming. Members of the SLP (Socialist Left Party - CWI Austria) participated in Vienna, Linz and Salzburg. Our call for a general strike was met with a warm response.
None of the strikers we spoke to thought that the 3 June protests would be enough and were clear that only decisive action can force the government to back down. Yet the ÖGB leadership still hesitates to step up action and simply refuses to use the words 'general strike'.
However, the pressure from below is building up, especially from workers facing other serious attacks from the government. Railway workers that are faced with the threat of privatisation and 're-structuring' said that this is not only a battle against the pension cuts. Teachers went on strike for the fourth time within two months against the pension cuts and cuts in education. Robert Wurm, leader of the Postbus workers (postal and transport), said that a general strike could not be ruled out.
Many workers welcomed our support. One striker told us, "We did not forget that the SLP was there when we blocked the road on 6 May".
In a workplace canteen in Linz protesting workers wanted to discuss anti-capitalist and socialist ideas with SLP members. One SLP member, who is an elected school student representative, initiated a joint protest of teachers and school students against the attacks.
The government will try to ignore the 3 June mass action by the working class. It is clear that the next step has to be a general strike to achieve broad participation from all sections of the working class and to put extra pressure on Schüssel and Co.
THE SLP argues for a national conference of shop stewards, trade union activists, school students and the unemployed to build for a general strike and the struggle against the government.
If a strike movement succeeds in bringing down this hated government, or if the Schüssel's administration is blown apart as a result of the inner contradictions of the coalition partner, the populist far-right FPÖ, it will have a huge positive effect on the outlook of workers.
The scale of this protest shows that the last chapter has not yet been written in this struggle, which is transforming Austria and bringing back to life the fighting traditions of the Austrian workers' movement.
WHEN CIA experts wrote a report in September 1978 on the political health of the pro-western monarchist regime in Iran, they concluded that despite his autocratic rule, the Shah presided over a stable dynasty that would last for at least another decade.
A mere four months later, he was forced to flee from a popular revolution that defeated one of the most vicious regimes on the planet.
His secret police, the 65,000 strong SAVAK, had penetrated every layer of society, borrowing from and 'refining' the fiendish measures of the Nazi Gestapo. Even the Chilean dictator Pinochet had sent his torturers for training in Tehran.
Despite these colossal obstacles the workers overthrew the Shah and set in train a process of revolution that would terrify both the reactionary regimes across the Middle East and the imperialist powers in the West. Not least, this popular uprising alarmed the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union, which was engaged in lucrative trade with Iran.
Yet the workers were not to be the beneficiaries of their revolution as power passed from the Shah into the grasp of right-wing political Islamists led by Ayatollah Khomeini.
Within three years all secular laws were declared null and void. Women's dress codes were enforced in line with a harsh interpretation of Islamic custom. 60,000 teachers were purged and thousands of working class oppositionists murdered or imprisoned. The Iranian Communist Party, the Tudeh, which had enthusiastically embraced Khomeini upon his return from exile in 1979, was itself banned in 1983.
A TOTALITARIAN regime maintains itself through terror and oppression and is successful while the masses remain cowed and inert. But the horror of daily life finally brings revolt. Once the working class loses its fear of a regime and moves into action, the secret police and all their grisly apparatus are often shown to be impotent.
Mass illegal demonstrations enveloped Iran between October 1977 and February 1978. Demanding democratic rights and their share in the nation's wealth, the students and then the working class braved the bullets on the streets.
Following the shooting of hundreds in the holy city of Qom in January 1978, a general strike of two million in Tehran spread to Isfahan, Shiraz and the Shrine City of Mashad. Placards called for: "Vengeance against the brutal Shah and his American imperialist friends," while others demanded: "A socialist republic based on Islam".
Increasingly, the soldiers began fraternising with the crowds, calling out: "We are with the people".
Even the capitalist class led by Mehdi Bazargan's National Front, which had previously limited its ambitions to getting the Shah to share power with them, was forced in the developing red-hot atmosphere to adopt a 'semi-socialist' programme.
The Iranian revolution was unfolding on a higher level than the Russian revolution in 1905 with which it possessed so many parallels. Then, the mass of the people had initially trusted their destiny to silken-tongued 'democrats' who promised they would make the Tsar listen to their grievances. Now, in Iran, the cry could be heard everywhere that the Shah must be brought down.
Civil service and bank workers played a crucial role in exposing the rottenness of the rich. Bank clerks opened the books to reveal that in the last three months of 1978, £1 billion had been taken out of the country by 178 named members of the elite, aping their Shah who had salted away a similar amount in the US. The furious masses responded by burning down over 400 banks.
WHEN MOHAMMED Reza Pahlavi, the self-proclaimed true son of Iran's 2,500-year-old Peacock throne, ignominiously fled the country for the last time on 16 January 1979, the struggle had gone beyond seeing his abdication as a victory. Now it was a question of the abolition of the absolutist state and what form the new Iran would take.
The working class had spearheaded the struggle against the Shah, through demonstrations, a four month long general strike and finally an insurrection on 10/11 February. The old order was swept away for ever. In this struggle it had become conscious of its power, but not conscious of how to organise the power it now held in its hands.
Revolution tests all classes and for the working class the key question is that of whether it possesses the decisive leadership equipped to move from popular insurrection to socialist construction.
In Iran, despite the heroism of the workers, students and youth, there was an absence of Marxist leadership and no mass party capable of drawing the necessary conclusions from the course of the revolution. It was the task of a Marxist party to explain the necessity for the working class, in alliance with the national minorities and poor peasants, to consciously take state power into its hands and carry through the tasks of the socialist revolution.
The largest left forces in Iran at the time were the Communist Tudeh Party, the 'Marxist' Fedayeen Khalq guerrillas and the Islamist Mojaheddin guerrillas.
Although enjoying a large membership and wider support and possessing armaments, they critically suffered from programmatic confusion. They did not pursue an independent working class policy but instead they sought to link up with Khomeini in spite of the clergy's attempts to suffocate an independent workers' movement.
The shattering of the autocracy revealed a power vacuum. Now at a critical moment in the destiny of the masses, when real power lay in their hands, the Tudeh unveiled the proposal for the setting up of a 'democratic Muslim republic'. This meant, in reality, the Tudeh renouncing its claim to leadership of the revolution and instead tail-ending the Mullahs political agenda.
RELATIONS BETWEEN the Western-leaning Shah and the Islamic mosques had long been strained. When the Shah dispossessed the Church of its lands, Muslim clerics reacted furiously and preached against the godless regime. The spiritual leader of Iran's Shiites, Ayatollah Khomeini, had been bundled off to exile in Turkey and later Paris, following a revolt against land seizures in 1963 when thousands were gunned down.
Marx once described religion as "the sigh of the oppressed". Because of the prohibition of all the organisations in opposition to the Shah, opponents of the regime tended to gather around the mosque where radical sermons were delivered. Increasingly these were interpreted as a struggle against totalitarianism.
Khomeini's message in exile was distributed through music cassettes smuggled into Iran in very small numbers. Once there, they would be reproduced and spread.
Khomeini and the other Mullahs painted a picture of freedom and democracy, calling for a return to the pure fundamentals of Islam, purged of all Western and non-Islamic influences which they argued had corrupted the culture and led society astray.
In economically semi-backward Iran, with large-scale illiteracy levels and over half the people still living in the countryside, the Mullahs' words became a powerful source of attraction to the peasants and sections of the middle class, even workers. Whereas the National Front sought compromises with the dynasty, Khomenei called for its overthrow. The masses interpreted his call for an Islamic Republic as a republic of 'the people', not the rich, where their demands would be met.
Upon Khomenei's triumphant return from exile on 1 February, the Tudeh immediately proffered their full support for the formation of the Islamic Revolutionary Council and urged him to join with them in a United Popular Front.
'DUAL POWER' prevailed in Tehran in February 1979. The rulers had fled, while the workers, who held the factories and refineries, organised democratic workers' committees and seized weapons from the fractured armed forces.
Khomenei however was the beneficiary of this revolutionary wave. A strange hybrid which combined contradictory and opposed class interests, his movement obtained the acquiescence of secular and non-clerical forces because he spoke the rhetoric of radical populism: an Islamic republic which would favour the oppressed against local tyrants and US imperialism.
The militant clerics were in a position to hijack the revolution because they were the only force in society with definite political aims, organisation and a practical strategy.
On 1 April Khomenei obtained a landslide victory in a national referendum in which people were offered the single choice - Islamic Republic: 'Yes' or 'No'.
He was nonetheless forced in the early days to tread carefully. On the one hand, clashes broke out between Revolutionary Islamic Guards and workers who wished to hold on to their recently acquired arms.
Meanwhile Khomenei denounced those who wished to continue the general strike as "traitors who we should smash in the mouth".
Balancing between the classes, he simultaneously made big concessions to workers. Free medicine and transport were introduced, power and water bills were cancelled and essential goods were heavily subsidised.
With state coffers plundered and unemployment scaling 25%, nationalisation decrees were unveiled in July. These were accompanied by the setting up of special courts with the power to impose two to ten year jail sentences "for disruptive tactics in factories or worker agitation".
Only gradually was Khomenei able to establish his power base. When Iraq invaded Iran in 1980 setting off a bloody war that would last for eight years, the masses rallied to the defence of the revolution. By then however, the revolutionary embers had cooled.
The Islamic Republican Party established by the clerics of the newly formed Revolutionary Council was connected to the old petit bourgeois (small capitalists) and the bazaar merchants who wanted order and private property defended.
While aiming to represent these conservative strata, Khomenei dealt blows against Western imperialism, through the nationalisations of the oil sector.
THE IRANIAN Islamic State is a capitalist republic of a special type - a clerical capitalist state. From the start, two opposing tendencies emerged within the clergy. One group around Khomenei argued that the Imams must hold power through a semi-feudal capitalist state with numerous centres of power. US imperialism represented the 'Great Satan' in their eyes and encouragement was to be given to the exporting of Islamic fundamentalism throughout the Muslim world.
Other leadership figures, including a more pragmatic wing within the clergy, wanted to establish a modern, centralised capitalist state. Whilst remaining resolute in their verbal denunciations of the US, they have sought especially in the last decade to put out feelers to the west.
The conflicts between these tendencies and the periodic political crises they have brought about, have never been resolved and are presently being fought out between Ayatollah Khamenei and the reformist President Khatami, elected by a big majority in 1997.
THE EVENTS in Iran sparked the growth of militant political Islam throughout the Muslim world. On the surface they demonstrated the power of the masses to strike a blow against imperialism.
But Marxists have to be clear. Islam is not intrinsically more radical or reactionary than any other world religion and Islamic fundamentalism is not a homogeneous phenomenon.
It was the past failures of secular Arab nationalist movements and the betrayals of the Communist Parties that ultimately created the conditions for the rise of right wing political Islam. It reflected in Iran and elsewhere since, the impasse of capitalism in the region and the need for the oppressed masses to find a way out.
The later variants of political Islam lack even a tinge of the radicalism that Khomenei was forced to embrace in the early months of the Iranian revolution.
The Taliban and the terrorist methods of al-Quaida and Osama bin Laden offer no solution to the struggling masses oppressed by capitalism and landlordism but, on the contrary, splinter the working class and rob it of its distinct and combative identity.
Today 20% of Iranians own half the country's wealth. Class struggle regularly breaks out. The stultifying edicts of the Imams increasingly clash with the desire of young people to live their lives in liberty.
Huge crowds took to the streets of Tehran to welcome the successful football team in 1998. Revolutionary Guards stood by helplessly as brave young women defied the restrictive dress code.
These are portents of Iran's stormy future. A new party of the working class must be built on solid Marxist foundations, capable of learning why the revolution was stolen from it in 1979.
With the country's income from oil exports halving since then, the voice of the working class will come to the fore once again allowing the unfinished business of the last revolution to be successfully completed.
PRIOR TO 1979 imperialism saw Iran as a crucial 'front line' buffer state against Soviet encroachment on the Middle East and South Asia. Its fabulous oil reserves were vital to Western interests.
In 1953 a radical nationalist movement led by Prime Minister Mosadeq's National Front had sought to nationalise the country's oil industry, triggering widespread demonstrations and elements of a popular uprising. The Shah was forced into temporary exile by the mass movement on the streets.
The response of imperialism was decisive. Britain and the US demanded Mosadeq's arrest and dispatched covert forces to create mayhem and force the Iranian army to deal with the threat to their profits.
The Shah was re-installed and ruled Iran with an iron fist for 25 years. His return saw all organised political opposition crushed and trade unions declared illegal. The security forces were re-organised with the assistance of the CIA.
After 1953, Iran embarked upon a frenetic period of industrialisation, largely pre-empting the economic programme of the capitalist National Front and thus eroding its popularity. The idea was to transform the nobility into a modern capitalist class, a ruling class on the model of the west.
Land reforms were introduced enriching the dominant absentee feudal landowners. They received enormous compensation, which they were encouraged to invest in new industries.
THE REAL casualties were the poor peasants. Over 1.2 million had their lands stolen, leading to starvation and a relentless exodus to the cities where they provided obscenely cheap labour for the new capitalists.
Before the revolution, 66% of carpet workers in the town of Mashad were aged between six and ten, while in Hamadam the working day was a staggering 18 hours. In 1977, many toilers earned just £40 a year. Although a nominal minimum wage had been granted by the regime, 73% of workers earned less than that.
Iran's factories resembled Dante's Inferno and comparisons with pre-revolutionary Russia were striking. There too, a breakneck process of industialisation had been undertaken by a weak capitalist class trying to unshackle itself from a feudal past, creating in Marx's words "its gravedigger" in the form of a militant working class.
As peasants flooded into the cities, the urban population doubled to reach 50% of the total. Tehran grew from three million to five million between 1968 and 1977, sprouting 40 shantytowns around its sprawling suburbs.
In 1947 there were just 175 large enterprises employing 100,000 workers. 25 years later, 2.5 million workers worked in manufacturing, one million in the construction industry and nearly the same number in transport and other industries.
Iran was in transition, half-industrialised and half-colonial. A mighty working class had been forged in just a generation. In Russia the working class had numbered just four million out of a total population of 150 million. Yet armed with Marxism, they had pulled the peasantry behind them and in 1917 had broken capitalism at its weakest link.
By comparison, the specific social weight of the Iranian working class was much greater - over four million workers in a population of 35 million.
US IMPERIALISM watched impotently as the Shah's last days in Iran were played out. Although voices in the Pentagon urged the sending of aircraft carriers and marines to the Gulf, the wiser heads in the US ruling class cautioned that 'you never invade a popular revolution'.
Moreover, America was still smarting from the wounds inflicted upon it in Vietnam. There the social struggle of the peasants and workers to throw off the chains of oppression had brought the superpower to its knees.
A US-led invasion of Iran would have had incalculable repercussions on a world scale, especially in the colonial world where the Shah stood for all that was most rotten in the eyes of the masses.
The Iranian revolution made America tremble. US president Jimmy Carter was humiliated when the Ayatollahs fomented street movements leading to the storming of the US embassy in Tehran and the taking of 66 hostages.
In 1983 Ronald Reagan was forced to withdraw from the Lebanon after US troops suffered losses at the hands of the Tehran-backed Shia Hizbollah movement.
IRAN WAS the second biggest exporter of oil in 1978 and the world's fourth largest producer. When oil prices quadruped between 1972-1975 as a result of the Arab-Israeli war, Iranian GNP leapt by 34% in one year alone. Enormous billions fell into the lap of the Shah for further investment.
But with the top 45 families owning 85% of medium and large firms and the richest 10% spending 40% of the money, the chasm between the classes was growing daily.
Over a quarter of Iranians existed in absolute poverty, yet displaying the characteristic arrogance of an absolute monarch, the Shah thundered in 1976, "We have not demanded self sacrifice from people. Rather we have covered them in soft cotton wool. Things will now change. Everyone shall work harder and should be prepared for sacrifices in the service of the nation's progress".
To hear an audio version of this document click here.
What the Socialist Party stands for
The Socialist Party fights for socialism – a democratic society run for the needs of all and not the profits of a few. We also oppose every cut, fighting in our day-to-day campaigning for every possible improvement for working class people.
The organised working class has the potential power to stop the cuts and transform society.
As capitalism dominates the globe, the struggle for genuine socialism must be international.
The Socialist Party is part of the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI), a socialist international that organises in many countries.
To hear an audio version of this document click here.
http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/13763