Editorial

Thousands of activists are taking part in this truly global event - celebrating the full strength of anti-capitalism and workers' struggle.

During the event cleaners and other low paid workers will lead a demo through Canary Wharf as part of their fight for decent wages and trade union recognition. Fighting against low-pay jobs and privatisation in Britain connects us with our brothers and sisters defending their rights across the world.

The divisions within the government spring from the massive discontent that has crystallised around the war and occupation.

He is wrong on two counts: not only is Moqtada al Sadr's Mahdi army still in control of the mosque, but it is the US army which has been bombarding them.

He had suffered a fatal aorta rupture at Stansted airport as he was travelling to Ireland with his partner Clare Fermont and daughter Kate.

Paul was a member of the Socialist Review editorial board for over 17 years and a regular contributor to this magazine. For a lot of this time our editorial meetings would take place in Paul and Clare's kitchen. The discussions were always friendly and fraternal, often polemical and occasionally heated, but they shaped the political content and direction of this publication and Paul's contribution was hugely significant.

In the run up to the bogus 'handover of power' to the puppet Iraqi interim government, the level of popular opposition became clear. The coalition was forced into humiliating withdrawals from the sieges of Fallujah and Najaf - conceding the return of a Ba'athist general in the former, and the continued liberty of the Shia cleric Moqtada Al Sadr in the latter. In the week preceding 30 June the last functioning oil pipeline was shut down, and the resistance mounted devastating, coordinated assaults on police stations and government buildings.

It may have been less visible than the 2 million person march against the war and the mass protests that greeted George Bush when he came to London last year, but the vote for the Respect coalition in the recent elections represents a huge step forward for the left in this country.

Whoever appointees US proconsul Paul Bremer and UN special representative Lakhdar Brahimi appoint as Iraqi prime minister - and whoever he in turn appoints to a provisional administration - it is a process that has been stripped of the last vestiges of credibility by the experience of a year of occupation. As the US army's War College concedes in a report titled 'Iraq and Vietnam: Differences, Similarities and Insights', 'In Vietnam, we were trying to prop up a government that had little legitimacy.

Along with George Galloway, who heads Respect's list for the European election in London, her involvement ensures that socialist politics will be at the forefront of the election over the coming weeks.

This is a bit rich given that Blair wants to claim the invasion as a precedent for future pre-emptive attacks.

The withdrawal of the case against Katharine Gun has fuelled the angry fire of opposition, and Clare Short‘s revelations have increased its intensity. Since Short claimed that British spies were bugging Kofi Annan at the UN, New Labour ministers and much of the press have lined up to attack her for being ’irresponsible‘, while UN spokespeople along with Hans Blix and others have exhibited little surprise.