Feature

Oh dear, oh dear. The old Tory governments of Thatcher and Major, New Labour assured us, were 'drowned in sleaze'. Corruption was their undoing, and the constant pledges of Labour's new, young, clean politicians, led by Blair, Brown and Mandelson, were going to clean up the whole mess. Now New Labour is back for a second term with an impregnable majority, and what is this? An opinion poll finds that the public consider New Labour even more sleazy than the Tories ever were! Blair and Co regularly mock and contradict that finding.

At the beginning of the year, war veterans of the Zanu-PF party in Zimbabwe went on a rampage through the townships of Harare. All suspected members of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) were systematically beaten, and one was decapitated in front of his family. The police did not intervene. This, like many other acts of violence, was an attempt by the ruling party to intimidate people before the presidential elections to be held in March.

A young Brazilian stayed behind after one of our workshops at Porto Alegre. 'I wanted to ask', he said, 'whether we've got an anti-capitalist movement in Latin America too.'

Such was the hysteria at the time that US senators were forced to evacuate their offices for two months because they thought anthrax had found its way into the air conditioning system. The scare was also used to justify the military build-up in preparation for the war against Afghanistan. We were told that the person sending anthrax was a terrorist, possibly a supporter of Al Qaida or Saddam Hussein.

US threats to unilaterally escalate the war have sent shockwaves around the world. Members of the French, German, Canadian and Japanese governments, all part of the western coalition, have expressed alarm and warned against precipitate US action. In Britain the normally pro New Labour 'Guardian' has come out against an attack on Iraq, and within two weeks of Bush's 'axis of evil' speech protests against war had been reported in Japan, Iran and South Korea.

The British ruling class quit India in 1947. But as it did so, it divided the subcontinent between two independent states, India (supposedly secular) and Pakistan (a homeland for Muslims). Pakistan was a bizarre entity which had 1,000 miles of India separating its western and its eastern wings--a state of affairs that would last until 1971 when, amidst tumult and war, the east broke away and became the state of Bangladesh.

Since it began 15 months ago the Palestinian intifada has had little to show for itself politically, despite the remarkable fortitude of a militarily occupied, unarmed, poorly led, and still dispossessed people that has defied the pitiless ravages of Israel's war machine. In the US the government and, with a handful of exceptions, the 'independent' media have echoed each other in harping on about Palestinian violence and terror, with no attention at all paid to the 35 year Israeli military occupation, the longest in modern history.

It was only 2,000 workers. Hardly enough to shake a majority government off course. Yet within days of the first South West Trains strikes the air of crisis around the government threatened Stephen Byers' position. ScotRail drivers refused to work rest days and stopped one in four trains running. Arriva train drivers returned a 17 to one vote for strike action, and even commuters are planning a passenger strike on 1 March . The media was suddenly full of talk about a return of the 1970s.

1972 was a tremendous year for Britain's working class. The struggle rose to new heights, both in terms of the number of workers involved, the size of strikes and their length, and above all in the quality of the struggle. There have been far more large-scale and prolonged strikes this year than in the previous ten years. November and December figures have not yet been published, but there is no doubt that the total number of strike days has reached or exceeded 30 million this year.

The RMT leadership was always proud of the deep links between Labour and the union at all levels. At the top the RMT sponsored half the shadow cabinet and had great expectations of a Labour government. A significant number of union activists had been encouraged to become Labour councillors and at the grassroots the union boasted the highest density of party membership of any trade union.