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Tyne & Wear May Day 2004
Workers' Daily Internet Edition: Article Index :
South Tyneside May Day Meeting & Celebration
Steelworkers in Canada Fight for the Dignity of Labour at May 1 Rally
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Tyne & Wear May Day 2004
Demonstrations were held on the occasion of May 1, 2004, day of the unity in struggle of the workers of all lands. In Newcastle, the sun shone on the march and rally organised by the Tyne & Wear May Day Committee under the banner of “Another World Is Possible”.
Some 250 working people and youth with their trade union, anti-war and other banners assembled at Times Square in Newcastle. The sentiments of working class unity and solidarity were further stirred when the Broughtons Brass Band from South Hetton struck up to lead the demonstration through Newcastle, including the thronged city centre. The march embodied the traditions of the working class in the North East region as a class for itself fighting for its rights and for a new socialist society. How this mood was at one with the masses of the people of Newcastle was evident as the demonstration marched through Haymarket and the city centre.
The brass band, which itself was made up of young and old, male and female, was applauded by local youth as the march entered Exhibition Park.
Speakers at the rally in Exhibition Park, which was chaired by Martin Levy of NATFHE, included Faz Velmi of the National Union of Students Women’s Campaign. She spoke of the fight against top-up fees and of education as a right, and of solidarity and collective struggle of working people. A coherent agenda our own is needed, she pointed out.
Dave Hopper, Secretary of the North East Area National Union of Mineworkers, 20 years after the commencement of the miners’ strike to defend their industry and the future of their communities and for the social ownership of the coal mines, brought the miners’ greetings to the international workers’ day rally and spoke of the lessons learned. In the programme for the May Day celebration, in an article The Struggle Continues, Dave Hopper wrote: “The miners’ defeat was also a defeat for the working class as a whole.” But, as he said in his speech, the defeat was not total. Former miners continue to play a massive political role in their communities, and the determination and organisation revealed in the tight-knit bonds of the miners and their families that so frightened the ruling class that it was determined to erase them from the social and economic landscape of Britain carry on. The eruption of the women of the coalfields on picket lines and demonstrations and their organisation into women’s groups remains a model.
Dave Hopper writes: “The Thatcher government had prepared well for the strike. They manipulated the media to sow division in the trade union movement, and they used the might of the state machine to smash trade union and community resistance. Yet the strike stimulated a magnificent demonstration of solidarity in Britain and across the world.
“As young miners went courageously into action on mass pickets against the paramilitary national organisation of the police, trade union and socialist activists formed support committees … Throughout the world, the labour and socialist movement came to our assistance.”
He continues: “The experience of standing up to the dictates of the owners of wealth and privilege is part of a process of change taking place in the wider working class movement. In factory and workplace – in spite of the blacklist – miners have been called upon to become shop stewards and take office in trade union branches. They carry into the wider movement their experience of struggle against the brutal class nature of the state and the class bias of the judiciary and media.”
Addressing the rally, Dave Hopper pointed out that the cost of defeating the miners’ strike taking everything into consideration was £28.5 billion. The forces of the state were ranged against the miners. In the old days, Dave Hopper said, the people who stood for socialism were jailed, but it remains our goal. We are still here 20 years later, he said. The lessons of the heroic action of the miners in 1984 will be carried forward into the next phase of working-class advance.
The speaker called on everyone to attend the Durham Miners Gala on July 24 which this year will have a further international dimension.
Other speakers at the May Day rally were Kevin Rowan (Northern Regional TUC Secretary), who spoke of his recent visit to Colombia as part of a delegation, Betty Hunter of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign who spoke condemning Israeli occupation and aggression against the Palestinian people, and Abdullah Muhsin of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Union Movements. Tyneside MP Jim Cousins also addressed the rally. Music was provided by the all-female band Snadge van Spearson.
On the evening of May 1, the South Tyneside May Day meeting and celebration was held in the Ex-Servicemen’s Club in historic Jarrow. Some 60 people attended the event, which consisted of a rally and social. At 8pm the Chairperson, Madeleine Nettleship of Unison Health, standing in for Jimmy Perry who was in Cuba, opened the meeting. She introduced the speakers, Dave Anderson, President of Unison and a former miner, speaking on the situation facing working people in Britain, and, speaking on the international situation, Dr Hakim Adi, lecturer in African and Black History at the University of Middlesex in London and particular expert in the participation of the people of African origin in the work of the communist movement.
After the speeches, Roger Nettleship, the Secretary of the South Tyneside May Day Committee, moved a motion of thanks to the speakers. He then called on everyone to join in and enjoy the social, which was a Ceilidh performed by the traditional Irish group, Cappaquinn & Friends. Discussion on many of the issues raised continued during the social until last orders were called.
We present a summary of some of the points raised in Dr Adi’s speech below.
We live in a society where there is massive disinformation, particularly about the struggles of peoples in other countries. The monopoly controlled media and major political parties do their best to say nothing about the struggles of our brothers and sisters in other countries. If they do say anything about these struggles they try to distort reality and present a view of the world where there is little or no opposition to the status quo. Just to give you an example take the struggle of the workers of the US. I think it was only last night on the television that the disgraceful photographs that had been taken in Iraq were shown in the main news bulletin. Immediately, they said that people in the US are not really concerned these things. But I can tell you I have just spent three weeks in the US, in three different cities and all the time I was there I didn’t meet a single person who supported Bush, or who supported the invasion and occupation of Iraq. In fact whilst I was in the capital, Washington DC, there was two demonstrations in opposition to the war on Iraq and there were also demonstrations in other cities – a demonstration in Buffalo against the visit of Bush, where working people of the US joined with their brothers and sisters in Canada to oppose his visit.
On May Day, it is important to remember the struggles of working people throughout the world and that includes the struggles of people in other parts of the American continent. We could take the example of Haiti, where the struggle against the US occupation and the US organised coup is still continuing. The media here provides us with hardly any explanation of the struggles of Haitian people, either today, or historically. It is a fact that the people of Haiti have a great revolutionary history, a history which inspired the working people of this country in the 19th century, when against all the machinations of the big powers they defeated the combined armies of France, Spain and of Britain and liberated themselves from slavery. The descendents of those people of Haiti have continued that struggle against the intervention of the US, the intervention of other big powers and over 30 coups and military regimes in the last century and a half, all inspired by the US or the other big powers. The have struggled against several periods of invasion and military occupation the most recent in the 1990s. Here the picture of Haiti is totally distorted. What is presented is that there is allegedly a popular opposition to the government of the elected President Aristide. The criminal activities of the CIA and other sinister organisations are entirely ignored. It is clear that the intervention of the US and CIA is one of many attempts to establish neo-colonial regimes throughout the world, not just in Haiti but elsewhere. In the example of Haiti, the US clearly wanted to militarise the Caribbean and wishes to establish a larger military presence in the area to threaten both Cuba and Venezuela, countries which are intent on pursuing there own independent path in the world.
This policy of disinformation is also evident in regard to the struggles of the peoples of the African continent, which are internationally celebrated at the end of this month on African liberation day, May 25. These struggles are particularly important at the present time, when again there is so much outside interference and intervention in the African continent. Here in Britain the colonial legacy of Britain’s presence and intervention in Africa is still very much around. And the effects of this colonial legacy are felt not only in the African continent, in the countries of Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, the Sudan etc but also in Britain where there is a whole distortion about the history and struggles of the African people. In much of Africa people are forced to survive on less than a dollar a day, many of them without clean running water and other basic amenities. But this colonial legacy is also still apparent in the sense that the British government and the other governments of the big powers are still intervening and are still ready to act as if colonialism still existed. You may be aware that the advisors to the present government such as Robert Cooper openly argue that colonialism should be re-introduced.
There is constant propaganda too that the people of Africa are incapable of self-government, that they are backward and victims of “failed” and “failing” states. All this is designed to hide the role of the imperialists and the legacy of colonial and neo-colonial rule. The struggles in Africa are continuing and developing against this external intervention, against the attempts to re-impose a naked colonialism on that continent. The people of Africa are struggling for their rights against the affects of globalisation, for sovereignty, for independence and for the ability to determine their own affairs without the interference of Britain and other big powers and their agencies such as the IMF and World Bank. It is partly in recognition of theses struggles that the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, has recently instituted his Commission for Africa, whose essence is to find new means to deny the people of Africa their rights. It cannot be a co-incidence in a country like Sierra Leone, Britain’s oldest colony in Africa, is still being occupied by British troops following the civil war in which the Labour government and other governments openly interfered, violating international law and UN sanctions. Today, Sierra Leone manages to be both the world’s poorest country and the world’s leading producer of diamonds. It is not co-incidental that not just in Africa but in so many other parts of the world too where Britain was the former colonial power there is continued instability, interference and oppression, and the struggles of the people are increasingly determined and have a massive international significance.
On this May Day, we can think particularly of the struggles of the people of Palestine and the people of Iraq. Here too there is a massive campaign of disinformation which has been unleashed which seeks to whitewash the crimes of both the Israeli Zionists and of the state terrorism of the US, Britain and other countries. This form of state terrorism has reached such alarming proportions and is meeting with such fierce resistance from the people of these countries, that even various members of the establishment have been forced to speak out as we saw this week with the letter addressed to Tony Blair condemning his toadying to Bush by former diplomats. More recently we have seen the articles in the press about wide spread use of torture in Iraq both by US forces and by the British army itself. Of course, there is still an attempt to present these acts as the action of a few bad apples but it is clear that both Britain and the US have engaged in various forms of torture both physical and psychological as part of their war crimes in Iraq for over a decade.
In all areas of the world these struggles of the working people are intensifying and this is only to be expected because they are being waged against the interference of the big powers, against the attempts to impose neo-liberalism throughout the world, against the constant interference of the big powers under a variety of guises, for example of so-called humanitarianism or under the guise of dealing with the problem of “rogue states”. The people of the world are protesting to assert their will, their demand for independence, the demand to be in control of their own affairs.
History shows that the world’s people cannot expect the imperialists to be their liberators. As the old saying goes, we are our own liberators. So too in Britain, it is up to working people themselves to plant the alternative in order to build a new society. Workers themselves have to become the opposition to the prevailing policy and programme of the rich, to the anarchy and chaos which are causing such disaster in our country and in the world. We are the ones who have to build a new world. In this, we can draw great inspiration from those struggles that are going on around the world, history is on our side, we must take up this historic task of building this new world and creating a society where working people are at the centre of consideration and where we become the decision makers.
Several thousand people took part in a militant and colourful march through Central London from Clerkenwell Green to Trafalgar Square on May First. Contingents represented trade unions, among whom RMT, Unison and PCS were prominent, youth organisations, pensioners associations, anti-war and anti-globalisation groups, national minority communities and numerous socialist and communist organisations. The banner at the front of the march proclaimed “For Trade Union Rights! For Human Rights! For International Solidarity!”
At the rally in Trafalgar Square organised jointly by SERTUC, the Greater London Trade Union Councils and the May Day Organising Committee, the marchers were welcomed by the Mayor of London Ken Livingstone. He condemned the atrocities being committed by the occupying forces in Iraq and called for Britain as well as Israel to give up their weapons of mass destruction. He called for a massive vote against racism and fascism in the June 10 GLA and EU Parliament elections.
Subsequent speakers included Frances O’Grady, Deputy General Secretary of the TUC, Joseph Mimich of the European TUC, Sarah Abawaju of the Kenyan Textile Workers Union, Kate Connolly of Globalise Resistance, Paul Mackney of NATFHE, Joy Moss of Greater London Pensioners Association, Andrew Bowden of Stop the War Coalition, and Mark Gould of SERTUC.
Without exception the speakers condemned the illegal war against Iraq and the subsequent occupation. All opposed the policies of the Blair government, in particular the attacks on public services and on rights, and many emphasised the vital role of workers in opposing these policies. Several speakers said it was important to vote in the June 10 election and keep fascists out of the GLA and the European Parliament. Many hundreds of copies of the Workers’ Weekly Special May Day Edition with its slogan Not New Labour, but the Workers’ Opposition were distributed on the march and at the rally, as they in other parts of the country where May Day events were held.
On May 1, day of international unity and struggle, it is very inspiring to learn that in the city of Hamilton in Ontario, Canada, as many as six or seven thousand active and retired steelworkers stood as one with their local union presidents in the fight against concessions and to defend the dignity of labour. At a rally organised by three branches of the United Steelworkers Union (USWA), they were joined by national and provincial labour leaders, the Mayor of Hamilton and contingents of workers and youth from across Ontario. Among them were car workers, public sector workers, postal workers, healthcare workers, teachers and others. Six busloads of workers came from Toronto organised by the Steelworkers' Toronto Area Council.
Banners such as "Fight for the Dignity of Labour", "Concessions are Not Solutions", "Hands Off Our Pensions" and "All for One and One for All" expressed the spirit of the workers present against attacks by companies such as the Canadian steel-maker Stelco and laws which defend the right of private property which are imposing monopoly right at the expense of labour. The necessity for ongoing work to build greater unity based on defending the rights of all imbued the rally, as well as the consciousness of the need to work out how this can be done in the face of the kind of pressure the workers are under. The flags of the various workers and organisations present reflected the consciousness that the battle now unfolding in Hamilton and elsewhere across Canada is decisive for the future of the Canadian nation and that the workers have a decisive role to play.
Rolf Gerstenberger, a USWA branch president, delivered the main speech at the rally. He pointed out that in a situation where maximum pressure is being exercised against the unity of the steelworkers, the support of their fellow workers is one of the most precious things.
Speaking about the struggle the Stelco workers have waged over the past year, Gerstenberger denounced the attempts of the company, with the assistance of the media and others, to create hysteria. The pressure must be rejected that if the steelworkers do not agree to what is unacceptable – to betray their pensioners, their active workers or the future generations of workers – disaster will befall them, he said. Further on he condemned the attempt to create what he called the barroom brawl atmosphere so that nothing can be discussed and resolved calmly, even though our future is at stake. Gerstenberger elaborated on this by saying it covers up how secret deals are made behind the backs of the workers. He emphasised that the discussion on Stelco and more generally on the development of Canada's steel industry is of vital concern to all, yet Stelco, the media and courts are demanding that it be kept secret and the public kept out of the discussion.
What is needed, he said, is for everyone to join in a nation-building project that includes saving the Canadian steel industry. He reiterated the call he issued earlier this year to Stelco, to the federal and provincial governments and to all political parties to "begin a national campaign and discussion to save the Canadian steel industry as well as to use our human and natural resources in a manner that is mutually beneficial to Canadians and the peoples of the world in dire need". To rousing applause he firmly rejected the demand that workers are supposed to choose whom to abandon – the current workforce or the pensioners or strike deals at the expense of new hires. He said that the unions are guided by the principle of defending the rights of all without which talk of fighting for the dignity of labour is hollow indeed.
The rally ended by once again expressing the unity of the active and retired workers affiliated with the three steel union branches in their fight to defend the dignity of labour. Following the rally, a demonstration was held through the streets of Hamilton.
Some 60 communist parties and people's organisations took part in the 13th International Communist Seminar (ISC) in Brussels, Belgium, on May 2-4, 2004. A delegation from the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) also participated in the ISC, which was hosted by the Worker's Party of Belgium. The entire conference was held in a militant anti-imperialist spirit directed against the US. During the proceedings various speakers underscored the need for all communists to strengthen and develop the worldwide anti-fascist anti-imperialist front of the world's peoples in order to stay the hand of the US imperialists who pose the greatest danger to the security and well being of humanity at this time.
Preceding the seminar was a May Day festival held on the outskirts of Brussels attended by over 1,000 people and which included music and cultural performances, solidarity activities including the sale and distribution of books, magazines and documents from various struggles and initiatives, and two open forums, one on the question of Iraq and another on the international struggle to Free the Cuban Five anti-terrorist patriots who are being held in the most barbaric conditions in US jails.
The overall topic of the 13th ISC was "Strategy and tactics in the struggle against global US imperialist war". Under this topic, various themes were discussed. On the first day of the proceedings the general theme was "US imperialism today, the number one enemy of the workers and peoples of the world". It was noted by a number of speakers that US imperialism under the Bush administration was determined to embroil the whole world in a global imperialist war. A few of the presenters observed that the US is putting on the agenda for the G-8 summit to be held on June 8-10 in Georgia, its "Greater Middle-East Plan" aimed at establishing its hegemony over the whole Middle-East in order to control Europe, and threaten Russia, China, as well as India, and to lay claim upon the continent of Africa. However, the invasion and occupation of Iraq and the increased fascist violence of the US backed Israeli occupation forces upon the Palestinian people have only resulted in increased resistance by the Iraqi and Palestinian people as well as the increasing opposition of the peoples of the world to the fascist US imperialist aggression and war.
Another theme that emerged was the importance of strengthening the support for all the fighting peoples of the world – Palestinians, Iraqis, Haitians, Colombians, Venezuelans – as well as defending the right to independence and self-determination of Cuba and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), countries which are in the forefront of the struggle of the nations of the world to affirm their independence and oppose all the attempts of the US to blackmail them through disinformation and military threats. A representative of the Communist Party of Cuba outlined the struggle that Cuba is leading against the plan of the US to impose the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) and that this struggle is the sharp edge of the fight against US hegemonism and domination of the nations and peoples of all the Americas. He also said that Cuba stands for peace and has done everything to fight for peace, but it will not give up its sovereignty to the US under any circumstances.
Similarly, the Worker's Party of Korea representative outlined the disinformation and military threats of the Bush administration aimed at undermining the sovereignty and independence of the DPRK and affirmed the determination of the people of the DPRK to unite around the army-first policy of the government and to defeat any military aggression by the US on the DPRK.
One of the highlights of the first day was an intervention by the spokesman of a Congolese delegation who denounced the continued interference and genocide carried out by Anglo-American imperialism to destabilise the Congo so that the Congolese people could not organise in their own interests for a government that would ensure an independent and sovereign Congo. He spoke about the decades of outside interference that has not permitted a moment's respite to the Congolese people. He informed the Seminar that Rwandese mercenaries are currently being funded by the US to continue to slaughter the Congolese people and to occupy their lands. He called on world public opinion to speak out against this and help to create space so that the Congolese people have a chance to establish their democracy and determine their own affairs.
At the end of each day there was a friendship dinner where the various delegations were able to exchange experiences and engage in informal discussions with one another.
The theme for the second day of the Seminar was "Today's struggle against global US imperialist war". A number of presentations were made by representatives of communist and workers’ parties from countries in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The main point they made was that with the restoration of capitalism in these countries and republics has come increased violence and exploitation of the working class, the destruction of the social and economic infrastructure and the humiliation of the people. In the context of "the new Europe", the blackmail to join NATO or the European Union was elaborated. The representative of the Socialist Party of Latvia pointed out that even the singing of The Internationale is banned in Latvia now and the reactionary government is proposing to the European Union that all communist parties in Europe be banned. That is the price of membership to the EU, they said.
Another theme that emerged during the second day of the seminar was the rise of the EU as an imperialist bloc which threatens the economic power of the US, and the decision of the EU as a whole to become the "most competitive in the global market". Various speakers noted that the rise of the EU as a powerful imperialist bloc threatens the communist and workers’ movement in Europe. The need for all the communist parties to work together as one united communist front against this retrogression was repeatedly stressed.
The second day ended with a meeting after dinner to discuss practical means to consolidate support for Cuba.
The last day of the Seminar was spent on the theme "The tasks ahead for the communists". Several interventions highlighted the necessity of building the international anti-imperialist anti-war front of the peoples of the world but not at the expense of the communists of each country taking up the work to organise the working class and people in their own interests – that is, how the working class can exercise proletarian political power and bring in those arrangements that would favour the class and the whole society. The representative of the Communist Party of Venezuela explained how they are organising the working class and people of Venezuela within the framework of the Bolivarian revolution of the Chavez government based on the need for an independent and self-sufficient economy, trade for mutual benefit, peaceful relations between Venezuela and other countries and defence of the right of the people of Venezuela to determine their own affairs themselves.
Time was also spent discussing the draft of the final resolution of the 13th ICS and many suggestions were received. It was clear that the thrust of the resolution would be to further develop the unity of the working class and peoples of all countries in the world to step up their collective struggle against the threat of another global imperialist war posed by the barbaric US imperialists.