The Demand for a Just and Peaceful Solution Is a Demand for the Alternative!

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The Demand for a Just and Peaceful Solution Is a Demand for the Alternative!

Students and Staff Lobby University Senate

Sunderland Medical Secretaries Strike

German Workers Stage More Warning Strikes

Africa:
EU-ACP Joint Parliamentary Assembly Ends in Acrimony
Leaders Insist that African Aspirations Are Vital in NEPAD

March and Rally:
'Don't Start Wars - War is Not the Answer!’

-- Statement of RCPB(ML) on the Occasion of the National Demonstration against War, March 30, 2002 --

The so-called "war on terrorism" which Bush and Blair declared as official state policy is not abating. George W Bush and Tony Blair are pushing further ahead down their warmongering path. A phase two of this "war on terror" – which is actually a policy of state terrorism of Bush and Blair – is in the making and a phase three is already being articulated.

The pretexts for aggression and intervention used by Bush and Blair, such as "wiping out the evil of terrorism" and "eliminating weapons of mass destruction" are just that – pretexts. The broad anti-war movement and all peace-loving people are rejecting these pretexts with contempt. The pretexts barely mask a rapacious drive to impose the Anglo-US "New World Order" globally in the interests of the rich and powerful.

Far from the war in Afghanistan being over, British troops are escalating their involvement. US troops are straddling the globe under the pretext of the "war against terrorism". US imperialism is threatening the world with a nuclear holocaust. Bush and Blair are openly preparing for a new war against Iraq.

In the face of the growing threat of a new war of world proportions, people are demanding a just and peaceful solution to the world’s problems. They are taking a stand against warmongering, the use of force to settle international questions, and against the nuclear blackmail of the big powers. They are demanding an end to militarisation and the usurping of decision-making power by a powerful elite.

The "war on terrorism" is also being directed against dissent and political protest by branding these as "terrorist", and against the rights of the vulnerable under a permanent stage of "national emergency". In the face of this terrorising of dissent, and the move to divide the ranks of the people into those that are with the authority of the land and those that are "with the terrorists", people are demanding that the rights of all be defended.

How should these demands be taken forward? How can war and state terror be prevented?

The people must step up their actions against war and injustice by taking a stand against the warmongering path of Anglo-American imperialism as well as against its declaration of war against the "enemy within". They cannot permit that these things should pass. In so doing, they are declaring "Not In Our Name!" to these actions of Bush and Blair, and are also declaring that Another World Is Possible!

It is this different world, this alternative, which is the essence of the demands for a just and peaceful solution and for the defence of the rights of all, and which these demands will give rise to when taken to their conclusion. The working class and people in this way will develop their struggles to put an end to war and state terrorism and be the champions of their own new world which will put an end to the "New World Order" of Bush and Blair.

On Tuesday, March 26, staff and students of the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne lobbied the latest meeting of the University Senate, in "a protest opposing student poverty and compulsory redundancies".

The University is currently undergoing a programme of restructuring. One aspect of this programme will be to reduce the number of faculties at the University from seven to three, meaning both voluntary and compulsory redundancies.

The lobby, supported by the unions AUT, MSF and UNISON, gave the call for "No Redundancies! Grants Not Fees!" in opposition to "the continued underfunding of higher education by the government".

The protest assembled outside the Students' Union Building at 1:00pm to proceed to lobby the University Senate meeting, which started at 1:15pm.

Approximately 30 people participated. One, a postdoctoral scientist at the University, gave us the following report: "Five of us covered the side door and I think between us we managed to lobby most of the senators. The major issue of protest was against the University's planned marginalisation of the Centre for Lifelong Learning."

The Centre for Lifelong Learning provides part-time courses for general interest, professional and vocational courses and part-time degrees to people from the North East. One proposal put before the Senate was to remove 150 Full-Time Equivalents (FTEs) from the funding for the Lifelong Learning Programme next academic year, which would mean that 30% of 3,000 part time students from the region would not be able to continue with their studies.

On Wednesday, more than 140 secretaries met at the Sunderland Royal Hospital and marched to Sunderland Eye Infirmary.

The march and rally came in a week the Sunderland medical secretaries had announced an indefinite strike for their demands. They want to be re-graded from scale three – which has a starting salary of £11,037, rising to £12,815 – to level four, which would increase their wages from £12,815 as a starting salary and rising to £15,546.

Also on Wednesday two ballots at other hospitals in the region were announced. Medical secretaries in South Tyneside and South Durham voted overwhelmingly for strike action in their ballots. At South Tyneside 96.6% of the 60 medical secretaries supported strike action with the 85 medical secretaries in South Durham recording 96.4%.

Liz Twist, UNISON regional Head of Health, said: "These members are not usually described as union hot heads; they are hard-working sensible women who have been driven to take this decision because of their frustration at their justified claim being ignored. The secretaries do a responsible job and all they are asking for is that this should be recognised by their employers." Liz Twist said that the Sunderland strikers were all very positive. "They will continue their protest tomorrow and indefinitely until their demands are met."

Today, Thursday, there will be discussions with the secretaries in South Tyneside and South Durham to determine the timetable for any industrial action. They will be joining the medical secretaries in Sunderland who have been taking action over a number of weeks.

WDIE wishes the medical secretaries success in their just struggle.

Thousands of German engineering workers staged more warning strikes on Wednesday and a union leader said the action could be intensified unless employers negotiated on their claims for inflation-busting wage increases.

IG Metall, the country's second-largest union, called out workers from the eastern states of Brandenburg and Saxony, including employees of car giant DaimlerChrysler and engineering group ThyssenKrupp.

It was the third day of brief warning strikes in east Germany by the 2.8 million-strong union in support of its claim for a 6.5 percent wage increase for members across the country.

"If we don't get down to this matter [the wage claim] in our talks, we will have to intensify our warning strikes," said Hasso Duevel, IG Metall's head for much of eastern Germany.

Economists have warned workers that their ambitious wage demands risked crushing the tentative recovery of the German economy and fuelling inflation, putting pressure on the European Central Bank to consider tightening interest rates.

IG Metall said the warning strikes were aimed at persuading employers to improve on their offer of 2 percent raises for this year and next. The union could ballot members at the end of April to launch full-scale strikes.

In western Germany union laws have forbidden workers from striking, but a grace period ends today, four weeks after the last wage contract ran out. The same rules do not apply in the former GDR.

Employers in Saxony yesterday withdrew a legal challenge to the warning strikes.

The recently concluded joint parliamentarian assembly between the African Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries and the EU in Cape Town, South Africa, ended in acrimony as a result of the efforts of the EU to impose their colonialist views on the forum. The meeting, held from March 18 – 21, considered a number of resolutions, including those on Zimbabwe, democracy in ACP states, the European development fund, the Cotonou agreement and resolutions on different regions in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific.

The colonialist nature of this gathering was reflected in the fact that whereas the ACP countries were called on to render account of the "progress and problems of democracy" in their countries, no such requirement fell on the EU states, whose representative democracy is experiencing a truly profound crisis of legitimacy and where "anti-terrorist" legislation is attacking human and civil rights. Ramdien Sardjoe, an MP from Suriname, reminded the Assembly that "threats to democratic society could also be found in the European Union, especially with the rise of racism and xenophobia". In the same vein, Gabriel Ankunwafor, speaking on behalf of the ACP Counci,l complained that "certain interpretations of the clause relating to human rights and democracy was becoming more of a court trial than a mechanism for dialogue between partners". The real aims behind the EU’s insistence on "certain basic democratic principles" which must be implemented by the ACP countries if they are to be considered "democratic" were summed up by a French MP, Dominique Souchet, who declared, "Investors need security."

However, the colonialist ambitions of the EU ran into stiff opposition when they attempted to manoeuvre the Assembly into condemning the Zimbabwean government and interfering in that country’s affairs. A resolution tabled by the EU condemned the recent elections in Zimbabwe, welcomed the suspension of Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth, called for the laws of Zimbabwe to be changed and for charges to be dropped against particular individuals and finally demanded that new elections be held in that country under the auspices of the "Commonwealth and the international community". The EU, however, could not win the Assembly around to this naked plan for the recolonisation of Zimbabwe. The first problem which confronted them was that the ACP observer mission to the Zimbabwe elections had concluded that the election results were legitimate. A Nigerian MP, Abubakar Bawa-Bwari, supported this judgement and Kaire Mbuende, a Namibian MP, declared that Zimbabwe’s future was in its people’s hands. Reports from the meeting indicate that the debate ended in acrimony with heated exchanges between the ACP parliamentarians and those from the EU.

Unable to browbeat the Assembly into supporting their colonialist plan, the EU delegation resorted to subterfuge. Glenys Kinnock who was chairing the session on the Zimbabwe debate violated the procedural rules to block discussion of a resolution submitted by the Southern African countries which sought to amend and replace the one tabled by the EU. She then pushed ahead with the vote on the EU resolution in violation of the rules of procedure. In response to this provocation from the EU, the ACP parliamentarians met and issued a formal protest. It declared:

"The ACP members of the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly deplore the manner in which the vote on the resolution on Zimbabwe was conducted during the fourth session held in Cape Town, South Africa, from 18^th to 21^st March 2002. They deplore the fact that notwithstanding the provisions of Articles 16(6) and 33 of the Rules of Procedure, they were not accorded the possibility of recourse to the appeal procedure, which would have enabled them to participate effectively in adopting the decision on the voting procedures. They call upon the co-president of the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly to rise above all individual considerations and have only the supreme interest of the ACP-EU partnership at heart. The ACP members regret the adoption, by the European Union side alone, of the resolution on Zimbabwe of which they have, however, taken note."

Speaking after these events in Cape Town, the Zimbabwe Minister for Information and Publicity, Jonathan Moyo, rejected the resolution as meaningless since it had been passed by the EU alone. He condemned the activity of Glenys Kinnock, describing her as someone whose "racism against Zimbabwe knows no bounds".

African leaders who held a daylong summit on Tuesday on the implementation of the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) resolved that the initiative must conform to Africa’s own aspirations to succeed.

"African ownership is central to the NEPAD process, which must be retained and strongly promoted so as to meet the legitimate aspirations of the African peoples," leaders said in the final communiqué at the end of the meeting in the Nigerian capital, Abuja.

In the document they said, "While the principle of partnership with the rest of the world was equally vital to this process, such partnership must be based on mutual respect, dignity, shared responsibility and mutual accountability."

The meeting brought together heads of state and representatives of 13 countries that form the implementation committee of NEPAD. Also in attendance were top officials of the Organisation of African Unity, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and the Food and Agriculture Organisation.

Concern had been widespread among participants over indications that Western countries, led by the United States, were considering withdrawing their commitments to NEPAD because of African support for the electoral process that returned Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe, to power earlier this month. Western countries had condemned the polls as deeply flawed.

Furthermore, US President George Bush had said at the UN Conference on Financing Development, held a week earlier in Monterrey, Mexico, that development aid to poor countries, most of which are in Africa, should be tied to reforms including the opening up of their markets.

Apart from stressing the need for development processes that respect the dignity of poor countries in international partnerships, the NEPAD meeting threw its weight behind the establishment of an African Peer Review Mechanism under which African countries would undertake "self assessment" based on common indicators of democracy and good governance.

The African leaders also spoke of centrality of peace and security to the continent's development. After considering the report of a subcommittee on peace and security headed by South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki, the meeting set out focal areas. These include curbing the illicit circulation of weapons and small arms, as well as enhancing the capacity to deal with and resolve conflicts in the continent.

Western leaders had been hoping that the summit would endorse an unprecedented declaration on democracy and good governance which adopts Anglo-American definitions.

Wiseman Nkuhlu, chairman of NEPAD's steering committee and special economic adviser to South African President Thabo Mbeki, said, "It is important that African leaders restore people's confidence in Africa's leadership."

He reacted angrily to a warning by the United States that overwhelming African endorsement of Zimbabwe's controversial presidential election could hurt Western support for NEPAD. "We take exception to that kind of position that countries like the United States are taking," Nkuhlu said. "African countries are doing this because they think it's the right thing to do. For Africans to be dictated to like this is simply irritating."

Nkuhlu said the lack of Western-style democracy in some Asian countries did not stop US investors putting money there.

Reminder about the following national event in London, organised by CND and supported by Stop the War Coalition:

Saturday 30th March 2002

'Don't Start Wars - War is Not the Answer!’

Assemble 12noon Hyde Park, London

followed by a march to the

Rally in Trafalgar Square;

there will also be a variety of guest speakers

For further information go to:
http://www.stopwar.org.uk

and
http://www.cnduk.org/campains/30march.htm