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Abortion: make the position
clear
An open letter to the Respect executive committee
After George Galloway's reactionary, anti-choice statements
to his interviewers at the Independent on Sunday,
Mark Fischer, National Organiser of the CPGB, demands
an unequivocal statement from Respect supporting abortion
rights, and reasserting democratic control over our Respect
leadership by the rank and file.
Letters
Respect abortion; Respect tact; Respect MAB; Lucy absent;
Imagined Jesus; Soccer racism; ESF translation; NUM kettles;
Spart hell
SWP vote down women's rights
Dave Landau proposed a motion to Islington Respect
defending a woman's right to choose. The SWP majority
in the branch prevented it being passed.
How embarrassing
For an organisation so focused on its image, Respect have
created a website surprisingly poor in design - though
the design remains better than the politics. Phil Hamilton
winces for them.
Unprincipled compromise
Ian Donovan examines the distinctly unholy alliance
of George Galloway's unreconstructed catholicism and the
SWP's willingness to sell out half our population's rights
over their own bodies
Fight for abortion rights
Eddie Ford examines the history of the struggle
for abortion rights which Respect seem willing to gamble
with.
Seeing red: MAB, abortion and the
CPGB
In a new regular column in the Weekly Worker, Cameron
Richards argues that George Galloway's attack on womens'
rights, and its acclaim from MAB, confirms the analysis
of the Red Platform that Respect is not fit to receive
the CPGB's unconditional electoral support.
On abortion and politics
of conscience
Mike Macnair directly challenges the trite bourgeois
orthodoxies on the subject of abortion: that abortion
rights are a matter of individual conscience, that
christianity and islam forbid it, and that democratically
accountable representatives should be allowed a 'free
vote' on the question. He brings the debate back to the
real issue: the rights of individual women.
Guildford Respect defends
a woman's right to choose
Manny Neira reports on the founding meeting of
Britain's newest Respect branch:its formation, and its
first vote - a unanimous call for free abortion on demand.
Damaged credibility
Pete McLaren, convener of the Socialist Alliance
Democracy Platform, invites the CPGB to rejoin. He argues
that the grounds on which we left are now irrelevant,
that some SADP members are already Respect activists,
and the CPGB should be joining in the defence against
any retreat from the politics of the Socialist Alliance.
Sectarian delusions
In his reply to the letter from the SADP above, Peter
Manson (member of our Provisional Central Committee
and editor of the Weekly Worker) argues that Respect,
for all its weaknesses, remains the main site for the
struggle to build a revolutionary communist party, and
concludes that the SADP's decision not to join or support
it is therefore sectarian.
Tip of the iceberg
Jem Jones examines the political realities which
lie behind the brutal treatment of prisoners by the US-UK
occupation forces in Iraq: treatment which dehumanises
both the victims and the perpertrators, and for which
the real responsibility lies with the initiators of the
invasion and the leaders of imperialism.
God, Mammon, and the American way
The US Presidential election is on November 2, and the
battle between the two men competing to be the most powerful
individual being on the planet on November 3 is as intense
as it is superficial. Manny Neira tries to cut
through the ticker tape to the politics.
Gilchrist launches witch-hunt
Alan Fox lifts the lid on the anti-democratic tactics
being adopted by Fire Bridge Union's leader Andy Gilchrist
against the rank and file movement, Grassroots FBU.
