On 10th September 2004 Oxford Labour Party welcomed IFTU representative Abdullah Muhsin to address a joint meeting of the Oxford Constituency LPs. The 50 or so Labour Party members present from across the city responded positively to IFTU’s call for the labour movement in Britain to help to provide practical and financial support for independent trade unions in Iraq. Anne Black a member of the Labour Party National Executive Committee had invited the IFTU and chaired the meeting.
Many LP members present said they had recently campaigned against the war on Iraq and many of them had over 30 years’ personal history of working in their trade unions or in the Labour Party. This experience of running political and social campaigns and organising at every level of civil society gave them an understanding of the day-to-day tasks facing the IFTU’s members in Iraq. For instance, the meeting warmly greeted the IFTU’s initiative in lunching the ‘Khalil Shawqi Appeal’ http://www.iraqitradeunions.org/archives/000049.html
The members Oxford Labour Party strongly empathised with IFTU’s project for a travelling theatre bus. They immediately grasped how this would help to spread the message of new independent trade unionism, in order to bury Saddam’s legacy of trade unions as state-fronts and to reassure Iraqi people that now it is essential to talk openly about politics and labour rights. The meeting was also visibly moved by the secular and democratic perspective of the independent Iraqi trade union movement and the IFTU’s determination to overcome religious, political and regional divisions.
The IFTU representative explained that although opinion surveys would show an overwhelming no vote amongst Iraqis for the question, ‘Do you want the American Occupation?’ an equal number would answer no to the question ‘Should the Americans leave immediately?’ And because of this paradoxical situation, the IFTU has chosen not to take up arms but instead to fight within the transformational process for labour rights.
The IFTU also oppose those sinister forces where Saddam’s loyal Ba’athists blocks with religious Fundamentalists to lead a movement of dispossessed young men back to a tyrannical state in one form or another. These sinister armies murder workers and proclaim no political or social programme other than opposition to America but actually harbour some of the most reactionary ideas in the world. The meeting agreed that massive investment is needed to provide jobs and hope to these self-same young workers; otherwise the chance of creating a sovereign, democratic secular Iraq may be lost.
The IFTU asked delegates to identify other forums for discussion; union branches, colleges and peace groups, and to invite the IFTU to speak to them. We hope a firm bond will develop between the Oxford CLPS and the IFTU.