The Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) is the socialist international organisation to which the Socialist Party in England and Wales is affiliated. CWI members here in Britain, those in other countries are involved in workers’ struggles and developing socialist ideas in order to fundamentally change society. Below are a few examples of this work. More reports and socialist analysis can be read on socialistworld.net

Nigeria

Abbey Trotsky of the Democratic Socialist Movement (CWI, Nigeria) faces four cases against him in separate courts. Abbey suffered regular arrest and detention throughout 2019 for supporting Sumal food workers win pay rises and other improvements in conditions in 2018.

In one trial against him, he has even been denied his choice of legal representation! But Abbey is defiant. And the protests outside the trials will continue.

South Africa

The government’s Expanded Public Works Programme gets workers to do jobs in the public sector, but without permanent contracts or decent pay. Some earn as little as £105 a month. Gauteng Workers’ Forum, an initiative of the Marxist Workers’ Party (CWI, South Africa), has organised five mass meetings demanding permanent contracts and decent pay.

  (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

The biggest meeting so far was in Soweto where 400 attended on 27 January.

Nearly 200 workers came to the Boipatong meeting, led by Marxist Workers’ Party member, Executive Lungisani Mukwevho, and over 100 to the meeting at Careltonville Hospital. Nupsaw trade union is now working with the Workers’ Forum. They’re jointly organising a protest march at President Cyril Ramaphosa’s state of the nation address to a joint sitting of the National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces on 13 February.

The Marxist Workers’ Party has already produced three bulletins for the Forum.

Germany

150 activists participated in the launch of a new Network for Fighting Unions on 26 January. This initiative was the result of collaborative work between Sol (CWI Germany) and other activists and included representatives of important recent workers’ struggles, including Amazon.

France

Strikes and demonstrations organised by France’s trade union movement are continuing in order to press back against the Macron government’s attacks on workers’ pensions (see socialistparty.org.uk for eyewitness reports), the main planks of which are still going through the national assembly.

The Le Harve demonstration on 24 January, in which CWI members participated, was huge. Here, Val De Seine high school students joined in. They built a human chain to protest the imposition of unfair university entrance exams. Teachers, furious at job cuts, surrounded the academic-inspection building.

Ireland

A protest in Balbriggan in Dublin successfully disrupted the election rally of the far-right racist Anti-Corruption Ireland. One of the speakers was prevented from getting into the meeting.

The CWI Ireland leaflet called for a united trade union and working-class struggle for jobs and homes, and against cuts, poverty and racism.

CWI Ireland member Carah Daniel addressed the protest. She said Balbriggan “has a proud record of pushing back against racism.” She blamed big landlords, property developers and capitalist TDs (MPs) in the Dail (Parliament) for the housing crisis, and called on young people and workers to get together and “fight for socialism.”