I nominate ERIC LEE of 4 Alexandra Park Road, London N10 2AA. as a candidate for a seat on the Board.

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As it needs your original signature, please send it by post to my address (see above).

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The first has been reaction to the decision taken by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) to call for a partial boycott of Israel and its more recent decision to praise the government's decision to label West Bank products. The second is the spectacular rise of the far-right British National Party (BNP).

And the stunning election victory by the BNP in this year's European elections – leading to two British fascists winning seats in the European Parliament – led to the decision by the BBC to invite Nick Griffin, the party's leader, to appear on “Question Time”. Following Griffin's breakthrough appearance, polls showed 22% of Britons would now consider voting for the fascist party.

The party already won a million votes in the European elections and it is widely believed that in parliamentary elections in 2010 they could make a breakthrough and win seats in the House of Commons for the first time.

In hearing the reaction of both Jewish leaders and union leaders to these two developments, I am struck by how much they seem to have lost touch with reality. They all appear to be in denial.

The common wisdom about the rise of the BNP is that white working class Britons are increasingly alienated, and no longer feel that the Labour Party represents them. So after decades of voting Labour, they have switched loyalties to vote for a party that they perceive as being their own – the BNP.

Trade union leaders and Jewish leaders alike are convinced that these voters do not turn to the BNP out of racism. In fact, if they were only to be made aware of the racism the BNP represents, they would return to their roots and vote Labour again.

The entire panel on “Question Time” -- which included senior figures from the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties – devoted all their energies to proving that Griffin was a racist.

And yet despite their best efforts, the BNP clearly profited from the exposure. Which raises the question – is it possible that exposing the racism of the BNP will actually make it more popular? Could it be that the problem is not so much that white working class voters are being tricked into voting for a racist party – but in fact that they are themselves racists?

There is considerable evidence both of a rise of racist attitudes in Britain and of a persistence of traditional racist beliefs. Even though the newspapers read by the country's elite (such as the Guardian and Independent) may laud multiculturalism, the tabloids read by millions of ordinary people (in particular the Daily Mail and Daily Express) routinely push an overtly racist agenda.

And yet leaders of the one large social movement – the trade unions – which could conceivably take on the BNP, are denying that racism is what attracts voters to it.

The implausibility of all this is really staggering.

I'm sure that the vast majority of BNP voters have no idea where the party stands on health care, education, or foreign policy. The one thing – the only thing -- everyone knows about the BNP is that it is a racist party.

Until very recently, its constitution explicitly banned non-Whites from joining.

Its origins are in the street-fighting neo-Nazis of the old National Front. Even those without the remotest interest in politics will known that Nick Griffin's party are the blokes who hate the Muslims and other immigrants.

That may be all they know about the party – but that is precisely its appeal. Educating the public about just how racist the BNP is will be unlikely to weaken it. And as the debacle of the “Question Time” debate shows, that kind of exposure may even win the party new converts.

And it strikes me that same kind of denial affects how moderate trade unionists are viewing the stunning reversal by the TUC of an even-handed approach to the Middle East.

The resolutions passed by the trade unions this year not only called for a boycott of some Israeli products, but also for an arms embargo on Israel, and for unions to affiliate to the pro-Hamas Palestine Solidarity Campaign. The resolution proposed by the Fire Brigades Union, which passed by a large majority at the TUC, called for the British unions to “review” their relationship with the only mass, independent and democratic trade union movement in the Middle East, the Israeli Histadrut.

One trade union leader who is considered pro-Israel opened a meeting I attended by saying he was “tired” of British unions being called anti-Semitic. No one in the room had done so and in fact, I can't think of an example of anyone doing so, anywhere. It was pre-emptive strike, a warning not to play the anti-Semitism card.

At another event, attended by trade union and Jewish community leaders, a union leader came down very hard on the TUC for reversing decades of a moderate policy, but insisted that we must all be aware that this has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. No one objected to this.

The strange thing about all this is that most educated people who follow this things will agree that anti-Semitism in Britain has been growing in recent years. Reports produced by the Community Security Trust confirm this, as did the All-Party Parliamentary investigation a couple of years ago.

It is now common practice for journalists and politicians to engage in anti-Semitic discourse. The Guardian and Independent newspapers as well as the BBC are routinely the subject of complaints by the Jewish community, as their anti-Israel bias becomes more blatant. For example, comparisons of the Israeli Defense Forces to the Wehrmacht are now commonplace.

At the TUC Congress, a delegate rose to support the motion which was eventually adopted – no one spoke against it – and in the course of his remarks compared the IDF's defensive action in Gaza earlier this year to the German invasion of Poland in 1939. No one rose to object.

It may well be the case that there is no connection between rising anti-Semitism and the decisions taken to boycott Israel. But if there is no such connection, it is quite a coincidence.

Jewish leaders and pro-Israel trade unionists are justified in not wanting to play the anti-Semitism card at every opportunity. One does need to be cautious. Not every criticism of Israel is by definition anti-Semitism. But also, not every criticism is therefore legitimate or free of anti-Semitism either.

Getting up at the TUC and comparing the IDF to the Wehrmacht is an anti-Semitic slur. But not a single trade union leader condemned it at the time, or since.

There is a connection between the views taken by Jewish and trade union leaders on the TUC boycott motion and on the rise of the BNP. In both cases, they insist, the problem is not that people are racist or anti-Semitic.

People vote for the BNP because they are “misinformed”. And trade unionists – who apparently are not affected by the constant barrage of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic attacks in the newspapers they read – are also not anti-Semitic at all, merely “misinformed.”

Everybody seems to be “misinformed” and the solution, apparently, is to educate them, to show them that the BNP, for example, is a racist party. (Even though that seems likely to increase its popularity.)

When I hear that, I think of the famous scene in “Casablanca” where Humphrey Bogart is asked why he came to the desert city.

“My health,” he replied. “I came to Casablanca for the waters.”

His interrogator replies, “The waters? What waters? We're in the desert.”

“I was misinformed,” Bogart says.

We were inspired by the example of American Rights at Work (ARAW), a union-supported campaigning organisation, that has recently taken on the American Chamber of Commerce (the equivalent of the CBI here in Britain) using Twitter.

ARAW took advantage of a new web service called Act.ly (http://act.ly) that allows the instant creation of Twitter campaigns. (Their slogan is "Tweet change.") They succeeded very quickly in mounting one of the largest campaigns ever using the microblogging service, with over 1,200 messages sent.

We decided to try the same thing in support of our more traditional global web and email campaign in support of striking Canadian workers at Vale Inco, a mining giant.

With the HR department a perfect target for our campaign, we came up with a text that read "petition @ValeIncoJobOpps to show your support for 3,500 striking Vale Inco workers in Canada http://act.ly/1es RT to sign #actly #valeinco."

Of course much of that won't make sense to readers, so let me explain.

The at sign (@) refers to a Twitter user. ValeInco's HR department is known on Twitter as "ValeIncoJobOpps". So this petition is directed to them. The target company or government needs a Twitter account for a campaign like this to work.

The hash sign (#) is what's called in the world of Twitter, a "hashtag". It's a way of bringing together messages on the same theme. In this case, we're using the "actly" hashtag (because Act.ly requires it) and the made-up hashtag of "valeinco".

Finally, the "RT" stands for re-tweet. We're encouraging people to forward on these tweets to fellow trade unionists, hoping to create a viral effect.

Very quickly, our campaign took off, and after a day or two online was the most popular petition of the week -- and one of the most popular ever on Act.ly. The United Steelworkers issued a press release about the Twitter campaign entitled "Petition Denouncing Vale's Attacks 'Catching Fire' on Twitter." Ken Neumann, USW's National Director for Canada, was quoted as saying that the union "and its allies continue to break new ground with our response to Vale Inco's attack on Canadian communities and working families".

Neither the Twitter campaign nor the more conventional email campaign (which has already resulted in 7,000 messages being sent to the employer) have yet brought Vale Inco back to the bargaining table. But it demonstrated that this new technology, previously thought of by many as merely a gimmick, can be one more way to mobilize public support for unions and to ramp up the pressure on difficult employers.

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In recent months, Amnesty International in the UK has taken a sharp anti-Israel turn. This will be obvious to anyone who receives the organisation’s bi-monthly magazine, which now features articles bashing Israel in every single issue.

For example, last summer the magazine carried a long report on a visit by an Amnesty delegation to Israel and Palestine. It was an utterly one-sided account, reporting the suffering of Palestinians without even hinting at the possibility that Israelis too might be victims of the conflict.

Amnesty condemns the building of the separation barrier without mentioning why it exists or the lives it has saved. Its report focuses on petty matters like the cleanliness of toilets at Israeli checkpoints, without a mention of why those checkpoints are there (to counter terrorism).

Perhaps worst of all, the Amnesty delegation report says that it’s hard to end a conflict “when people are constantly being provoked to retaliate”. The reference is to Palestinians who are being provoked by Israelis. Israel is never provoked by the Palestinians, apparently.

This is not only one-sided, but seems to be a moral justification for terrorism, which is far worse. Amnesty adopts the language of Palestinian extremism, referring to “resistance” when they mean terror. Indeed, the report concludes by saying that the conflict will only end when that “resistance” (albeit in its “non-violent” form) wins.

I wrote to complain about that report and a shortened version of my letter was duly published in the next issue of the magazine — which also featured a long interview with Noam Chomsky. In that interview, Chomsky barely touched on human rights, but included — as usual — an anti-Israel rant. What this has to do with Amnesty’s core mission of promoting human rights is beyond me.

The next issue of the magazine contained yet another long article on Israel. Amnesty’s latest project is to condemn Israel’s water policy and the organisation held a public meeting in London featuring Ben White, the author of a book on Israeli “apartheid”. In doing this, Amnesty is following the lead of War on Want, whose charitable status is under threat as it pursues a one-sided political agenda.

In the last few weeks, Amnesty has encouraged its supporters to pressure the British government to back the biased and deeply flawed Goldstone Report. When the UN General Assembly voted (as expected) against Israel, the organisation sent out an email message to its members with the subject line “More good news on Gaza”.

This was inappropriate. Good news on Gaza would be an end to terror, the ousting of Hamas from power, and the freeing of Gilad Shalit.

For Amnesty International to find itself on the side of such human rights violators as the dictatorial regimes in Belarus, Burma, Cuba, Eritrea, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Syria (all of whom voted for Goldstone) — and against all the world’s democracies — surely cannot be something to be proud of.

Of course it’s right for Amnesty to condemn human rights violations anywhere in the world, including Israel. But its one-sided, inaccurate, and persistent attacks on the Jewish state are making some us question our support for the organisation.

Let’s not forget that Amnesty does outstanding work for human rights around the world. There are many, like myself, who remain members of the organisation in spite of what it does and says regarding Israel. Some say that Amnesty, like War on Want, is no longer worthy of our support. They may be right. For the moment, I remain a member.

The organisation is holding elections to its board this spring, offering the chance to set things right, and to turn Amnesty around.

Nearly 1,600 trade unionists participated, with the largest single group (360) coming from the U.K.

While all those responding were online (the survey was conducted through a website and publicized by email), less than a third used Twitter. Less than 10% of those surveyed said they frequently sent out "tweets" (short messages sent through Twitter).

This is not surprising. These are early days yet for Twitter and we're now at the stage email and the web were at a decade ago. Celebrities like Stephen Fry and Sarah Brown may be fervent twitterers, but you won't find many delegates to union conferences tweeting away on their mobile phones. Not yet, anyway.

One surprising response was that the vast majority did not actually know if their unions used Twitter. A small number (15%) believed their union did so. As many large unions (including Unite and Unison) do use Twitter, they're apparently not doing a great job of publicizing this fact to members.

We asked about what other social networks trade unionists use and unsurprisingly, Facebook was hugely popular, with more than three-quarters of the respondents admitting to using it. Clearly this is an important platform for trade unions to use to communicate with members, potential members and the general public.

YouTube also proved to be quite popular, though I'd guess most of the 37% who use it are consumers, not producers, of video.

The new social networking website for trade unionists, UnionBook, is used by over 18% of the respondents and is far more popular than other Facebook rivals such as MySpace and Bebo, or social bookmarking sites Digg and Delicious.

The virtual world "Second Life" which has been heavily promoted by some unions (which have invested in a "Union Island" there) is used by only 1.6% of those responding to the survey.

The full results -- including over 800 comments -- are available here:

http://www.labourstart.org/twittersurvey2009.html

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Here are two important ones:

"Trotsky was the founder of the Red Army, and along with Vladimir Lenin, one of the prime movers in the Bolshevik revolt that overthrew Tsar Nicholas II."

Wrong. Neither Trotsky nor Lenin was even in Russia when Tsar Nicholas II was overthrown. The Bolsheviks overthrew the Provisional Revolutionary Government, which at the time was headed by Kerensky.

"Today Leon Trotsky is almost forgotten, even though he was a real Russian Che Guevara -- a revolutionary who dreamed of global revolution," Alexander Smirnov, organiser of the exhibition at the Museum of Political History, told AFP.

Wrong. Che Guevara was a totalitarian Stalinist who would have been happy to plunge the world into nuclear war, had no problem with the persecution of dissidents (including homosexuals) and so on. His own party ruthlessly crushed Trotsky's own followers in Cuba. Trotsky is known today -- and respected -- precisely because he became an outspoken opponent of the totalitarian shift in Soviet Russia.

A generation ago, we had to contend with Stalinist media that lied about Trotsky. Today our enemy is ignorance.

In the course of the last decade, two colleagues of mine -- both senior trade unionists -- have suffered catastrophic losses of data. One lost his address book and calendar when his hand-held device died. The other lost all his handheld's calendar entries when he synced the device to his desktop PC, which had contracted a virus, thereby wiping out what was on the handheld.

There are two important lessons I draw from these experiences.

First of all, backups are essential -- but not in the way we used to do them.

And second, use of open source operating systems is no longer a luxury for the geeks.

Backups cannot be dependent on others; each of us needs to take personal responsibility for backing up vital data on what is, after all, a personal device.

But backups also cannot be voluntary. They cannot be something on our to-do list that never gets done, that we need to be reminded about or find time for.

Backing up should be an integral part of the process of using handheld devices.

A good example is the integration of web-based tools on an iPhone or iPod Touch. I maintain my task list on a website called Toodledo. Every time I access the list using my iPod Touch, the tasks listed on the device and those on the web are synchronized. I am not asked if I want to synchronize, and I do not have to remember to do so. The software on the iPod knows to do this.

If I lose my iPod, I've got the latest version of my task list on the web. If the website crashes, I have a version on the iPod.

The same is true with my calendar. The iPod's built-in calendar can automatically sync to my Google calendar. If I lose one, I will have access to the other.

It's not a question of making the traditional backups of data, where there's a clear distinction between the primary location of the data and its backup, which is somewhere else (such as on an external disk). The two task lists, on the device and on the web, are equally useful and accessible.

The other lesson relates to viruses and other forms of malware that cause endless headaches to many of our colleagues. Of course you can keep some of this under control by using the very latest anti-virus software, keeping it updated on a daily basis, but there is a far better solution.

If my colleague who lost all his diary entries due to a virus had been using the open source Linux operating system on his laptop, it is highly unlikely that the problem would have arisen in the first place.

While it is theoretically possible to have viruses on a Linux machine, it is highly unlikely. The system is inherently more secure than Windows, and because its user base is so much smaller than that of Microsoft's, virus writers don't target it.

The use of web-based backups to data on handhelds, and of Linux on laptops and desktops, is not common among the trade unionists I know. And as a result, a number of them have suffered the kind of catastrophic data loss that can now easily be avoided.

To emphasize the importance of email, I used to tell unions that given the choice between a great website and a list of all members' email addresses, choose the latter. I still believe that email is the most powerful tool we have and now, thanks to a new service called Posterous, email lists can be the starting point of a multi-platform net-based campaign.

But let's take this a step further. Imagine you have a mailing list. Add post@posterous.com to your list. Now you've got a blog which archives all your mailings to that list.

You're not limited to posting simple text messages. Posterous allows you to post images, videos, audio files, PowerPoint presentations and PDF documents. In fact, you can create an entire website on the fly just by using email.

It gets better. If you have Facebook or Twitter accounts (free and easy to set up), Posterous will post whatever you send as Tweets or Facebook status updates.

And if you want the whole thing to be private, it can all be password protected.

So who could use this and why? Imagine there was a sudden need for a campaign -- for example, workers occupy a factory producing wind turbines in the Isle of Wight (as recently happened). First thing you should do is create a mailing list. You then go to Posterous and set up an account and then start mailing to your list, making sure you've added post@posterous.com to it.

You've instantly got yourself a website, a Twitter feed, your Facebook status is updated with each bit of breaking news, and you're posting images, videos and audio files without needing to know anything technical. You don't need to learn about HTML, FTP, content management systems, passwords, or anything else.

This is by far the cheapest, easiest and fastest way to create an online presence. And it all starts with email.

But what if you already have a website? Could this still be useful? LabourStart has begun using Posterous to publicly archive our weekly mailings to subscribers, which are then broadcast as Tweets.

As the set up takes only a few seconds and everything else is automated, this is a real no-brainer. Every union and branch should have a Posterous account.

The UN-mandated International Independent Fact Finding Mission, headed by Justice Richard Goldstone, has published its findings on the 22-day conflict in Gaza and southern Israel in December 2008-January 2009. The carefully argued report, which is consistent with the findings of Amnesty International, concludes that both the Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups committed grave violations of international law including war crimes and, possibly, crimes against humanity.

The Amnesty website encourages us all to send messages calling "on the UK government to spare no efforts to ensure war criminals do not get away with murder". In an email to members, they express concern that the UK government may do no such thing.

But Amnesty's website allows people to individualise their messages -- to write their own thoughts, which they cheerfully pass on to the Foreign Minister. So I'd like to thank Amnesty for giving me a chance to write this instead of their text:

I am a member of Amnesty International but I do not agree with their call on the public to encouage Britain to support the Goldstone report.

Amnesty is wrong to call on us to ask you to help bash Israel -- clearly what is needed is a re-launch of the peace process, based on the Road Map, and not something that will only benefit Hamas.

The problem is that the decision the TUC took to support boycotts, sanctions and divestment targeting Israel was the wrong one. The energetic campaign to target the most democratic and lively trade union federation in the Middle East, the Israeli Histadrut, is a disappointing case of misplaced priorities. Iran, not Israel, should have been the focus of TUC attention this year.

To read the rest of this article, which appeared on the Guardian's Comment is Free website, click here.

"It's not enough for working people to feed our bodies with bread -- we also have to nourish our hearts and spirits with art."

Those words appear on the first page of an entire website devoted to working class art and culture -- part of the website of the AFL-CIO, one of America's national trade union centres.

This site-within-a-site (located here) exploits some of the advantages of the web, reproducing not only text but multimedia and interactive elements as well.

The Films section of the site is relatively underdeveloped, but still includes clips from Hollywood films and music videos relating to workers and their unions.

The music section allows you to hear nine songs -- including "Solidarity Forever," the unofficial anthem of the American labour movement.

Photos, cartoons and art are also available, as are reviews of books and a whole section of the site is devoted to labour history.

The AFL-CIO's mini-site is not perfect. The music section, for example, should include lyrics and sheet music and the selection of songs available for download should be much larger -- in more popular formats (such as MP3).

The whole site would benefit from linking prominently to many more external resources, such as Mark Gregory's Australia-based UnionSong.com site which has lyrics for over 250 labour songs (and MP3 recordings of many of them).

Closer to home, the AFL-CIO should be linking to the wonderful Labor Heritage Foundation site (http://www.laborheritage.org/), with its labour song parodies -- including this version of the classic "Dancing in the Street":

"All we need is unions, Strong Unions -- there'll be Unions everywhere
There'll be swinging, swaying, and pepper spraying
While we’re marching in the street"

A quick glance at the website of the TUC shows that we have nothing like this here in the UK, which is unfortunate. Unions are about more than improved wages and working conditions -- they offer an alternative worldview and a culture all our own. Our union websites should show this side of the labour movement as well.

If the TUC adopts the resolution proposed by the Fire Brigades Union, the implications are far-reaching.

First and most important, it opens the way for the Labour Party, in which the unions play an increasingly important role, to shift its own views on the Middle East toward a more pro-Palestinian position.

This could result in the British government supporting sanctions targeting Israel. As the UK is a permanent member of the UN Security Council, this might even mean an eventual push for UN sanctions against the Jewish state.

But the idea that one of the two main political parties in Britain would support sanctions against Israel is a dangerous precedent.

It also means that individual British unions, which may at one time have promoted a two-state solution and invited Israeli trade unionists to their conferences, may stop doing so. Unison, for example, is already retreating from its traditionally even-handed approach, and no longer invites Histadrut (Israel’s national trade union) to its conferences.

The other effect will be within the international trade union movement.

At the moment, Histadrut is a member of both the International Trade Union Confederation and a number of the global union federations (GUFs) which are organised by sector. (The recent expulsion of the Israeli journalists’ union from one of the GUFs was exceptional.)

While there are some trade union movements that are openly hostile to Israel (such as Cosatu in South Africa), others (most notably unions in the USA and Germany) remain sympathetic.

Were the TUC to sever its relationship with Histadrut, as the resolution proposes, this could trigger a major fight in the international trade union movement. All this might come to a head at the international trade union congress due to be held in Vancouver in June 2010.

Unions with strong ties to the Histadrut are likely to put up a fight and this could result in the first split in the global trade union movement since the Cold War.

Dieselbe britische Öffentlichkeit, die scheinbar nicht berührt wird von dem Leiden der Menschen in Myanmar, Zimbabwe und Darfur, reagierte mit wütenden Protesten auf den Beginn der Operation »Gegossenes Blei« der israelischen Armee. Die Zehntausende, die sich im Dezember und Januar über Londons Straßen ergossen, die Universitätsgelände besetzt hielten und wütende Resolutionen auf Gewerkschaftskongressen verfassten, waren bei anderen Protesten völlig abwesend. Zu verstehen, warum die britische Linke – und die Linke in anderen Ländern zumeist auch – zwar binnen kürzester Zeit und mit wirklicher Leidenschaft ihre Rolle als Verteidiger des »palästinensischen Volkes« einnehmen kann, aber keinerlei Besorgnis über irgendeine andere unterdrückte Bevölkerung zeigt, ist von zentraler Bedeutung, um zu verstehen, warum es keinen Aufschrei der Öffentlichkeit wegen der Geschehnisse im Iran gegeben hat.

Auf den ersten Blick scheint dies überraschend. Die Kämpfe der Iranerinnen und Iraner haben ihrerseits alle Voraussetzungen erfüllt: Das herrschende Regime ist in keiner Weise progressiv und gibt nicht einmal vor, dies zu sein – anders etwa als die stalinistischen Länder, welche zu ihrer Zeit für sich in Anspruch genommen haben, einer großen progressiven Bewegung anzugehören. Frauen, Homosexuelle und Gewerkschafter werden im Iran brutal unterdrückt. Jeder Linke müsste dieses Regime hassen. Und doch zögerte die größte Gruppierung der britischen radikalen Linken, die Socialist Workers Party (SWP), über sehr lange Zeit und bis vor kurzem, Kritik am iranischen Regime zu üben.

Genau dies erlebte ich vor einigen Monaten in einer Diskussionsrunde mit dem Nahost-Experten der SWP, John Rose. Auf eine Frage aus dem Publikum zu dem iranischen Regime erörterte er den Unterschied zwischen Moderaten und Extremisten in der herrschenden iranischen Elite und deutete dabei seine volle Unterstützung für die so genannte islamische Revolution im Iran an.

Als ich an der Reihe war, etwas auf seine Äußerungen zu erwidern, fehlten mir fast die Worte. Wie konnte jemand, der sich ernsthaft als Sozialist – und tatsächlich auch als Feminist – bezeichnet, irgendetwas anderes sein als ein Gegner des islamischen Regimes im Iran? Die Frage, warum Sozi­alisten, die in anderen Zusammenhängen sensibel sind für Themen wie die Verfolgung von Homosexuellen oder die Inhaftierung von Gewerkschaftern, dazu schweigen, wenn es sich bei dem unterdrückenden Staat um den Iran handelt, bedarf einer komplexen Antwort. Hierbei ist es durchaus hilfreich, dass es sich dabei nicht um eine neue Frage handelt.

Ein Blick zurück: Viele erinnern sich noch an die Gleichgültigkeit der Linken gegenüber Menschenrechtsverletzungen nicht nur in stalinistischen Gesellschaften, insbesondere in der so genannten Dritten Welt und in Ländern, die, wenn auch nur lose, mit der Sowjetunion verbunden waren. Idi Amin in Uganda wurde von »Progressiven« ebenso gefeiert wie die Roten Khmer Pol Pots in Kambodscha, die Baath-Partei Saddam Husseins und der Sendero Luminoso Abimael Guzmáns in Peru. Die meisten Menschen würden heute alle vier Anführer als krankhaft gewalttätig und in keiner Weise mit progressiven oder sozialistischen Zielen verbunden ansehen.

Was alle diese Gruppen gemeinsam hatten und auch mit dem Regime in Teheran teilen, ist, dass sie eingeschworene Feinde der USA waren bzw. sind. Wenn man wie viele Linke daran glaubt, dass die USA der Feind jeden Fortschritts ist und George W. Bush als Präsident der schlimmste ­Terrorist der Welt war, dann muss wohl jeder Feind dieses Feindes ein Freund sein.

Das islamische Regime im Iran ist von Anfang an mit den USA im »Kriegszustand«. Dies verleiht ihm Legitimität in den Augen all jener, die Politik entsprechend dem Ausmaß der Feindseligkeit gegenüber dem »großen Satan« bewerten. Wenige Regime stellen sich derart offen gegen den »amerikanischen Imperialismus« wie der Iran. Folglich muss dieses Regime in irgendeiner Form »progressiv« sein – ungeachtet dessen, was es seiner eigenen Bevölkerung antut. Dies ist das Vermächtnis jener kommunistischen Parteien, die ganzen Generationen von Linken beigebracht haben, Amerika mehr zu hassen als alles andere. Bereits während des Kalten Kriegs war dafür eine verdrehte Logik notwendig. Heute ergibt diese »Logik« überhaupt keinen Sinn mehr.

Und dann gibt es einen weiteren Aspekt, der noch beunruhigender ist: Das iranische Regime steht nicht nur den USA und dem Westen insgesamt ablehnend, sondern vor allem Israel besonders feindlich gegenüber. Genau genommen ist der Iran wahrscheinlich – unter den Staaten – der größte Feind eines jüdischen Staats überhaupt. Dabei belässt es der Iran nicht bei extremen Äußerungen gegenüber Israel und den Juden, wie etwa die Leugnung des Holocaust, sondern wird im Gegensatz zu vielen anderen Israel-Hassern auch selbst aktiv. Der Iran sponsert sämtliche Formen des anti-jüdischen Terrorismus, wie zum Beispiel das Bombenattentat auf das jüdische Gemeindezentrum in Buenos Aires, und unterhält Stellvertreter-Armeen wie die Hamas und die Hizbollah, die eine permanente Bedrohung für den jüdischen Staat darstellen.

Das iranische Regime ist dabei, Nuklearwaffen und Langstreckenraketen zu entwickeln, und es besteht kein Zweifel, dass diese nach Tel Aviv ausgerichtet werden sollen. Wenn man der Meinung ist, dass Israel der entsetzlichste Staat der Welt ist, dann erscheint einem sicherlich die kompromisslose Feindseligkeit des Iran als unterstützenswert. Von einer Linken, die Amerika und Israel als die wirkliche »Achse des Bösen« ansieht, wie dies ein Großteil der britischen Linken tut, ist nichts anderes zu erwarten als Unterstützung für das iranische islamische Regime. Das ist der Grund, warum ein SWP-Funktionär wie John Rose nicht auch nur einen Moment aus seinem antiamerikanischen und antiisraelischen Weltbild ausbrechen und Kritik an den Regierenden in ­Teheran üben kann. Und dies galt sogar, als das Regime zwei Aktivistinnen der iranischen Arbeiterbewegung, Sousan Razani und Shiva Kheirabadi, zu 15 Peitschenhieben und vier Mo­naten Gefängnis verurteilte, für das Verbrechen, an den Feiern zum 1. Mai 2008 teilgenommen zu haben.

Zugegeben, in letzter Zeit hat sich manches geändert. Die offene Brutalität, mit der das Regime gegen seine Gegner vorgeht, wie sie im Fernsehen und auf Youtube zu sehen ist, hat es vielen Linken schwer gemacht, weiterhin zu behaupten, dieses Regime sei keine brutale Dikta­tur. Aber diese Meinungsänderung ist weder tiefgreifend noch dürfte sie lange vorhalten. Nicht eine linke Gruppe in Großbritannien hat größere Proteste organisiert. Die vereinzelten Demonstrationen, die stattgefunden haben, waren ausgesprochen klein. Allein die Alliance for Workers Liberty (AWL), eine marxistische Gruppierung, hat sich ehrenhaft verhalten und die iranische Bevölkerung öffentlich unterstützt. Aber die AWL ist sehr klein. Zufälligerweise ist sie auch die einzige Gruppierung in der britischen Linken, die sich für das Existenzrecht Israels ausspricht.

Eine wirkliche Ausnahme von dieser deprimierenden Szenerie bilden nur die Gewerkschaften. Nicht nur die britischen Gewerkschaften, sondern auch die internationale Gewerkschaftsbewegung haben eine klare Position gegenüber dem islamischen Regime eingenommen; und dies nicht erst, seit bekannt wurde, dass Ahmadinejad die Wahlen hat fälschen lassen. Bereits seit einigen Jahren haben Gewerkschaften sehr aktiv ihre Unterstützung für die iranischen Arbeiter gezeigt, die bemerkenswerten Mut gegenüber dem Regime bewiesen haben. Der Fall von Mansour Osanloo, dem Vorsitzenden der Busfahrergewerkschaft Teherans, hat große Bekanntheit erlangt. Die Streiks u.a. in der iranischen Zucker­industrie haben wiederholt Solidaritätsbekundungen in aller Welt erfahren. Die International Transport Workers’ Federation war hier besonders aktiv und organisierte einen Besuch von ­Gewerkschaftern aus Indonesien, dem weltweit größten muslimischen Land, im Iran, um dort die Freilassung von Osanloo zu erwirken. Mit den Gewerkschaften verbundene NGO wie Labourstart und Amnesty international haben einige weitreichende Online-Kampagnen organisiert, die sich für Arbeiterrechte im Iran einsetzten. Auch wenn sich die Basismitglieder nicht sehr zahlreich an diesen Protesten beteiligten und diese weit davon entfernt waren, das Ausmaß etwa der Demonstrationen während des Gaza-Kriegs zu erreichen, sticht das Engagement der Gewerkschaften im Vergleich zu der Apathie beim Rest der Linken doch deutlich hervor.

Aus klassisch marxistischer Perspektive sollten die sozialistischen Parteien den Gewerkschaften voraus sein und ein stärkeres Klassenbewusstsein als jene besitzen, die sich vor allem auf Alltags­themen wie höhere Löhne und Arbeitsbedingungen konzentrieren müssen. Im Falle des Iran sind es jedoch die Gewerkschaften, die die Führung übernommen haben. Wenn die iranische Opposition überhaupt internationale Unterstützung für ihren andauernden Kampf gegen das iranische Regime erwarten kann, ist es unwahrscheinlich, dass diese Unterstützung von der selbsternannten Avantgarde der radikalen Linken kommen wird. Es wird die Gewerkschaftsbewegung sein, die einen einfachen Wert hochhält, der auch nach Jahrzehnten der Niederlagen weiter lebendig bleibt: Solidarität.

Aus dem Englischen von Bella Morgan