A countrywide dawn-to-dusk hartal (Generel Strike) called by the left to protest against the government's certain wrongdoing and US war preparation against Iraq passed off by and large peacefully today Monday, March 10, in Bangladesh.

We have received this report from the Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign (PTUDC) on the terrible conditions faced by one of the most downtrodden sectors, the agricultural labourers. The PTUDC is taking a courageous stand in their campaign to organise them into a union.

The demonstrations organized by YFIS in Lahore received full coverage from all the main Pakistani daily papers and TV, such as the Jang, the Nation, and the Dawn (the largest circulation English speaking daily). We will keep you informed as more reports come in.

Report by Sadaf Zahra and Aamir Raza for the PTUDC, Pakistan, February 2003.

Pakistan is in a critical condition at the current time, it is engulfed in a social, economic and international crisis. In an attempt to escape from this crisis, General Musharaff held elections for parliament at the end of last year. In spite of all the hopes of Musharaff the elections have not created any strong government. His “democracy” is a sham. Musharaff has reserved the right to amend any law passed by parliament. He even has the right to amend the constitution. One man can override the whole of the elected parliament. But behind the political crisis lies the social and economic crisis that the country faces.

In January Wang Fanxi died in Leeds, England. He was one of the few remaining links to the early Chinese Trotskyist movement. It was after the defeat of the 1926 Chinese revolution that, together with hundreds of other members of the Chinese Communist Party, he began to question the policies of the leadership and joined Trotsky’s Left Opposition.

The PTUDC in Britain organised a speaking tour throughout January. The tour was designed to build the profile of the campaign in this country, to establish points of support in the labour movement, and to collect financial donations for the campaign. The tour involved meetings and discussions with leading figures and bodies of the labour movement, meetings with individual trade union branches, and regional public meetings to attract broader layers of workers and establish support in Britain's Asian communities. Lal Khan, PTUDC International Secretary, and Manzoor Ahmed, the recently elected Marxist PPP MP, spoke at many trade union meetings around the country.

Finally the Musharraf dictatorship was forced to call the session of the parliament in the wake of an irresistible pressure from all sides. The only member out of the 324 taking oath with a red jumper was comrade Manzoor [editor of the fortnightly Marxist paper Class Struggle]. On his chest he was wearing a very prominent badge of Karl Marx. When he was called to the podium to sign his name the television cameras had to film him and the Marx insignia was shown on the television screens beaming to millions of the Pakistani workers and youth wanting to have a glimpse of their only representative in the parliament.

In this interview Mansoor Ahmed explains how he intends to use his position as a member of parliament to defend the interests of the workers and peasants of Pakistan. Interview by Jonathan Clyne.

As US imperialism prepares to go to war against Iraq, Jonathan Clyne looks back at the Vietnam War. He shows quite clearly the level of radicalisation that had developed among both the US soldiers fighting in Vietnam and the mass opposition that had developed back home among US workers and youth. As he says, "It was the American working class, those in uniform and those without, that more than anything else put an end to the war."