June 6, for immediate release
AS IMPERIALIST THREATS AGAINST IRAN GROW, SECOND UK UNION AFFILIATES TO HOPI
Delegates to the June 2-6 Nottingham conference of the train drivers’ union, Aslef, voted unaminously to make their union the second to affiliate to Hands Off the People of Iran in just 2 weeks. They joined the PCS, the 300,000-strong civil servants union, in lending their support to Hopi.
The gathering pace of Hopi’s support is crucial in a period when authorative leaks from Washington tell of Bush secretly briefing key US senators on plans to launch air strikes against Iran with the next two months.
In what must be an orchestrated move with the US, a deputy prime minister of Israel, Shaul Mofaz, has warned that an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites was “unavoidable” unless Tehran halts its alleged weapons programme. Meanwhile, the prime minister, Ehud Olmert, met US president George Bush on June 4 to discuss concerns over Iran’s supposed nuclear threat, something he has stated “must be stopped by all means possible”. (While no one has produced a shred of evidence that Iran – a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty – is making nuclear weapons, there is plenty of evidence that Israel (which refuses to sign the NPT) has a huge nuclear arsenal).
Mark Fischer of the Hopi steering committee commented:
“This underlines the importance of Hopi’s unequivocal stance in its founding statement against ‘Israeli expansionism and aggression’ and for ‘a nuclear-free Middle East as a step towards a nuclear-free world’.
“We also have to set these statements against the background of Barack Obama’s hawkish June 4 speech, where he pledged his ‘unshakable commitment’ to Israel and warned that if elected president he would do ‘everything in my power to prevent Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon’. Attitudes towards Iran are hardening in the US political elite and in its close Middle East ally, Israel. The threat of a new war is growing.”
Hopi says that the organised working class movement is the key to any successful fight against imperialist war. The action take by Glasgow train drivers in 2003 when they refused to move arms freight is a glimpse of its power – this is the sort of determination we need again if we are to have a chance of stopping a new disaster for the peoples of the Middle East.
ENDS
NOTES FOR JOURNALISTS
1. ASLEF is Britain’s trade union for train drivers. Its 18,500+ members are employed in the train operating companies, the freight companies, London Underground and some Light Rapid Transport.
2. Hopi was established in December of last year and includes amongst its supporters John McDonnell MP, Derek Wall, male principal speaker, Green Party, Peter Tatchell, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Naomi Klein, Michael Mansfield QC, John Pilger, Peggy Seeger (singer, songwriter and activist), Bill Bailey (actor and comedian) and Noam Chomsky.
3. Hopi was barred from affiliating to the Stop the War Coalition in October 2007 because – it was claimed – we were “entirely hostile to the Coalition, its policies and its work” (see www.hopoi.org/media.html for material on this controversy). The dispute was also covered in the Independent – see www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/antiwar-activists-do-battle-over-intervention-in-iran-399450.html).
4. However, Hopi supporters have remained members of the StWC and intend to challenge this undemocratic exclusion at the coalition’s AGM in the Autumn.