Taiwan Tension increases Jun Xing
Official unemployment statistics in May 1996 recor- statistics in May 1996 recorded 218,000 people out of work (2.5%), an increase of 69,000 over the preceding year. Some academics estimate unemployment at 4%. This means 400,000 are without jobs in a system without unemployment relief.
Immigrant labour problems are also serious. In the first three months of 1996, visas were issued to 387,000 immigrant labourers from over 746,000 applicants. The government estimates there are currently 217,000 immigrant labourers in Taiwan, constituting 2.3% of the population. But the Taiwan Labour Front puts the number of legal and illegal immigrant labourers at 450,000. The labour movement in Taiwan is becoming more militant in struggles to fight the worsening labour conditions and wages due to vicious competition from immigrant workers.
Women suffer most in this situation. They constitute 80% of the unemployed. According to the Taiwan Labour Front Labour Report 1996, over 4.28 million women were unemployed last year. The Equality Law, passed on 10 April 1996, does little to protect women: no penalties are levied on the employers for sex discrimination. In 1995, women's average pay was only 67.8% of that of men.
The post-election thaw in relations between Taiwan and mainland China is giving President Lee Teng-hui some boost in his political position, and also causing a rise in the Taiwanese stock market. But this cannot draw attention away from the domestic problems of labour and inter-party politics. Opposition forces in the parliament have united, placing the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) of President Lee in a minority in the legislature for the first time in the country's history. * Source: October Review (Vol.23 Issue 3) G.P.O.Box 10144, Hong Kong e-mail address: [email protected] 36 Inter tional Viewpoint
Alec Acheson: a convinced Marxist revolutionary
The Internationale closed Anna funeral in May Camily Alec's funeral in May. Family, comrades and friends could read tributes offered by East Knighton Labour Party, Socialist Outlook, members of the Socialist Labour Party, the Troops Out Movement, and the Irish Study's group.
Alec spent the last 60 of his 84 years as an active supporter of the Fourth International. He as one of the tiny handful of pre-war Trotskyists who was still in the ranks of the International until his death.
My earliest memories of Alec go back to 1937. We were both in the Islington branch of the Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL). In those days we used to hold open air meetings in Highbury Fields. One evening, the speaker who had to follow me failed to turn up. Alec, who was selling our paper The Militant, but who had never addressed a public meeting before, mounted the platform and spoke.
He was clearly nervous, but there was a job to be done for the revolution, and he did it.
This was typical of Alec -his never-failing devotion to the fight for socialism, which to him was synonymous with the building of the Fourth International.
In 1939, Alec threw himself into the revolutionary opposition to the war.
On January 6 1940 he organised a conference of sixty delegates from the Labour Party, the Independent Labour Party Guild of Youth, the ILP, the Communist Party, the National Unemployed Workers' Movement, Leicester Trades Council and local trades union branches. It was addressed by Fenner Brockway and Starkey Jackson.
When he was conscripted into the army he continued his socialist activities as far as possible.
When he was sent to Egypt he contacted comrades living there. There was an election going on, and the Trotskyist group supported the socialist candidates. Alec, in defiance of military discipline, took part in the election campaign, going round to the houses and tenements where the workers were.
### Together with another
British comrade Joe Pawsey, he drafted a leaflet on the developing situation in Greece, which was duplicated by the Egyptian comrades. It called on the soldiers in the British army not to fight against their working class brothers in Greece.
They were nearly caught by the military police.
After the war, Alec became an activist in the National Union of Teachers, eventually becoming honorary President. He was also active in the Labour Party and the antiracist movement. He was a founding member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
He will be remembered as a teacher, a good friend, a secularist and a leading representative of what he once called the "red thread" linking the present revolutionary movement to the experiences of the twenties and thirties.
Alec loved reading, particularly Irish literature and culture. We will all miss his friendship, experience, knowledge and personal warmth.
This was Alec Acheson, a Marxist revolutionary
[CVG, BH]
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