LFIQ Message to Labour Students Conference in Leeds on 19th February

LFIQ Director Gary Kent will tell delegates that Labour Students and the broader student movement can do much to help lift the isolation of progressive Iraqi forces such as the trade unions and student unions from the rest of the world. Saddam ruthlessly excluded Iraq from the rest of the international community. This means that students and teachers are often decades behind in educational terms.

Labour Students could spearhead campaigns at a local and national level to make direct contacts with students and educationalists in Iraq, perhaps starting with Iraqi Kurdistan. An increasing number of trade unions is being imaginative and determined in their solidarity efforts and the student movement can seek to work with unions such as Unison and the TUC to provide material and moral support for our comrades in Iraq.

Books to Iraq provides an example of what can be done.

It doesn’t matter in this respect whether you backed or opposed the invasion. History will judge that debate but history will be very unkind to those who refuse to lift a finger to help the beleaguered labour and student organisations in Iraq. Solidarity is an essential principle of socialist groups and this is more urgent than ever in Iraq if left-wing forces are to have a say in the future of that country and thereby in promoting democratisation and peace in the wider Middle East.