What is the WCPI view on the trade unions, on trade unionism?
Trade unions are one form the workers’ movement takes to organise its activities. There are others: it could be shuras [workers’ councils]. In 1991 in Kurdistan we had shuras, but the PUK/KDP suppressed them. Women activists are starting to organise themselves. It could come in many ways. Recently, in Kirkuk, we got an invitation from oil workers. We went. We heard they had been ordered to go back to work but when they arrived they could not get in. We were contacted by workers from the Lylan factory. They raised the issue of their managers with us, told us the funds of the factory had been stolen. We helped them raise their demands, with other workers we restored the electricity. For the AWL, the trade union is the most important organisation of the working class, it’s there every day in the workplace, it has been the basis for the working class to have a voice-an inadequate one, but a voice-in politics. If we were in Iraq, it seems to us that the first thing we would do would be to o
