Archive for January 2008
10 January 2008
Building workers fight for real union representation
Construction workers from across the north-west are demonstrating at Whiston Hospital on 11 January... By Hugh Caffrey, Manchester
10 January 2008
Greenwich: Greenwich Unison is preparing a new year campaign to fight cuts being proposed by the council...
10 January 2008
BAA pensions dispute: BAA have been forced to climb down over their attack on pensions. They have reopened the final salary scheme to new entrants. This was won after the threat...
10 January 2008
Scrooge employers attack shop workers
When the company you work for makes £2.7 billion in profit, then cuts your pay by £1.40 an hour, you begin to wonder what's going on... By East Midlands shop worker
10 January 2008
Feature: Socialism and democracy needed to reshape the world
The present crisis in the world economy has underlined Karl Marx's analysis of capitalism as a system that works blindly, behind the backs of society and without conscious human control...
10 January 2008
Postal workers fight to defend the Burslem 12
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The CWU postal strike 2007 |
10 January 2008
Renationalise the energy industry
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Flooded with Debt, cartoon by Suz www.squashdonkey.co.uk |
10 January 2008
Prime minister Gordon Brown has declared further war on public-sector workers' pay by saying that he wants pay rises this year kept under 2%...
10 January 2008
JUSTICE SECRETARY Jack Straw has announced that he is reintroducing a ban on prison officers going on strike...
10 January 2008
Police ballot for industrial rights
GORDON BROWN is trying to enforce below-inflation pay rises on public-sector workers, from the civil service to local government workers, teachers and nurses... By Iain Dalton
10 January 2008
Soaring food prices hit world's poor
FOLLOWING A surge in food prices last summer (the fastest rate in 14 years in the UK), consumers are facing further price hikes in the coming months... By Dave Carr
10 January 2008
Pakistan: Mass opposition to Musharraf regime after Benazir killing
BENAZIR BHUTTO, leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), was killed in a suicide attack after addressing a public rally in Rawalpindi on 27 December...
10 January 2008
Kenya: Stolen election explodes into mass anger and bloodshed
AT LEAST 600 people, perhaps as many as 1,000, have been killed in political violence in Kenya following the result of a rigged presidential election on 27 December 2007... By Dave Carr
10 January 2008
Victory! Tenants beat £1 million sell-off campaign
COUNCIL TENANTS and local campaigners have won a significant local victory in Lewisham, south London, against the privatisation of council housing...
10 January 2008
Big business hands off our NHS!
PRIMARY CARE Trust (PCT) bosses in one of London's poorest boroughs have given a contract to a multinational private conglomerate, Atos Origin, to run St Paul's Way Medical Centre, at present managed by the PCT... By a community nurse
10 January 2008
The privateers are taking over
UNDER THE gleeful heading "Private sector role in public services explodes," the Financial Times reported that the private sector's supply of public services "now makes a bigger contribution to the economy than pharmaceut...
10 January 2008
With great sadness, we report the death of Andrew Glyn, an internationally renowned socialist economist and a former supporter of the Militant, the Socialist Party's precursor...
10 January 2008
Review: Marx's Das Kapital: a biography, by Francis Wheen
This is a disappointing book. Francis Wheen's earlier biography is definitely worth a read and shows he has made a serious study of Marx's writings....
10 January 2008
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Make Socialism Our Future: ISR / CWI banner on the Anti-G8 demonstration in 2005, photo by Paul Mattsson |
17 January 2008
Nationalise Northern Rock - permanently
THE LABOUR government is still desperate to find a private-sector buyer for Northern Rock, despite having shored up the bank to the tune of £50 billion (over half the NHS budget)...
17 January 2008
Ideas for campaigning and fundraising
The Cardiff branch of the Socialist Party raised £6,800 in 2007 to help fund the campaigning work of the party...
17 January 2008
Debate: Is the burning of fossil fuels causing climate change?
RAPID CLIMATE change caused by the burning of fossil fuels has become a major social and political issue internationally. ...
17 January 2008
The government has given the go-ahead for a new generation of nuclear power stations, with no limits on how far the nuclear industry could expand.... By Steve Score, Leicester Socialist Party
17 January 2008
Review: More Time for Politics, Diaries 2001-2007, by Tony Benn
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Tony Benn |
17 January 2008
Feature: Building the shop stewards' movement
One of the themes of the Socialist Party's Socialism2007 weekend last November was the development of the shop stewards' movement... By Alison Hill, industrial editor of the socialist
17 January 2008
Editorial: Fight three year low pay tie-ins
German train drivers have just won an 11% wage increase. German Telecom workers on the other hand have suffered accumulated wage cuts amounting to 25%...
17 January 2008
Burslem: Support victimised postal workers
The national march and rally organised by the Communication Workers' Union (CWU) in Stoke on Saturday 19 January gives postal workers and supporters an opportunity to show their solidarity with victimised Burslem postal work... By Andy Bentley Stoke Socialist Party
17 January 2008
As Peter Hain's scandal of undeclared campaign donations has unravelled it has revealed the nature of New Labour politics... By Dave Reid and Geoff Jones, Socialist Party Wales
17 January 2008
Fire cuts threat to our public safety
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Matt Wrack, FBU General secretary, photo Paul Mattsson |
17 January 2008
Blair's rewards from big business
SO TONY Blair has a new £2.5 million a year job as a part-time adviser to the international financial services and investment banking group, JPMorgan...
17 January 2008
Cardiff schools campaign grows
FOURTEEN CARDIFF schools now face cuts and closures from the Liberal council, with many more set to join them....
17 January 2008
Reinstate Karen Reissman - defend mental health services!
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Manchester mental health workers on strike, photo Christian Bunke |
17 January 2008
Derby nurses fight management attacks
More than 100 Unison members and their families packed a meeting to protest at threatened pay cuts to Derby nurses... By Graham Lewis, Long Eaton trades council
17 January 2008
On 11 January, Liverpool became the European City of Culture. But the Liverpool Echo on 8 January announced that the city council faced a debt of £25 million....
17 January 2008
THIRTY PEOPLE turned up on a wet Tuesday afternoon to a protest, organised by Leicester Socialist Party, against local post office closures...
17 January 2008
HOUSING IN Britain is an example of 'market failure'. The free market cannot, and will not, solve the current housing crisis.
17 January 2008
Socialist Party member Jim Cessford is standing for assistant branch secretary of Manchester Unison local government branch...
17 January 2008
Salford says: "Don't close our women's centre"
"SAVE OUR Women's Centre" chanted 50 protesters on 9 January, opposing the Labour-driven closure of Salford women's centre... By Steve North, Salford
17 January 2008
Legal - illegal; Life after Twizzlers; Student fees VOSPER THORNEYCROFT, one of the world's biggest warship manufacturers, is set to be given the contract to run education services in Waltham Forest, east London...
17 January 2008
Sri Lanka: New year starts with atrocities
The new year began in Sri Lanka with atrocity after atrocity. First, on New Year's Day itself, came the killing of opposition parliamentarian, Thiyagarajah... By Senan, Socialist Party
17 January 2008
Biggest miners' underground occupation in Polish history
Solidarity action needed: FIVE HUNDRED coal miners are taking part in an occupation strike 1,000 metres underground in the Polish mine Budryk... By Paul Newberry, GPR (CWI, Poland)
17 January 2008
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Greenwich council workers lobby the council, photo Paul Mattsson |
23 January 2008
Editorial: AS SHARE values tumbled in the most dramatic falls since 9/11, the talk was not so much of whether there will be a recession, but of how deep and long it will be....
23 January 2008
IN NOVEMBER and December last year Bolivia was on the brink of civil war. The right-wing opposition of the gas-rich eastern provinces had declared autonomy... By Karl Debbaut, Committee for a Workers' International (CWI)
23 January 2008
Marching behind the Burslem 12
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Demonstration in support of the Burslem 12 victimised postal workers, photo Stoke Socialist Party |
23 January 2008
Strike against poverty deals in PCS
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PCS on strike 1 May 2007, photo Paul Mattsson |
23 January 2008
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Tommy Sheridan, photo Paul Mattsson |
23 January 2008
SNP 'trusts' are PFI in disguise
THE SNP-led Scottish government has published a consultation paper setting out its 'alternative' to the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) and Public-Private Partnership (PPP) schemes in Scotland... By Brian Smith, Glasgow Unison social work services secretary, personal capacity
23 January 2008
Tower Colliery closes: A brave attempt
Miners will march out of Tower Colliery for the last time on Friday 25 January. This will be an emotional end for the last deep coal mine in South Wales. By Dave Reid, Socialist Party Wales
23 January 2008
Post office campaign: Changes in the law to break the poor
Life will be made much harder for many elderly and disabled people with the planned closures of around 2,500 post offices across the country this year... By Jon Dale
23 January 2008
New threats to abortion rights
THIS APRIL marks the 40th anniversary of the enactment of the 1967 Abortion Act. That law change introducing safe, legal abortion in Britain has saved lives and given women more control over their lives... By Sarah Sachs-Eldridge
23 January 2008
Bristol: THE FIGHT to defend Marksbury Road library from closure by Labour-controlled Bristol city council, is gathering momentum... By Wayne Coombes, Bristol South Socialist Party and MACA member
23 January 2008
NUT national executive: Left fighter stopped from standing
A concentrated effort to prevent left militant fighters from occupying influential positions within the labour movement - usually by bureaucratic means - has traditionally been used by the right wing of the trade unions...
23 January 2008
Shelter staff under attack from management
Senior management at housing charity Shelter are attempting to implement the most serious attack on staff pay and conditions in Shelter's 41 year history... By A Shelter worker
23 January 2008
While teachers' workload remains as high as ever, with an average 50-hour week in primary schools, we are now being asked to take wage cuts for a further three years from September 2008.... By Linda Taaffe
23 January 2008
Cadburys close Keynsham factory
Bristol: The Cadbury bosses have behaved utterly predictably in deciding at the end of a 90-day "consultation" process, to press ahead with the complete closure of their historic Keynsham site near Bristol... By Robin Clapp
23 January 2008
Council spends thousands fighting workers' pay claims
Coventry City Council has admitted to having spent £747,000 so far on outside lawyers, to try and stop some of its own employees getting equal pay.... By Dave Nellist, Socialist Party councillor
23 January 2008
Construction workers demonstrated at the Whiston hospital site on Merseyside on 11 January against the actions of a company-appointed union 'representative'... By Hugh Caffrey, Manchester
23 January 2008
Why should we pay for capitalist crisis?
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Stock markets crash |
29 January 2008
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Gazans streamed across the bulldozed Gaza-Egypt border during just a few days, desperate to buy basic goods that are no longer available in Gaza...
29 January 2008
New Labour attacking our vital benefits
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Flooded with Debt, cartoon by Suz, www.squashdonkey.co.uk |
29 January 2008
THE RECENT white-knuckle ride on world stock markets threatens a world recession. And it will be working-class people who will pay the price, writes Manny Thain
30 January 2008
Debt and housing slowdown threaten Britain's time bomb economy
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Debt and housing time bomb, photo The Socialist |
30 January 2008
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On the 3 November Save the NHS march, photo Paul Mattsson |
30 January 2008
Incapacity benefit cuts hit the sick
THE GOVERNMENT'S plans for 'welfare reform' are raising concern among people on Incapacity Benefit (IB). Nooshin Shabani spoke to two people on incapacity benefit...
30 January 2008
AS PART of their battle against Brown's public-sector wage freeze the police held a demonstration of their own, with over 18,000 attending, in London on 23 January... By Alex Gounelas
30 January 2008
Labour councillors anger parents and tenants
Tales from the council chamber: "CALLING THE Socialist Party motions 'far-left extremism' shows that New Labour can't answer what you're saying." That was the response of one of the 50 or so parents and council tenants who watched Lewisham council's ... By Clive Heemskerk
30 January 2008
Anti-war protests save teachers
Last November over 125 students walked out of Foster High School in the US, in response to a call from Youth Against War and Racism (YAWR) to protest against the war in Iraq and military recruiters in schools... By Bryan Watson, Socialist Alternative
30 January 2008
Reality of London students' debt trap
Christmas may be over but many Goldsmiths students are still playing mousetrap... By James Kerr, Goldsmiths Socialist Students
30 January 2008
College students seek socialist ideas
Last December I was invited to speak to some college politics students. In my introduction I made points on socialism, Marxism, what the Socialist Party... By Frankie Langeland, Cambridge Socialist Party
30 January 2008
Student elections: Not just a 'beauty contest'!
Students can't go anywhere in February and March without being bombarded by people handing out leaflets, with 'Vote for Robbo' or 'Sharon for Pres' on their t-shirts, not to mention the odd person dressed as a furry anim...
30 January 2008
More foo than fight as rockers agree to cross picket line
Opinion: I regularly squabble with friends about music; which band has a good singer, a bad drummer, which bands are unoriginal... By Anne Englehardt
30 January 2008
Rise of evil?: Towards the end of World War One Germany was a country in ruin. Over one and a half million Germans had died. An economic blockade meant conditions for workers in the cities were deteriorating...
30 January 2008
Global warming, climate change and human activities - Part 2
Debate: THE SCIENTIFIC ideas under-pinning the issues of global warming and climate change were recently debated in The Socialist (Issue 516) between reader Tony Simmons and the author of the Socialist Party's pamphlet Planning Green Growth, Pete Dickenson.
30 January 2008
Suharto: "One of the 20th century's biggest killers and greatest thieves"
THE STATE funeral of Indonesia's ex-dictator, General Suharto, took place on 28 January as Asian stock markets began to slide once more... By Clare Doyle, Committee for a Workers' International
30 January 2008
Teachers' union calls strike ballot on pay
The National Union of Teachers (NUT) national executive has announced a decision to ballot all its members for the first national teachers' strike for 21 years... By Linda Taaffe, NUT
30 January 2008
Burslem postal workers march back to work
At 6.15am on 24 January, Burslem postal workers marched proudly behind their banner back into work more united than when they walked out on strike six weeks before... By Andy Bentley
30 January 2008
Giving the real facts on Burslem strike
In Stoke the Socialist Party campaigned in support of postal workers at Burslem in North Staffordshire...
30 January 2008
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) strike for 31 January has been suspended as management have been forced into talks... By Jane Aitchison, PCS DWP President, personal capacity
30 January 2008
National Shop Stewards Network meetings
Yorkshire: "It took just six mobile phones and two hours to get 21,000 prison officers on strike!" National executive member Joe Simpson's account of how the Prison Officers Association (POA) organised their 'illegal' strike had an...
30 January 2008
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Cardiff parents beat council cuts in 2006. Picture: Socialist Party Wales |
30 January 2008
Hain resigns but stink of sleaze remains
IF GORDON Brown hoped the smell of scandal would be blown away with Peter Hain's resignation, a new scandal soon dispelled his hopes... By Dave Reid
30 January 2008
US elections: The Barack Obama mirage
IT SEEMS on the cusp of being real. For the first time in the US, an African American - Barack Obama of the Democratic Party - has a serious chance of being... By Teddy Shibabaw, Socialist Alternative (CWI, USA)
28 Feb Socialist Students conference
2 Mar Bristol North Socialist Party: The National Question - Scotland, Wales & N Ireland
2 Mar Caerphilly & RCT Socialist Party: How can peace be achieved in Israel/Palestine?
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