Archive for June 2000

2 June 2000

Revolt grows at Labour's health plans

THE GOVERNMENT are sending out 12 million leaflets this week, asking people what their top three priorities are for the NHS...

2 June 2000

Are the dotcoms deadcoms?

THROUGHOUT THE 1990s, investors in shares just assumed that share prices would go ever upwards. But in recent months all the froth of the 'booming' internet companies - known collectively as dotcoms...

2 June 2000

Stock markets: A Giant Gambling den

Analysis: WHEN TV news bulletins try to explain financial matters they tend to lose their audience in a complex fog of FTSEs, Nasdaqs, trade deficits and so on...

2 June 2000

22-year Israeli occupation comes to inglorious end

IN THE end one of the world's most efficient and well-armed fighting forces - the IDF - was defeated by a Islamic volunteer guerrilla force of about 5,000 men - Hizbollah (funded mainly by the Iranian regime but also influenced and supported by the Syrian government)...

2 June 2000

Palestinian teachers fight

SINCE FEBRUARY, 27,000 Palestinian teachers from the West Bank have been on strike, demanding the implementation of the Service Law, and for democratic elections to the teachers' union...

2 June 2000

End The Class Divide

NEW LABOUR are panicking. They had hoped to call and win a general election next spring...

9 June 2000

No Post Office Sell-Off

THE EUROPEAN Commission are proposing to end the postal monopoly for mail weighing more than 50 grams from the year 2003, writes Peter Redfarn.

9 June 2000

New Labour's drugs policies don't work

From Blair's introduction of a drugs Tsar to the recent death toll linked to contaminated heroin in Glasgow and Dublin, drugs are rarely out of the headlines...

9 June 2000

Irish politicians scapegoat refugees

THE QUESTION of asylum seekers has come to the top of the political agenda in southern Ireland. Meanwhile, racist attacks, particularly against African asylum seekers and refugees, are on the increase,...

9 June 2000

Blair's Allies Desert Him

Anger grows against Labour as...: ANGER AND disillusionment with New Labour is at an all-time high. Since coming to power 170,000 jobs have gone in manufacturing. Compared to 1997, one million more people live below the poverty line, writes Hannah Sell.

16 June 2000

Build decent affordable housing not yuppie flats

Hands Off Housing: Across the country residents are being forced to fight back against attempts to privatise and yuppify council housing...

16 June 2000

Brazil's workers and poor have nothing to celebrate

BRAZIL'S 500TH anniversary celebrations by the country's ruling elite were reduced to a farce as a result of mass protests, including occupations of land, government buildings and strikes by tens of thousands of students and public sector workers...

16 June 2000

Left unity put to the test in London

THE LONDON Socialist Alliance (LSA) is an alliance of different Left organisations with a handful of individual members...

16 June 2000

Nigeria: General strike wins big concessions

ABSOLUTELY SOLID. That has been the impact of the general strike against the Nigerian government's 50% rise in oil prices which began on 8 June. Across the country workers and students have taken the...

16 June 2000

Barak retreats over 'tax reforms'

A THREATENED general strike by Israeli workers has forced the coalition government of prime minister Ehud Barak to back down on his so-called 'tax reform'...

16 June 2000

Labour Can't Deliver

NEW LABOUR is in a panic. Across the board people are rejecting New Labour - from working-class voters at elections to Blair's handbagging by the Women's Institute...

23 June 2000

Asylum seekers: "We're not asking for charity"

AT PRESENT, 780 asylum seekers are known to Newcastle city council. Since April, 153 have been dispersed to the city under the new legislation. There are 3,000 asylum seekers in a Tyne and Wearside region...

23 June 2000

Stand up to the Fascists

IT TOOK just 15 minutes for the police to quick-march 30 or so National Front (NF) fascist thugs up Margate seafront on Saturday, writes By a Kent anti-fascist.

23 June 2000

Labour's sell-off madness

THE MAIN air traffic control computer failed on 17 June, leaving thousands of passengers stranded. This was inconvenient enough for people wanting to travel but it once again exposed New Labour's privatisation...

23 June 2000

Korean war 1950-1953: When the cold war caught fire

FIFTY YEARS ago, on 25 June 1950, the Korean War officially started. It was a "small war" and practically forgotten though it was much closer to instigating World War Three than anyone admits. It lasted...

23 June 2000

Korea today: Heading for reunification?

IN THE rush to stem the tide of revolution which swept the Korean peninsula once the Japanese surrendered in mid-August 1945, 'an imaginary line' was agreed by the US and the USSR which severed the living body of Korea for over 50 years, writes Elizabeth Clarke.

23 June 2000

Victims of the Capitalist System

MOST PEOPLE were horrified when 58 migrants were found dead at Dover in a container meant to convey tomatoes. But the migrants weren't just killed by lack of air, writes Brian Debus, chair Hackney UNISON.

30 June 2000

Pride Not Profit

THAT'S THE message thousands of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people will be giving on 1 July when the Pride march hits London streets with its traditional combination of defiance, diversity and display...

30 June 2000

Not so 'gay friendly' New Labour

THIS IS an important week for gay rights activists. On 1 July tens of thousands will gather for Pride. Three days earlier, representatives from 34 trade unions assemble for the Lesbian and Gay Conference...

30 June 2000

The TUC's 'Straight Up!' Campaign

In April the TUC published a survey in which 74% of those questioned thought employers should not be able to sack workers because of their sexuality, writes The 'Straight Up!' Campaign calls for:.

30 June 2000

Uniting against fascist threats

THE NAIL bombing of the Admiral Duncan pub in Soho a year last April killed three people: two gay men - Nick Moore and John Light; and a married, mother-to-be, Andrea Dykes, writes Manny Thain.

30 June 2000

Mugabe's iron grip weakened

THE FINAL results of the Zimbabwe election were coming in as The Socialist went to press. It looked most likely that Mugabe's ZANU-PF would cling to power on the basis of 'radical' rhetoric and widespread...

30 June 2000

Angry Ford workers demand action

"Cheaper to hire, cheaper to fire" TO CHANTS of "no closure" and "the workers united will never be defeated", hundreds of Ford workers marched through fashionable Bayswater, west London to lobby Ford UK's headquarters, writes Manny Thain and Dave Carr.

30 June 2000

Signal workers vote for strike

MEMBERS OF the Rail Marine and Transport (RMT) union have voted for strike action against Railtrack over signal workers' pay...

30 June 2000

RMT conference: delegates defy leaders

NO SOONER had the rail union RMT conference started than it came to a grinding halt. For a day and a half, delegates wouldn't let the union leaders start the conference until the issue of elections for...

30 June 2000

Left win in Tipperary

SEAMUS HEALY, a left-wing candidate, has topped the poll in the Tipperary South parliamentary by-election in Southern Ireland, decisively defeating the right-wing Labour candidate...

30 June 2000

Keeping it out of the family

Is a woman's work ever done?: THE NEW Labour government is reviewing its family policy. It is trying to don a 'family-friendly' mantle, hoping to win back women's support for Labour which has evaporated in recent months, writes Jane Nellist.

30 June 2000

Cuba: Socialism and democracy

SOCIALIST PARTY general secretary, Peter Taaffe's new book, Cuba: Socialism and Democracy, is a timely explanation of the processes that led to the Cuban Revolution, the development of the Cuban regime and its perspectives for the future, writes Kevin Parslow.

30 June 2000

Labour Pampers Its Fat Cats

IN OPPOSITION, New Labour pledged that they would end the massive tax avoidance and corruption by the rich which was rife under the Tories, writes John Reid.