“Outsourcing of public services to the
private and voluntary sectors has almost doubled to close to £80bn in little
more than a decade and makes up a far larger part of the economy than
previously thought.” (Financial Times 09.07.08) A third of all public services – far
more than previously thought – are now delivered by the private and voluntary
sectors, according to this report commissioned by the government.
Labour’s National Policy Forum took
place in Coventry over the weekend of the 25th, 26th and
27th July. The policy objectives were to be known as Warwick 2
The Forum took place against the backdrop of
the disastrous by-election defeat in Glasgow East. This in turn was only the
latest in a list of electoral humiliations over the past few months. The
Henley, Crewe and Nantwich by-election defeats, the council elections and the
defeat in London’s mayoral elections, are all a reflection of the utter
frustration felt by the working class electorate after ten years of New Labour
pandering to big business.
This is part one of a major five part article on what was actually the English bourgeois revolution. We shall run it over the next two weeks on this website
None comes into the world with a saddle on his back, neither any booted and spurred to ride him. Richard Rumbold, Leveller.
Politicians, mainstream historians, constitutional lawyers and the like would have us believe that there is something uniquely decent about the way in which the British conduct their affairs of state. These are marked out, so they say, by tolerance, hatred of violence, a sense of justice and fairness, willingness to compromise and by gradual, evolutionary change. Not for us, they continue, warming to their theme, are the extremism, the violence and the awful revolutionary upheavals witnessed in France, Russia or elsewhere.
Put up or shut
up!
“They’re tearing
themselves apart, just like we used to do,” a senior Conservative MP said,
beaming in the sunshine. “God knows why he’s done it now.” This is a quote from
the Financial Times (31.07.08) about what the Tories think of David Miliband’s
‘coded leadership bid’.
Harry DeBoer wrote this pamphlet in 1987 to inspire
a new generation of trade union activists with the militant traditions of US
labour’s past. As a young man he worked in the Minneapolis coal yards and
became caught up and radicalised in the Minneapolis ‘teamster rebellion’ of
1934. As he makes clear, this was a model strike, and it was led by Marxists.
(See our review of ‘Teamster Rebellion’ by Farrell Dobbs, another Trotskyist
and strike leader.)
SOME 70 RMT station staff at a dozen
stations at the north end of London Underground’s Metropolitan line are striking
for 24 hours from 05:30 today (Thursday)
Members
returned a 13-to-one majority for action after senior LUL management breached
its own procedures to tell staff on permanent postings that they would have to
move jobs – over-ruling a potential solution negotiated locally.
The
negotiations between the Local Government Employers and UNISON, Unite and the
GMB which are due to start on August 12th represent an important
development in this year’s pay campaign. The fact that they are going to happen
at all is significant as it shows that the national two day strike in July that
involved 500,000 UNISON and Unite members was effective. However although the
employers have been forced back to the table, it doesn’t mean that the outcome
of the talks is guaranteed.
Five years ago the USA and Britain
invaded Iraq. They lied that it was because Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass
destruction. Really they were just going in to steal Iraq’s oil. They killed a
million people, but they said Saddam was a dictator, which was true. They were
going to set the Iraqi people free.
So what are we to think when we hear
that 8 Iraqi trade union leaders are to be transferred from Basra to
Baghdad. Their crime? They oppose the
law that passes Iraq’s oil over to the greedy hands of the foreign
multinationals. Their lives are at risk. Iraq, and specially Baghdad, is a
cauldron.
William Morris is probably known best today as a designer of wallpaper
and fabrics. This is a travesty. Morris was a revolutionary socialist,
a Marxist. Morris read Capital when it was only published in German,
and therefore unavailable to most British workers. Inspired, he joined the Democratic Federation, later called the
Social Democratic Federation, the first British Marxist organisation.
From that time on he was a tireless agitator for socialism till his
last days.
On Saturday 19 July around
300 Kurdish teachers protested against Farzad Kamangar’s death
sentence. At the gathering in Sanandaj, in Iranian Kurdistan, the
teachers read out a manifesto in defence of Farzad Kamangar, calling
his death sentence unjust and demanding that the authorities revoke it
and release him immediately.
The following statements were
unanimously passed at the World Congress of the International Marxist Tendency. A detailed report about the congress will follow in the coming weeks.
The following statement has been issued by John McDonnell MP regarding
attacks on left wing activists in Unison by the bureaucracy. Follow the
links at the bottom of the article for articles explaining the background to this disgraceful
campaign.