September 2008

Union members will be more than a little alarmed at reports
that union officials have been having secret talks with someone called Richard
Balfe, who is Tory Leader Cameron’s ‘special envoy’ to the trade unions. Those
who lived through the last Tory government and remember all too well their
vicious attacks on trade union rights as part of their plan to destroy the
union movement will be amazed, to say the least, at the fact that a) the Tories
have a trade union envoy and b) that some of our leaders are prepared to talk
to him.

On 16th July over 200 Unite activists were at a meeting in Friends’
House in Euston. Derek Simpson was there to speak about the new union.
I don’t think he was expecting such a large turnout and such a vocal
audience. There were Unite members present from various sectors  – NHS,
engineering, banking, construction and the public sector (who had been
on strike that day).

After a week of turmoil on financial markets, on Saturday 20
September President Bush said he was proposing to spend $700bn of taxpayers’
money to buy the rotten mortgage assets held by the banks on Wall Street.  He said he was doing this to help the
average American family with their homes and jobs.

The first Northern weekend school was held on the 12th-14th September,
organised by Yorkshire supporters of Socialist Appeal. The school took
place in Saddleworth, on the edge of the Peak District National Park. The theme of the school was "The Class, the Party and the Leadership". The
weekend proved tremendously successful, both in terms of political
education and bringing together socialists in the movement and young
activists.

PCS members in the RPA have
gained an important success in the dispute with their employer over the
imposition of a flawed and incomplete staff reporting system.

With the beginning of the 2008/09
academic year fast approaching, students will soon be settling in to the
realities of student life. For new students this means at some point they’ve
made a choice: between studying away from home on the one hand and continuing
to live with their parents on the other. Almost a third of students choose the
latter option. This often means a long commute to a university chosen on the
basis of its location instead of its merits – but at least these students have
the security of a roof over their head. For those who have chosen to study away
from home, often unaware of the true cost of student life, this means moving in
to student accommodation and an ongoing struggle against poverty, unscrupulous
landlords and, more often than not, appalling living conditions.

Alan Woods’ new book ‘Reformism and Revolution – Marxism and socialism of the 21st Century’ has its official launch in the UK at Bolivar Hall on Wednesday, October 1st, in London. It defends the ideas of Marxism and the class struggle against the revisionism of Heinz Dietrich and the bureaucracy who are determined to hold back the movement and water down their programme. Download and print off this A4 leaflet and distribute it as widely as possible.

As I write, financial markets in Wall
Street, New York, the City of London and all over are in turmoil.  In just 24 hours, two out of the four largest
investment banks in the US have disappeared. 
Lehman Brothers, around for 158 years, has declared bankruptcy and
25,000 employees around the globe have lost their jobs. 

Merrill Lynch, the world’s largest
investment bank, has been taken over by the largest high street bank in
America, the Bank of America.  Bank
America was virtually ordered by the US financial authorities to take over
Merrill Lynch, paying $50bn.  Otherwise,
that bank too would have gone bust, putting thousands more out of work.  Even worse for capitalism, it would have
meant that both Lehman and Merrill Lynch would have defaulted on their contracts
and obligations and thus brought down many other banks (15 were rumoured to be
in trouble).