The
LRC combines a growing part of the Labour left as well as a few groups outside
of the party who don’t stand in elections against it. Most significantly it has
affiliations from a number of national unions (including the RMT and FBU) and
branches and a good third of the 203 accredited delegates who voted in the
National Committee elections were from affiliated organisations. Total
attendance was around 270.
More than 200 delegates and visitors met at
the Conway Hall on Saturday November 15th for the Annual Conference
of the Labour Representation Committee, the organising hub of the left wing
within the Labour Party and among trade union activists. There was a determined
mood among those meeting. After years of right wing drift and domination of the
labour movement, LRC members rightly felt that the crisis had brought out the
urgency for socialist ideas to be heard and taken up. The Conference was opened
by a stirring speech from Tony Benn.
Last year, Richard Desmond, the proprietor of Express Newspapers announced he was paying himself a chairman’s
remuneration of some £52m – the equivalent of £1m a week.
It hardly raised an eyebrow.
Although hefty by historical standards, it was not by contemporary ones. Just a few months earlier Lakshmi Mittal had paid himself a record £1.1bn dividend. At the time it was the highest private dividend on record. But that record did not last for long as high street
retailer Philip Green topped it with a dividend of £1.2bn from his Arcadia
Group – the equivalent of the annual pay of 54,000 people on average earnings.
Alan
Woods was recently interviewed by the Argentine magazine Sudesta on the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. He deals with
the gradual political degeneration of the Revolution and its usurpation by the
Stalinist bureaucracy, discussing the political issues raised in the course of
the struggle. Unease at the rise of bureaucratic rule was signalled by Lenin in
his last years and by Trotsky. As Alan says, “In 1923 Trotsky launched the
Platform of the Opposition, based on a defence of the Leninist principles of
workers’ democracy and proletarian internationalism. He began a struggle
against bureaucratic tendencies in the state and Party. This was the beginning
of the Left Opposition in the Soviet Union and internationally. The struggle
between the Left Opposition and the Stalin faction was at bottom a class
struggle, which reflected the contradictory interests between the working class
and the rising bureaucracy.”
As water approaches boiling point more and more atoms fly off the surface. The same process can be observed in society. A revolution is where the majority actively enters the stage of history and challenges for political power. But long before society undergoes a revolutionary transformation advanced layers of the working class, and in particular young people, ‘fly off the surface’ and begin to draw revolutionary conclusions for themselves.
Come and hear Jesus Pino from the
Revolutionary Front of Steel Workers (SIDOR). He is speaking at the Hands Off
Venezuela National Conference in London
in less than two week’s time. He will speak about the struggle to nationalise
the steel industry and the fight for workers’ control in Venezuela. The
nationalisation of SIDOR earlier this year was a direct outcome of a militant
struggle by the steel workers themselves. This shows the direction that the
Venezuelan Revolution is taking and highlights the need to complete the tasks
of expropriating the Oligarchy.
Five
years into the occupation of Iraq
and seven years after the war in Afghanistan started the Americans
and their allies are bogged down in an unwinnable situation. Even if they
withdraw from Iraq
in the medium term future, the political and social repercussions of the war
will go on for decades. The attempt to carve out a new sphere of influence in
the Middle East, and thus guarantee oil
supplies has proven to be a lot more difficult than the American Imperialists
imagined, and serves to demonstrate the limits to the power that they can
wield. The New World Order has become disorder and the economic and financial
crisis in America
brilliantly confirms Trotsky’s analysis when he explained that the cost of the
growth of American Imperialism was to accumulate “dynamite in its foundations”.
The situation of financial crisis, coupled
with a hugely unpopular Westminster government that has found itself entirely
incapable of coming up with any solutions
beyond throwing more and more of our money at the banks, would seem a
perfect opportunity for the SNP to make their mark and assert the need for an
independent Scotland. With unemployment poised to reach two million and share
prices continuing to fall at the SNP conference, Alex Salmond has been reduced
to calling for the return of ‘Scotland’s money’ and blaming the collapse of
Scottish banks on the Union. Supposedly independence will save us from such
catastrophes in the future.
On the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918,
the armistice took effect on the Western front. One year after the
victory of the Russian Revolution, the German proletariat had entered
the scene of world history and brought an end to "the Great War".
Austria-Hungary soon followed suit and the "old regime" had collapsed.
Dave Prentis, UNISON’s General Secretary, recently circulated an
important NEC document that gives a clear analysis of some of the main
threats and problems that the public sector faces as a consequence of
the financial and economic crisis. UNISON Socialist Appeal
Supporters welcome the call for branches to discuss the situation, We
think its publication reflects a significant development reflecting the
huge pressure that the UNISON leadership are under. After all the
UNISON bureaucracy has fought hard to "hold the line" for New Labour
over the past period.
We conclude our Manifesto on the crisis of capitalism by pointing out
that the resources exist to guarantee decent living conditions for
every man, woman and child on this planet. The private ownership of the
means of production, where the profit of the few is the driving force,
is at the heart of the crisis. It is capitalism that must be abolished,
but this is only possible through an international struggle for
socialism.
Spare a thought for the poor old bosses who are trying to make ends meet in these uncertain times. Some are very depressed about the capitalist system. Take John Book, Managing director of Millards Cleaning Services. “We’ve been going since 1919, so we have seen several recessions and a depression. The current situation has the characteristics of a depression – not a recession – and my guess is that it will last for four years.” Then there is Brian Rice, Chairman of Dial-a-Cab. “The incessant talking down of the economy frightened people. I attended a dinner where Richard Lambert, the […]