Ireland faces the biggest crisis in
world capitalism since the 1930’s and for that reason there’s never been more
need for a socialist response to solve the problems workers face. With that in
mind, how do the Labour leadership stand up to scrutiny?
Greece, like all the other capitalist
countries afflicted by the recession, is running a big deficit on its
government budget. Tax revenues have
collapsed and more benefits are having to be paid out to the unemployed.
Deficits for the European Union countries as a whole tripled from 2.3% to 6.9%
from 2008 to 2009 because of the slump.
‘Ethical consumption’ and other capitalist ‘solutions’ to the climate crisis are a blind alley. We need a socialist alternative.
In the previous few months, we have attempted to show how capitalist ‘solutions’ to climate change, such as market-based methods like carbon trading, are not able to combat the environmental problems facing humanity and our planet. Similarly, international treaties that attempt to operate within the confines of capitalism are also doomed to failure, as was seen in Copenhagen last year. Capitalism cannot solve these problems – capitalism is the problem.
Greek capitalism is in a deep crisis.
It is the weak link in the chain and it is beginning to break. The
country risks defaulting on its debt repayments, posing a serious
threat to the stability of the euro. Severe austerity measures are
being imposed and these are provoking a working class backlash.
Paul Holmes is standing for election as General Secretary of UNISON.
Paul has been active in the union for 36 years, he’s branch secretary
of Kirklees Branch in Yorkshire. The branch has over 10,000 members and
an 80% membership density. Paul agreed to be interviewed for Fightback
which is the Journal of the International Marxist Tendency in Ireland and we are pleased to reproduce that interview here.
Steve Acheson, blacklisted electrician from Manchester, was nearly arrested recently on his picket at Fiddler’s Ferry power station. Steve was dismissed in December 2009 and has held a peaceful picket outside the site ever since. His tribunal for unfair dismissal will not be heard until October this year.
From the 4th-9th of February, Cambridge University students voted in a
referendum on whether to remain affiliated to the National Union of
Students (NUS). The referendum was held due to a motion, passed earlier in the
term, in which a small group of students proposed that the Cambridge
University Students Union (CUSU) disaffiliate, claiming the the NUS had
irreversibly degenerated into a bureaucratic travesty and that we were
wasting our time (and money) by remaining affiliated to such an
organisation.
In the society in which we currently
find ourselves, class society, a small minority of the population holds
ownership and control over industry, banks and all major means for
producing wealth. Because we, the workers, do not get to enjoy this
wealth, although we create it, our lives are reduced to working for
wages that disappear when we pay the bills. How does the ruling class
keep us putting up with such a lifestyle? One way is the fact that the
ruling class’s ideology permeates contemporary culture and dominates
the media.
Over the last 40 years we have had two periods of Tory rule; one was
Thatcher and Major’s period in office from 1979 to 1997. But there was
another period between 1970 and February 1974 when Ted Heath was
installed in Downing Street. The Tory attempts to attack the working
class and attack the workers’ organisations rebounded badly then.
Should Labour lose the next election, it’s clear that an incoming Tory
government would be a government of crisis. An industrial and, at a
later stage, a political response to their attacks from the working
class would be on the cards.
Labour MP John McDonnell today welcomed the candidacy of leading
Yorkshire trade unionist, Paul Holmes, to replace Dave Prentis as
General Secretary of UNISON, the largest public sector trade union.
Last Friday February 5th members of the CYWU Unite trade union in
Coventry staged another one-day strike to defend jobs and conditions
and to try and stop the savage cuts being imposed on the Children and
Youth Services budget.
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