Pat Macdonald gives a report on Hands off Venezuela at this years T.U.C in Brighton. To a filled room of trade union
activists, Rob Sewell gave a speech on the importance of events in Venezuela,
followed by John McDonnell MP, who praised the work of Hands off Venezuela and
its founders. NUJ General Secretary Jeremy Dear and FBU vice president Alan
McLean also spoke at the meeting.
Floods, Foot and Mouth and hundreds of thousands of public
sector workers balloting for industrial action over pay, not perhaps the sort
of run up to the party conference that Gordon Brown had hoped for. But can we be
confident that Labour can beat the Tories in a "snap" election, and just
as importantly is there any evidence that Brown will be more convincing to
working class voters who have stayed at home in droves in the past period?
Since the first Gulf War the US and UK have been using Depleted Uranium (DU) weaponry. DU has a half-life of 1.5 billion years, can result in cancerous tumors and
genetic mutations, and pass from mother to unborn child, resulting in birth
defects. In
Basra hospital from 1991 to 2000 some malignicies, like Leukemia, have increased as much as 600%. This reveals not only the depths of imperialist barabarity, mocking the idea of ‘the rules of war’, but demonstrates with painful acuteness capitalisms’ inability to regard the environment.
Last year’s war in Lebanon ended in defeat for Israel, but it also
shook up Lebanese society. The general strike that took place shortly
afterwards is testimony to this fact. Luke Wilson interviewed a student
activist in Beirut on how he sees the situation now.
Today the death of nearly 3000 people during the September 11 attacks will
be officially commemorated once again. But will anyone at those commemorations
mention how those deaths were cynically exploited by the Bush administration to
carry out a plan hatched by the US oil lobby for its own greedy interests?
At the 1944 conference of the ILP there were
clear indications that a steady move to the right on the part of the leadership
was taking place. This posed the question of what the left wing of the party
should do. Here Ted Grant raises the need for the left to sharpen up its ideas
and take a firm stand.
The tube workers’ strike, the strike of prison
officers in August, the call by rank and file police to be granted the right to
strike, and other similar disputes mark an important change in Britain. The
workers of this country have had enough and they are starting to fight back.
In
previous centuries, time worked for us, in present times and in modern times,
we work for time. Due to the pressures of the clock, stress levels, mental
illnesses and breakdowns are on the increase. The clock is more and more being
used to hound workers through their everyday lives.
The Grunwick strike was the first dispute where
a majority of strikers who were from ethnic minorities received widespread
support from the labour movement. This pamphlet and DVD should be seen by those
who did not live through the event. The strike also gives a
different twist to the current debate about multiculturalism – there was no
doubt in those days that the strikers at Grunwick belonged in the trades union
movement, regardless of their ethnic background or culture. Workers from all
different cultures were united at Grunwicks.
The collapse of Metronet , the consortium entrusted with upgrading the
tube, spells the collapse of the whole notion of ‘Public Private
Partnership’, otherwise known as the Private Finance Initiative.
Ten years ago in Britain, at the time of the sudden death of
Diana, we witnessed an outburst of popular feeling without precedent in recent
British history. It was an entirely new phenomenon, reflecting an entirely new
situation in Britain. Here we republish Alan Woods’ article written in 1997 which
looked at the serious crisis the monarchy and the British establishment were
facing at the time.
With inflation running at
well over 4% for the last 6 months conditions couldn’t have been better for
public sector trade unions to challenge the Government’s 2% public sector pay
limit. Many staff are already angry
over cuts, NHS redundancies and job evaluation, so a real pay cut of 2 – 3% has
provoked a strong response.