Twenty-five years ago today John Lennon was killed in New York. There was a mass outpouring of grief all over the world. This was because he symbolised something different from the mainstream music industry. He gave expression in the words of some of his songs the genuine feeling of disgust of many workers and youth at what capitalist society stands for.
Dramatic climate change in recent years has led scientists to the conclusion that global warming is the cause. This is bad news for the private owners of the $2trn dollar oil, gas and natural gas industries. If serious action were taken to deal with global warming, their profits would be in trouble. That is why these big monopolies have spent millions on a campaign designed to rubbish the global warming theory.
Tony Blair suffered his first ever defeat in parliament yesterday when 49 Labour MPs voted against the introduction of new repressive ‘anti-terror’ legislation. The defence of civil liberties, consistently under attack from the Blair government, is a vitally important question in its own right. However, as Phil Mitchinson explains, Blair’s parliamentary defeat has far wider implications for the future of the British labour movement.
Saturday’s Marxist.com day school proved to be very successful, with many new faces turning up, especially youth. This success bodes well for the future of our work in Britain. Here we provide a brief outline of the proceedings.
The right to demonstrate, to strike, to trial by jury in Britain are all elementary civil liberties, yet most of them have already been whittled away. Now the so-called “war on terror” is being used to destroy what little is left. This assault on our democratic rights is not a secondary matter. The democracy afforded us by capitalism is restricted, but we can no more ignore the attacks launched on our political rights than we can attacks on our jobs, wages and conditions.
The idea that Brown
has been secretly opposed to privatisation, to the war in Iraq, to the Labour
government’s assault on civil liberties ‑ but keeping quiet through ‘loyalty’
(to his career that is, not to the Labour Party or working class Labour voters)
‑ is patently absurd. Both should go.
“I was a member of the British Labour party
for some years and seeing that old man being manhandled the way he was out of
the Labour conference made my blood boil and almost brought me to tears.”
The 2005 Labour Party
Conference marks a significant shift in the situation in Britain. It deserves careful study by Marxists and by every
trade union and Labour activist. It was chiefly marked by a sharp conflict
between the Party leadership and the trade unions
Anyone
who doubted the wider implication for civil liberties of Blair’s ‘anti-terror’
legislation need look no further than the Labour Party Conference in Brighton.
82-year-old Walter Wolfgang, who fled Nazi Germany in 1937, was roughly
manhandled out of the hall by a pair of heavies
The
recent announcement that the Provisional IRA had decommissioned all its weapons
has been drowned out by the blasts of the loyalist paramilitaries using theirs.
The Good Friday Agreement is dead. Instead of peace we have a dramatic increase
in extreme sectarian violence. More than ever the call for working class unity
in the struggle for socialism is the only answer.
Three Amicus members
of staff have been suspended
from their jobs in the union. All three are leading members of the
broad left that was instrumental in defeating the right wing and
getting Derek Simpson elected as General Secretary. No reason has been
given
for their suspension. It is obviously a politically motivated attack.
Please
take part in the campaign to get the three reinstated.