Last week’s FBU conference revealed a militant fighting mood, with Matt
Wrack, the new General Secretary, expressing an equally fighting spirit.

Labour
has won an historic third term victory in the 2005 General Election,
yet there will be no dancing in the streets, no street parties, in fact
little enthusiasm at all. The combination of widespread opposition to
the war in Iraq, distrust of Blair, and disillusionment with the
failures of the last two terms of Labour government means that Labour
won the election with the lowest share of the vote, just 36 percent, of
any victorious party in history.

We recently published a review of a film shown on the BBC entitled
Faith which wove together the lives of its fictional characters with
the real events of the 1984-85 Miners’ Strike. The result was a moving
drama and an unusually honest account of this great struggle,
sympathetic to the miners and their communities. The film’s director,
David Thacker spoke to us about the making of the film and his own
political views.

The closure of Rover involves the loss of 26,000 jobs, in the plant and
the industries that supply it. The present owners were called in to
“save” jobs. All they have done is siphoned off millions for
themselves. The only answer is nationalisation under workers’ control.

Mick Brooks looks at the historical background to the British car
industry and in particular that of Rover. It is a history of decline,
of underinvestment, and finally of collapse. Now all the attempts to
save Rover by looking for private buyers have failed. It is a
reflection of the decline of the British capitalist class as a whole.

The message of this book is that the destiny of Ireland is a Workers’
Republic, a free Republic without landlords, bankers and capitalists.
It is a message of hope, of confidence in the future of Ireland, the
working class and socialism. It is non-sectarian equally addressed to
all thinking people from different backgrounds, but especially to the
cadres and the youth of the Republican movement, who have paid a very
heavy price for the last thirty years and who are now seeking
explanations.

He
who does not learn from history will forever be doomed to repeat it. It
is time to take stock of the past of the Republican movement and to
draw a balance sheet. Only by such means can we extricate ourselves
from the present impasse, and build the revolutionary movement urgently
needed to prevent a further descent into sectarian chaos and achieve
instead the historic task of overthrowing capitalism and constructing
the 32-county Socialist Republic. This is the introduction to the
recently published book Ireland: Republicanism and Revolution, to be ordered from Wellred Books. (May 2005)

In April a new book by Alan Woods is being published by Wellred Books.
The title of the book is “Ireland: Republicanism and Revolution”. It
looks at the history of the Republican movement from a Marxist
viewpoint. Gerry Ruddy, Ard-Comhairle member of the Irish Republican
Socialist Party, has written a preface to the book, which we provide
here. As he says, “Hopefully, it will stimulate debate and analysis.
Serious revolutionaries, genuine Marxists, committed Republicans will
read this book with thoughtful interest.”

A group of students organised in the UCL Social Forum, UCL Stop the War
Society and the UCLSSWS, together with other activists, occupied the
University College London on the eve of the national march against the
occupation of Iraq.