Thousands of workers gathered in Coventry (UK) at the end of November
to protest against the closure of the Jaguar plant in Brown’s Lane with
a projected loss of 1150 jobs. From the December issue of Socialist
Appeal.
Elections can provide us with a snapshot of the political mood of
society at a given moment. Yet if we restrict ourselves to who won and
who lost they can teach us very little. This is the editorial from the
current issue of the British Socialist Appeal.
The ongoing conflict between the management of An Post (the Irish state
run postal services) and the Communication Worker’s Union (CWU) may end
up with 1,450 workers losing their jobs, the reduction of workers’
incomes, and the subcontracting of deliveries of mail in rural areas,
if the CWU doesn’t stand up against these attacks.
The left wing Labour MP John McDonnell has tabled an Early Day Motion
condemning the murder of Danilo Anderson, the Venezuelan prosecutor
investigating the April 2002 military coup against president Chavez.
In her usual style Naomi Klein provided many interesting facts, but
failed to reach any concrete conclusions of how we can or whether it is
actually necessary to abolish capitalism. In essence she would like
another kind of capitalism, a more humane capitalism, which of course
is utterly utopian.
The Scottish Socialist Party, once heralded by many on the left as the
most successful socialist experiment in recent times, is in the process
of tearing itself apart after sacking its founder and leader Tommy
Sheridan as the party’s convener. Officially he is now simply a
“backbencher”.
The Blair government is putting the lessons it has learned in Iraq to
good use in attacking workers at home. They have unleashed a campaign
of shock and awe against their own workers in the civil service.
Following the announcement of an unprecedented offensive by the
government on its own employees in the civil service the PCS (Public
and Commercial Services Union) is mobilising its entire membership to
take the government head on.
GM Europe makers of Vauxhall (Opel) announced this month that they are
planning to cut 12,000 workers across the continent – the equivalent to
20% of the European workforce. They are carrying through these attacks
to put them back into profit.
The Labour Representation Committee (LRC) held its first rally last
night at this year’s Labour Party Conference in Brighton attended by
some 250 activists. This successful event marks an important milestone
in the challenge to Blairism and the campaign to reclaim the Labour
Party. Alan Woods was among the speakers.
Alan Woods was invited officially to speak at the LRC rally. Here we provide the text of the whole speech.
The Blair government is facing serious difficulties. It cannot convince
the trade unions that its pro-big business policies, its continued
privatisation of public assets are in the interests of the working
class. Brown tried to make up for this by hinting that in some way he
might be “old Labour”. In reality there is no fundamental difference
between the two.