Uncategorised articles from The Communist archives.
Management in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) are imposing a
three year pay deal on staff in their November pay-cheque. This is
because they believe that staff want money for Christmas, which is
true, but we must not be fooled into thinking short-term. The pay deal
is being hailed as a great offer by management who, in an unprecedented
move, have been putting pressure on local managers to promote the deal
and sell it to staff.
Two hundred day care workers in centres across Glasgow are now entering
the second month of an indefinite strike, after the Council refused to
negotiate pay and conditions until the workers agreed to ‘modernisation
of services’. The day care centres provide support and education for
people with disabilities and learning difficulties and are crucial not
only for the clients who use them, but for their families.
On June 15th psychiatric nurse Karen Reissmann was ordered off the
premises and suspended in the middle of a delicate and difficult
consultation with a patient. Manchester Mental Health and Social Care
Trust charged her with ‘bringing the Trust into disrepute’. Don’t let them sack Karen Reissmann – an injury to one is an injury to all!
We are publishing
here an interesting piece on the Irish trade unions by Peter Black, an active
member of the TGWU (now fused with Amicus to form "Unite") and the Irish
Republican Socialist Party. Trade union membership is growing in Ireland, as is
the militancy of the working class and Socialist Republicans, in the tradition
of James Connolly, can play an important role in providing the militant
leadership the Irish workers deserve.
On Saturday 24th November over 2,000
trade unionists marched through Manchester demanding the reinstatement of
UNISON health service activist Karen Reissmann. Banners were present
from UNISON branches across the country, but also from UNITE branches, civil service
branches, teachers, lecturers, journalists, railway workers, fire-fighters,
postal workers and specialist hospital workers, like Midwives.
At a meeting in London recently Linda Clarke of the Socialist Appeal talks about Marxism in relation to the national Question. Linda talks about the history and evolution of the nation state, the meaning of bourgeois nationalism, and deals with the particular circumstances of the national question in relation to Scotland, Ireland and the position of the Marxists during the Falklands war.
In 1970, just like today, the Labour Party seemed dead from
the neck up. After six years of desperately disappointing government, Labour
had been unceremoniously bundled out of office. The Tories were back, aiming to
put the boot in to the working class.
Supporters of the Venezuelan revolution held a meeting at Cardiff University on Wednesday evening. This
meeting was held in order to explain the significance of events that have taken
place in Venezuela over the last 10 years and to spread the message that is
coming out of Latin America: that there is an alternative to capitalism in the
21st century – socialism.
A Basque Marxist was
on a speaking tour of the North of Ireland at the end of October. He spoke to
audiences in Belfast, Strabane and Derry mainly composed of republican socialists, but not
only. There was keen interest in seeing how the experience of the Basque
situation could be applied to the North of Ireland, and vice versa. We make
available here a report, originally published in The Plough, the journal of the
Irish Republican Socialist Party.
The London Fire Brigade have been trying to impose a change in the
current shift system on its fire-fighters. This has been in the
pipeline for some time and would benefit the LFB management to the
detriment of its workforce.
MANCHESTER (fighting the victimisation of Karen Reissman)
BARNET, NORTH LONDON (battle against
vicious privateers, Fremantle)
NEWHAM, EAST LONDON (stop the victimisation of Michael
Gavan)
GLASGOW
(all-out strike by day centre workers)