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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.

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.

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.

Issue 155 of Socialist Appeal now out!

Michael Collins was a great
Irish revolutionary and nationalist who more than any one person may be
considered to have created modern Ireland. On 22 August 1922, 85 years ago, he
was killed in an ambush during the Irish civil war – he was 31 years of age.

The following is a short letter from a Postal Worker from Oxford, giving his impressions in his own humorous words of his experience on the picket line. For many of us, it is a grassroots view we can identify with.

The establishment of the Labour Party to give a political voice to the trade union movement was a historic achievement. Even today, after more than a decade during which the Party has been firmly in the grip of Blairite, pro-capitalist interlopers, the link between the unions and the Party remains.

Fred Weston, editor of the website In Defence of Marxism, talks about the current situation in Brazil to the London Aggregate of the Socialist Appeal at the begining of July. The occupied factories movement in Brazil is symptomatic of the extreme instability throughout the Latin American continent, as is the Lula governments attempts to divide the working class along race lines and its recent attacks on the CIPLA and Flasko occupied factories. Listen to part 1 and part 2 .

A
Speech delivered in Barcelona Wednesday August 1st 2007 to a gathering of
Marxists from around the world by Gerry Ruddy, a member of the Irish Republican
Socialist Party.