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New Labour has thrown down the gauntlet to civil servants, of which over 300,000 are organised in the PCS, Britain's sixth largest union. The PCS's national executive needs to take a clear lead on the issues that affect all members; job cuts, pay and privatisation. One-off protest strikes are not enough.

Milton Friedman died on 16 November aged 94 years. He was one of the foremost bourgeois economists of the 20th century. His reputation among the right-wing capitalist leaders, especially those who drove the policies of reaction and counter-revolution against the gains of the post-war labour movement in the 1980s was second to none.

AMICUS members at Peterborough District hospital have voted unanimously to take strike action over the way their jobs have been banded under the new NHS pay scheme, Agenda for Change. They plan four one-day strikes, starting on Monday 27 November, combined with a ban on overtime and call-outs.

The International Conference in Solidarity with the Lebanese Resistance against Imperialist aggression was held at the UNESCO Building in Beirut on November 16-19.

Comrade Lal Khan, who is the International Secretary of the Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign (PTUDC) and Editor of the Asian Marxist Review, had been officially invited to address the conference. Here we provide a summary of his speech, which, we hope, will be of great interest to our readers.

Garment production workers at one of the world's most famous clothing manufacturer continue their series of industrial actions, including strikes after bosses rejected their demand for a 2.5% pay increase. 85% of the membership voted for industrial action up to and including strike, work to rule and a refusal to pass on work to sub-contractors for completion.

In October's Socialist Appeal our Economics Correspondent, Michael Roberts, examines the claims of the Financial Times
(and others) that the British economy is in rude health. In reality, he
argues, Britain’s capitalist survival has increasingly been built on
becoming a
rentier economy, relying on providing financial and ‘professional’
services to other capitalist nations, while the "City of London is a
huge aircraft carrier parked in the Thames,
where world money flows in and out, with little touching the sides,
except fro those working on the carrier and living in London and the
south-east.  The rest of Britain is a just a dark shadow to these
people."

Twenty five years ago British imperialism demonstrated its cold,
calculating cruelty in the face of Irish Republican prisoners who felt they had no alternative but to make
the ultimate sacrifice in the struggle for political rights, embarking
on a
hunger strike that would tragically end with their deaths.
The Hunger Strikers of 1981 join a hall of many martyrs in the long
struggle to free Ireland, the fight for national liberation and
socalism. Gerry Ruddy of the Irish Republican Socialist Party has sent
us an excellent and intimate analysis of the events, the tactics, and
the politics of Republicanism from the time of the Hunger Strikes in
1981 to the present day, highlighting the need to build a revolutionary
movement based on Marxism and rooted in the working class across all
boundaries.

We buy 95% of the food we eat in supermarkets. Tesco alone, the market
leader, gets 30% of all food sales. Competition between supermarket
chains is based on a systematic ratcheting down of standards across the
board, forcing down the standard of living of workers and poor farmers;
wrecking the environment and local communities; and poisoning the
consumers.

Immediately following the
ceasefire the government of Israel
attempted to convince the Israeli population, and its friends abroad, that Israel had ‘won
the war'. Now they are forced to beat a hasty retreat from such declarations,
as no-one in Israel
is stupid enough to swallow them. We reproduce here the latest article from www.marxist.com on the current situation in Lebanon

Within the space of two days the vast inequalities in the UK in
remuneration for “work” done have been exposed to public gaze. On the
one hand it was announced on August 18th that public sector workers are
to be limited to a 2% pay increase this year, whilst the day before the
press reported on the bonuses paid at the start of the year to those
who inhabit the boardrooms of big companies and the dealing rooms in
the City.

The latest war in Lebanon, apart from showing the
brutality and barbarism of the Israeli government and its main allies and
supporters, is also shedding light on the limits of US imperialism.

Here we provide a four minute speech by Ted Grant in which he expressed
the confidence that by basing ourselves on the fundamental ideas of
Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky we can build a powerful international
Marxist movement. There can be no greater task than this. You can watch
the video here, here and here.