Britain

As a new addition to the Socialist Appeal website we would like to introduce the outspoken Elmer Whitefeather column, which takes a light-hearted look at working-class life.

Here we publish a letter sent by a Socialist Appeal reader about the decision of Michael Meacher MP to run for the Labour Party leadership. 

A recent Unicef report has condemned Britain as the worst industrialised nation for children to grow up in. For all the noise the government has made over the years about investing in our children, the realities of privatisation have produced the opposite effect.

As Blair prepares to hand over the leadership of the Labour
Party to Brown, opinion polls reveal how low support for Labour has fallen. We
face the real prospect of a return of the Tories at the next general election.
Blairism has failed abysmally and it is time to change course and adopt genuine
socialist policies.

On the 6th of February the HOV delegation that went to Venezuela during the December elections, showed video-clips and slides from their visit and spoke about their experience. John McDonnell MP and Alan Woods, founder of the HOV campaign, were among the main speakers, as was the Venezuelan Ambassador, Alfredo Toro Hardy.

The stench of sleaze emanating from Number 10 Downing Street marks the end of the Blair era. Brown is no alternative. Both men will lead the Labour Party to defeat in the future. What is needed is a genuine left alternative. That is why it is so important that John McDonnell gets the required number of nominations to be able to stand for the party leadership.

We live in a world never so technologically advanced, and yet never so unbalanced and chaotic. What we need is a society driven by the edict, "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs". This article exposes the contradictions of a society driven by private profit.

It is widely agreed that the main security threat facing Britain today is terrorism. Yet the British Bourgeois insist on maintaining nuclear weapons in an attempt to represent itself as a great economic and political power.

Hospital closures in North Lanarkshire have caused outrage among local residents already suffering from a woefully inadequate health service. Here we see how dangerous PFI policy in our NHS really is.

As George Bush commits a further 20,000 troops to Iraq in a desperate gamble to hold the situation, the realities on the ground are pointing to a defeat for the super power. We take a look at the implications and prospects of this new 'surge'. 

Family, friends and comrades of Phil Mitchinson gathered in Cardiff on Saturday 13th January for a memorial meeting.  We came together to celebrate his life that ended so tragically.

The capitalist system that flourished in the time of Dickens is still upon us, as are all of its ills and evils. Reminiscent of the popular festive tale A Christmas Carol, in 2006, over 150 years after Charles Dickens wrote the story reflecting the callousness of a society divided by class, we still find that ordinary working peoples everyday lives are subject to the whims of a minority of parasitic individuals. This has found expression most recently in the Farepak fiasco.