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When the Irish Catholic priest Fr. Hugh O’Donnell decided it was time to
build a Catholic church in Belfast he had a problem: it costs a lot of
money to build a church. The Catholic population of Belfast was too
small and too poor to provide enough money, so if he had to rely on the
Catholics alone it would take forever. He had to seek help elsewhere. So
he asked the Protestants of Belfast to help him out. As you do.
In what could turn out to be a significant turn of events,
Unite general secretary Len McCluskey fired an angry broadside last week at
Labour leader Ed Miliband, taking issue with Miliband’s recent support for a
public-sector pay-freeze. After twenty years of uncritical support by
trade-union leaders for the right-wing Labour leadership, such a missive is
certainly welcome. It has also helped reopen the debate about the relationship
between the Labour Party and the trade unions.
The following is a motion written and
proposed by Adam Booth, Labour Party member and secretary of the
Cambridge Marxist Discussion Group. The resolution was written in
response to comments made recently by Ed Miliband and Ed Balls, the
leader of the Labour Party and Shadow Chancellor respectively, who have
outlined that the Labour Party cannot promise to reverse any of the
Coalition’s cuts if Labour is elected in the next election.
The recent remark by Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, that the Labour
party should join a Lib-Lab coalition, is another dangerous attempt to
push the party to the right
The Coalition of millionaires is continuing with its onslaught against
working people. Billions of pounds have been slashed from public
spending, destroying essential services, cutting pay and conditions and
throwing tens of thousands of workers on to the dole.
In response to pressure from the bosses’ press and Blairites, Labour leader, Ed Milliband has come out in favour of the government’s line on cuts and pay. Rob Sewell responds.
“Marx was right!” For Marxists, this is not a particularly profound revelation. We have long known that the German revolutionary’s analysis of capitalism was as fundamentally sound as the capitalist system itself is fundamentally unsound. But let’s face it: for decades, we’ve been in a small minority, fighting against the stream and against the odds. After spending a long time in the “wilderness,” that is beginning to change. The fact that the more serious capitalist economists are forced to admit the correctness of ideas they once ridiculed is an important symptom of a transformation in public consciousness./(Editorial for Socialist Appeal […]
This is an overview of the documentary Inside Job that was recently
shown on the BBC. As one interviewee commented regarding the path
Iceland had taken from 2000 onwards, “Nothing comes without
consequence.”
Ed
Miliband’s leadership of the Labour Party is turning into an elaborate
parody of the emptiness of reformism. With capitalism unable to afford
any reforms, he is like the school pupil who works extremely hard to
avoid working whilst giving the impression of being studious. He is
trying very very hard, tossing and turning, to give the impression that
reformism can work without any actual reforms. Unfortunately for Ed, in
this case the illusion does not work.
The government has been hard at it coming up with new ideas to punish those who are unemployed and on benefit. The latest such idea involves forcing people to work for nothing or starve. This is now being legally challenged as it breaks laws against bonded labour i.e. slavery!
This is the year universities in
England are allowed to charge their UK based students £9000 for studying
for just one year. With most undergraduate courses lasting 3 years this
will mean that students may have to pay £27000 for tuition fees. This
doesn’t include the cost of living away from home. We probably will see a
major increase in students either living from home and going to more
local universities, or people will sadly sacrifice university education
altogether.
When Tony Blair left office (and then parliament itself) he set about
doing what all ex-PMs tend to do – earn a little bit of extra cash.
Well, as it happens in Tony’s case, quite a lot of extra cash.