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The following statement has just been released by John McDonnell
concerning his campaign to be on the ballot paper for Labour leader.
Nominations close at lunchtime today with the party NEC meeting this
afternoon. We will comment further on this once the situation becomes
clearer later today.
Last Saturday an excellent meeting of the Northern LRC was held in
Gateshead with John McDonnell, fighting to be on the ballot for the new
leader of the Labour Party, and Paul Holmes, candidate for GS of
Unison, amongst those in attendance. We reproduce here a report on the
meeting by Veronica Killen from the LRC
Those of us watching the political developments in the wake of the
election have seen a kaleidoscope of people passing by – Brown,
Cameron, Clegg and all their understrappers have all been very busy.
They all have one thing in common. They are interested in politics. But
at this crucial time their attention has been concentrated on an
unusual figure – the Queen. She’s unusual because she’s not interested
in politics at all. Her favourite paper is the ‘Racing Post’ and her
major interest is in horse racing
On Tuesday and Wednesday, June 1 and
2, most workers returned to work at the Honda plant in Foshan, China,
after strike action which had started on May 17. As www.marxist.com reported
earlier, the workers were fighting for substantial wage increases.
In
1987, Margaret Thatcher, the Conservative Prime Minister, declared in an
interview that, “there is no such thing as society.” It is therefore fairly ironic that 13 years later,
David Cameron, the new Conservative Prime Minister, has announced his plans to
create a ‘Big Society’ in Britain. Throughout the general election coverage,
Cameron had avoided mentioning any specifics on what was meant by his vision of
a Big Society, but now Cameron and his new best friend Nick Clegg, have
outlined what is in store for the country.
Tony Woodley, joint general secretary of UNITE,
in a speech at the union’s conference in Manchester, declared his
determination
to “take the party back” for working people. This is a positive step but
it
needs to be made concrete.
Britain is heading for a showdown. The British establishment is taking
stock of the situation. They are fully aware of the social crisis that
is unfolding. The illusions of class harmony have evaporated. They
consider that it is time that the working class learned its lesson that
capitalism cannot afford any reforms. Counter-reforms are on the order
of the day. The workers are therefore being sent to the school of the
coalition government whose programme is “red in tooth and claw”
austerity.
It cannot be denied that the historic global crisis of
capitalism has not, in Britain and America, led to an immediate corresponding
rise in class struggle (unlike say in Greece). Does this rule out the class struggle in the long term?
No. But in order to understand why it has been delayed, it is necessary for
socialists to concretely analyse all the conditions of the class.
Last Saturday’s HOV conference, held in London, was a great event. Here are some photo’s by HOV’s resident snapper, Will.
At this year’s Trades Council conference, the West Mids delegate was
asked to do the traditional vote of thanks speech – so he decided to
tell the delegates a little fairy story. Here it is. Please note that
any connextion between this and the current UK situation is purely
intentional!
When watching
Comic Relief or any other sort of international aid fundraiser, viewers
are
often startled with images of starving children, and an attempt is made
to
portray the African continent as a complete humanitarian disaster,
composed of
destitute countries that are plagued by famine, drought, disease,
corruption,
and civil war. Whilst it is true that natural disasters and adverse
conditions have
hindered the development of many African countries, these media sources
do not
attempt to address why the continent is prone to civil war and
corruption and
no effort is made to explain the root cause of the problem: imperialism.(Photo: Paul Shaffner)
It’s been close to a month since the Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig
exploded and sank into the Gulf of Mexico, just 45 miles south of the
already beleaguered gulf coasts of Louisiana and Mississippi. The
ensuing oil spill may well surpass that which followed the wreck of the
Exxon Valdez, which poured over 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska’s
Prince William Sound in the spring of 1989.