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At Lloyds TSB, Daniels’ strategy is to pay back the
government preference shares that are currently propping up the business in a
year or so. Then they can really party! Shareholder dividends, swollen bonuses,
and vast salaries will be dished out while the banks ruthlessly cut back loans
and repossess homes in honour of the new age of austerity.
On Saturday 8th November, in celebration of the
91st anniversary of the Russian Revolution, students of ULU’s Marxist Society
organised a Lenin tour of London. The tour, led by Rob Sewell, provided a
unique insight into some of the places both Lenin and his life long partner and
comrade Nadezhda Krupskaya lived
and where they worked to build the Russian Marxist movement, destined to lead
the Russian working class and peasantry to victory in 1917.
As water approaches boiling point more and more atoms fly off the surface. The same process can be observed in society. A revolution is where the majority actively enters the stage of history and challenges for political power. But long before society undergoes a revolutionary transformation advanced layers of the working class, and in particular young people, ‘fly off the surface’ and begin to draw revolutionary conclusions for themselves.
Come and hear Jesus Pino from the
Revolutionary Front of Steel Workers (SIDOR). He is speaking at the Hands Off
Venezuela National Conference in London
in less than two week’s time. He will speak about the struggle to nationalise
the steel industry and the fight for workers’ control in Venezuela. The
nationalisation of SIDOR earlier this year was a direct outcome of a militant
struggle by the steel workers themselves. This shows the direction that the
Venezuelan Revolution is taking and highlights the need to complete the tasks
of expropriating the Oligarchy.
Five
years into the occupation of Iraq
and seven years after the war in Afghanistan started the Americans
and their allies are bogged down in an unwinnable situation. Even if they
withdraw from Iraq
in the medium term future, the political and social repercussions of the war
will go on for decades. The attempt to carve out a new sphere of influence in
the Middle East, and thus guarantee oil
supplies has proven to be a lot more difficult than the American Imperialists
imagined, and serves to demonstrate the limits to the power that they can
wield. The New World Order has become disorder and the economic and financial
crisis in America
brilliantly confirms Trotsky’s analysis when he explained that the cost of the
growth of American Imperialism was to accumulate “dynamite in its foundations”.
The situation of financial crisis, coupled
with a hugely unpopular Westminster government that has found itself entirely
incapable of coming up with any solutions
beyond throwing more and more of our money at the banks, would seem a
perfect opportunity for the SNP to make their mark and assert the need for an
independent Scotland. With unemployment poised to reach two million and share
prices continuing to fall at the SNP conference, Alex Salmond has been reduced
to calling for the return of ‘Scotland’s money’ and blaming the collapse of
Scottish banks on the Union. Supposedly independence will save us from such
catastrophes in the future.
After a long drawn out process the Scottish
Government has controversially granted infamous American tycoon turned
television celebrity Donald Trump permission to build a luxury golf resort in
rural Aberdeenshire. It will feature two golf courses and hundreds of private
homes and is set to be the most expensive golf resort in the world. The plans
have faced widespread opposition and the means used to finally secure their
approval has only exposed the reality of our allegedly democratic system and
the slavish attitude of the SNP government towards big business.
The case of Binyam Mohamed is a national disgrace. Binyam
faces trial before the Military Commissions at Guantamo, which all fair-minded
people regard as kangaroo courts. The US administration is desperately trying
to wangle a few convictions in order to justify keeping suspects locked up for
years and torturing them at Guantamo Bay. Binyam faces the death penalty, but
his defence has a problem. They cannot procure the evidence that could save
him. The US government refuses to release the documents.
The U.S. has elected a new president,
Barack Hussein Obama. Along with the dramatic turn in the economic situation,
this marks a definite turning point in the history of the country and of the
world. Big illusions have been created that Obama will provide “change”. What
American workers have voted for is an end to policies that benefit the rich,
but Obama does not represent real change. In the coming years workers will
learn from real life experience that what is required is a genuine voice of the
US working class, and that can only be a mass party of labor.
US Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich described the
$700bn bail-out of the US banks by the Bush administration as: “The largest
single act of class warfare in the modern history of this country” In Britain £50bn is being doled out in a similar scheme.
That’s approximately £833 for every man, woman and child in the country, or
£1,500 for every taxpayer. If someone was to help themselves to £1,500 of your
money and spend it wouldn’t you at least want to know how and why? Yet the
language saturating the media is full of panic and obfuscation.
6,000 London bus workers from 3 different companies have been taking
co-ordinated strike action in pursuit of a basic wage of £30,000. Since
privatisation, drivers from different companies have different wages
and conditions. The companies argue that they need to be competitive,
i.e. offer lower wages than competitors to get work. There is no
justification for bus drivers being on different rates of pay if they
do the same job. This strike has been building up for years and is long
overdue.
Elections can reveal a lot about a country, and the fast-approaching
U.S. presidential election is proving to be no exception. Above all,
the current election shows just how much working Americans need their
own political representation. This fact is expressed and cynically
taken advantage of by Barack Obama’s campaign slogan: “Change We Can
Believe In.” Even the “old guard” represented by John McCain has had to
raise the idea of change in his campaign rhetoric.