News and analysis

As socialists we absolutely support the movement of the workers of the Prisme Packaging Plant in fighting for their right to work and pay.

Maureen a worker of the factory for 13 years spoke of the optimistic
mood amongst the workers in the factory “We have decided to continue
our fight to put this company to shame. We have to fight for our
rights. The support we have had has been tremendous, totally amazing."
This shows only in a small part the growing radicalisation of the
working class of not only Scotland but also of the United Kingdom as a
whole.

Following on from the Hooper Report, the
government is proposing to part-privatise Royal Mail, the letter delivery arm
of the Post Office. There’s no silly nonsense about putting the arrangement out
to tender so we the taxpayers get the best deal either. They’ve already lined
up TNT to take 30% of Royal Mail. The announcement has roused fury among
millions of people – trade unionists and just ordinary people who use Royal
Mail, which is pretty well everyone. Why mess about with something that works
well? We have the cheapest postal service in Western Europe. We are the only
country in the European Union that still has a Saturday delivery.

As the
capitalist crisis deepens, more and more workers are coming under attack.
Vodafone has just announced huge lay-offs. There are plans to axe 1,000 jobs on
the railways. The sacking of 850 agency workers at the Cowley car plant in
Oxford is the latest in a string of redundancies. They received no redundancy
pay, no holiday pay and no sickness pay. All they were offered was their P45s
and a week’s wages. Wage freezes have also become common in the last period. Short-time
working has spread with Toyota closing its factory for four weeks.

High-ranking British police officers
have expressed concern that the country may be facing an outburst of street
protests. Superintendent David Hartshorn, head of the Metropolitan police’s
public order branch, and one of the highest ranking police officers in the
country, in an interview with The Guardian newspaper, spoke of the
possibility of riots like those that rocked the country in the 1980s, erupting
later this year as people who lose their jobs, homes or savings become
"footsoldiers" in a wave of violent mass protests.

The State Pension was
established 100 years ago on 1^st January 1909. This followed a ten
year campaign by social reformers and the Trade Union Movement.Pensions should be a right for those who have worked all
their lives. Instead the government is looking to whittle away the fragile
gains of a century of struggle.

The welfare ‘reform’ measures currently wending their way through Parliament are so right wing you might have thought they were drafted by the Tories. Funny you should mention it…David Freud, who drafted the White Paper on which the bill is based, has just defected to the Conservatives. This shows two things:

He’s a rat leaving what he sees as a sinking ship

New Labour sucking up to the Tories with anti-working class policies just paves the way for the real thing to take over and put the boot in further.