After 7 months,
the occupation of the Hetherington Research Club at Glasgow University,
better known as the Free Hetherington, has come to a close. With
universities across Britain on the verge of a new term, two student
activists from Glasgow look at the history of the occupation and the
anti-cuts movement at Glasgow this year, and the lessons that the
student movement can take from it.
In 1931, Labour right-wingers joined with the Tories to form a National Government. This act had but one purpose: to carry through ruthless cuts to save the profits of capitalism. Rob Sewell looks back at the great betrayal.
While I was in Venezuela a number of comrades asked me about some
manifesto against “Chavez’s attacks on trade union rights” and also
about the controversy over a letter Noam Chomsky had signed which the
bourgeois media had used in their campaign in defence of “human rights”
in Venezuela.
Socialist Appeal recently met up with Claire Locke, president of
London Met SU, to discuss the cuts taking place at London Metropolitan
University and the fightback against them Claire described
how the Tories are conducting a class war at the University. They are
cutting humanities, arts and student support at the same time as
strengthening the business ties of the university.
TUESDAY: Twenty four
hours ago, the streets of Tripoli were full of the sounds of rejoicing.
Now they are filled with the sounds of gunfire. The real battle for
Tripoli has commenced.
The Tories are on the rampage. Their response to the worst riots in
living memory is more state repression. The blame for the riots,
according to David Cameron, lies with the “criminal disease” sweeping
our neighbourhoods.Cameron also attacked the “moral collapse,” the breakdown of “family
values,” poor standards in schools, and a welfare system that rewards
the idle.The Tories’ answer, as always, is tougher rules on benefits claims, the
introduction of National Service, more discipline in schools, ending the
human rights culture, and the introduction of “family tests.”
In the Horn of Africa, a famine is raging that has claimed the lives of
tens of thousands of people. For the first time in 30 years, the UN has
officially declared a famine. The drought in East Africa has resulted in
a food crisis across Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya that has affected over
12 million people; hundreds of thousands of refugees from Somalia have
fled to neighbouring Kenya and Ethiopia, where unsanitary and crowded
conditions await, leading to thousands more deaths. But this seems to go
almost unreported in the media, which is dominated by stories of
rioting, phone hacking and the economic crisis.
The end came suddenly and without warning. In the moment of truth the Gaddafi regime fell like a house of cards.
Last
night the streets of Tripoli were filled with wild rejoicing as rebel
forces occupied Green Square in Tripoli. Libyan rebels waved opposition
flags and fired shots into the air in jubilation after reaching the
central square of the capital in the early hours of Monday. Until now
the vast square was reserved for carefully orchestrated rallies praising
Moammar Gaddafi. Now it erupted in celebration after rebel troops
pushed into the centre of the Libyan capital.
“When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions!” Shakespeare: Hamlet Act IV.
Each week the financial crisis seems to be moving from one country to another without a pause. No country can feel safe. This is the grim reality for world capitalism today. Political editor, Rob Sewell, looks at the reasons for this ongoing crisis and explains why capitalism cannot find a way out.
One recent evening, whilst fumbling through a collection of
documentaries by acclaimed journalist and film maker John Pilger, I came
across ‘Heroes’. This short film, produced in 1981, shone a spotlight
on the treatment of Vietnam veterans in the aftermath of the conflict by
an administration that had sent them to war.
As Britain prepares for the possibility of new outbreaks of rioting this
weekend, the courts have been hard at work dispensing bosses’ justice
to those unfortunates picked up by the police in the wake of the
disturbances over the last few days.
As expected the state is warming to the task of cracking down hard, as they like to put it, on looters/rioters past, present and future. Cameron and May have been strutting around talking tough about what they are going to do.