The New Labour government is on the rocks. The wreckage of
Blairism, under the leadership of Gordon Brown, was dealt a further crushing
blow at the Crewe and Nantwich by-election. A 7,000 Labour majority was turned
into a 7,000 Tory majority in a swing of 17.6%. It was the Tories’ first
by-election gain in 30 years.
The Crewe by-election, with an 18% swing to the Tories,
confirms that they are on target for a landslide win in the next general
election. Railway workers and other working class people who have voted Labour
for generations have finally had enough. The betrayals and disappointments of
New Labour have caused these electors to break the habit of a lifetime. Make no
mistake about it. Mass working class abstentions have done for Brown and his
witless crew.
There is no such thing as a natural disaster. That may come as a surprise to those of you who were wibble-wobbled out of bed over much of the south of England at the end of February by the UK’s largest ever earthquake, which went over 6 on the Richter scale in some areas.
Thousands joined the Unison rally on April 24 outside Birmingham town
hall as the fight against Birmingham City Council’s attempts to impose
Single Status (which means big wage cuts for thousands of workers)
continues.
On the 14th of March, at a quarter to three in the afternoon, the greatest living thinker ceased to think. He had been left alone for scarcely two minutes, and when we came back we found him in his armchair, peacefully gone to sleep — but for ever.
As ‘Socialist Appeal’ goes to press, members of PCS, which represents
over 300,000 workers in the civil service and associated bodies, are
awaiting the full details of the agreement reached between the civil
service unions and the government via the Cabinet Office. There will be a significant number of PCS members out with the NUT on
24 April, but a national strike would have massively strengthened
teachers, civil servants and others in the public sector in our fight
to secure a fair pay settlement. Militancy pays and this the only way
we can break the 2 % pay cap.
Stock markets around the world have been rallying. They are up 15% since they hit a low for the
year in mid-March and they are now hardly down in value since credit crunch
began last August. Investor optimism is
rising that the great global credit crunch is nearly over. Now
that the financial sector is in trouble, the weakness of capitalism in its
downphase of profitability is being exposed. It is paving the way for a serious worldwide economic recession, despite
the current optimism of the stock markets.
Friday 16 May saw two unconnected judgements that
have put a spoke in the wheel of the UNISON bureaucracy’s witch hunt against
prominent lefts in the union. As we have explained before, the
UNISON leadership have a responsibility to stand up for the members - not
to waste their time policing the membership and attacking some of the best fighters
that the union has in its ranks. The members deserve better than that. We need
a fighting democratic union.
Gordon Brown was delivered a rap on the knuckles by the House of Commons transport committee. As Chancellor he insisted the contract to upgrade London Underground be awarded to private consortium Metronet. Predictably, Metronet went belly up last year amid much scandal leaving us with a £2bn bill. The committee denounced Brown’s “spectacular failure, ” for which of course us taxpayers will be picking up the bill. Committee chair, old-style right winger Gwyneth Dunwoody, commented on the debacle, “Any reasonable person, looking at the current situation, would find scant evidence to sustain a dogma that the private sector will always […]
This is the first of two articles looking at the decline in the quality
of life for working people in Britain today. This first article focuses
on the workplace, where there has been relative decline in wages and
deterioration in the conditions of employment. The second part looks at
the attack on the ‘social wage’. This consists of the services and
facilities we access such as health care, education, public transport
and local services – all of which contribute towards the quality of
life for working people in modern society. They form the provision in
society of things working people, unlike the rich, could not afford to
buy individually but provided on behalf of people by the State.
Together the two elements – direct wages and the social wage – provide
our quality of life, but both are now under attack, creating an
impoverished life in Britain for working people.
In August 1968 Ted Grant drew a balance sheet
of the revolutionary crisis ignited in France with the May events. In this
important article he carefully analysed the main problems facing the
revolution, exposing the treacherous policies of the Stalinist CP leaders, who
gave De Gaulle the possibility to recover from his earlier paralysis, and the
sectarian mistakes of the leaders of the "revolutionary left".
Following a massive earthquake measuring
7.9 of the Richter scale, a collective shock and grief has gripped China. The
epicentre of the quake was Wenchuan County in the Ngawa
Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture; the majority of people here are ethnic
Tibetans. A new mood of mutual solidarity has been born throughout the
nation, strengthened by the fact that the quake was felt as far away as
Beijing. Present figures are; over 20,000 dead, 25,000 buried under rubble,
14,000 missing, and 64,000 injured. The death toll looks set to rise to over
50,000.