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Ford: Global Company, Global Struggle

The big
corporations in North America, Western Europe and Japan are moving more
of their factories abroad in search of lower wages. But in the process
they are tying the interests of the international working class closer together. In North America Ford workers prepare to weather a new round
of closures and layoffs, while their bosses have unveiled
plans for new plants in China, a country with the world’s fastest
growing car market along with rock-bottom wages. Meanwhile, Russian
Ford workers have won an important victory not only against the company
but against the new, repressive Russian Labor Code.

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Support Iran’s jailed and tortured students!

The
Iranian regime has raised the level of repression against many sections
of society, especially against students. To show solidarity with the imprisoned students a
number of Iranian opposition groups are organising pickets outside the
Iranian regime’s diplomatic missions on Saturday 16 February 2008.

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The construction industry in Britain: 1.2 million unorganised workers

The construction industry consists of roughly 1.2 million workers at
present, a massive boost for the capitalists and the UK economy. Just
think how much can be made once all the new office blocks and
‘affordable’ housing, and not forgetting the Olympic Games, are built.
Any chance of the workers who build these new structures getting a
slice of the cake? You are more likely to be sacked or even killed on a
building site in Britain today.

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Kenya: the barbaric consequences of capitalism

Until recently
Kenya
was held up as a glowing example of the success of the free market
economy. It was supposed to be a shining example of democracy, a
beacon of hope for what Europeans used to call "the dark continent."
Now all these dreams lay in ashes. In recent weeks Kenya has been
torn asunder by a wave of ethnic and tribal violence that has claimed
nearly a
thousand lives.

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China: Migrants, workers and unions in year of the Rat

The largest human migration
in the world gets under way every Chinese
New Year, as China’s 120
million strong army of migrant workers make
their annual trip home. This
year heavy snows led to railways and
roads being overburdened and
transport bottlenecks wreaked sudden
nationwide chaos.

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In like Flint….

Caroline Flint, the new
Housing Minister has proposed that new tenants on council estates will have to
sign up to "actively seek work" as a condition of their tenancy. So now it’s a
case of "no dog, no cat, no loud music, keep the place spick and span and you
must get a job". There is something
disturbingly familiar about this rubbish: it’s like the old Victorian notion of the deserving and
undeserving poor.

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Military elite reject democratic proposals

Former military heads of
the British army have attacked proposals for Parliament to have to
approve any declaration of war made by the British state. The ruling class is
eager to keep a direct grip on its bodies of armed men; the police and the military,
the chief instruments of class suppression. These are vital to the ruling
class’ ability to keep control of society, and sections of the boureoisie are
reluctant to relinquish them even to their own organs of so-called democratic rule.

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Who Owns the Wealth and How they Spend It

In 2006 a report from the UN showed
that the world’s richest two percent of adults owned more than half the
global wealth, while half the world’s population own only one percent.
Inequality has been increasing, particularly over the last decade, with
the rich getting richer, the mega rich getting richer quicker than the
rich, and the poor getting even poorer, with the number of people
living on less than $2 a day increasing.

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Child Poverty in Britain

Since 1979 UK child
poverty has doubled. In 2006, 3.8 million children were living in poverty in
homes on less than 60% of average income. Although this is a fall of about
600,000 since 1998, this still leaves 500,000 children above the Government’s
own target. This is not the whole picture either – poverty in the whole
population is increasing.

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Mightier than the sword

If there was one man who embodied the spirit of revolutionary democracy,
it was Tom Paine. He inspired the American Revolution of 1776, took part
in the French Revolution of 1789 and, while abroad in France, was tried
in Britain for seditious libel for writing his book ‘The Rights of Man’

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The Pentrich Uprising, 1817

Pentrich in Derbyshire is a quiet place these days. But in 1817 it was the centre of a plot to
overthrow the Government of the day. Britain had been at war with Revolutionary and Napoleonic
France almost continuously until 1815. When war ended, the
economy slumped. It was the poor who had borne the brunt
of the fighting. Now they were required to bear the economic and
social fallout from the subsequent peace.

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