Postal workers are to take industrial action this month over
a bitter row over pay and conditions. Walk-outs will take place on 5/6 October
and 8/9 October followed by a rolling programme of strikes until the dispute is
resolved.
On the 18 and 19 September comrades from the Socialist Appeal attended
the Oxford Brookes University freshers fair, with the aim of attracting
people to the ideas of socialism.
Speculation has reached fever pitch in the press over whether or not
Brown will call a snap General Election after only three months as
prime minister. With the Tories languishing in the polls, one giving
Labour an eleven percentage lead, and the government surviving the
different crises of foot and mouth, floods and the run on Northern
Rock, the young Turks of New Labour’s front bench are keen to launch an
election. However there is little enthusiasm amongst traditional Labour supporters and there are dangers of an economic crisis.
With total student debts in the U.K reaching a staggering
£18 billion, the threat to our education by privatisation has never been greater. The result has been that the responsibility for higher
education has been handed down, like a cursed heirloom, from government to
university, to family, the buck finally stopping at the student. This means
that students going to university today will pay three times as much as they
would have done a decade ago.
We republish this article from Socialist Appeal April 1995 on proportionality as part of the ongoing discussion in the labour movement about reserve places as a means of overcoming discrimination. Since its original publication it has become more evident that proportionality and reserved seats have been used to undermine democracy in the trade union movement, while not resolving the issues of discrimination.
A critical
comment by Moroccan Marxists on the line of thought developed in the article,
The
victory of Hamas in Gaza and the questions facing Israeli and Palestinian
workers by Yehuda Stern in Jerusalem, that we
published on Wednesday, 11 July 2007. It is the opinion of the Editorial Board
that the Moroccan Marxists are absolutely correct in their criticisms.
The bourgeois economists are incapable of understanding
crises, which are an inescapable result of capitalism. They look for subjective
factors such as "confidence", even "human nature". In reality what we are
witnessing are the real workings of the capitalist system in a period of
decline.
More
people have been killed in Myanmar (Burma) as the military try and hold back
the wave of protest. But pressure is building up on the regime. Whether it will
clamp down firmly or move in the direction of negotiations depends on the power
of the movement in the coming days.
The way
the computer industry functions today is a perfect illustration of all the
faults and massive inefficiencies of capitalism, where the primary goal is not
serving the interests of society. Developing, improving and distributing
software takes place only where big profits can be made. This stands in sharp
contrast to free software, where human knowledge and the produce of human
labour is used to the advantage all of society.
The recent chaos on world stock markets is a
manifestation of the general turbulence that is the most prominent feature of
the present epoch. The crisis that affected the Northern Rock bank in Britain
is but an indication of dramatic
events that are being prepared globally.
New Labour’s record on housing policy is a
disgrace. Reports say
we face a ‘housing time bomb’. There
are 1.6 million on council house waiting lists. Their numbers are
growing by 7.6% a year. Repossessions were up by 65% last year to
17,000 losing their homes, and official homelessness went up by 14.4%
between 2000 and 2005. Last year we built less houses than any year since the
1920s. And because so few new homes are being built, prices go up so as
to be completely unaffordable for the poorer in our society.