Tag: Socialist Appeal (UK)

Ireland’s public sector strike day: Crocodile tears won’t stem the tide

Original article, by Séamus Loughlin, via Socialist Appeal (UK):

Ireland: Well over 250,000 Irish workers in the public sector were on strike on the 24th of this month. There would have been many more, but the unions guaranteed emergency cover including flood relief in the west, the midlands and the Shannon area and in Cork City. It’s a feature of every major strike, not just here, but throughout the world, that the well fed representatives of the bourgeois and particularly the mean spirited and greedy petty bourgeois attempt to criticise and attack the worker’s movement. These fine gentlemen and ladies are always the first to reach for the box of tissues as they weep crocodile tears about the poor and the vulnerable who they claim (wringing their hands in woe) are being let down by the strikers. The fact that the government have been slashing and burning public services for the last year and attacking the vulnerable seems conveniently to have been forgotten.

Honduras: the farcical agreement is exposed – boycott the elections!

Original article, by Jorge Martin, via Socialist Appeal (UK):

As we explained in a previous article , the Tegucigalpa/San José Accord signed on October 30 by representatives of the legitimate president of Honduras, Mel Zelaya, and those of the coup regime of Micheletti, was in reality a farce.

Total Victory At Lindsey

Original article, by Steve Kelly,UNITE London Construction Branch member, via Socialist Appeal (UK):

On Monday 29th June the workers at Lindsey agreed to return to work with heads held high.It was a magnificent result and all those involved deserve a great round of applause. The dispute began when 51 scaffolders were sacked at Lindsey and refused employment with another contractor on the site. They were regarded as troublemakers by management.The rest of the workers immediately downed tools in support of them.

A Lesson from Labour? Perhaps.

Original article, titled Statement:”A long time in politics” – Labour after the elections, via Socialist Appeal (UK):

“A week is a long time in politics.” Harold Wilson

The European election results were published last Monday, following on from the local election results of a few days earlier. They showed Labour behind not just the Tories, but even behind UKIP, a lunatic fringe party, on just 15% of the vote. For the first time since 1918, Labour had been beaten by the Tories in Wales. Labour was smashed in its other heartlands, where working class voters just sat at home in disgust, and was completely marginalised elsewhere in the country. Labour came 5th in the South East with just 8.2% of the vote. In Cornwall they came 6th behind the Cornish Nationalist Party, whom presumably even the local folk see as a lost cause.

Gutter press campaign aims to distort union demands

Original article, By Rob Sewell (vice-chair, London Central, National Union of Journalists), via Socialist Appeal (UK):

The present struggle of construction workers in defence of their national agreement on terms and conditions has been deliberately distorted by the British media and press. One not unexpected aspect of the recent wave of wildcat strikes in the construction industry has been the way that the media has reported them.

Lenin’s Last Struggle

Original article, by Alan Woods, via Socialist Appeal (UK):

The year 2009 marks the 85th anniversary of the death of the man who, together with Leon Trotsky, made a decisive contribution to the cause of socialism and the working class in this century, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. To mark the occasion, we are republishing this article which was originally written to commemorate the Lenin centenary in 1970.

Banks in meltdown. Take them over.

Original article, by Mick Brooks, via Socialist Appeal (UK):

Stock exchanges in Britain and the USA have been on the slide over the past few days. The reason is not hard to seek. The FTSE has been spooked by bank shares collapsing. Barclays, for instance, saw 25% of its share price shaved off in one hour last Friday (16.01.09). This was the day after the bank announced 2,100 job losses.

The spectre is back

Original article, an editorial, via Socialist Appeal (UK):

In 1848 The Communist Manifesto opened with the line, “A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of communism. ” The spectre of Marx haunts world capitalism still.

Unskilled workers and the unemployed: organise, or die on your feet slowly

Original article, by Hamish McLaren, via Socialist Appeal (UK):

2008 makes for a sad story, and in 2009, the working class will begin really paying for it. Some of the worst to be affected will be young unskilled workers; cleaners, shop-workers and caterers, like myself. Minimum wage workers at the best of times, we have, during the period of boom (which apparently was the last 10 years, although no one told us) eked out an existence, hovering from one place to the next for as long as moral holds out. Most I have worked with were young, often migrants, demoralised but unorganised and so usually without contracts of employment and subject to very poor working conditions.

Audio File: US elections – Obama for change?

Original article, by Mick Brooks, via Socialist Appeal (UK):

The U.S. has elected a new president, Barack Hussein Obama. Along with the dramatic turn in the economic situation, this marks a definite turning point in the history of the country and of the world. Big illusions have been created that Obama will provide “change”. What American workers have voted for is an end to policies that benefit the rich – but does Obama represent real change?

Jeremy Dear speaks at LRC Conference

Original article, a speech by Jeremy Dear given at the Annual Conference of the Labour Representation Committee (the organising hub of the left wing within the Labour Party and among trade union activists), via Socialist Appeal (UK):

As an aside, you may be asking why we should be interested in what Jeremy Dear is giving a speech on? The answer, to me, is simple: Labour has been hijacked by the neoliberal militarists just the same as the Democrats have been. While the crisis in Britain may not be 100% the same as here in the US, it is part and parcel of the collapse of international capitalism. Our workers face the same problems as theirs. It is within this framework that I think Dear’s speech is worth a read:

The Financial Crisis Explained in One Interview!

Originally posted via Socialist Appeal (UK):

Still flummoxed by the financial crisis? In this classic comedy sketch, John Fortune and John Bird explain why we are in such a mess.

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