Editorial

New Labour has won its ‘historic’ third term. A victory, however, which came at a heavy price. Its majority slashed by 100 seats - from 160 to 66 - it received the smallest share of the vote, for a governing party, since WW 2 – just 36%. Blair himself was damaged beyond repair in the process.

 

The G8 coming to Scotland has put a big responsibility on the SSP. As the only anti-capitalist party in the Scottish Parliament there is an onus on us to challenge the G8. But it is also an opportunity to try to engage with people across Scotland about the politics of globalisation and to mobilise people onto the streets to actively challenge Bush, Blair & Co.

 

The crisis in the provision of pensions both public and private has been developing for some time. Whilst the remit of the Turner Commission of 2002, was to look at private pension policy inevitably the provision of pensions for public sector workers has come under close scrutiny.

 

The last issue of Socialist Outlook went to press just before the Iraqi elections on January 30. Here Dave Packer looks at some recent developments.

 

G8: Africa and Climate Change

In the happy lands where live the ideologists of global free trade, there are no wars, only people peaceably trading. States are hardly visible either: they just protect property and enforce contracts. What an irony then that the most enthusiastic free marketeers are also the most warlike. The hidden hand of the market requires the (not so well) hidden fist.

 

G8: Africa and Climate Change

The G8 and Africa

Jane Kelly looks at the realities of life in African nations saddled with debt.

 

G8: Africa and Climate Change

New president of the World Bank - What will change?

Eric Toussaint, President of CADTM (Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt) looks beyond the question of who presides over the World Bank, and asks what is the role of the World Bank?

 

G8: Africa and Climate Change

At the forthcoming G8 Summit meeting in Scotland, world leaders and businessmen will focus on the three interrelated issues of war, poverty and climate change. But these problems cannot be solved by such people, since it is they and their economic and political systems, which have caused the crisis in the first place. Here Sheila Malone argues that only public ownership and democratic planning have a chance of finding solutions to the current crisis of climate change.

 

G8: Africa and Climate Change

A solution to global warming?

Despite the promise to make 2005 the year that politicians would face up to the challenges of climate change, the topic remains a low priority in the election campaign. But after the election, Alice Cutler argues, Blair has plans for a return to ‘clean’ nuclear power.

 

G8: Africa and Climate Change

Britain’s Department for International Development and the Oil Industry

Pumping Poverty, a new report published by Platform Research Ltd, Friends of the Earth (England, Wales and Northern Ireland), and Plan B, investigates the role of British overseas development aid in facilitating oil development. The report argues that far from helping the world’s poorest people, such aid often serves its wealthiest corporations leaving the poor worse off than before and aggravating global climate change.

 

World Politics

Gilbert Achcar’s recent writings on Iraq and his debate with Alex Callinicos on the Iraqi elections were widely circulated in the British left and internationally. He was interviewed for Socialist Outlook on 24 April by Alex Cowper.

 

World Politics

The political struggle unfolding in Venezuela has become the most important reference point in today’s world for both the left and the global justice movement. Here Stuart Piper explores some of the contradictions facing Chavez.

 

World Politics

Last years Boxing Day tsunami took nearly forty thousand lives in Sri Lanka. Here Yamuna Bandara shows how, as soon as the waters receded, the president gave a clear signal to the country that what the waves could not take would be taken by sheer state force.

 

Review

Exhibition at the Royal Academy, January to April

I am glad I had the opportunity to see Turks: A Journey of a Thousand Years, 600-1600, although my feelings about many aspects of the exhibition remain mixed.

 

Review

Africa Remix: contemporary art of a continent Exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, London, February to April

From the late eighties to recent years, the Western world has made various attempts to define and display the ambiguous cultural phenomenon known as ‘contemporary African art’. The first of these attempts dates back to 1989, at the Pompidou Centre, Paris, with the exhibition agiciens de la Terre– whose curator Jean-Hubert Martin was part of the curatorial team for this exhibition.

 

Letters

One year after the vote of a law banning young muslims from wearing their headscarf in schools, it appears that the law has encouraged a much wider expression of islamophobia. There have been a number of violent attacks against mosques.