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Socialist Resistance
SR35 - May 2006
Finish off flagging Blair Election shows anger over New Labour’s NHS crisis, incompetence, sleaze and war
Editorial
Respect’s showing in the local election results was indeed impressive. Given a rotten first past the post electoral system, to get sixteen councillors elected is something to celebrate.
Respect
LIAM MAC UAID looks at Respect’s performance in the local elections.
Respect
So near, yet so far! That was the reaction to Respect candidate Mukhtar Master coming within seven votes of a sensational victory in Preston’s Town Centre ward.
Respect
In Haringey Respect stood two candidates in each of two Tottenham wards; West Green and St Anne’s. There was a vigorous campaign with each ward being canvassed at least once, and three leaflets and a postcard delivered to each household.
Respect
After an extremely hard fought and well organised campaign Respect’s Jerry Hicks came second in the only seat we contested in Bristol – Lockleaze ward in the north of the city.
Respect
The front page the Birmingham Evening Mail featured a large picture of a smiling Salma Yaqoob after her landslide win in Sparkbrook, as well as a headline that the city was BNP-free (after a flawed count in one area).
Respect
New Labour’s strategists in Tower Hamlets will be worried by the election of twelve Respect councillors. The Respect group is the official opposition to Labour’s twenty-six members, seven Tories and six Liberal Democrats.
Election analysis
It was Labour’s worst local government vote on record. 26 per cent support on a 36 per cent poll meant less than one in ten electors could be bothered to back them. PIERS MOSTYN considers these and other implications of the 2006 election results.
NHS crisis
Wheels fall off NHS privatisation machine
After months of hesitation, there are signs that health unions facing wholesale job losses, service cuts and galloping privatisation in the NHS are beginning to move towards the necessary fightback.
NHS crisis
There are problems inside the NHS too, as policies begin to unravel, past failures hit the headlines, and a disgruntled former top manager has become the first to speak out on the regime within the Department of Health.
Palestinian Diary
Tony Richardson of the Oxford-Ramallah Friendship Association went back to Palestine in April to see the effects of the EU-US squeeze on the Hamas government. Here is his report.
Middle East
Given the continued anti-Saddam rhetoric from US and British leaders it is easy to see the current threats against Iran as a new departure. Yet, in many ways, it was the war against Iraq that obscured a central aspect of US policy since 1979 – hostility to the Iranian revolution. Geoff Ryan reports.
Latin America
Kathalina Barroso will be sending regular reports to Socialist Resistance from Venezuela. Liam Mac Uaid interviewed her in Caracas.
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