Palestine

The bloody conflict that has broken out between Hamas and Fatah in Gaza and the West Bank will be music to the ears of the Israelis, the US and the EU.

 

Palestine

The most important fact about the June 10, Washington DC March to End the Israeli Occupation was simply that it took place.

 

Labour leadership transition

The inauguration of Gordon Brown and his new deputy leader at the end of June will close a period of relatively heightened debate and slightly more open-minded analysis of the state of working class politics in Britain.

 

Editorial

“By 2010 we will ensure that all social tenants benefit from a decent, warm home with modern facilities.” That’s what the Labour Party Manifesto said in 2005. So how many council houses do you think were built in 2005? Half a million? One hundred thousand? No. Two hundred and thirty nine! That’s 239 without any missing zeroes or decimal points. To be fair to New Labour that’s a big rise from the 192 council houses built in 2001/2.

 

Labour

The government’s media friends have been talking up the wonderful possibilities offered by Brown’s coronation as Prime Minister. In their fantasies, years of disaffection and disgust at Blair’s championing of bombs and banks can be brushed aside as a fresh breeze sweeps the political horizon.

 

Labour Party

The Labour leadership succession has been the first substantial chance since the early 1990s for Labour Party and trade union members to challenge the party’s trajectory and address the burning issues of the day. It has been largely a wasted opportunity.

 

Debate: After Blair...

The failure of John McDonnell’s Labour Party leadership challenge even to get as far as the ballot paper represents a new low water mark for the power and influence of the Labour Left. But the situation poses challenges also for the building of any new left wing alternative to Blairism, and has highlighted the weaknesses of Respect, as sections of the trade union and Labour left begin to regroup forces without abandoning their conception of “reclaiming Labour”. A recent Socialist Resistance London forum took up this issue, in the form of this debate between Alan Thornett from SR, and Simon Deville, who spoke from Labour Left Briefing.

 

Debate: ...Left in disarray

We are at an important turning point in British politics. Brown is about to enter office. It is already clear that he is planning to drive forward all the main items of New Labour policy: the neo-liberal offensive; the attack on public sector; the continuation of the war in Iraq; the replacement of Trident; and the attack on human rights and civil liberties as well as his current attack on public sector wages. He may disengage to some degree from Iraq, but no more so than the US Democrats are planning to do.

 

After Blair

Andy Newman reports from the Morning Star organised conference and finds that the Communist Party of Britain is having serious, strategic discussions about the left’s future.

 

Venezuela - Media Debate

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s recent refusal to renew the licence of a private television company Radio Caracas Television (RCTV) for using the public airwaves has triggered a new polarisation, and something of a debate over how media freedom and democratic access to the media can be achieved and maintained in the process of socialist revolution. Here we carry three initial responses to the events and the hysterical bourgeois response to Chavez’s action.

 

Venezuela - Media Debate

Kathalina Barroso reports from Caracas on the demonstrations in support of the restrictions imposed on counter-revolutionary RCTV

 

Venezuela - Media Debate

Venezuela’s decision to reclaim the public airwaves used by Radio Caracas Television prompts a wider question for socialists: .what would a revolutionary model of the media look like?

 

Eco-Socialism

In what promises to be a milestone event, ecosocialists are preparing to meet in Paris to launch a new international.

 

Eco-Socialism

THERE IS an objective urgency to the climate issue that impacts directly on social consciousness, and which helps us to define some aspects of the movement we seek to build.

 

Eco-Socialism

Australia is currently in the grip of an ecological and environmental crisis, one that is characterized by the current drought gripping over half of Australia’s agricultural land.

 

Trade Unions

Fight back now for jobs and public services!

Tens of thousands of South African public sector workers have been on strike for over two weeks as this issue of Socialist Resistance goes to press. They have defied police violence and held solid in their fight for a 12% pay increase, having rejected an insulting 6% offer from a government that is paying its ministers a thumping 57% extra.

 

Trade Unions

Despite being held back by a “socialist” government and their own trade union leaders Spain’s car workers look set to continue strike action.

 

Trade Unions

South African trade unions have launched one of the biggest national strikes of the post-apartheid era in a move widely seen as spearheading the left’s challenge to win control of the ruling African National Congress ahead of next year’s presidential election.

 

Trade Unions

Delegates at the Communication Workers Union Conference stood and cheered when the results of the Royal Mail and Post Office pay ballots were announced.

 

Trade Unions

One of Britain’s most militant unions is establishing a cross-union organisation for shop stewards. On July 7th, the RMT is sponsoring the founding conference for the national shop stewards network.

 

Health

As Patricia Hewitt proudly unveiled a massive unspent pot of NHS cash that could have spared misery for patients and staff, health services across England face another battering from cutbacks and closures.

 

Health

“It’s full steam ahead for a national demonstration to defend the NHS on Saturday, 13 October”, according to UNISON’s Head of Health Karen Jennings, writing to health branches of the largest public sector union.

 

Education

Following a short, but very vigorous, campaign, unions and parents in Waltham Forest have forced the council to reverse - or at least postpone - plans to close the centralised school meals service.

 

Education

Westminster City Council, securely Tory since the mid 1980.s, has embraced New Labour’s City Academy proposals. It is within sight of abolishing all state secondary schools by turning them into Trusts or Academies.

 

Iraq

May was the worst month for US fatalities in Iraq since 2004 and the first anniversary of Israel’s failed onslaught on Lebanon approaches. Piers Mostyn asked GILBERT ACHCAR to provide an update on some recent developments, starting with a balance sheet of the US surge in Iraq.

 

Iraq

Into the camp of Imperialism

The recent conference of the Alliance for Workers Liberty (AWL) has voted to reject calls for the withdrawal of Western troops from Iraq. It concluded that the Iraqi workers’ movement could currently not survive without the occupation, because US and UK withdrawal would lead to civil war.

 

Women

Development or devastation?

Human resources are now the primary commodities for export by the Philippines government –and most of the labour exported is female, to respond to labour demands in the advanced countries, such as domestic work, taking care of the aging population and other human service-related work.

 

Ireland

Ireland’s Green Party has gone into government with Bertie Ahern’s corrupt Fianna Fail. They have been bought off with two government jobs.

 

Italy

“The left that is in government has completely broken its relationship with the social movements.”

 

Review

Trotsky, by David Renton, Haus Publishing, London 2004, 181 pages, paperback £9.99

Having recently slated Ian Thatcher’s woeful 2003 biography of Trotsky I approached David Renton’s contribution to the Haus Publishing .Life and Times. series with some trepidation. Would this be another piece of incompetent anti-Trotsky hackwork?

 

Culture

Surreal Things Exhibition V & A London, 29 March - 22 July 2007

Any exhibition of work by Surrealists is likely to be of interest to socialists familiar with the long-standing links between Surrealism and Marxism, and also to a broader audience for whom Surrealism and the surreal are part of everyday parlance.