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Socialist Resistance
SR48 - October 2007
FIGHT BACK against BROWN OFFENSIVE!
Editorial
Gordon Brown’s first visit to Iraq as Prime Minister may have been a miscalculation. It’s certainly a hard act to pull off. The reality is that everyone – on both sides of the Atlantic – knows that Iraq is a disaster.
Respect
Just when the need for a party like Respect is clearer than ever, with the arrival of Brown and the snuffing out of the last vestiges of democracy in the Labour Party, Respect has been passing through the biggest crisis in its three-and-a-half year history. Alan Thornett reports on the events and decisions of Respect’s September National Council meetings.
Editorial
AS THIS issue of Socialist Resistance was preparing to go to press one huge issue has been dominating the domestic news agenda, giving some other discussions a slight air of unreality: will Gordon Brown, Prime Minister for just on three months, opt for an early election, on November 1 or 8?
Trade Unions
On 1 April 2007 Fremantle Trust cut 196 low paid care workers’ pay by up to 30%. The workers were told – “accept these terms or be sacked”!
Respect
“The fact that Respect has won a serious base in some Muslim communities is a tremendous achievement for all of us.”
Respect
“The objective conditions which produced Respect, and the space to the left of Labour, remains in full-force, as shown by the Shadwell result. Brown leads a right-wing, anti-working class, neoliberal government, which has continued the Blairite relationship with the employers, and is even more hostile to the unions, as his pay freeze makes clear. …
NHS
TWO recent top-level academic reports have struck body blows at the drive towards “centralizing” more hospital services and downsizing many hospital Accident & Emergency departments to “urgent care centres”.
Asylum
September 19 saw the official opening of the “No Borders” camp near Gatwick airport. Activists from across the country gathered in protest against the new Immigration Detention Centre being built inside the airport’s perimeter (there are already 10 in the UK and one in Gatwick already).
Asylum
All new asylum seekers now are processed through a New Asylum Model.
Asylum
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a huge country with lots of resources that are needed in the western world. The sufferings of the people of the Congo are based upon the interests of the big powers.
Abortion rights
Abortion law 40 years on …
It is forty years since women in Britain won a major victory in the battle to control our bodies and therefore our lives – with the passage of the 1967 Abortion Act. At few points over the last four decades have the limited rights won then not been under attack from reactionary forces.
USA
With the George W. Bush presidency limping into its final sixteen months and a line of rats led by torture boy Alberto Gonzales and dirty trickmeister Karl Rove jumping ship, several questions come to mind.
Economy
The last few months have witnessed the beginnings of a major global credit crunch. Domestically, this has manifested itself in the recent Northern Rock crisis where thousands of people made a run on the bank. JON KERSHAW takes the pulse of the British economy.
Pan-African politics
of African people from struggles around the world
Norman Traub of Socialist Resistance spoke with EXPLO NANI-KOFI, coordinator of African Liberation Support Campaign Network (ALISC Network) and editor of their magazine Kilombo on September 18 in London
Pan-African politics
TWENTY years ago one of the greatest leaders Africa has seen was brutally assassinated.
International
On September 22, as thousands were protesting across Burma, Indian Oil Minister Murli Deora was in the country’s capital Rangoon for the signing of oil and gas exploration contracts between state-controlled ONGC Videsh Ltd and Burma’s military rulers.
International
The current political situation in Pakistan is extremely volatile in the run up to the General Election scheduled for October 6. Parliamentary elections will then probably take place in November.
International
Revolutionary militants gather in Caracas
“Huge opportunities, very great dangers!” That’s how one of President Chavez’ closest advisers summed up the current situation facing Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution.
Europe
After his slender victory in May’s elections for the Scottish Parliament leading to the establishment of a minority administration, Scottish National Party leader and First Minister Alec Salmond has announced a ‘national conversation ’ on Scotland’s future.
Europe
September’s general election in Greece saw the ruling conservative New Democracy (ND) party win. Its vote declined slightly from 45 per cent to 42 per cent.
Eco-Socialism
Capitalism fouls up…
The fires during the summer months were the biggest and most devastating in the modern history of Greece. They left behind more than 2 billion square metres of burned land, more than 100 totally destroyed villages and the loss of more than 60 human lives.
Eco-Socialism
In June this year the Irish Green Party became the latest of such parties around the world to enter government, in a coalition with the Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrat (PD) parties, which had been in power for the previous 10 years.
Eco-Socialism
October 10 sees the end of a public “consultation” to “help the government take a decision on the future of nuclear power in the UK”. The exercise is completely cynical.
Eco-Socialism
Over the last few months Managua, capital of Nicaragua, has seen thousands of farmers and their supporters camped outside the National Assembly building protesting against the use of the pesticide Nemagon in banana plantations across the country.
Eco-Socialism
Class issues central to real change
During the Green Party Conference Nick Hildyard leaned over to me and said ‘The problem with Zac Goldsmith and John Selwyn Gummer is that they lack a class analysis’.
Eco-Socialism
Trade unionists mobilise against Climate Change
It is a long time since the role of trades unions was confined to “wages and conditions”, while leaving wider matters to direct political representation.
Eco-Socialism
Demonstration on Climate Change, London
George Bush convened a special Conference on Climate Change in Washington, on September 28-29 in a transparent attempt to pre-empt and derail the official UN Talks in Bali this December. Us activists organised actions in Washington and elsewhere to highlight the cynicism of the President.
Eco-Socialism
Two decades on, no justice, no lessons learned
In 1984 a mass leakage of toxic gas from the Union Carbide pesticide plant in the Indian city of Bhopal created the world’s worst industrial disaster. Thousands died immediately, thousands more have since died and continue to die through health complications after breathing the toxic gas.
Our History
“James Connolly: ‘a full life’” by Donal Nevin (Gill & MacMillan 2006) 16.99 Euros.
NAME a revolutionary Marxist anywhere assassinated by imperialism but still celebrated in song almost a century later.
Our politics
Socialist Resistance AGM integrates ecosocialism into activities
Socialist Resistance’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) has adopted a new manifesto calling for a broad ecosocialist and anti-capitalist current to be built in the labour movement, amongst young people and in the environmental movement.
Our politics
Resistance sent a delegation of nine people to this year’s Fourth International Summer Camp at Barbaste in south-western France, which was attended by 418 people overall.
Activity
On September 5, twenty activists from Southend Stop the War Coalition staged a demonstration and picket at a local Shell Oil garage during the early morning rush hour.
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