Light, not darkness: rebuild all our electricity-generating industries
[WORKERS, DEC 2008]
It is nearly 30 years since the dismantling of Britain’s state owned energy industries started – first gas, then coal, then electricity generation and all the twists and turns over nuclear, the National Grid etc. The concept of an integrated energy industry, with a mix of fuels guaranteeing heat, light, industry, protection against the elements and nature is in tatters.
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A crisis out of control – and it’s a crisis for the working class, too
[WORKERS, DEC 2008]
As we watch the daily reports of the credit crunch and the recession, two main thoughts strike most of us. Firstly, governments are unable to control this crisis of capitalism, and secondly, what do all these huge sums of money mean and where do they come from?
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Invest now in a future for rail
[WORKERS, DEC 2008]
Massive fare increases well in excess of inflation will hit rail passengers once again at the New Year. Tickets will cost between 6 per cent and 11 per cent more, hitting workers already having to contend with the effects of the financial crisis.
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No to the Common Market, the EEC, the European Union!
[WORKERS, DEC 2008]
In our final article to mark the 40th anniversary of the CPBML by looking at the past four decades through the eyes of Workers and its predecessor, The Worker, we look at the fight against the European Union.
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Credit crisis: don’t just blame the bankers
[WORKERS, NOV 2008]
It is an ill wind that blows no one any good: the BBC demonstrates the truth of this old aphorism. As economic twisters roll around the international money markets, so the BBC is supplied with a surfeit of ready meals for its various fast news outlets. Economists, financiers, politicians and commentators are summoned to portentous studios to be verbally examined by grave, morally superior interviewers. Then there are those parodies of popular democracy, the phone-ins. There we hear a litany of crisis and despair, with a little panic from modest savers who have so little, and yet so very much to lose.
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Construction: lessons from a picket line
[WORKERS, NOV 2008]
Following the sacking of 16 British workers at the new power station being constructed in Langage near Plymouth, a picket line was mounted on the morning of 7 August and respected by some 200 workers of various nationalities including Polish and Portuguese, demanding that the 16 be reinstated. By 09.00 the gates were locked and passes withdrawn from those outside the gates. The main contractor, Alstom (a French multi-national), was demanding that the contractors on site whose workers were involved, obtain repudiation of the dispute from the unions (Unite – Amicus and T&G – and the GMB) and sack the workers.
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Book review: The hidden history of one of the unsung heroes of the English revolution
[WORKERS, NOV 2008]
The Houses of Parliament are one of the busiest tourist attractions in the whole of Britain. They are considered remarkable for many reasons; in fact they are remarkable only really for one. That is the statue outside the building of Oliver Cromwell. He was the only person – not Guy Fawkes, as the popular joke runs – who entered Parliament with honest intentions. Where Fawkes would have destroyed Parliament to subject England to a Catholic dictatorship, Cromwell entered Parliament in 1653 ordering it to “take away this bauble”, meaning the crown of England.
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1992: The response to Thatcher – Rebuild Britain
[WORKERS, NOV 2008]
Absolute decline and deindustrialisation ravaged our working class in the 1970s and 1980s. Following the call of our Ninth Party Congress in 1991, The Worker featured applications of the Rebuild Britain line. We espoused it then, but continue to do so now, when the need is even more urgent as the decay of our country has deepened and widened.
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Exclusive: Hurricanes – Cuba fights back
[WORKERS, OCT 2008]
The recent hurricanes that have caused so much loss of life and damage in the Caribbean and southern United States are considered by the Cuban Civil Defence Authority to be the worst for 60 years, partly because of their strength and partly because there were so many in close succession. Hardly surprising, then, that many people are asking the question ‘why does Cuba manage to keep the loss of life so low compared to other countries?’ The answer lies in both Cuba’s values and working class organisation.
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What’s happened to the financial markets?
[WORKERS, OCT 2008]
The unravelling of financial markets that has been taking place now for the past twelve months should not be seen as a crisis but as a continuum of absolute decline, a trend first identified by our party in 1976. The current contradictory mess has one central feature, namely that Britain produces little new wealth and has been accessing international capital to create domestic credit.
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Book review: The Gods That Failed
[WORKERS, OCT 2008]
The Gods That Failed: how blind faith in markets has cost us our future, by Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson, paperback, 326 pages, ISBN 978-1-847-92030-0, Bodley Head, 2008, £12.99.
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2000: Nothing free about the free movement of labour
[WORKERS, OCT 2008]
The subject of migration– both immigration and emigration – is one that many on the so-called left refuse to deal with. Yet it is an issue that won’t go away. In this groundbreaking article in November 2000, Workers took the issue head on. Who benefits? Not the workers here, and not the countries where the migrant labourers come from, either.
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TUC: Back to basics
[WORKERS, SEPT 2008]
The annual congress of the TUC rolls round this month and it is time to take stock again of the health of the labour movement. The TUC agenda will deal with all the supposed pressing and politically correct agendas of the activists (not the members) who will be present.
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North Yorkshire, American style
[WORKERS, SEPT 2008]
US INDEPENDENCE Day, 4 July, this year saw a large-scale demonstration outside the largest spying base in the world, Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire. Organised by the "Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases", the "Independence FROM America" event has been for 20 years an annual feature in the calendar of those concerned with US belligerence around the globe and British acquiescence in it.
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The NHS: We don't know how lucky we are
[WORKERS, SEPT 2008]
"I heard on the radio the other day that, per head of population, Cuba had more people who were 100 years old than anywhere else in the world. The report also stated that the general life expectancy had risen to 80. Those two facts are remarkable, and would be remarkable in any other country, even incredible in most, but taking into account the context of life in Cuba with people struggling against the backdrop of the American economic and material blockade..."
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The politics of 'failure': Education is not just an academic question
[WORKERS, SEPT 2008]
How is it possible for a school to be rated "Good" by OFSTED, be in the top 10 per cent of improved schools, to receive commendations for those improvements and then be branded a "failing school"?
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1979: Thatcher Out!
[WORKERS, SEPT 2008]
Following the 1979 General Election, our Party quickly reassessed the political situation facing workers and concluded that it was not just business as normal for capitalism, that in fact the post war bourgeois consensus had been ditched and that Thatcherism was a dangerous governmental stance which was set to undermine and destroy the organised working class. We changed the basis of our line from 'Don't Vote, Organise for Revolution' to "Thatcher Out".
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Fighting by numbers
[WORKERS, JULY 2008]
The First World War was described as war by railway timetable in that once the order to mobilise had gone out and the troop trains had started to roll, then the war was supposedly unstoppable. The looming dispute over pay in local government has all the hallmarks of slow motion painting by numbers.
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The NHS at 60: not given to us by Labour, but fought for and won by workers
[WORKERS, JULY 2008]
The National Health Service came into being on 5 July 1948, and has played a major part in the quality of our lives ever since. Most people in the UK have known no other way of providing medical care. The NHS faces many threats and challenges despite all its successes. The alleged need to improve patient choice is pushing many changes, not all of them welcomed by patients and health workers.
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Intervene? Haven't Britain and America already done enough damage?
[WORKERS, JULY 2008]
In all the coverage of Zimbabwe, it is rarely noted that the US and British states have been imposing punitive economic sanctions on the country since 2001. Western academics and journalists instead portray the crisis in Zimbabwe solely as the result of the land reform or of Mugabe's mismanagement.
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Welcome to the 21st century: the return of the killer diseases
[WORKERS, JULY 2008]
Britain was supposed to see the end of infectious diseases. This feat of public health was achieved by a combination not of drugs, doctors and hospitals but of clean water, proper sewage systems and better nutrition. Of course there were medical advances such as vaccination, antibiotics and widespread availability of barrier contraceptives, combined with greater knowledge and awareness of illnesses.
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1982: War in the South Atlantic
[WORKERS, JULY 2008]
The Falklands War was probably the most important foreign policy event in domestic terms in the 1980s. It occurred when Thatcher was deeply unpopular, giving her the chance to gain support.
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The battles over pay: still too many generals, not enough in the front lines
[WORKERS, JUNE 2008]
The manoeuvres around the pay offers, potential pay disputes and who is really saying what their members mean in the trade unions – or even if the members have spoken at all – are what are shaping the choreography around pay in local government.
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Marx was right!
[WORKERS, JUNE 2008]
So long as we were able to kid ourselves that capitalism was working, however cruelly, and would see us out, we could avoid the hard intellectual task of trying to understand how it all works. Now it clearly doesn't, so we have to try and do for our time what Marx did for his.
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Forty years on: a May Day celebration of the founding of the Party – with music
[WORKERS, JUNE 2008]
In celebrating the bold move to found a new party of our working class 40 years ago, we're not having a reminiscence session or wallowing in nostalgia. A vital stream has flowed, influencing our class ever since, breaking away from moribund, social democratic thinking.
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Imperial ambitions: US and EU rebuffed as they seek to control around the globe
[WORKERS, JUNE 2008]
The United States and the European Union are hell bent on interfering in the internal affairs of other countries in order to secure puppet governments that will do their bidding and open up to their capitalists. There are currently three obvious cases that illustrate this.
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1972: the US lashes out in Vietnam – and fails
[WORKERS, JUNE 2008]
In the 1970s, both Labour and Conservative governments continued to support the US government's wars of aggression against Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. This complicity was one of the most shameful acts in British history.
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Construction: contracts for the companies, insecurity for the workers
[WORKERS, MAY 2008]
A cursory glance around Britain's towns and cities reveals construction work being undertaken nearly everywhere one looks, and one could be forgiven for thinking that the industry is thriving. Representing some 10 per cent of GDP and with 2.1.million workers, it continues to grow. Indeed, such is the demand for labour that for the next five years, an additional 90,000 workers are needed annually.
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Going to the Dog
[WORKERS, MAY 2008]
If ever a commodity was associated with a particular region or city, surely Newcastle Brown Ale must have been it. The iconic blue star on the label glowed above the brewery next to St. James Park where it was also emblazoned on the Magpies' black and white shirts. Legends about the one-time potency of a bottle of "Dog" were exchanged across many a bar, along with suspicions about more feeble brews emanating from the South, Teesside for example.
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Primary education – who decides?
[WORKERS, MAY 2008]
When schools minister Jim Knight told this year's conference of the teaching union ATL that a class size of 70 can work "very well" he was greeted with jeers from the delegates. Maybe because they actually have experience of teaching, and he only has his own public school background to go on – probably with class sizes of a bit less than 70 (the private sector average is 10–15).
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They say they want freedom for Tibet, but what they want is to break up China
[WORKERS, MAY 2008]
What are we to make of the protests against the Olympic torch relay combined with calls to 'Free Tibet'? Let's start with the US award to the Dalai Lama of the Congressional Gold Medal in October 2007.
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1974: The fight against the Social Contract
[WORKERS, MAY 2008]
As part of the celebration of our 40th anniversary, we look at our party's warnings about the dangers of voluntary emasculation inherent in the Social Contract introduced by the Labour Party in 1974.
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Castro leaves office, and the US's dream of Cuban collapse fails to materialise
[WORKERS, APR 2008]
Fidel Castro will not stand for election again. Announcing his decision in February, he wrote, "This is not my farewell to you. My only wish is to fight as a soldier in the battle of ideas. I shall continue to write under the heading Reflections by Comrade Fidel. It will be just another weapon you can count on."
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Progress in the NHS: it's up to us
[WORKERS, APR 2008]
Last July, amid a fanfare of publicity in the trade press, and even some national news coverage, Professor Sir Ara Darzi became a well known name. It was he who had been commissioned by NHS London (the capital's Strategic Health Authority) to undertake a review into the health service in London, looking at all of the different clinical specialities, the services delivered and the settings in which they're undertaken, and was charged with the task of proposing recommendations for their improvement.
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EU Constitution: Referendum now!
[WORKERS, APR 2008]
THE HOUSE of Commons voted on 5 March to deny the British people a referendum on the EU Constitution. Only a handful of Labour MPs stood by their party's manifesto commitment for a referendum.
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1971: British troops out of Ireland, Ireland one nation!
[WORKERS, APR 2008]
The issue of northern Ireland is a test of workers' internationalism, today just as it was from 1922 when Ireland was split and Northern Ireland annexed.
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The London Underground unions have taken up a vital struggle over jobs and safety...
[WORKERS, MAR 2008]
Over 7,500 members of the RMT and TSSA unions are mounting a joint campaign in defence of safety standards and staffing on London Underground (LUL).
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Goodbye public ownership, hello to the £56 billion subsidy
[WORKERS, MAR 2008]
When the Labour Government of 1945 nationalised coal, railways, road haulage, gas, electricity and a range of other assets including the Bank of England, they did so not from a sense of introducing socialism, although there was a high level of support for socialism, but because the economy was in ruins at the end of World War II.
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There is a future for British oil and gas – but not if entrusted to corporations and the EU
[WORKERS, MAR 2008]
With workers in the North Sea oil and gas industry joining forces to boost their strength (See article in Workers February 2008), it is an apt time to take a look at what is a strategic part of British manufacturing and energy assets.
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Give capitalism enough room and it will wreck any industry – even football
[WORKERS, MAR 2008]
Why are there so many overseas football players in the English and Scottish professional leagues? There were always many Scots and Welsh with English clubs and Irish in both leagues, but few moved outside that circle. In some games in the Premier League 15 or more players from abroad are on the pitch. Even in Scotland and the English lower divisions there are many overseas players, in a far greater proportion than occurs in other countries.
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1969: Labour turns on the trade unions
[WORKERS, MAR 2008]
Quite soon after the birth of our Party, the social democratic Labour government headed by Wilson followed up an attempted wage freeze by moving to emasculate the trade unions with a set of proposals in a White Paper promulgated under the slogan, In Place of Strife. In the February 1969 issue of our paper, The Worker, our party responded to the government's threat advocating wholesale opposition to the proposed legislation.
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North Sea oilfields: workers flex their muscles in the industrial battleground
[WORKERS, FEB 2008]
Workers in the offshore oil and gas industry are getting better organised and flexing their muscles on pay, conditions and safety. On 13 February the result will be announced of the 2 January ballot on the merging of the RMT and the Aberdeen-based Offshore Industry Liaison Committee (OILC).
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European Union plans to annex Kosovo
[WORKERS, FEB 2008]
THE EUROPEAN Union is preparing for the annexation of part of a sovereign country, egged on by the USA. Having encouraged the break-up of Yugoslavia by offering first German and then EU recognition to a breakaway Croatia, the EU then offered Slovenia membership, sent troops to Macedonia and along with the US encouraged Muslim separatists in Bosnia Herzegovina with the US actually arming them.
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Midwifery in 21st–century Britain: death rates on the rise
[WORKERS, FEB 2008]
BACK IN 2003 Jacqui Smith Minister of State for Health stood in front of the Royal College of Midwives and said: "We have seen tremendous improvements in the care women and their babies have received in the last decade but I know that midwives are not the complacent type and that you continue to strive to develop care and services."
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Railways: struggle ahead on the line as bungling employers look for more profit
[WORKERS, FEB 2008]
The failings of the nation's fragmented and privatised railway were highlighted over the Christmas period as major engineering works overran, and huge fare increases were announced. Network Rail, brought in to overcome the chaotic and dangerous situation on the tracks after privatisation, has failed to deliver thanks to its continuing reliance on the contracting system condemned after the Hatfield and Potters Bar crashes.
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1969: Focus on the engineers, and on Britain
[WORKERS, FEB 2008]
Amid world turmoil and struggle, our party was formed in April 1968. Our founding chairman, Reg Birch, had issued a call to all interested persons in the labour movement and beyond to join our founding congress, which thus went on to create the only revolutionary communist party that Britain has ever known.
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Financial services: not so much an industry, more a short-cut to debt and dependency
[WORKERS, JAN 2008]
When US home owners can't pay their mortgages Northern Rock collapses, and the entire British economy, so reliant upon the so-called financial services "industry", is thrown into jeopardy. (See "Northern Rock: when the merry-go-round had to stop".)
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Northern Rock: when the merry-go-round had to stop
[WORKERS, JAN 2008]
Northern Rock is not an aberration. Take the trouble to understand what is unfolding there and you open a window on the present parlous state of capitalism in Britain and the world. Finance capital has built a house of cards on the "safe as houses" mortgage market.
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London's guides point the way over the Constitution
[WORKERS, JAN 2008]
While the TUC prepares to abandon any remaining vestige of democracy by reneging on its own massive vote for a referendum on the EU Constitution (on the grounds that some people don't want one!), the list of grass roots union members demanding their say grows by the day.
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There is an option in dealing with Iran – leave it alone
[WORKERS, JAN 2008]
What do we do about Iran? The question is so often posed, along with the fatuous "doing nothing is not an option", that it has become almost impossible to suggest that in fact doing nothing is the only sensible plan.
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The smashing of the Industrial Relations Act
[WORKERS, JAN 2008]
In 1970 a lead article in our Party newspaper The Worker gave an early warning against the coming corporate state. We reproduce the article below. By way of introduction, the Labour Party had started the attack on our trade unions with the Wilson government's "In Place of Strife", a 1969 white paper introduced by employment minister Barbara Castle, which proposed to curb the power of the unions but was never passed into law.
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