Hands off Syria!
[WORKERS, OCT 2014]
We are told that we have to attack Syria in order to defeat the Islamic State (IS), a brutal, fundamentalist autocracy.
...[read more]
A system set up for slavery
[WORKERS, OCT 2014]
The government is sponsoring a series of television adverts against slavery in Britain. The domestic servant, the farm hands, the sweat shop labourers, the sex worker etc.
...[read more]
What democracy really means
[WORKERS, OCT 2014]
Now that the referendum is over, the focus of the media has leapfrogged the coming months and focused on the general election. Nothing else is relevant. No event or attitude can be considered or even discussed without thinking about how it will play come the general election.
...[read more]
Once again, no intervention in Iraq
[WORKERS, SEP 2014]
Once again the war drums are beating over Iraq. This time we are told we have to go into battle abroad in order to prevent ISIS waging war on the streets of Britain, or to save the Yazidis.
...[read more]
Pay: a step in the right direction
[WORKERS, SEP 2014]
It is a step forward that this October’s TUC national demo will have a single concrete demand: Britain Needs a Pay Rise. This is in sharp contrast to vague calls such as the March for the Alternative or the March against Austerity.
...[read more]
Genocide in Gaza
[WORKERS, SEP 2014]
Yet again Israel’s military terrorises Gaza. The inevitable toll of death and destruction tarnishes an already impoverished strip of land. Why does political progress remain so far out of reach in this pivotal part of the Middle East?
...[read more]
Positive thinking
[WORKERS, JUL 2014]
Perhaps it is a result of more than three decades of counterrevolution. Perhaps it is simply a refusal to take responsibility for our futures. But sometimes it seems as if opposition to capitalism and the consequences of the rule of profit remains just that – opposition.
...[read more]
Dangerous manoeuvres
[WORKERS, JUL 2014]
NATO military exercises are due to take place in Ukraine in July. British troops will be deployed as part of NATO’s Rapid Trident manoeuvres.
...[read more]
Iraq: tragedy and farce
[WORKERS, JUL 2014]
Karl Marx famously wrote that history repeats itself – the first time as tragedy, then as farce. That just about sums up the contortions that the US is twisting itself into over Iraq, shabbily abetted by David Cameron.
...[read more]
Still plotting against Russia
[WORKERS, JUN 2014]
When NATO swallowed up most of eastern Europe’s countries, it agreed that it would not put bases or troops in. Now it is deploying planes, ships and troops to Poland and the Baltic region.
...[read more]
The politics of minority
[WORKERS, JUN 2014]
News in April that Cornwall has been granted minority status by the Council of Europe was met with joy by some groups. Many locals are much less keen.
...[read more]
EU: the real work is yet to be done
[WORKERS, JUN 2014]
The enthusiasm of Britain’s political establishment for the European Union – echoed so enthusiastically by the TUC – is not shared by the people. UKIP, proving that all publicity is good publicity, burst that bubble when it topped the poll in the elections to the European Parliament in May.
...[read more]
Yet another enquiry
[WORKERS, MAY 2014]
The investigation by Bruce Carr QC into trade unions has begun. Claiming to address Unite’s so-called “leverage tactics” during the 2013 Grangemouth fiasco – when some Unite staff imported US-style tactics with personal and confrontational actions such as camping on the company director’s lawn – Carr is expected to recommend making some industrial action or tactics illegal. Surprise, surprise.
...[read more]
Lost in Wales, dreaming of the EU
[WORKERS, MAY 2014]
The capacity of the trade union movement for self-delusion, especially when its representatives meet in TUC bodies, is staggering. The Wales TUC is marking May Day with a meeting in the Welsh Assembly “highlighting the contribution of the European Union to workers’ rights and the broader Welsh economy”.
...[read more]
We're a nation, not regions
[WORKERS, MAY 2014]
Life is changeable, but you can trust the Labour Party to run true to form. It has an enduring ability to come up with what it thinks is a bright and progressive idea, and everyone else thinks is a pretty dim and reactionary one. Like its new wheeze, part of its 2015 election proposals, of “regionalism”.
...[read more]
Ukraine: the US, the EU and fascism
[WORKERS, APR 2014]
ON 16 MARCH, an overwhelming majority (96 per cent) in Crimea voted to realign themselves with Russia, an outcome quickly confirmed by Russia itself. Sixty years ago Crimea was handed to Ukraine by then-premier Nikita Krushchev in an act which apparently took 15 minutes. The Crimean people were and are deeply unhappy with this autocratic decision, now reversed.
...[read more]
Two trillion ways to rebuild Britain
[WORKERS, APR 2014]
The government’s pension proposals in the March 2014 budget came as no surprise. Easier access to cash for workers with personal pensions or money-purchase pension pots is simply an invitation to spend the money to prop up current consumption, mostly of imports. At the same time our production capacity continues to decline. Are we, as the government would like, a hand-to-mouth people without thought for the future?
...[read more]
Making space for water
[WORKERS, MAR 2014]
Britain is an island particularly exposed and vulnerable to north Atlantic weather systems. No one who has seen the pictures on our TVs of the havoc wreaked by this winter’s storms, with whole areas of the country under water (often mixed with raw sewage), washed away railway lines and roofs blown off railway stations, can doubt that we have a national problem. The question is, what are we going to do about it?
...[read more]
A lesson from the universities
[WORKERS, MAR 2014]
If you want a glimpse of the kind of chaos that would engulf Britain should the SNP have its way, take a look at the universities. The situation is bad enough as it is. There are currently no tuition fees for Scottish students in Scottish universities. Nor for students from the European Union. Only students from the rest of Britain have to pay fees.
...[read more]
Lessons from the academies
[WORKERS, FEB 2014]
The wheels are starting to come off the academies programme, and not before time. It was back in 2000 that Blair’s Labour government introduced them, keen like all governments to cut down the role of all possible centres of opposition, such as local authorities.
...[read more]
State subsidies are alive and well
[WORKERS, FEB 2014]
Who says state subsidies have gone out of fashion? British taxpayers generously gave Britain’s biggest banks £38 billion last year. At the same time, the financial services sector has, since 2007, halved the corporation tax it pays – to just £6.5 billion last year.
...[read more]
Barristers join the working class
[WORKERS, FEB 2014]
For the first time in the history of legal chambers across Britain, bewigged and cravatted barristers, accompanied by solicitors, defied the threats of the Bar Standards Board and walked out in protest at proposed cuts to the criminal legal aid budget.
...[read more]
Pimping for foreign capital
[WORKERS, JAN 2014]
Mao Tse-tung, writing about classes in Chinese society in the 1920s, defined “the comprador class” as “wholly appendages of the international bourgeoisie, depending upon imperialism for their survival and growth”.
...[read more]
In praise of science, and scientists
[WORKERS, JAN 2014]
In November Fred Sanger died, aged 95. He was never a household name, but he should have been. The only Briton – and one of only three people in history – to have won two Nobel prizes in science, his contributions encompassed laying the basis for the sequencing of proteins and genes.
...[read more]
Jilted by the European Commission
[WORKERS, DEC 2013]
The TUC and trade union love affair with the European Union began in the dark days of Thatcher, when then-President of the European Commission Jacques Delors addressed Congress and said Europe would save them from Thatcherism.
...[read more]
Sharks will be sharks
[WORKERS, DEC 2013]
Everyone knows the big six energy companies are profiting at the expense of their customers. But that is what they are supposed to do. Indeed, it is what they are legally obliged to do.
...[read more]
Hope for the dismal science
[WORKERS, DEC 2013]
Economics is widely known as the “dismal science”, and the description rings true, so dismally has classical economics performed over the past century or more.
...[read more]
It's our power, let's build and run it
[WORKERS, NOV 2013]
So Osborne went on holiday to China and came back with an agreement to let Chinese companies run our nuclear power stations. This is trumpeted as a win for Britain.
...[read more]
Recovering into the grave
[WORKERS, NOV 2013]
It’s a funny kind of recovery we are having. The newspapers are full of it. Chancellor Osborne is full of it. So why aren’t we all rejoicing?
...[read more]
The Syria vote: speaking for Britain
[WORKERS, OCT 2013]
The House of Commons vote against war on 29 August was historic. Not since Lord North failed to get a majority to continue to fight the US War of Independence in 1782 has Parliament refused a government motion to back a war.
...[read more]
Daylight robbery in Grand Theft City
[WORKERS, OCT 2013]
So you thought the regulators were cracking down on banking criminality? They’re not.
...[read more]
The absurd logic of 'Islamophobia'
[WORKERS, SEP 2013]
In 1997 the Runnymede Trust defined Islamophobia as the “dread or hatred of Islam and therefore, [the] fear and dislike of all Muslims”. The logic is absurd.
...[read more]
Neofascism in Westminster
[WORKERS, SEP 2013]
When the TUC denounces something as “an outrageous attack on freedom of speech worthy of an authoritarian dictatorship”, you know things are bad.
...[read more]
Hands off Syria!
[WORKERS, SEP 2013]
VOICES IN the West demanding military aggression against Syria are growing louder and louder, as the “rebels”, including Al-Qaeda terrorists and foreign jihadists pouring across Syria’s borders, lose ground in the civil war.
...[read more]
Subversion of Syria is a threat to us all
[WORKERS, JUL 2013]
The Western-backed assault on Syria was planned long before the war started. It is part of an organised attempt pursued by the British, French, US and Israeli governments to destroy any independent states in the Middle East, above all Iran.
...[read more]
Patently good
[WORKERS, JUL 2013]
The surprise decision by the US Supreme Court, in a case brought by the non-profit scientific society the Association for Molecular Biology, to ban the patenting of any naturally occurring human DNA is a major success.
...[read more]
Let's start being inflexible
[WORKERS, JUN 2013]
Labour mobility sounds much better than labour immobility – who wants to be immobile? Just as labour flexibility sounds much better than labour inflexibility – who wants to be inflexible? But both are bad for us.
...[read more]
A degree of infamy
[WORKERS, JUN 2013]
Despite Alex Ferguson receiving greater television and media coverage and honours without dying, the Thatcher minority cult continues with yet another foundation being established in her name.
...[read more]
Back to Front - The sick joke
[WORKERS, JUN 2013]
All the Acts outlawing discrimination in Britain – the Equal Pay Act 1970, the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, the Race Relations Act 1976, and the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 – were passed well before the EU Employment Equality Framework Directive of 2000.
...[read more]
And they call this freedom...
[WORKERS, MAY 2013]
This time last year, Cyprus was preparing to take over the “presidency” of the European Union (a grand term, signifying only self-importance and the right to organise junketing). Now Cyprus has been taken over by the EU.
...[more]
Back to Front - Buried, but not yet dead
[WORKERS, MAY 2013]
So Thatcher finally died. Who says there’s no good news any more? Her last abode was a suite at the Ritz in London, a nursing home for the incurably rich and snobbish. Old and frail, memory and mind sapped and wandering, rootless and parasitic, she had grown into a grotesque caricature of the capitalism she worked for – the capitalism we in Britain have yet to destroy.
...[more]
No room at the school
[WORKERS, APR 2013]
The National Audit Office has warned that England and Wales will have a shortfall of 250,000 school places by September 2014, unless a major building programme is undertaken.
...[more]
The part-time collapse
[WORKERS, APR 2013]
Each day comes a new and shocking statistic about the destruction being wrought by this government.
...[more]
Back to Front - Manufacturing matters
[WORKERS, APR 2013]
In the topsy-turvy world of capitalist economics there have up to now been one or two unshakeable dogmas.
...[more]
A say in our country's future
[WORKERS, MAR 2013]
Alex Salmond wants to split our country into two new countries, Scotland and “England and Wales”. So shouldn’t we all have a say in our country’s future? Why should it be restricted to those living in Scotland?
...[more]
Africa and amalgamation
[WORKERS, MAR 2013]
“We expect full integration around 2030, when the [continent’s] economy will be amalgamated. Africans will use one currency, and goods will flow freely within the continent. The common market will also have a unified tax rate for all outsiders.”
...[more]
Back to Front - Words, words, words
[WORKERS, MAR 2013]
Speak softly and carry a big stick – that was the advice of US President Theodore Roosevelt. When it comes to the European Union, our politicians prefer the opposite. They shout loudly, but do nothing.
...[more]
State funding for terrorism
[WORKERS, FEB 2013]
IMPERIALISM is playing a murky role across the Middle East and North Africa – aiding Al Qaeda terrorists, jihadists and foreign mercenaries preparing to overthrow the Syrian government.
...[more]
Referendum: force the issue
[WORKERS, FEB 2013]
Cameron and indeed all the parliamentary parties are running scared about a referendum on whether Britain should leave the European Union. They all want to dodge the issue as long as they can.
...[more]
Back to Front - Helping themselves
[WORKERS, FEB 2013]
When all the political parties agree on something, you just know there’s something fishy going on. Miliband and Cameron, Livingstone and Johnson, they all love the City of London. What a jewel it is, how vital it is to the British economy. But the reverse is true.
...[more]
Dark shadows
[WORKERS, JAN 2013]
The government says it is reducing the scope of the state. Of course, it is doing no such thing. Instead of the public state, run by an independent civil service and accountable (in theory) to the electorate, the government is creating a private state.
...[more]
From Canada, with debt
[WORKERS, JAN 2013]
The new governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, is yet another unelected Goldman Sachs old boy, just like the unelected head of the Italian government, and the equally unelected head of the European Central Bank.
...[more]
Back to Front - A bad anniversary
[WORKERS, JAN 2013]
THE YEAR 1972 saw the House of Commons commit Britain to joining the European Economic Community, the pre-runner of the European Union, by 309 to 301 votes. Since 1972 the controversy around Britain’s membership of the EU has never ceased or faded away.
...[more]
Ashes to ashes
[WORKERS, DEC 2012]
National sovereignty can sometimes seem an abstract concept. But what does it really mean? If Britain’s ash trees could talk, they would give a clear reply. For the ash trees of Britain, abandonment of national sovereignty could mean extinction.
...[more]
Back to Front - Panic and power
[WORKERS, DEC 2012]
The November edition of Workers described the energy crisis facing Britain as “an energy investment strike produced by greedy monopolies, stupid governments, abdication of responsibility and lack of planning.”
...[more]
The Nobel Prize for War
[WORKERS, NOV 2012]
Is humour a recognised characteristic of Norway? Obviously, with the award of the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union, Norway appears in a new light.
...[more]
Back to Front - Devouring the young
[WORKERS, NOV 2012]
Never say that capitalism has no long-term aim. It does. Capitalists simply want to stay in power until the Earth is swallowed up by the Sun.
...[more]
Take Charge
[WORKERS, OCT 2012]
Another month like September and there soon won’t be much left of British industry.
...[more]
No statue - thank goodness
[WORKERS, OCT 2012]
The BBC has declined to erect a statue to the author George Orwell in its reception lobby on the basis that Orwell was “far too left wing”. It’s a strange definition.
...[more]
Back to Front - A sovereign state
[WORKERS, OCT 2012]
Sovereignty has become a vital issue for Britain, one that requires informed and urgent consideration by the British working class – the great majority of the British people who must work to earn the means of their livelihood.
...[more]
Playing the numbers
[WORKERS, SEP 2012]
The workings of capitalism remain a mystery to its proponents. They tell us “the market” decides, and that everything depends on “confidence”.
...[more]
Spare a penny for the MOD
[WORKERS, SEP 2012]
HELP FOR Heroes has been phenomenally successful as a charity. Huge sums are routinely raised for it around the country. But now at last soldiers themselves have been sounding the alarm.
...[more]
Back to Front - A nation reclaimed
[WORKERS, SEP 2012]
Anyone British who watched the opening ceremony for the London Olympics could not fail to understand what it was saying. It was a celebration of – among other things – work, industry, the NHS, and of the breadth of our culture, from symphony orchestras to TV soaps. It was also a celebration of Britain, of our nation, of our one nation.
...[more]
Migration and Labour
[WORKERS, JULY 2012]
The Labour Party is shifting ground on migration. Ed Miliband’s latest speech certainly moves things on from Gordon Brown’s “bigot” outburst at the last general election.
...[more]
Back to Front - It's not austerity
[WORKERS, JULY 2012]
It would be a good start if those in the unions, and elsewhere, opposed to the government’s policies stopped talking about “austerity”. What we are living through now has nothing to do with austerity.
...[more]
It's disdain, not apathy
[WORKERS, JUNE 2012]
To say Labour was the winner in the May local elections is to take all the power and fun out of the word “winning”.
...[more]
Back to Front - Drive up wages
[WORKERS, JUNE 2012]
The government recently announced that the national minimum wage is to rise from October 2012 for those 21 years and over – by 11 pence, from £6.08 to £6.19 an hour.
...[more]
How Greece really got into debt
[WORKERS, MAY 2012]
The EU likes to castigate Greece for being “profligate” and “living beyond its means”. Germany especially complains about Greek debt.
...[more]
Funding failure
[WORKERS, MAY 2012]
Political parties are voluntary organisations. When their policies are deeply unpopular, people don't want to give them money.
...[more]
Back to Front - Data and dictatorship
[WORKERS, MAY 2012]
Four years ago it was the Labour Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, who was proposing a central database of all mobile phone and Internet traffic (under cover of an EU Directive). The idea collapsed under a storm of protest. Now it is back, but with a twist.
...[more]
Humanitarian war?
[WORKERS, APR 2012]
Any NATO attack on Syria would be an outrage, a flagrant act of aggression. There is no justification for attacking Syria. It is not in Britain’s or Syria’s interests.
...[more]
Seedy commemoration war?
[WORKERS, APR 2012]
Cameron is rattling sabres to commemorate The Malvinas (Falklands) War of 1982. The war was just a seedy footnote to the undistinguished history of British imperialism...
...[more]
Back to Front - Wealth and money
[WORKERS, APR 2012]
Osborne’s Budget on 21 March was about the creation of wealth, or rather the lack of it, and not about tax rates or income distribution.
...[more]
Unity of the unelected
[WORKERS, MAR 2012]
Cameron, Clegg and Miliband have all made noises about the need for a “government of national unity” in the face of “austerity”.
...[more]
The separatist trap
[WORKERS, MAR 2012]
Anyone who thinks it fine to detach Scotland from the rest of Britain falls straight into a baited trap.
...[more]
Back to Front - The standpipe system
[WORKERS, MAR 2012]
Parts of Britain once again face uncertainty over water supply after a second consecutive dry winter. An official state of drought has been declared for most of southern and eastern England.
...[more]
A world to win
[WORKERS, FEB 2012]
We’re very good in Britain at making fun of things. We mock, we scorn – and then we move on. Satire has become safe. But this year has got to be the year we stop mocking the European Union and start the process of leaving it.
...[more]
The war on Syria has already begun
[WORKERS, FEB 2012]
“I don’t want to be Prime Minister of England, I want to be Prime Minister of the whole United Kingdom,” says David Cameron. And Ed Miliband, who has seemingly joined the coalition on this issue, was correct when he told the Commons: “This is a momentous decision which our children and grandchildren will have to live with if we get it wrong.
...[more]
Back to Front - Britain is one nation
[WORKERS, FEB 2012]
The war on Syria threatens to become another undeclared war like NATO’s attack on Libya. NATO is already secretly involved, with Turkey taking the lead as US proxy.
...[more]
A happy ending
[WORKERS, JAN 2012]
Last year ended with a bang. There was the 30 November action over pensions, a nation united in struggle. And then the EU summit on 9 December, whose outcome represents a big breach in our relationship with the European Union and accordingly a significant advance for Britain.
...[more]
Back to Front - Getting desperate
[WORKERS, JAN 2012]
The NATO campaign to oust Syria’s president, Basher al-Assad, is gaining momentum, but losing substance. The propaganda machine is being wound up, with tales of atrocities filling the press. Yet there is a touch of desperation here: the attempt to re-create the Libyan intervention is already on rocky ground.
...[more]
The war against young people
[WORKERS, DEC 2011]
As capitalism stares into the pit it has dug for itself and us, it still has time to twist language. “Austerity”, for example, should involve some kind of stern self-disciplined sobriety, but those imposing it are sparing themselves.
...[more]
After Libya, Syria
[WORKERS, DEC 2011]
The war drums are beating again. This time it’s Syria, laughably suspended by the Arab League for sins against democracy.
...[more]
Back to Front - Selection, not election
[WORKERS, DEC 2011]
A technocracy is supposed to be rule by technical experts – people like scientists, engineers, or even, says Wikipedia, health professionals. Suddenly, it seems, we have a new definition: failed bankers and yesterday’s politicians.
...[more]
Who needs a civil service?
[WORKERS, NOV 2011]
The real significance of Liam Fox’s links with Adam Werritty is not that he broke the Ministerial Code, nor that the Conservatives (like Labour before them) have lobbyists crawling all over them.
...[more]
Less a civil war than NATO's war
[WORKERS, NOV 2011]
We’ve seen ragtag militia driving to the front in cars, but hardly a single frame of one of the 26,000 NATO air missions which have laid waste to much of Libya.
...[more]
Back to Front - Left, right and centre
[WORKERS, NOV 2011]
Debates at all three major party conferences this autumn focused on debt, austerity and cuts. But whether it was the Conservatives in Manchester, the LibDems in Birmingham or Labour in Liverpool, the differences were barely detectable.
...[more]
The twilight zone
[WORKERS, OCT 2011]
Racked by debt and riven by internal differences, the European “project” is sinking fast. Even as they fail to agree on how to bail out Greece, the countries of the eurozone (17 members of the EU) cannot even provide the most basic need of work to their own people.
...[more]
Back to Front – Anyone for a future?
[WORKERS, OCT 2011]
Has the working class a future? If we do nothing we do not have one. We have a choice: decline as an unproductive island off the coast of Europe, with a bit of tourism and a pool of cannon fodder for European military adventures, or re-build a productive Britain.
...[more]
Take responsibility
[WORKERS, SEPT 2011]
August’s riots should ring alarm bells for the organised working class. Everything that comes from employment, skill and collectivity – dignity, pride, confidence – stands in opposition to the looting and robbery that swept across some parts of England in August.
...[more]
Back to Front - Libya: Britain's shame
[WORKERS, SEPT 2011]
As WORKERS went to press, there was fighting inside Tripoli, which looks likely to fall to rebel forces. Should that happen, it will not be a “liberation”, but an occupation by a ragtag army sustained by NATO.
...[more]
Britain’s War against Libya: Statement from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Britain (ML)
[WORKERS, JULY 2011]
Britain’s brutally aggressive adventure in Libya is to be utterly condemned.
...[more]
Back to Front - Mugging a country
[WORKERS, JULY 2011]
Greece is being mugged, forced at financial gunpoint to hand over everything it has to Brussels and the banks.
...[more]
Back to Front - The health business
[WORKERS, JUNE 2011]
The Coalition’s mask has slipped further still regarding the future of the National Health Service if they get their way. Its statements on the NHS are lies.
...[more]
Back to the roots
[WORKERS, JUNE 2011]
With the conclusion of the Unite General Secretary election, we now see another round of proposed trade union mergers. Unite is courting PCS (the civil service union). PCS is playing the field, its romance with Unison now over.
...[more]
AV RIP, OK
[WORKERS, JUNE 2011]
Life is grim, but now and then a shaft of light breaks through. Larger than expected numbers of voters turned out in the referendum to kick out the Alternative Vote...
...[more]
Back to Front - Build the resistance
[WORKERS, MAY 2011]
Marches don’t change history. It’s what people do after them that matters. And there can’t have been many among the half million or so on the big march in London on 26 March who thought that even a very large walk around the capital of a weekend was going to shift this government.
...[more]
More wars, says Brussels
[WORKERS, MAY 2011]
It almost seems as if every failed leader in the world wants a piece of the war in Libya. Obama, Cameron, Sarkozy...and now the European Union is using it to brush up its plans for intervention – as if being the world capital of banking debt were not enough.
...[more]
Reaching for the bombs
[WORKERS, APR 2011]
Another prime minister, another war: British imperialism is unable to conduct its business without reaching for missiles and bombs. Much better than wasting money on hospitals and schools or investing in industry.
...[more]
Back to Front - Good decisions
[WORKERS, APR 2011]
At last, at last. A court decision has gone in favour of the right to strike. In fact, two decisions, reached by the Court of Appeal on 4 March.
...[more]
No to AV
[WORKERS, MAR 2011]
A Referendum on changes to how we elect MPs will go ahead on 5 May, after opposition in the Lords collapsed. A Yes vote would replace the First Past the Post (FPTP) system with the Alternative Vote (AV).
...[more]
Hands Off!
[WORKERS, MAR 2011]
Imperialism is trying to seize its chance to redefine nation states in the Middle East. The club of military intervention seems to have been set aside – for now – in favour of economic intervention on an unprecedented scale.
...[more]
Back to Front - Unity is strength
[WORKERS, MAR 2011]
We face destruction, not cuts. Even the very metaphor is misleading. If we get a cut on our hand, it soon heals. But what the government is doing won’t heal.
...[more]
Work till you drop
[WORKERS, FEB 2011]
The government is to scrap the default retirement age from October 2011, but employers looking to sack older workers will get more protection, with industrial and employment law to be amended to remove unfair dismissal challenges
...[more]
After 26 March
[WORKERS, FEB 2011]
The TUC and affiliated unions have set 26 March as the date for a demonstration in London against cuts. By then the government will have revealed its hand. Its plans for the NHS, education, housing benefit and all types of local service, regional development and bankers’ bonuses will be clear to all.
...[more]
Back to Front - Locust politics
[WORKERS, FEB 2011]
THERE IS a wanton savagery about the government’s attacks in so many areas, a recklessness that needs careful consideration. It is moving with unparalleled haste to undo much of the progress that the British people have managed to win over decades.
...[more]
Weakness and strength
[WORKERS, JAN 2011]
We start 2011 with a government both weak and vicious, a coalition of the desperate. The question for workers is whether we can lift our eyes from the consequences of their viciousness and see how weak they really are.
...[more]
Gerrymandering for capitalism
[WORKERS, JAN 2011]
Cameron’s Commissioners of Boundaries has now been established to re-draw the constituencies for MPs. Cameron’s plan is for a smaller parliament, roughly 600 MPs in equal-sized constituencies too large for anyone to feel represented. Less input from Wales and Scotland, to keep them uninvolved.
...[more]
Back to Front - The centralising line
[WORKERS, JAN 2011]
It has been estimated that over 100,000 jobs will be lost in local government if the government’s cuts strategy is implemented. That figure is likely to double, treble or more.
...[more]
So we can spare a few billion...
[WORKERS, DEC 2010]
Here's a strange coincidence: the £7 billion that the British government is going to pour down the thirsty throats of Ireland's failed banks is more or less equivalent to the total amount of money to be saved in this financial year from the first wave of government cuts.
...[more]
Life on easing street
[WORKERS, DEC 2010]
The United States has begun another round of quantitative easing (QE), as the Bank of England is being urged to do.
...[more]
Back to Front - Not our debts
[WORKERS, DEC 2010]
We need an urgent debate among our class to win acceptance for the position that banks must pay the bill, not workers. The banks’ debts are not our debts.
...[more]
The price of capitalism
[WORKERS, NOV 2010]
The ruling class is attacking public services to destroy the trade unions – that’s what the Comprehensive Spending Review is about.
...[more]
Short of money?
[WORKERS, NOV 2010]
Even leaving out the value of property, there are nearly 300,000 millionaires in Britain.
...[more]
Back to Front - War on the young
[WORKERS, NOV 2010]
Attitudes towards the young are a litmus test of any government’s intentions.
...[more]
The right to work
[WORKERS, OCT 2010]
The quarterly unemployment figures published in September put an end to the attempt to play one region off against another over who is suffering most as government economic policy screws the country.
...[more]
No publicity, please: we're centralising
[WORKERS, OCT 2010]
The government has told District Councils they have until the end of this year to opt for a “leader and cabinet” mayoral system.
...[more]
Back to Front - A declaration of war
[WORKERS, OCT 2010]
Speeches from the great, good, devil incarnate, friends and enemies, all motions carried. Motions of emergency defending the London Underground, defending the Royal Mail, standing up to Tory brinkmanship in Birmingham City Council, resisting cuts, international causes and greenery to lose the proverbial forest and trees.
...[more]
Crying out for a national plan
[WORKERS, SEPT 2010]
Britain is becoming more lop-sided and divided due to the anarchy of capitalism and the deliberate strategies of the EU.
...[more]
Money for misery
[WORKERS, SEPT 2010]
According to government figures, and on top of the defence budget, £18 billion was funnelled into military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan between September 2001 and March 2010.
...[more]
Back to Front - Deeper into darkness
[WORKERS, SEPT 2010]
David Cameron, seeking the high ground on behalf of his Cutback Coalition, postures a rose-tinted vision of “The Big Society”. But his velvet-glove soundbites hide an iron fist: “Cut Government Down to Size”, “Free People and Communities to Help Themselves” and “Involve Voluntary Organisations”.
...[more]
How about banks that lend?
[WORKERS, JULY 2010]
So far, our class has given the banks a trillion pounds of tax-payer support through quantitative easing, etc., and the country has lost a trillion pounds’ worth of production.
...[more]
Gangster radio
[WORKERS, JULY 2010]
The US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations has decreed that Radio and TV Martí, the voice of Cuban counter-revolutionaries, gangsters and CIA toadies, has no credibility – that they blatantly lie...
...[more]
Back to Front - Easing into debt
[WORKERS, JULY 2010]
Commentators like to talk about “defining moments” in the history of governments. Here’s one for them: the decision to abandon support for Sheffield Forgemasters, announced in the second round of pre-budget softening-up cuts.
...[more]
The price of capitalism
[WORKERS, JUNE 2010]
There’s one thing they all agree on: in the current phase of economic capitalist crisis hitting Europe, countries must pay the banks what they demand, however much suffering this imposes on their peoples and however destructive it will be for their economies.
...[more]
Back to Front - They all lost
[WORKERS, JUNE 2010]
Like Brown, Cameron and Clegg intend to continue giving the banks all they want. In June 2006, Cameron hailed “the victory of capitalism, privatisation and liberalisation”. In September 2007 he said, “the world economy is more stable than for a generation.”
...[more]
The real agenda
[WORKERS, MAY 2010]
The Communist Party of Britain Marxist Leninist has recently concluded its 15th Congress (see WORKERS March 2010) with its analysis of Britain’s problems and what a working class has to do to rescue itself and the situation.
...[more]
The promise they'll keep
[WORKERS, MAY 2010]
So much for Labour’s stewardship of the economy. Investment in fixed assets (machinery and buildings) is not enough even to cover wear and tear – it’s down 22 per cent from the end of 2007 – by far the largest fall in any postwar slump.
...[more]
Back to Front - Call this democracy
[WORKERS, MAY 2010]
The majority of MPs have been found guilty of fiddling their expenses. Likewise, the majority of them have claimed for trips abroad and then – without declaring their interests, in breach of their own rules – asked parliamentary questions about the countries they visited.
...[more]
Democracy, not parliament
[WORKERS, APR 2010]
To Vote Labour or Lib Dem or Tory is to back finance capital and the banks, public spending cuts and tax rises, continued destruction of our industry, the Lisbon and Maastricht Treaties with their theft of our sovereignty, Thatcher’s anti-trade union laws, NATO and all its wars – in short, it is to back the continuation of capitalism in its absolute decline, along with its corrupt political system.
...[more]
Back to Front - Don't vote, organise
[WORKERS, APR 2010]
We are witnessing the longest General Election campaign in history. Last year’s Labour, Tory and Lib Dem conferences saw their spokesmen trying to outdo one another over who could cut public services the most – in other words, who could attack the working class the most. Later, Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg sang the praises of Thatcher, and the Tories are now heavily into union bashing. The EU Commission chips in by saying that no party’s cuts are sufficient, yet all of them seem quite happy that the Commission is now intervening in our financial affairs, even in our election!
...[more]
Embrace your party
[WORKERS, MAR 2010]
IN NOVEMBER the Communist Party held its 15th Congress since its founding in 1968. It had to consider not only the dire position of the working class – and anyone who denies that denies reality – but also how we are to escape from that position and reclaim our country for ourselves.
...[more]
What's right is right
[WORKERS, MAR 2010]
No other country in the world treats its own people in the way that happens here, allows its industry to be decimated and washes its hands – treachery hardly begins to describe these acts.
...[more]
Back to Front -PIGS fly home to roost
[WORKERS, MAR 2010]
The madness of welding together economies as disparate as an industrial Germany with those of rural Southern and Eastern Europe was bound to fail. And it has.
...[more]
Wishful thinking
[WORKERS, FEB 2010]
Britain is still producing wealth, at least enough for the Labour government to make us pay billions to the bankers and the EU, and billions for Labour’s illegal foreign wars.
...[more]
The rights of capital
[WORKERS, FEB 2010]
When we are balloted in a General Election, there is absolutely no control over who is on the electoral list.
...[more]
Back to Front - Beware US gifts
[WORKERS, FEB 2010]
In February 2004, WORKERS exclusively told the story of the Cuban Medical Brigade in Haiti, “Cuba’s Haitian heroes”, and the story of Haiti itself.
...[more]
Worse than the thirties
[WORKERS, JAN 2010]
THE 1930s hold a special place in labour movement history: a dark period, full of slump and unemployment. Well, the Labour government has contrived to trump the 1930s, producing a fall in GDP worse than in any year of that decade: 4.75 per cent.
...[more]
They made him
[WORKERS, JAN 2010]
As the Iraq inquiry under Sir John Chilcot gets into its stride, some interesting things are coming to light. The inquiry, of course, is intended as a whitewash, and what’s more set to report next year after the latest date for an election.
...[more]
Back to Front - Destroy the destroyers
[WORKERS, JAN 2010]
The Seventies changed everything. Working class struggles at that time ensured that the ruling class could not rule in the old way, so they created the monster Thatcher to destroy our class by destroying our industry and causing mass unemployment – absolute decline.
...[more]
Make it in Britain
[WORKERS, DEC 2009]
Increasing numbers of British people are expressing deep disquiet over the obscene amounts of foodstuffs imported into our country, which require transportation over huge distances, unnecessary air miles and wasteful consumption of fuel.
...[more]
Back to Front - A rocky road
[WORKERS, DEC 2009]
Given that the EU has recently ratified the Lisbon Treaty and presuming the Conservative Party carry out their declaration not to present the British people with a referendum on whether to accept the terms of the treaty, workers here need to consider the implications for our nation.
...[more]
It's class war...against the workers
[WORKERS, NOV 2009]
With capitalism in absolute decline, the ruling class is using the crisis they caused to attack industry and services, our whole class.
...[more]
What's the difference?
[WORKERS, NOV 2009]
There is not just the smell of death around this Labour government – there’s something worse.
...[more]
Back to Front - A province once more
[WORKERS, NOV 2009]
So after two centuries of struggle for liberation from British colonialism, the Irish Republic, in saying Yes to the Lisbon Treaty, finally capitulated to EU neo-imperialism.
...[more]
The agenda must be ours
[WORKERS, OCT 2009]
The tortuous 2009 local government pay round is over. The final agreement was reached after a consultation exercise of stunning non-involvement – once again plummeting participation levels which are too frightening to reflect on.
...[more]
Back to Front - The winds of profit
[WORKERS, OCT 2009]
There is much talk about “greening the environment”. No doubt the way our economy is organised now ferociously wastes finite natural resources. To hear the Greens talk one would think that everything can be solved by things such as wind power.
...[more]
In defence of the British working class
[WORKERS, SEPT 2009]
Capitalism’s fifth column in Britain – the ultra left – along with their allies in the liberal bourgeois establishment, have done their best to destroy any concept of a working class in this country. Their obsession with race, gender and sexuality has led to a situation where raising the issue of a British working class itself is dismissed by these bigots as racist, sexist or homophobic.
...[more]
Can't help, won't help
[WORKERS, SEPT 2009]
So, how to recover from the crash? The government and the opposition agree that we should rely on those who caused it. But life has proved that stock markets are not a reliable source of finance for industry and that they don’t help to develop efficient companies.
...[more]
Back to Front - In defence of protection
[WORKERS, SEPT 2009]
IF GORDON BROWN and Alistair Darling, Sarkozy and Merkel, the TUC and the EU all keep telling us how bad “protectionism” is, then maybe we ought to look at exactly what they are against – just in case it’s something that may be good for us.
...[more]
And the winner was...
[WORKERS, JULY 2009]
The most important result of the EU election? 65.7 per cent of us effectively said “No to the EU” by not voting at all – the turnout in Britain was 34.3 per cent, down from 38 per cent in 2004. This ever-rising abstention is what frightens our rulers. How the minority voted matters far less.
...[more]
Back to Front - Looking after ourselves
[WORKERS, JULY 2009]
Capitalism is hell-bent on destroying any structure, society, nation state, or people who get in the way of its unrelenting pursuit of profits. Its devouring of the seed corn of future survival, of people, of any principle or remnant of human dignity has brought it to its present economic debacle.
...[more]
If anything needs stopping, it's the EU
[WORKERS, JUNE 2009]
Labour says Vote Labour to stop the BNP. The Tories say vote Tory to stop the BNP. The Greens say vote Green to stop the BNP. The Church of England and the European Commission say vote to stop the BNP. The Times on 11 May said we must vote to stop the BNP. When Labour, the Tories, the Church, the European Commission and The Times all agree, workers should smell a rat.
...[more]
Blame the system
[WORKERS, JUNE 2009]
From fraudulent mortgage repayments on second homes to calculated nepotism, the sliding scale of rottenness would seemingly now apply to all 646 MPs. Like the bankers before them, they were only operating ‘within the system’.
...[more]
Back to Front - Surprised? Really?
[WORKERS, JUNE 2009]
We shouldn't be surprised at the behaviour of politicians or bankers, of the Speaker or the Prime Minster. This is capitalism and capitalist democracy in absolute decline, exposed in all its gory details and in beautiful Technicolor.
...[more]
The national is also international
[WORKERS, MAY 2009]
MAY DAY has been International Workers Day for over a century. But the background to this year’s celebrations around the world is new. The triumph of capitalism supposed to result from the destruction of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of a host of socialist countries – though not Cuba – has become a wake.
...[more]
Back to Front - The same old story
[WORKERS, MAY 2009]
World industrial production is set to fall by between 30 and 35 per cent this quarter, even worse than the 20 per cent plus fall in the last quarter of 2008. In the last year, industrial production fell in the eurozone by 18.4 per cent, in the USA by 12.8 per cent and in Japan by 38.4 per cent.
...[more]
To be killed not cured
[WORKERS, APR 2009]
So Madoff gets 150 years, the Financial Services Authority gets “tougher” on hedge funds and insider dealing, and stability returns to business and households, says Mandelson.
...[more]
Who needs the membership?
[WORKERS, APR 2009]
The ultra-left in Unite, Britain’s self-proclaimed biggest trade union, using anti-trade union legislation, appealed to the Certification Officer and forced a re-run of the General Secretary election.
...[more]
Back to Front - Fear and false unity
[WORKERS, APR 2009]
March was a bad month for Britain. Unemployment steepled up to over 2 million – and that’s just the official figures. And Brown agreed to the EU setting up a European Systemic Risk Council with ultimate authority over all financial markets in the EU. Not content with handing over the real economy to Brussels, he’s now given them the City.
...[more]
Make it here
[WORKERS, MAR 2009]
Capitalism’s absolute decline is hitting Britain hardest, because Britain’s capitalist class is the most in thrall to finance capital.
...[more]
Back to Front - Industry, not the euro
[WORKERS, MAR 2009]
In the global capitalist crisis we are instructed that the main threat to recovery is protectionism and nationalism. Running scared, the capitalist class and their spokesmen are keen to emphasise the global, fearing that a national line from the working class will overwhelm them.
...[more]
Bye, bye, euro
[WORKERS, FEB 2009]
AS THE EURO heads for parity with the pound, its supporters are coming back out of the woodwork. But the euro is the past, not the future.
...[more]
Back to Front - Keynes for the banks
[WORKERS, FEB 2009]
They tell us the figures are going to be bad, and then the figures turn out to be even worse. The latest, dreadful, figures on the economy, showing that overall production fell 1.5 per cent in the last quarter of 2008, illustrate that Brown’s management of the economy outdoes Thatcher’s in sheer incompetence.
...[more]
There's a thought
[WORKERS, JAN 2009]
Have we British workers any idea what is just around the corner? Do we, the sole remnants of the national entity, understand what we have allowed to develop?
...[more]
Back to Front - In love with the City
[WORKERS, JAN 2009]
As an object lesson in sheer cluelessness, the government’s interest rate cuts and VAT cut takes some beating. The new year has dawned, and all they have managed to do is spark a run on the pound while mortgaging the country for a generation at least.
...[more]
Out of control
[WORKERS, DEC 2008]
Phil Woolas, the new Immigration Minister, has said, “This government isn’t going to allow the population to go up to 70 million.” Fine – but how can this be achieved when the EU allows free movement to all its citizens?
...[more]
Boost industry, not banks
[WORKERS, DEC 2008]
The French government is planning to put 20 billion euros directly into a strategic investment fund designed to protect key French industries, bypassing the banks.
...[more]
Back to Front - Capitalism's carte blanche
[WORKERS, DEC 2008]
Now even capitalism’s apologists are saying this crisis could be worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s. Finance capital is entirely parasitic on production, and as it now devours itself it will also devour its host, if we let it.
...[more]
Something rotten in No. 10
[WORKERS, NOV 2008]
There’s a nasty smell hanging about this government, the smell of dictatorship. One might almost say of fascism, but they lack the uniform and most importantly the strength to go that far, yet.
...[more]
Back to Front - A fraud on workers
[WORKERS, NOV 2008]
“Very little is now built to order. Anyone wanting a new house picks one from among those built on speculation or still in the process of construction. The builder no longer works for his customers but for the market and builds from 100 to 200 houses…”
...[more]
Don't mention the migration
[WORKERS, OCT 2008]
Immigration has pushed population density in England to a higher level than any other major country in Europe. Figures released by the Office for National Statistics show there are 395 people per square kilometre in England. This is an increase of five per square kilometre in the past two years.
...[more]
Back to Front - Moving money about
[WORKERS, OCT 2008]
AFTER YEARS of being told that the City was an engine for “creating wealth”, the tens of thousands of workers in financial services – and not just in the high-profile collapses of recent weeks – must be wondering what’s gone wrong. Perhaps the reason is that they were never creating wealth in the first place.
...[more]
The drums of war
[WORKERS, SEPT 2008]
There's no sabre rattler like a Labour sabre rattler. To listen to Foreign Secretary Miliband, you'd wonder why we aren't sending an expeditionary force to Georgia to fight the Russians. He and Bush (and others) are turning the world into a very dangerous place.
...[more]
Back to Front - People are such a burden
[WORKERS, SEPT 2008]
OH DEAR! Disaster – or so the newspapers would have it. The reason: there are now more pensioners in Britain than under-16s, according to official figures (about which, as ever, there needs to be some caution).
...[more]
Ireland says No
[WORKERS, JULY 2008]
Not for the first time, the people of Ireland have spoken for the peoples of Europe, rejecting the EU's Constitutional Treaty by 53.4% to 46.6%.
...[more]
Back to Front - Wages, prices, profits
[WORKERS, JULY 2008]
To capitalists, the system that supports them is a complete mystery, and despite decades of Nobel prizes they have been unable to shed much light on its workings. So they seize upon any theory, however pathetic, to explain why it is so good, and what workers must do to keep it going.
...[more]
Unnatural disasters
[WORKERS, JUNE 2008]
US President George Bush made the most outrageously hypocritical statement recently while being filmed at the White House.
...[more]
Back to Front - Who asked us?
[WORKERS, JUNE 2008]
We are told our system of government – "democracy" – is so good we must spread it across the world, by force of arms if necessary.
...[more]
Two glimpses of the future
[WORKERS, MAY 2008]
Our Party has said that capitalism is in absolute decline and that if our class, the working class, does not take steps to replace it with something else, then we will go down with it. Only now are we beginning to glimpse what that might look like.
...[more]
Back to Front - Bailing out bankers
[WORKERS, MAY 2008]
Northern Rock has said it will cut about 2,000 jobs by 2011 and reduce its residential mortgage lending by half. Unions have said they will fight any compulsory redundancies.
...[more]
How are the mighty fallen
[WORKERS, APR 2008]
Everywhere you look, the triumphant march of capitalism seems to be in some difficulty. Far from being clever and innately superior to any other form of social organisation, its "success" rests on a foundation of debt. This they call wealth creation.
...[more]
The archbishop, the PM, and Lisbon
[WORKERS, APR 2008]
THE MUSINGS of the Archbishop of Canterbury on "Sharia" law have thrown up some unintended consequences.
...[more]
Back to Front - Get Serious
[WORKERS, APR 2008]
AS WE enter the fourth month of the TUC Public Sector Unions' campaign on pay there is a slow realisation that it is going to be protracted and with very few fireworks. Those who thought it was going to a grand heroic charge that would bring down the government's pay restraint policy have been proved very foolish. Those who saw it more as sabre-rattling are being proved correct.
...[more]
The future worked
[WORKERS, MAR 2008]
After 140 years of deep coal extraction, Tower Colliery in Rhondda Cynon Taf, South Wales, closed on 25 January. Miners and their families marched proudly from the colliery to mark the closure of the last deep coalmine in Wales, and to celebrate the unique achievement of the Tower miners in running the pit themselves for the past 13 years.
...[more]
A little French lesson
[WORKERS, MAR 2008]
The news has trickled through (good news rarely travels fast) of the action of French workers last month striking back at plans to shift their jobs to Slovakia, where wages are lower.
...[more]
Back to Front - Goodbye China
[WORKERS, MAR 2008]
These days Hoover and Vax household appliances are made in Hong Kong. And when the owner of the brands warned last year that growing "inflationary" and cost pressures in China were forcing it to look elsewhere for future manufacturing capacity, it was a straw in the wind for this new "workshop of the world".
...[more]
All power to the power station
[WORKERS, FEB 2008]
The decision by Medway Council in Kent to support the planning permission for the refurbishment of the Kingsnorth coal-burning power station is to be applauded and supported. The private generator Eon's plan to invest over £1 billion in the mothballed station is also to be welcomed.
...[more]
Referendum now!
[WORKERS, FEB 2008]
January saw the start of the parliamentary debate on the EU treaty/constitution signed by Gordon Brown in private away from the photographers. MPs will have a little over a month before the final vote is taken.
...[more]
Back to Front - Feet of clay
[WORKERS, FEB 2008]
The so-called giants of Wall Street are tottering. Simply in order to survive, they are drawing in huge funds from abroad, selling off stakes in themselves and mortgaging their own futures. And these are the companies that thought they ruled the world.
...[more]
Forty years young
[WORKERS, JAN 2008]
The Communist Party of Britain was formed 40 years ago. And we are still here, while most of what appeared during the interesting year of 1968 has long since disappeared or found a resting place in obscure history books – or in the case of the "leader" of student revolt in Paris in 1968, a well-padded seat as a middle-of-the-road Green MEP.
...[more]
Back to Front - Paying for the privilege
[WORKERS, JAN 2008]
LABOUR is nothing if not predictable. Under fire for accepting cash from anonymous or expatriate donors, its response is to suggest that political parties should be funded by the state; which is to say, by the taxpayers.
...[more]
Who dares talk about migration?
[WORKERS, DEC 2007]
In this issue of Workers we return, and not for the first time, to the question of the free movement of labour. Why? Because it represents a deep-seated challenge to the British working class. And let us be clear what we mean by the British working class: all those, of whatever origin, living permanently in Britain and living by selling their labour power.
...[more]
Back to Front - Thoughts of war
[WORKERS, DEC 2007]
It is a marker of just how far Labour has come in its open admiration for military aggression and capitalist expansionism, that foreign secretary David Miliband could write the speech he was due to give in Bruges in late November.
...[more]
Pay your way, capitalist-style
[WORKERS, NOV 2007]
Tuesday, the day before the Russia v England European Championship qualification match and leading up to the three o'clock news on TalkSport, presenters Hawksbee and Jacobs link with the radio station's correspondent in Moscow. Mike Parry is setting the scene and speaks fulsomely of how the city has changed from the cliché grey of communism into a metropolis made vibrant by rampant free enterprise.
...[more]
Back to Front - Fraudulent and phoney
[WORKERS, NOV 2007]
So Gordon Brown promised us a new type of politics. No spin, more inclusiveness and honesty. Any illusions that British workers may have had about a break with the past were rudely dismissed by events in September.
...[more]
Speaking for Britain
[WORKERS, OCT 2007]
THE TUC has spoken for Britain. Despite all the bluff of Brown and the manoeuvrings of his allies in the unions, Congress called overwhelmingly for the British people to have the chance to vote against the new European Constitution (ie, the treaties effectively bringing it into force).
...[more]
Back to Front - Building profits
[WORKERS, OCT 2007]
From the newspapers you might assume that the finance problems of the NHS were a result of incompetent managers or overgenerous pay awards. But closer examination reveals how the Private Finance Initiative is literally draining away public funds.
...[more]
Unfinished business
[WORKERS, SEPT 2007]
After a 97.1 per cent 'YES' vote by Unison members for the renegotiated local government pension scheme, a scheme which covers over 1 million members in local government, further and higher education, transport, police civilians and the Environment Agency, Unison regards the fight to defend the scheme as drawing to a close.
...[more]
Back to Front - A subprime system
[WORKERS, SEPT 2007]
EVERY SO often, the hidden workings of capitalism come to light, and what strange workings they are. The latest example – as usual, it seems to take a crisis to winkle out these odd practices – is the US subprime market.
...[more]
By any other name
[WORKERS, JULY 2007]
THEY LIKE grand names in Brussels. So when they came up with a plan to give the European Union a proper legal personality (now, there's a thought...it doesn't really exist) and strip national governments of their powers, it only seemed right to give it a grand name. Let's call it a constitution, they said.
...[more]
Back to Front - Bye bye, Blair
[WORKERS, JULY 2007]
Blair is finally going, leaving behind him, for all the talk of legacy, a poisoned inheritance. Even the most demented Victorian imperialists would have thought twice before entering into as many and such frequent foreign military adventures as this government has taken us into: Iraq, Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Iraq again.
...[more]
Make capitalism history
[WORKERS, JUNE 2007]
Once-large and once-vibrant unions seem to want to crawl into a hole. The Iron & Steel Trades Confederation, with close to 300,000 members 30 years ago, now has a tenth of that number and has, in shame perhaps, now re-named itself "Community". Surely a matter for the Trades Descriptions Act.
...[more]
Back to Front - Some independence!
[WORKERS, JUNE 2007]
The British agents of the EU led by Blair are resourceful but ultimately limited, resorting to old tricks. Separatism for the regions of Britain, originally called devolution, was first attempted by a Labour government in the late 1970s. An obvious variant of the divide and rule tactic, it attempts to maintain the domination of Capital.
...[more]
The assault on pensions
[WORKERS, MAY 2007]
The recent unmasking of Brown and his part in the pensions attack is welcome. But his removal of advance corporation tax in 1997 has not been the only reason for the pensions problems. For example, no mention has been made in the popular press of the inflated actuarial assumptions that have been applied since the late 1990s to measure pensions liabilities.
...[more]
Apologise? What for?
[WORKERS, MAY 2007]
There's a lot of sanctimonious drivel talked about the slave trade and its so-called abolition (see Abolition? What abolition?, p11). And none more sanctimonious nor drivelling than London Mayor Livingstone, "apologising" for London's alleged role.
...[more]
Back to Front - No threat to us
[WORKERS, MAY 2007]
Iran is no threat, it is not about to attack anybody. And so any attack on Iran would be illegal and a breach of the UN Charter, which prohibits the use of force. But there are threats to attack Iran, coming from both sides of the Atlantic.
...[more]
An inglorious anniversary
[WORKERS, APR 2007]
Fifty years ago six European countries came together and signed the Treaty of Rome, creating the European Union's forerunner, the EEC. This shoddy anniversary went, thankfully, almost unremarked in Britain. Even the TUC, often the cheerleader for Europhiles, stayed silent.
...[more]
Back to Front - A worse and wider war
[WORKERS, APR 2007]
The US government has refused diplomacy by rejecting the Baker-Hamilton Report on Iraq with its limited, compromised and conditional approach to preventing a worse and wider war. The US occupation of Iraq is the cause of all Iraq's present problems, and nothing can be settled until the occupying forces leave.
...[more]
Unity, not separatism
[WORKERS, MAR 2007]
All over Britain collectivism is under attack from capitalism. In places, that attack is being resisted by the working class. Collective, unified class action is indeed our only defence, which is why employers and their political henchmen hate it so much.
...[more]
Import labour, export jobs
[WORKERS, FEB 2007]
British employers seem to have only two strategies. 1: if you can move the work elsewhere, then find cheaper labour abroad. 2: if you can't move the work abroad, then go abroad and import cheaper labour. That, in a nutshell, is what that fancy term globalisation is all about.
...[more]
Back to Front - Making monsters
[WORKERS, FEB 2007]
Imperialism creates monsters to destroy its enemies; the monsters then turn against their master. It is using Al-Qaeda to destabilise its economic rivals China and India. It is still protecting bin Laden and his sponsors the Pakistani and Saudi states.
...[more]
Privatisation prepares the way...
[WORKERS, JAN 2007]
It started with Thatcher. She first privatised the steel industry and worked her way through a series of state industries including gas, electricity, telecoms, water, coal, shipbuilding, and rail and air transport. The objective was to breathe new life into a dying capitalism by letting it exploit and make profits from previous off limits industries and funded by the working class. In the process trade unions could be destroyed and all concepts of public ownership or enterprise with them.
...[more]
Season's - and anniversary - greetings
[WORKERS, JAN 2007]
WORKERS wishes all its readers a happy and combative new year. Not just better than the last one, but a real year for progress.
...[more]
Back to Front - It's all gone wrong
[WORKERS, JAN 2007]
The involvement of the "axis of evil" in the search for peace in Iraq must be the ultimate humiliation for the American architects of war. It all started so well, an apparently swift victory in Afghanistan led to grand designs to reform the middle east on the American model.
...[more]
Go red for green
[WORKERS, DEC 2006]
Amid all the talk of green taxes, carbon footprints and global warming, one country is ploughing ahead with moves to reduce energy consumption on a massive scale. Last year, socialist Cuba declared that the year 2006 would be the year of the energy revolution.
...[more]
PFI: No debt for the wicked
[WORKERS, DEC 2006]
The costs to the NHS of Private Finance Initiative schemes have now been quantified at in excess of £53 billion over the next 30 years. Profits for the consortia that have funded PFIs are showing returns in excess of 1,000 per cent at Cornwall Partnership NHS Trust and over 1,361 per cent at South Manchester University NHS Trust.
...[more]
Back to Front - Together at last
[WORKERS, DEC 2006]
The lobby of the House of Commons on 1 November by NHS Together, the joint NHS trade union and health care professionals campaign, was successful in that over 2,000 health staff came together. On the other hand, meeting their MPs, especially Labour MPs, was in many instances an exercise in trying to communicate with the dead, or at least with the deaf.
...[more]
Cul-de-sac
[WORKERS, NOV 2006]
After two one-day national strikes the Unison members employed by NHS Logistics have given up their token protest against privatisation to DHL. The TGWU members voted against the strike. GMB members sent a message of solidarity and went to work.
...[more]
The lobbying season
[WORKERS, NOV 2006]
November sees two major lobbies of the House of Commons: on 1 November over the future of the NHS and health care provision; on 22 November about local government pensions.
...[more]
Back to Front - Unions, incorporated
[WORKERS, NOV 2006]
Given the TUC's less than glorious record in defending workers' rights in Britain, it's hard to avoid a feeling of irony in the news last month that TUC experts were heading off to Warsaw to advise Polish workers on what rights and wages to expect in Britain.
...[more]
Bring them back - alive
[WORKERS, OCT 2006]
The cry is going up everywhere from Whitehall to the White House, from Herat to the House of Commons. "We didn't expect it to be like this. We didn't expect this kind of trouble. Why are they fighting so hard?"
...[more]
Back to Front - Forwards or backwards?
[WORKERS, OCT 2006]
The 138th Trades Union Congress has concluded, and workers should ask themselves in which direction – backwards or forwards – 19th century or 21st century – are we moving? Fewer unions, fewer members, fewer delegates and yet supposedly the unions have the ear, the deaf ear, of government. Government displays itself as the school yard tantrums of Blair, Brown and other self-promoting, largely ex-union, officials wanting to aspire to Downing Street.
...[more]
Don't underestimate Cuba
[WORKERS, SEPT 2006]
The Bush administration set aside around $80 million for the "Transition to a Free Cuba". A plan was drawn up to establish capitalism in Cuba in the event of Fidel Castro's death. A secret annex to the plan outlined invasion plans. Activists in mass organisations were to be rounded up and imprisoned – trade unionists, women, young people, and communists.
...[more]
Back to Front - Supply and demand
[WORKERS, SEPT 2006]
IF YOU wanted to put young people off higher education, you couldn't make a better fist at it than the Labour government. Figures published in August suggest that sixth-formers with their A-levels are contemplating an average cost of £33,512 to get a degree. Not government figures, of course – don't expect them to reveal anything; these figures come from the NatWest bank.
...[more]
Privatise first, then sell abroad
[WORKERS, JULY 2006]
THE AIRPORT operator BAA, privatised in 1987 for £1.2 billion, is to be taken over by Spanish construction firm Ferrovial in a deal worth £10.3 billion. Ferrovial has already indicated it intends to outsource and reduce overheads. BAA controls 92% of travellers passing through London and 86% of those passing through Scotland so Ferrovial's monopoly position and transfer of work out of London and Scotland can only damage those local economies.
...[more]
Make them pay for outsourcing
[WORKERS, JULY 2006]
Powergen, the utilities company, is to close its outsourced call centres in India and relocate them back to Britain, where 980 staff will be recruited. Its decision to locate in India was economic – workers could be employed at a small fraction of the wages paid in Britain. So is its decision to relocate to the UK – relocation is costing too much in complaints and reparation to its 6 million customers in Britain.
...[more]
Back to Front - Political Economics
[WORKERS, JULY 2006]
The National Health Service, according to government figures, now has a deficit of £1.3 billion. London has a deficit of £213 million.
...[more]
Out of control
[WORKERS, JUNE 2006]
In the past seven years, the government has deliberately let 1,023 foreign prisoners return to society without deportation hearings. The policy was to release them without any check of their status, in order to meet its own target of cutting the number of asylum claims. Public safety didn't come into it.
...[more]
Back to Front - Their deal, not ours
[WORKERS, JUNE 2006]
Early May's news headlines reporting that an agreement on pensions retirement age had been reached must have at first taken workers by surprise. Certainly there had been no prior mention of negotiations taking place, let alone indications of a possible settlement with those unions involved in the successful day of action on 28 March.
...[more]
Making the people pay
[WORKERS, MAY 2006]
Blair, Cameron and Campbell agree that we should all fund their parties. Don't they get enough already?
...[more]
Get the troops out now
[WORKERS, MAY 2006]
The current big lie about Iraq is that the war is being ended. But Blair will not willingly withdraw British forces because to do so would be to admit that the war was in vain.
...[more]
Rewriting history
[WORKERS, APR 2006]
The death of Slobodan Milosevic has occasioned a massive rewriting of history. Suppression of the truth is the rule.
...[more]
Bolkestein dead – perhaps
[WORKERS, MAR 2006]
In February over 65,000 trade unionists took to the streets to protest in Berlin and Strasbourg, as MEPs debated the hated Directive on Services. The Bolkestein Directive attracted the most attention, as its implemen-tation would have devastated pay, standards, qualifications and working conditions through-out Europe. MEPs had to wrestle with 404 amendments to this directive (out of an original 1,500!). After a two-year struggle, however, on 16 February Bolkestein was finally laid to rest.
...[more]
Labour deserved to lose Dunfermline
[WORKERS, MAR 2006]
IN THE run-up to the Dunfermline by-election, one of the town's major industrial employers shut – Lexmark, the computer printer company, with the loss of 700 jobs. The day after the election, the town lost a further 70 jobs as the electronics company Simclar moved more production to "low cost" plants overseas.
...[more]
Back to Front – Workers of the world
[WORKERS, MAR 2006]
Remember the World Federation of Trade Unions? Established in 1945, it created a world trade union organisation to represent the working class of the world just as the United Nations was to represent the nations of the world following the defeat of fascism. It supported the anti-fascist forces in post- war Greece and Spain and was responsible for many countries withdrawing their ambassadors from Franco's Spain.
...[more]
Caught in the French slipstream
[WORKERS, FEB 2006]
French President Jacques Chirac warned on 19 January that France was ready and willing to use its nuclear weapons against any state that mounted a terrorist attack on French soil. This is a clear departure from France's professed policy of no 'first strike' – and if you follow his logic through, it could also embroil Britain in a nuclear attack. That is the logic of the EU.
...[more]
Back up into the trees
[WORKERS, FEB 2006]
WITHOUT DARWIN, the Galapagos Islands would not be such a tourist magnet. But now, we hear, the manager of a resort on the Galapagos has told a guide not to bring up the topic of evolution, because of complaints, mainly from Americans convinced that Darwin is the devil.
...[more]
You only live once
[WORKERS, JAN 2006]
Dignity at birth. Dignity in infancy, childhood, youth. Dignity at work. Dignity if needing support or in trouble. Dignity in retirement. You only live once. Might as well live a dignified existence on earth and earn good wages and pensions. And spare a thought for each other to be really dignified.
...[more]
Back to Front - Join the future
[WORKERS, JAN 2006]
Are we casting our eyes back over the year 2005 and looking forward to 2006, or are we looking back over the year 1905 and looking forward to 1906? OK, so there were no mobile phones, aeroplanes and celebrity love islands 100 years ago, but in politics we're in an eerily familiar place there.
...[more]
The cost of war
[WORKERS, DEC 2005]
The Iraq war cost Britain almost £3.1 billion up to the end of March, according to the Ministry of Defence. Its annual report shows operations in Iraq cost £910 million in the last financial year, as against £847 million in 2002/3 and £1.3 billion in 2003/4. The US spends around $70 billion a year on the war.
...[more]
Charity belongs...out of school
[WORKERS, DEC 2005]
Every secondary school in England is to receive £500 as part of a package on charitable giving called "A Generous Society". Pupils will be encouraged to top up the £500 through fundraising efforts of their own, and will be responsible for managing the fund.
...[more]
Back to Front - Whose democracy?
[WORKERS, DEC 2005]
When asked by visiting British doctors why Cuba could not have multi-party elections, the president of a major Cuban medical institution replied, "If we permitted an opposition party, it would be funded by the US. However, we would beat it in a fair election, and then the US would step up its funding again and four years later we would win again in a second election. By the third election, the US funding may be sufficient to secure the opposition victory. They would then have to repay the US and we would have a US puppet government, and then we would have to have our revolution all over again, and we would win."
...[more]
Phoney war, real disgrace
[WORKERS, NOV 2005]
The battle over public-sector pensions is not over yet, whatever victories may be trumpeted following the latest agreement between unions and government. In fact, the battle has yet to start. All we have seen so far is posturing, designed not to preserve decent pensions but to save the blushes of a Labour government that knows no shame anyway.
...[more]
Back to Front - An occupied country
[WORKERS, NOV 2005]
Increasingly Britain is being run through Blair from Brussels. Most workers would think that is an overstatement.
...[more]
the sentence from brussels
[WORKERS, OCT 2005]
The European Court of Justice's ruling of 13 September gives the EU the power to jail British citizens. After a qualified majority vote (i.e., no British veto), the EU could now force all EU members to impose criminal penalties, including prison sentences, on their citizens for breaking EU rules. It could force British courts to imprison people, even if government, parliament and courts were opposed.
...[more]
two blairs, one attack
[WORKERS, OCT 2005]
When political leaders such as Blair lose their grip on reality they often take refuge in draconian laws and censorship to appear strong and decisive. The current dictatorial proposals are no accident: the political standing of Bush and Blair is at an all-time low.
...[more]
back to front - follow the leader
[WORKERS, OCT 2005]
IT IS HARD for the political pundits. Every time a party conference comes round, they need to think of something new to say. That must be the only excuse for the surprise that Gordon Brown is now promising to carry on the "New Labour" programme. After all, he has been Chancellor of the Exchequer for the entire disastrous period since 1997, organising the funding for Blair's counter-revolution.
...[more]
london bombings: cpbm-l statement
[WORKERS, SEPT 2005]
The barbaric bombing of Londoners on Thursday 7 July is to be utterly condemned, without reservation. This massacre of British workers, deliberately timed to kill and maim people travelling to work on tubes and buses, succeeded insofar as many died and were injured. But the brilliant skills, creativity, indomitable spirit and rationality of British workers displayed in London on the day, and since, give the lie to the inhuman fascists who carried out, or connived in, these acts, wishing to push us into a dark age of unreason and fear.
...[more]
the poverty of sanctity
[WORKERS, SEPT 2005]
One of the Make Poverty History campaign's demands is "make laws to stop big business profiting at the expense of people and the environment." This reveals the naivety, not to say connivance, of those behind the campaign. Big business exists in order to profit at the expense of people. It has no other purpose. No law is going to stop it doing what it depends on doing.
...[more]
back to front - migration and power
[WORKERS, SEPT 2005]
Speaking in Bradford in June, the Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, said, "Immigration has reduced wage inflation:...If the increased demand for labour generates its own supply in the form of migrant labour then the link between demand and prices is broken...Indeed, in an economy that can call on unlimited supplies of migrant labour, the concept of output gap is meaningless...the inflow of migrant labour, especially in the past year or so from Eastern Europe, has probably led to a diminution of inflationary pressure on the labour market...Without this influx to fill the skill gaps in a tight labour market, it is likely earnings would have risen at a faster rate, putting upward pressure on the costs of employers."
...[more]
EU Constitution: CPBM-L Statement
[WORKERS, JULY 2005]
After the magnificent votes against the EU Constitution in France and Holland, those here who want to try to save the tatters of a Treaty are desperate to deny a similar vote to British workers. So Kinnock, on behalf of Brussels as ever, immediately declared the Constitution dead, seeing this as the best way to try to salvage it by bringing it in some other way. But the Treaty — signed by Blair — is still there. Straw followed Kinnock's lead, telling Parliament that the British referendum would be put on hold.
...[more]
back to front - rewriting history
[WORKERS, JULY 2005]
We live at a time when we can actually see history being rewritten. The 60th anniversary of the defeat of fascism in 1945 is a case in point. Schools are already equating Stalin with Hitler. The history of China and Mao is now being reversed as if it were truth. Now the role of the USSR in World War II is being rewritten. Bush's decision to visit Latvia and Georgia either side of the celebrations in Moscow shows one man who is behind the rewriting.
...[more]
first thoughts - nasty but weak
[WORKERS, JUNE 2005]
RE-elected for a second time, Blair wasted no time putting his cronies into jobs — even lavishing a peerage on policy adviser Andrew Adonis, the "brains" behind university top-up fees. Adonis, of course, was not elected by anyone. But then again, not many voted for a Labour government either: just 36%, or around 21% of the electorate, barely 1 in 5 of the adult population. Many of those hate Blair as well, voting Labour only because the alternatives seemed even less acceptable. But what, exactly, is more acceptable about Labour?
...[more]
back to front - the centre cannot hold
[WORKERS, JUNE 2005]
In his poem "The Second Coming" W. B. Yeats wrote: "Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold". And though the recent Westminster and local government elections in northern Ireland were not exactly what he had in mind, his words were nonetheless prophetic.
...[more]
first thoughts - election lies
[WORKERS, MAY 2005]
The general election is a fraud and a farce. The politicians of all the parliamentary parties conspire to lie about Britain and its future. The government's attacks on Britain and on other countries are not to be discussed.
...[more]
second opinion - VE day
[WORKERS, MAY 2005]
The 60th anniversary of the victory in Europe of the Allied Powers over Nazism and Fascism falls on 9 May. It is to the honour of the British Legion that they have commissioned their Victory and Freedom remembrance campaign to run throughout the General Election campaign.
...[more]
back to front - rover: killed by capitalism
[WORKERS, MAY 2005]
If you want to understand the calculated destruction of Rover, read Ford Strike — The Workers' Story by John Mathews, published in 1972. There is no better analysis of the problems facing the British mass manufacturing car industry in the late 1960s and early 1970s and by foresight and prediction its almost total demise 35 years later.
...[more]
first thoughts - pensions puzzle
[WORKERS, APR 2005]
ONE-AND-A-HALF MILLION public service workers must be scratching their heads at the government's sudden about-face over so-called pension reform (see related news article), leading to the cancellation of the planned 23 March national strike.
...[more]
second opinion - productive values
[WORKERS, APR 2005]
Belated government figures for 2002 indicate that the contribution of manufacturing to the creation of value in Britain was in the region of £150 billion – or just one-seventh of Britain's wealth. And the decline has continued to the present day.
...[more]
first thoughts: thatcherism for ever? [WORKERS, MAR 2005]
The government has decided that the referendum question must be, "Should the United Kingdom approve the treaty establishing a constitution for the European Union?" But this is seriously misleading. It is not a question of "approving" a treaty — to answer Yes to this question would be to pledge allegiance to what would be our new constitution — the trap would shut.
...[more]
second opinion: market madness [WORKERS, MAR 2005]
The internal market has become an obsession with Blair's gang. John Hutton, a junior minister at the Department of Health, says the government should end the redistribution of surpluses to less successful hospitals and schools and allow the more successful ones to retain the money "to improve their services".
...[more]
back to front — merger mania [WORKERS, MAR 2005]
UNISON says it wants to work closer with the German public service union ver.di. Amicus has entered into closer working with its German counterpart IG-Metal. Are these the first stages towards mammoth EU-wide trade unions in the public services or manufacturing? Or the fulfilling of an EU directive on the trade unions reflecting the industrial structure of the EU?
...[more]
first thoughts - just work and die [WORKERS, FEB 2005]
THERE ARE times when European Union directives are so handy for the government, you would think they had been written in Whitehall. (And who knows, you might be right.) Take the latest "anti-discrimination legislation", designed to force us to treat people looking to retire (or not) equally regardless of their age (see Eurotrash news article).
...[more]
back to front - lord of the lies [WORKERS, FEB 2005]
It is now three-and-a-half years since Bush promised to get "the people who knocked these buildings down". Instead, he and Blair attacked Iraq, the one Middle Eastern country where there was no al Qaeda.
...[more]
first thoughts - 'democracy' [WORKERS, JAN 2005]
What will 2005 hold for us? Will the Russian mafia buy the Premiership title? Will Britain overtake North America and Australia in the World's Biggest Gamblers league? Well, apart from anything else, we're told 2005 will be a general election year. We should be pleased, grateful even, as 2005 will have more than the usual store of 'democracy' in it.
...[more]
back to front - organised, rational
[WORKERS, JAN 2005]
There is a lot going on. There is a malaise of hyperactivity. Everyone is at it: elections in the United States creating hysteria; 100,000 killed in Iraq; savage wars over minerals; retail markets and of course oil and gas. Fiddled elections in the Ukraine to keep fascists out, then clamour in the streets as if respectable; separatists murdering school children in Russia; the Israeli Apartheid Wall to which terrorists obligingly respond; terrorist MI5 doubling its budget and agents; agriculture and productive industries closed and run down every day; super profits made by the US and the Bin Laden family on the destruction of Iraq; and Ian Paisley, aware of Protestant weapon stores, but demanding photographs of republican gun destruction!
...[more]
first thoughts - regionalisation rejected [WORKERS, DEC 2004]
Workers in North East England voted decisively against a regional assembly in November: 78% against on a 48% turnout. This result put a stop to referendums due to take place in Yorkshire & Humberside and North West England, and damaged campaigns for votes elsewhere — and may have delayed even further the planned polls on the euro and the European Constitution (see article, page 8). All in all, a stunning result.
...[more]
second opinion - UN support for cuba [WORKERS, DEC 2004]
For the thirteenth year in a row the United Nations General Assembly has voted for the US blockade of Cuba to be lifted. The vote was Cuba 179, USA 4. The USA, Israel, the Marshall Islands and Palau all voted against. There was one abstention.
...[more]
back to front - foxes and chickens [WORKERS, DEC 2004]
WHAT BRAVE men and women our MPs are! Too cowardly to stand up to Blair over Iraq, over tuition fees, over industrial destruction over...well, you name it, they have finally stood up for a vicious if rather cute-looking bit of carnivorous vermin. (At least, it looks cute if you're not a real chicken.)
...[more]
first thoughts - iraq [WORKERS, NOV 2004]
IT'S A LOSE-LOSE SITUATION. For the Iraqi people, occupation by, among other, British forces is a denial of national independence, accompanied by oppression, killing and the normal savagery of an imperialist army of occupation. For us in Britain, we have the shame of seeing our army used in this way, our prime minister following orders from Washington, our soldiers killed and injured (see feature article)....[more]
second opinion - eu interference [WORKERS, NOV 2004]
Before one sod has been turned or one brick laid for the proposed new Thames Gateway Bridge, which will link Beckton in East London with Thamesmead on the south bank, the European Union has intervened. Local residents and businesses were to be charged lower tolls as part of the regeneration of the Thames Gateway, but the EU has declared this unlawful....[more]
back to front - a very brussels coup [WORKERS, NOV 2004]
It's been described as the biggest slow motion coup d'etat in history. The drive towards one legal and political entity under one constitution, known as the European Union, has reached a crossroads. The multinationals and bankers want ultimate power over a superstate in which nations cease to exist....[more]
first thoughts - liberation begins at home [WORKERS, OCT 2004]
October will see the European Social Forum (ESF) come to London. This is the third ESF, popular with European globe-trotters, who may also have attended the World Social Forum which was held in Mumbai in January 2004....[more]
second opinion - ban on fox hunting [WORKERS, OCT 2004]
Protesters against the ban on fox hunting have invaded the House of Commons and forced a Minister to cancel his walk on Kinder Scout, celebrating the Right to Roam. Quite right. This government is happy to abolish thousands of jobs in the countryside, where most workers struggle to earn a meagre living....[more]
back to front - made in britain [WORKERS, OCT 2004]
The way some people in the labour movement see Blair, you'd think that his position of leader was some kind of historical accident, the result of a hijacking rather than what it is — an organic development within the Labour Party, made in Britain, the natural culmination of a journey that started with Ramsay Macdonald, continued with Attlee and NATO, Wilson and the first attacks on unions, and went on with Callaghan and the Winter of Discontent....[more]
first thoughts - sudan [WORKERS, SEPT 2004]
Blair says that Britain has a "moral responsibility" for the decisions taken by the Sudanese government. Why? Because Britain misruled the Sudan until 1956? Does he think we have a right to interfere wherever the flag of empire flew, or could it be that southern Sudan has become a significant oil exporter?...[more]
second opinion - london tube [WORKERS, SEPT 2004]
Whingeing like a market stall holder who has to pay his Saturday labour too much, Mayor Livingstone decided to blast the RMT and cross its picket lines if the gutter press needed him to. It would have been a classic photo opportunity....[more]
back to front - politics of closure [WORKERS, SEPT 2004]
While the government tinkers with all-inclusive postal ballots, as trialled in the North of England during the June local elections, and pontificates about regional government and the fragmentation of the UK, attention should be given to the state of local government....[more]
first thoughts - pensions [WORKERS, JULY 2004]
The fight for pensions (see "Pensions plan threatened", p3) cannot take place in isolation. It has got to be part of the fight for the future of Britain. Our pensions are a vital part of our wages and salaries, and as with our wages, employers and their governments always seek to keep pensions as low as possible....[more]
second opinion - government extends illegal occupation [WORKERS, JULY 2004]
The illegal 37-year US occupation of Diego Garcia and related islands by the US military has now been extended by the British government. The forcible deportation of the islanders in 1967, to create a vast US military base threatening the Middle East and Indian Ocean, was authorised by the British government, which leased the islands to the US. After 30 years of legal challenge, the High Courts ruled in 2000 that the islands should be returned to the indigenous people....[more]
back to front - dirty dealing [WORKERS, JULY 2004]
IT LOOKS like we now have a new word in the language: "toilettage". And a fitting word it is to describe the process of attempting to remove the stench from the European Constitution in order to convince the nations of the European Union to accept it (there will be a full analysis in the next edition of Workers). Blair talks of a triumph, but then he talks about everything as a triumph. In fact it is the biggest shift of power from Britain since the Roman invasion. We'd better all prepare for a massive barrage of spin....[more]
first thoughts - election propaganda barrage [WORKERS, JUNE 2004]
The message from Westminster and Brussels is clear: whatever you do, just vote in the European elections this month. A propaganda barrage is being levelled at the British people, varying from European Commission adverts in cinemas with breast-feeding babies, to dire warnings about the threat posed by the BNP....[more]
second opinion - thatcher and blair [WORKERS, JUNE 2004]
May 3rd was the 25th anniversary of Thatcher coming to power. Applauded? Only slightly by a few of her old retinue. Medals issued? No. Statues raised? Only one, awaiting repair from being beheaded. Rolled out in the Tory or even Labour election campaign? No. Missed by anyone? No. Hated by millions? Yes. All that's missing from her footnote in history is the date of her death....[more]
back to front - power play [WORKERS, JUNE 2004]
Whatever their initial views on the US invasion, most Iraqis now see it as a traditional colonial war, where the occupier fights to get control of a country's resources, then remains in order to keep it. They want the occupying troops withdrawn immediately, and increasing numbers of Iraqis are prepared to fight them. And the predictions that the ethnic and religious divisions in the country would prevent Iraqi unity have been confounded....[more]
first thoughts - ditching britain [WORKERS, MAY 2004]
When it comes to ditching Britain Labour has been creative in its tactics. Blair is doing the splits. One foot is in the United States and one in Europe. The two are pulling further apart and the nation of Britain is about to be torn apart. He has made the country beholden one minute to the war-mongering rantings of the United States, the next gripped by the privatising feeding frenzy of the EU....[more]
second opinion - referendum [WORKERS, MAY 2004]
Blair decided about a referendum on the EU's new constitution all on his own, on holiday, in Bermuda. He did not talk to the cabinet, his party, parliament or his allies, the Europhiles and the EU's leaders. God knows who he did consult! So, to nobody's surprise, he has annoyed them all....[more]
back to front - revelations on iraq [WORKERS, MAY 2004]
Revelations in the American Congressional hearings, and now being published elsewhere, are piling up to prove that the Bush and Blair governments are not really interested in fighting terrorism. Both the Clinton and Bush administrations continually refused Sudan's offer to share their files on Osama bin Laden, because the files showed his links to the Saudi government and the Bush family. The last US Ambassador to Sudan called this US refusal worse than a crime....[more]
first thoughts - bombs in madrid [WORKERS, APRIL 2004]
WHEN THE bombs went off in Madrid last month, the Spanish government claimed that the modus operandi bore the imprint of ETA, a desperate and ultimately failed lie whose aim was to avoid to electoral backlash. Later, commentators found evidence of al-Qaeda involvement. There was much talk about kinds of explosive, and so on. But the real evidence linking 11 September with Madrid was there for all to see: they were both attacks on workers....[more]
second opinion - blair breaks the law [WORKERS, APRIL 2004]
When the Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, gave Blair two sheets of A4 claiming that the invasion of Iraq was legal, Blair did not let the Cabinet discuss this summary or see the full advice. He won't let us see it either, falsely claiming that 'Governments never' publish the Attorney-General's advice....[more]
first thoughts - euro and eu questions [WORKERS, MARCH 2004]
Rugged, ripe Britain is performing only less well than Canada and Australia and is a haven for capitalist investment. We thrive while the eurozone, also very capitalist, takes a dive....[more]
second opinion - war criminals in charge [WORKERS, MARCH 2004]
On the day that American arms inspectors were lining up to confess there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, virtue descended on the British government thanks to loyal servant of the Crown, albeit a Protestant from Northern Ireland, Lord Hutton. Hutton defended British soldiers following Bloody Sunday....[more]
back to front - a modern slave trade [WORKERS, MARCH 2004]
On 5 February, 20 (possibly more) Chinese cockle pickers died in Morecambe Bay. How could this have been allowed to happen?...[more]
first thoughts [WORKERS, FEBRUARY 2004]
It's known as the Agenda for Change, a far-reaching agreement on pay and conditions. After more than three years of negotiation, and more than six months of being tested out at twelve "early implementer" sites across Britain, it's coming to decision time for the NHS's 1.3 million workers....[more]
back to front - against the law [WORKERS, FEBRUARY 2004]
The moves to introduce a new EU constitution are being worked in tandem with the proposed domestic changes that Blair is trying to push through the British legal system....[more]
second opinion [WORKERS, FEBRUARY 2004]
The launch of Queen Mary 2, French built, at a cost of over £550 million reflects the parlous state of this island's shipbuilding industry....[more]
first thoughts - the meat market [WORKERS, JANUARY 2004]
At the turn of the 20th century James Joyce described the "stately, plump Buck Mulligan" character as someone who "ate with relish the internal organs of beasts and fowl". As the 21st century perversely turns, it is the stately and the plump humans who are having their internal organs eaten or sold....[more]
back to front - time to be ungrateful [WORKERS, JANUARY 2004]
THIS YEAR will see a host of elections, local, regional, European Union. Is there any way that the working class could use them to advance our interests? Or is there a better way?...[more]
talking about a referendum [WORKERS, DECEMBER 2003]
On 7 November, a Rally for a Referendum on the European Union's proposed new constitution was held in Westminster. It was very well attended, with representatives from across the country....[more]
back to front - floating away [WORKERS, DECEMBER 2003]
It is estimated that during the next ten years 800,000 jobs including at least 50,000 senior management jobs will be 'off-shored'. This abuse of the English language essentially means that 800,000 jobs will be exported from Britain - off our shores. ...[more]
first thoughts - no life after death [WORKERS, NOVEMBER 2003]
Two of the most significant gatherings of workers take place in the autumn. First the TUC then the Labour Party Conference. The sun shines for the TUC and the leaves fall for the Labour Party....[more]
back to front - a fee to far [WORKERS, NOVEMBER 2003]
Earlier this year the government released the white paper The Future of Higher Education, which proposed that from 2006 institutions will be able to charge fees of up to £3,000 per student. It appears that this three-year run in period has focussed the minds of students, parents and the public at large to stop the fees and to consider how higher education should be funded....[more]
first thoughts [WORKERS, OCTOBER 2003]
Britain, as presently constituted, is not working. Parliamentary democracy has always been about maintaining the rule of capitalism, and it is now clearer than ever that parliament is failing to represent the will of the British people. We do not support Bush's foreign wars, but parliament does. Most of us think that the attack on Iraq was wrong, but parliament voted for it....[more]
nej means nej [WORKERS, OCTOBER 2003]
In Sweden's hard-fought euro campaign, the government and big business (Volvo, Scania, Ericsson and Sweden's main newspapers) and, shamefully, most of Sweden's trade unions, backed entry....[more]
back to front - anywhere won't do [WORKERS, OCTOBER 2003]
BETWEEN 1978 and 2000, London lost 432,000 manufacturing jobs. And according to a new report (see News Analysis, p6), the decline is set to continue. With just over a quarter of a million now employed in manufacturing in the capital, numbers are expected to fall between 21% and 40% by the year 2016....[more]
first thoughts [WORKERS, SEPTEMBER 2003]
Britain, as presently constituted, is not working. Parliamentary democracy has always been about maintaining the rule of capitalism, and it is now clearer than ever that parliament is failing to represent the will of the British people. We do not support Bush's foreign wars, but parliament does. Most of us think that the attack on Iraq was wrong, but parliament voted for it....[more]
back to front - the limits of spin [WORKERS, SEPTEMBER 2003]
WHEN BLAIR finally leaves Downing Street, as one day he surely will, you can be sure that the people who earn their living from commenting on politics will date his demise from the departure of Alistair Campbell. And they will be wrong....[more]
first thoughts [WORKERS, JULY 2003]
The Daily Mail's poll on whether we should have a referendum on the proposed EU Constitution received 1.7 million responses. 89.8% said that the final decision should be put to the British people. An ICM poll of 54,973 people in 172 town centres across Britain, also on 12 June, confirmed that result: 88% for....[more]
second opinion [WORKERS, JULY 2003]
The G8 circus at Evian, with its equally ritual anarchist demonstrations, cost an estimated £144 million, money that could have been far better spent, on, say, getting clean water to Ethiopia's people. But the G8's leaders had nothing to say about improving water supplies, nothing to say about reducing the exorbitant costs of generic drugs....[more]
back to front - keeping control [WORKERS, JUNE 2003]
Firefighters took a realistic but courageous decision at their union's special conference on 12 June in accepting their employers' latest pay offer of 16% following nine months of struggle. The Fire Brigades Union has a proud class conscious tradition of maintaining total control of the workplace and manning levels, and it was this that the government was out to destroy....[more]
first thoughts [WORKERS, JUNE 2003]
The decision by the European Court of Justice to declare illegal the “golden share option”, whereby the government retains strategic control of key industries and service providers, shatters any pretence that the EU is compatible with the preservation of sovereignty in Britain....[more]
second opinion [WORKERS, JUNE 2003]
WHAT IS a fitting education system for an advanced industrial nation in the 21st century? The picture from the British schools front line is of teacher redundancies, crumbling buildings and four-day weeks — with only the commitment and professionalism of education workers holding things together....[more]
back to front - it's simple, stupid [WORKERS, JUNE 2003]
IT IS HARD to argue against holding a referendum on the proposed European Constitution, but defending the indefensible has become a kind of badge of honour with this Labour government (not that honour rides high with them on any subject). So faced with calls to hold a referendum, they wheel out what passes for heavy political guns these days....[more]
first thoughts [WORKERS, MAY 2003]
“Work till you Die” - Not a slogan from a Nazi labour camp but the official government answer to the supposed pension crisis. The ridiculously styled “pensions tsar”, Adair Turner, ex-Director General of the CBI, believes workers should “slog on beyond their 65th birthday”. But we wouldn't expect anything else from a “captain of industry”....[more]
second opinion [WORKERS, MAY 2003]
The Office of National Statistics' new report, “The Effects of Taxes and Benefits on Household Income, 2001-02”, shows how all taxes hit the working class far harder than the capitalist class....[more]
back to front - this lot have got to go [WORKERS, MAY 2003]
IN AMONG all the lies and diversionary propaganda that have accompanied the war on Iraq, the leak that Jack Straw, Gordon Brown and probably even Blair had decided to resign in the event of a huge Labour backbench rebellion over the war probably takes the biscuit....[more]
workers and the war: a statement from the CPBML [23 MARCH 2003]
The commencement of overt hostilities against Iraq brings centre stage the struggle against the United States imperial way. Not since the heroic struggle of the people of Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s has the clash of interest between imperial aggression and sovereignty been so polarised...[more]
elective dictatorship [WORKERS, MARCH 2003]
ONE LOOK at the huge march on 15 February and you can see why our "democratic" rulers dont like the idea of referendums. Like company bosses who insist on "the right to manage", they believe that they and they alone have the right to rule. Let the people have a say? You must be kidding...[more]
back to front: help yourself [WORKERS, MARCH 2003]
IN THE 20 years since the identification of the HIV virus, the AIDS epidemic has ravaged sub-Saharan Africa, where in many countries it is the major cause of adult death...[more]
in the red [WORKERS, MARCH 2003]
BRITAINS TRADE DEFICIT last year was yet again a new record, at £34.3 billion, the worst total since records began in 1697...[more]
who needs sovereignty? [WORKERS, FEBRUARY 2003]
THE NEWS that France and Germany are to celebrate 40 years of the European Union with a joint session of their parliaments is more than a symbolic act...[more]
its not inevitable [WORKERS, FEBRUARY 2003]
WAR OVER IRAQ is not inevitable. Britains involvement in war against Iraq or anywhere else in the world will only come about if we, the British working class, do not act to prevent it...[more]
power and anarchy [WORKERS, JANUARY 2003]
THE GOVERNMENTS white paper on energy is expected early in 2003. The anarchy, bank-ruptcy and uncertainty affecting the electricity utility companies is well documented ...[more]
doomed youth? [WORKERS, JANUARY 2003]
HAVING ALLOWED Thatcher to stay in power for over a decade, we are well on the way to committing the same mistake with this lot. Whatever we thought we were electing in 1997, no one could have any doubts at the next election...[more]
eleven years in a row [WORKERS, JANUARY 2003]
FOR THE ELEVENTH year in a row, the United Nations has supported a motion condemning the US blockade of Cuba...[more]
fresh blood [WORKERS, DECEMBER 2002]
THERE WAS some footage of Tony Blair in Budapest last month, walking on his own up some steps, looking for a banquet. He appeared to be a little lost, as if unsure about where he was, or why...[more]
slavish thinking [WORKERS, DECEMBER 2002]
AT A RECENT conference in the Caribbean, Cuba denounced as "racist" the demand that only non-white delegates could discuss slavery and reparations to their descendants...[more]
living dangerously [WORKERS, NOVEMBER 2002]
MORE COMMUNISTS were killed in Indonesia in 1965 than anywhere else at any other time in history outside of the Soviet Union in World War Two ...[more]
industrial sabotage [WORKERS, NOVEMBER 2002]
PONTEFRACT, the last pit in West Yorkshire, closed in August. The Selby complex is earmarked for closure in 2004. This act of industrial sabotage sets the seal on the planned elimination of primary industry in the area...[more]
irish independence [WORKERS, NOVEMBER 2002]
BRITISH IMPERIALISM has a legendary role in conquering and dividing nations overseas and Blair continues this tradition recklessly...[more]
no to war - let the people speak! [WORKERS, OCTOBER 2002]
IT MAY JUST be the summer holidays, but it's hard to escape the impression that SOME PEOPLE just wont take yes for an answer. When Iraq said it would admit the UN weapons inspectors, Blair said he did not believe it, and the British press has been assiduous in inventing "stories" about alleged restrictions ...[more]
energy for Britain [WORKERS,
OCTOBER 2002]
THE GEOLOGICAL MAP of Britain indicates extensive coal reserves across much of the country. It is estimated that we have up to the equivalent of 1,000 years burn. The difficulties are how to extract it safely and burn it cleanly ...[more]