“The workers... battle-cry must be: 'The Permanent Revolution.'” — Marx and Engels, 1850
Wed 30, September 2009 @ 21:54
At the end of the summer term 30 teachers, most of them NUT members, left St Paul’s Way Community School in Tower Hamlets. Amongst those who left were the whole of the NUT Committee at the school. Dave Gay reports on how this defeat came about
Wed 30, September 2009 @ 21:52
Brighton seafront resembled an armed camp, replete with crash barriers, sniffer-dogs and machine gun toting cops – all the modern paraphernalia of a New Labour conference. But only five minutes up the road, without a guard in sight, 150 leftists met in the third Convention of the Left. Stuart king reports on the debate
Wed 30, September 2009 @ 18:57
Wed 30, September 2009 @ 16:32
15 October 2009
Mon 28, September 2009 @ 21:59
Guillermo Lora, a historic leader of Bolivian Trotskyism, died on 17 May 2009 in La Paz at the age of roughly 87. His age was never certain because, born in the early 1920s in the town of Uncía in the department of Potosí, he never received a birth certificate.
Mon 28, September 2009 @ 21:57
APPARENTLY, the job of the armchair critic watching Synedoche, New York is to decide whether it’s a soaring masterpiece or monumental self-indulgence. Well, leaving aside the notion that a film maybe both of these things at the same time, Synedoche, New York, it turns out, is neither.
Mon 28, September 2009 @ 21:55
Solidarity divided: The crisis in organized labor and a new path toward social justice
Mon 28, September 2009 @ 21:49
A fish always rots from its head. The parliamentarians of the Labour and Tory parties emit the stench of decay. The scale of the manipulation of expenses and outright fiddles revealed in the British House of Commons rightly enrages working class people facing redundancies and short-time working while struggling to pay their rent and mortgages. To read that Cabinet ministers like Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper, who pocket £150,000, a year habitually claim £600 a month for food as well is nothing but contemptuous.
Mon 28, September 2009 @ 21:42
In early April the Irish government, a coalition of Fianna Fáil and the Green Party, introduced an emergency budget, the second in six months. It was a swingeing austerity budget that fell squarely on the shoulders of the workers while hardly touching big business and the rich. It introduced spending cuts of C= 1.5 billion, mostly from social welfare, and raised taxes by C= 1.8bn. Eighty percent of these taxes fell on PAYE payers – that is the workers.
Mon 28, September 2009 @ 21:39
In the summer of 2008 John McDonnell warned that the next general election would not be a rerun of the 1983 defeat, but a rerun of the 1931 disaster. Now, a year on, the prospects for Labour look even worse. Even before the outrage of MPs fiddling, Labour was languishing a long way behind the Tories in the polls. Gordon Brown’s briefly improved ratings during the banking crisis collapsed to the point where he was vying with Michael Foot for the title of most unpopular Labour leader ever.
Fri 25, September 2009 @ 15:18
A discussion on the rise of China – will China be the saviour of capitalism? “If China manages to avoid an explosion of internal social turmoil, it will undoubtedly emerge from this world recession as a yet more important political and economic power on the world stage.” Permanent Revolution March 2009
Thu 24, September 2009 @ 21:15
Fifteen years after the ANC won a majority in the first post-Apartheid election, it may have done little to transform the lives of the black masses but it has certainly transformed the fortunes of its leading cadre, says Stuart King
Thu 24, September 2009 @ 17:03
The English Defence League (EDL) a group of racist Nazis linked to the BNP are planning to march through Manchester on Saturday October 10th. They plan to meet in Piccadilly Gardens in the town centre at 10.00 am. Join the counter demonstration in Piccadilly Gardens at the same time.
Socialist, anarchists, anti-capitalists and anti-fascists have called a counter demonstration to oppose them. They were successfully in opposed in Birmingham twice and Harrow. Let's do the same in Manchester.
Download a leaflet here and get your friends along
Tue 22, September 2009 @ 18:23
Eleanor Davies reviews the recent struggle by the Visteon workers and looks at the implications of it for the rest of the motor industry
Tue 22, September 2009 @ 11:31
The dramatic impact of the recession on jobs
and pay has highlighted the state of working class organisation and
its ability to resist these attacks. PR14 leads on an assessment of
the trade union movement’s response to the crisis – do the rash of
unofficial actions and occupations this year signal a new mood of
resistance or are they isolated and defensive struggles?
Tue 22, September 2009 @ 11:19
A number of key generals in the UK and USA say that either as far as Afghanistan goes NATO has to "go long, go deep, or go home". Keith Harvey looks at imperialism's dilemma in fighting the Taliban-led resistance to foreign occupation
Sat 19, September 2009 @ 18:08
Brian Lyons an ESOL teacher at Tower Hamlets for 8 years and an active member of the strike committee talked to Kirstie Paton about the strike. He describes the mood as “one of defiance, of solidarity and of standing firm to continue the strike until we win what has become the bottom line of the strike which is no compulsory redundancies.”
Thu 17, September 2009 @ 18:19
Mark Hoskisson and Stuart King show quite how far from internationalism the Socialist Party and others strayed in the recent European Union Parliamentary elections
Thu 17, September 2009 @ 18:17
For the PDF of this article click here
The European elections marked a further step in the political disintegration of the Respect coalition led by George Galloway MP. Respect exists purely for electoral purposes and electoral failure spells disaster for this coalition. So, faced with its inability to field any candidates in the elections, the leadership promptly fell out over which party or coalition they would support. There were resignations at the top over the issue.
Mon 14, September 2009 @ 18:07
Con 17 detenidos -8 militantes del Movimiento del Pueblo y los Trabajadores (MPT) - terminó la marcha tradicional que se realiza en homenaje a las víctimas de la dictadura pinochetista que gobernó Chile desde septiembre de 1973 a 1990, y que este año se efectuó el domingo 13 de septiembre. La dirigenta del MPT
Mon 14, September 2009 @ 08:43
Around 400 trade unionists marched through Liverpool on Sunday, 13 September, as the national TUC started unpacking its bags in the city’s hotels on the eve of the annual congress.
Sat 12, September 2009 @ 14:01
On October 10th the fascist English Defence League (EDL) a violently racist group of Nazi thugs loosely linked to the BNP, are planning to march through Manchester. We are calling on all socialists and anti-fascists to unite to oppose them. Since the election of the two BNP MEPs in June, the EDL have held two marches through Birmingham, announced another gathering in Luton and staged a provocation at a Mosque in Harrow. The EDL want to drive black and Asian people, gay people, the left, trade unionists and campaigners out of our city centres.
Fri 11, September 2009 @ 12:16
Rally in support of Tower Hamlets College Strike
Save Tower Hamlets
College.
Download flyer here
Mon 07, September 2009 @ 01:03
After over a week the all-out indefinite strike by Tower Hamlets College lecturers remains solid. At the latest University and College Union (UCU) strike meeting to decide whether to continue the strike only a handful abstained and one person voted against continuing the strike. The rest voted to stay out. There are around 300 lecturers on strike.
Dave Esterson, UCU rep from Lambeth College reports
Sun 06, September 2009 @ 23:34
The frequent murder of trade unionists in Colombia continues unabated. According to figures from the CUT (Colombian TUC), there have been around 580 assassinations of trade union leaders during the presidency of Álvaro Uribe.
Sun 06, September 2009 @ 20:22
From Revleft.com
Before heading up to Birmingham I was a bit nervous because there had been no signs of any national call outs from any organisations in regards to this event, so I didn't really know what to expect. But me and some others had decided we'd go have a pop at the EDL so we went anyway.....writes someone from Rev Left....
Sun 06, September 2009 @ 19:17
Cuba is not immune from the world recession and its economy has been badly hit recently from a series of hurricanes. New austerity measures have been announced by the Cuban Commuist Party under Raúl Castro. We publish here an analysis of these measures from the Argentinian paper La Verdad Obrera
Sun 06, September 2009 @ 19:15
On Saturday 5 September 2009 the United Left in the union Unite met at Manchester’s Friends House to decide which candidate it was going to back for the election of General Secretary Designate of the union. The election is scheduled for some time next year by a Unite Shop Steward (personal capacity)
Thu 03, September 2009 @ 19:49
After more than 4 months in strike, the Tambillo miners have been unable to win a settlement that meets their demands; the bosses have refused to meet the union. The Labour Law in Chile was implemented by Pinochet; it is completely in favour of the bosses, nonetheless after much discussion the workers agreed to use Decree 369. This should mean that everything goes back to square one, to zero again. The workers should come to work; negotiations should start again from zero.
Thu 03, September 2009 @ 18:53
Europe thought it would avoid the worst of the “Anglo-Saxon” banking crisis. It was not to be. Keith Harvey and Bill Jefferies looks at the depth of the recession in the eurozone....
Thu 03, September 2009 @ 18:49
A teenage anti-fascist who escaped a Gestapo jail and a Nazi work camp, Ernest Mandel went on to be a prominent Marxist intellectual and key leader of the Fourth International after the war. Keith Harvey looks at a first biography
