TUC: Back to the workplace
[WORKERS, SEPT 2010]
Grand policies and posturing will not save the labour movement from the current onslaught. Only one strategy will work: workplace organisation
...[more]
Coalition set to destroy public healthcare
[WORKERS, SEPT 2010]
They said they would defend the NHS. They lied. But then, that’s what parliamentary democracy is all about
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Under attack – but schools frustrate Coalition academy plans
[WORKERS, SEPT 2010]
Education Secretary Michael Gove thought he would have more than a thousand schools straining to become independent of local control. After all, it was merely an acceleration of Labour policy. But the teaching profession has taught him a lesson
...[more]
Unions in illegality: the Combination Acts of 1799 and 1800
[WORKERS, SEPT 2010]
Capitalists and workers are engaged in a constant battle to exert influence and control over pay and conditions as the two classes contend in the sphere of work and industry. This is as true now as it was at the birth of our class several centuries ago
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Just one policy: make us pay…
[WORKERS, JULY 2010]
Despite the news that the budgetary shortfall is less than expected, the government is accelerating its attack on Britain…
...[more]
…but there’s money to buy finance firms
[WORKERS, JULY 2010]
On 7 May the Prime Minister delivered a speech in Milton Keynes, declaring the national debt to be £1.4 trillion with interest payments of £70 billion a year.
...[more]
Call this democracy?
[WORKERS, JULY 2010]
The state of British politics is almost a joke. But it’s gone beyond satire. There’s something rotten in Britain. It’s the whiff of fascism, and it’s coming from the state…
...[more]
The same old refrain: attack the working class
[WORKERS, JULY 2010]
The main capitalist political parties all agree that there must be massive cuts in public spending.Their common demand in 2010 echoes unmistakably what happened in the public spending debt crises of 1921 and 1931…
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Cuito Cuanavale – the story behind the battle that became Africa’s Stalingrad
[WORKERS, JULY 2010]
The epic story of the battle of Cuito Cuanavale in southern Angola in 1987/89 is little known in Britain. But the events leading up to it show how small yet decisive actions by workers can bring about massive changes in the world…
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Unite against the anti-strike laws!
[WORKERS, JUNE 2010]
Recent court decisions, backed up by silence from the parliamentary parties, has all but made the right to strike an illegal act…
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Free trade deal set to hit British workers
[WORKERS, JUNE 2010]
The ConDem coalition has promised a referendum on significant changes to the way the EU operates. It can start with one on the proposal for a trade deal with India…
...[more]
Mobility of labour: why the conspiracy of silence?
[WORKERS, JUNE 2010]
With the anti-trade union laws as the backdrop, capitalism has deployed its favoured method of attack to devastating effect: unemployment, intensified by the exporting of jobs and the importing of labour…
...[more]
How Argentina escaped the clutches of the IMF
[WORKERS, JUNE 2010]
When Argentina ran into a debt crisis like Greece, its first response was to borrow money from the IMF and others, promising “austerity” packages of cuts. Then it took a different direction…
...[more]
The price of failing to take responsibility
[WORKERS, MAY 2010]
What is going wrong in this country? There’s food for thought in the Francis Report into the litany of neglect at Mid Staffordshire Foundation Trust…
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Of course the free market isn’t efficient. Why would it be?
[WORKERS, MAY 2010]
Workers reviews two books this month that explode two American myths: first that Wall Street knows what it's doing; and secondly, the so-called power of positive thinking...
...[more]
An extract from our history
[WORKERS, MAY 2010]
The CPBML is shortly to publish an account of its history. Here, we present a preview of the ideas that motivated its founding…
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Gilt-edged insecurity: workers and quantitative easing
[WORKERS, APRIL 2010]
A defensive “no to the cuts” campaign that lacks a strategy capable of taking us on to the offensive will not do the job. We need to understand the government’s borrowing scam and the politics behind it…
...[more]
A manifesto for libraries
[WORKERS, APRIL 2010]
Librarians are up against a philistine government whose tactic seems to be death by a thousand reviews. But the professionals are resisting…
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The struggle against the ‘Great Powers’
[WORKERS, APRIL 2010]
The General Assembly of the United Nations has now become an organising area against imperialism…
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They say defence, they mean war
[WORKERS, MARCH 2010]
In the government’s Green Paper, “Adaptability & Partnership: Issues for the Strategic Defence Review”, the Defence Secretary admits in his Foreword that “There is no external direct threat to the territorial integrity of the United Kingdom.” Yet, in the same paragraph, he insists, “Our ability to project force to counter threats will remain crucial to our national security.”
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The spirit of Lindsey lives on…
[WORKERS, MARCH 2010]
February has proved to be a lively month in the engineering construction industry, demonstrating that neither the issues nor the workers will simply go away, despite attempts by “friends” and enemies.
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Energy supply: mind the gap
[WORKERS, MARCH 2010]
Whichever way you look at it, within seven years Britain will face a shortfall between the power it needs and its ability to supply it…
...[more]
The day the Army was sent to the streets of Glasgow
[WORKERS, MARCH 2010]
It began with the reasonable demand for a 40-hour week, led to a demonstration by 35,000 workers at Glasgow’s City Chambers – and howitzers around the city centre…
...[more]
Engineering construction: underpayment at Staythorpe sparks renewed calls for action
[WORKERS, FEBRUARY 2010]
Construction workers are, once again, at the forefront of challenging our thinking and taking the fight to the opposition, both in and outside our own class. Opposition comes in many guises and in today’s climate its most debilitating manifestation is the idea that there is no alternative to accepting whatever capitalism throws at us.
...[more]
Haiti puts the spotlight on the politics of aid
[WORKERS, FEBRUARY 2010]
The TUC has its own Aid for Haiti appeal. But where will the money go? The history of its involvement in South America does not bode well for the future…
...[more]
The German takeover of Europe’s – and Britain’s – rail services
[WORKERS, FEBRUARY 2010]
Taking full advantage of the liberalisation of Europe’s international passenger services, Deutsche Bahn is moving into Britain. Armed with massive opportunities to exploit workers across Europe, it’s looking for profits, at the expense of workers…
...[more]
Vocational education under attack
[WORKERS, FEBRUARY 2010]
Programmes frozen, budgets cut, young people excluded. Now responsibility for vocational training is to be handed to local government, with little evidence that it is prepared…
...[more]
The cartel from hell: IG Farben and Hitler’s Nazis
[WORKERS, FEBRUARY 2010]
Hitler needed a chemicals company to provide the raw material for his war. Enter IG Farben, the largest chemicals cartel in the world…
...[more]
The Earth’s climate changes. It always has done. But there’s no future without power…
[WORKERS, JANUARY 2010]
Using the excuse of global warming, the European Union is trying to shut down many of Britain’s coal-fired power stations, and stop new ones being built. But the evidence is not as hard as it seems. Could it be that politicians have their own agenda, more related to power than to the environment?
...[more]
The wages of credit
[WORKERS, JANUARY 2010]
Instead of fighting for pay and industry, we’ve been queuing up for loans…
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Stalingrad: the battle that saved the world
[WORKERS, JANUARY 2010]
At the end of January 1943, the German armies that had tried to smash the Soviet Union’s third-largest industrial centre surrendered in ignominy…
...[more]
Rail: the failure of privatisation
[WORKERS, JANUARY 2010]
As European railways are broken up under EU diktat and parcelled out to greedy privateers, in Britain there are faint signs that the reverse is beginning to happen…
...[more]
Who will be running our schools? The academies – another lethal legacy of Labour
[WORKERS, JANUARY 2010]
The Labour government may be finished, but it has not given up on its drive to strip Britain’s schools of all semblance of democratic control. Any price is worth paying, it reckons, to create its new academies. Even handing the control of the new state-funded schools over to religious fundamentalists…
...[more]
No end in sight as Afghan adventure turns into a fully fledged disaster
[WORKERS, DECEMBER 2009]
Not for the first time in its history, Afghanistan is turning into a killing ground for British troops – and for Afghan civilians as well. The killings will go on until British troops are withdrawn…
...[more]
Finance capital isn’t working
[WORKERS, DECEMBER 2009]
Most people do not believe what they are being told about the state of the economy in Britain, if recent polls are anything to go by. It’s hardly surprising given the different stories we are being sold and the variety of cures that are proposed.
...[more]
Why workers need to run Britain
[WORKERS, DECEMBER 2009]
Capitalism depends on us. But the reverse is not true. Indeed, unless we strike out on our own we will never have what we want…
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Trade unionism, colonialist style
[WORKERS, DECEMBER 2009]
Unison has made an agreement with a predatory US union over recruiting members in three companies in Britain. It should tell the US union to go home…
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When 70 tulips sold for the price of 300 tons of butter
[WORKERS, DECEMBER 2009]
It was the world’s first financial bubble, and at the centre of it was a luxury flower and the world’s first futures market…
...[more]
Why is Brussels messing with our mail?
[WORKERS, NOVEMBER 2009]
It has issued a Directive on privatising postal services. One of its bureaucrats is even on secondment as a PostComm commissioner. And its own man, Mandelson, is involved…
...[more]
Coup in Honduras: an attack on progress, upheld by the United States
[WORKERS, NOVEMBER 2009]
What happens to a country run for generations by a tiny oligarchy when someone gets elected who challenges their power and the power of the American corporations?
...[more]
Land of the free? Tell that to American workers trying to get unions recognised
[WORKERS, NOVEMBER 2009]
When Barack Obama was elected, he promised a law to allow workers to choose to have collective bargaining. It has come up against massive opposition from industry and the US’s army of union-busting lawyers…
...[more]
Alfred the Great and the foundation of England
[WORKERS, NOVEMBER 2009]
As a nation we have our heroes, though we can often be coy about celebrating them. Workers looks at the life of a man who laid the basis for England – and for Britain…
...[more]
What Mandelson won’t tell the British public about cheap labour and EU trade talks
[WORKERS, OCTOBER 2009]
There’s a new threat to British workers that goes under the innocuous-sounding title of Mode 4. It is set to allow cheap labour to be brought from developing countries to work in Britain. It’s being negotiated by the European Union in talks set up by Peter Mandelson when he was EU Trade Commissioner. And it’s all being done in secrecy…
...[more]
Cuba: she won’t go away!
[WORKERS, OCTOBER 2009]
Black or white US President, change must be real. Obama must lift the 50-year-old inhuman blockade against America’s tiny neighbour, Cuba…
...[more]
Creeping privatisation of housing? Now it’s a full gallop
[WORKERS, OCTOBER 2009]
Far from rolling back the private sector in order to rebuild a truly public national housing system based on need, Labour is proposing to dismantle entirely the system of central subsidy that served the working class since the 1930s.…
...[more]
The Turner Review – capitalism indicts itself
[WORKERS, OCTOBER 2009]
The people who try to run finance capital find hindsight a lot easier than foresight…
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Mick Broderick, worker and singer, remembered
[WORKERS, OCTOBER 2009]
A working life in the shipyards combined with folk singing, monologues and drumming…
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Too much business as usual in the institution that is the TUC
[WORKERS, SEPTEMBER 2009]
After 141 years has the Trades Union become as institutionalised as the capitalist system we argue to change?
...[more]
The failure of capitalism
[WORKERS, SEPTEMBER 2009]
What are concerned and honest workers to make of the economic and political mess that they see around them as we enter the conference season?
...[more]
Professionalism matters: the attempt to undermine skill in nursing
[WORKERS, SEPTEMBER 2009]
The phasing out of state enrolled nurses that began in the 1980s should have given a boost to the professionalism of state registered nurses. But into the space they occupied have come hundreds of thousands of healthcare assistants not subject to any regulation…
...[more]
The rise and fall of the South Sea Bubble
[WORKERS, SEPTEMBER 2009]
Financial speculation, irresponsible behaviour in the City, massive government debt, shares slumping: three centuries ago, finance capital was learning its tricks…
...[more]
The refugees who don’t abandon nation
[WORKERS, JULY 2009]
Workers visits Palestinian refugee camps – and finds a people with no intention of abandoning their nation and drifting around Europe seeking charity…
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Unity, not devolution
[WORKERS, JULY 2009]
As workers try to act in a concerted way nationwide, new devolved powers would seek to divide them…
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Contracting fight flares up again
[WORKERS, JULY 2009]
Once again, the Lindsey oil refinery has become the flashpoint for the struggle for the right to work…
...[more]
Running out of drugs
[WORKERS, JULY 2009]
Helped by the government’s strategy of printing money, speculators are targetting the import and export of medicines – and the NHS is losing out…
...[more]
Western philosophy’s ‘greatest intellectual partnership’
[WORKERS, JULY 2009]
A new biography looks at the life and work of Frederick Engels, whose brilliant survey of the condition of the English working class was the prelude to joint authorship of the Communist Manifesto…
...[more]
Victory over employment of British workers – now there is a war to win
[WORKERS, JUNE 2009]
A second victory has been chalked up in what is part of the war to secure a future for Britain's construction industry. But, as ever, the value of winning this battle depends on the next steps and the lessons learned…
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Rail: the fight for the industry
[WORKERS, JUNE 2009]
Attacks on jobs, conditions, pensions, fares and safety. There’s a sustained attack on the rail industry – and the workers are fighting back…
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The acid test for any economy. What works? And what doesn’t work?
[WORKERS, JUNE 2009]
So-called “globalisation” doesn’t work. Even before this crisis, most of the world’s peoples were worse off than they were in 1989. But some things do work – self-reliance, controls on capital, protection, national liberation, workers’ nationalism and fighting for wages and jobs…
...[more]
Consistently malign: British foreign policy since 1870
[WORKERS, JUNE 2009]
Britain’s economy is the key to understanding its foreign policy, as a new book magnificently describes: leading to 140 years of devastating interventions…
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Make it in Britain – or see Britain decline
[WORKERS, MAY 2009]
The single most important feature distinguishing rich countries from poor is their greater manufacturing capabilities: their productivity is generally higher and tends to grow faster. All the evidence shows that countries cannot develop without industry, and to do this they need trade protection, mainly tariffs, and subsidies.
...[more]
A model of colonialism: the European Union’s unequal treaties
[WORKERS, MAY 2009]
In the European Union–South Africa trade agreement of 1999, the EU negotiated “special treatment” for itself by agreeing to cut tariffs on just 25 per cent of the goods South Africa exports to the EU while getting South Africa to cut tariffs on 40 per cent of the goods the EU exports to South Africa.
...[more]
Capital’s global ambitions got us into this mess – only workers’ nationalism can get us out
[WORKERS, MAY 2009]
It is now urgent for us to re-focus on Britain – the rest of the world thinks we’re bankrupt. Inevitably attention has been diverted by conflict and devastation in the Middle East over the past couple of months. They must look to their own future; we must deal with an emergency for our class, those we are responsible for, the people of Britain.
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From Guernica to Whitechapel, via the United Nations
[WORKERS, MAY 2009]
The huge tapestry reproduction of Picasso’s masterpiece Guernica, expressing the full horror of the bombing of civilians in the small Spanish town by that name in 1937, was displayed at the Whitechapel Gallery in east London from 5 to 18 April.
...[more]
G20: a giant with feet of clay
[WORKERS, APR 2009]
Another month, another summit. This April it’s the G20, hosted in London’s Docklands by a man on his way out. Each week brings news that makes Gordon Brown’s tenure as Prime Minister increasingly fragile. One of the triumvirate along with Blair and Mandelson who re-branded Labour for electoral purposes in the early 90s, Brown is suitably positioned to oversee its demise. As with Obama, Brown has no answers other than to shovel the cost of the massive debts incurred onto the working class in the form of the loans paid out to banks.
...[more]
The new strategy for councils: everything must go!
[WORKERS, APR 2009]
There was a time when the term “local council” or “the Local Authority” was a well-understood term in Britain. It referred to a provider of local services which was overseen by locally elected councillors whose decisions were made in full council or committee mostly open to the public.
...[more]
Where have all the health visitors gone?
[WORKERS, APR 2009]
The death of ‘Baby P’ in the London Borough of Haringey showed the inadequacy of various public bodies. Of course responsibility lay with the baby’s mother, her partner and another man who were convicted of involvement in his death, but there are many other failings and inconsistencies which have been highlighted.
...[more]
The beginnings of a passage into enlightenment
[WORKERS, APR 2009]
God’s fury, England’s fire: a new history of the English civil wars, by Michael Braddick, hardback, 758 pages, ISBN 978-0-7139-9632-6, Allen Lane, 2008, £30.
Cromwell: an honourable enemy. The untold story of the Cromwellian invasion of Ireland, by Tom Reilly, paperback, 316 pages, ISBN 1-84212-080-8, Phoenix Press, 2000, £10.99.
...[more]
Construction workers take up the challenge in the 21st-century Battle of Britain
[WORKERS, MAR 2009]
On 28 January engineering construction workers at Lindsey Oil Refinery (LOR) ignited the spark that is the 21st century Battle for Britain. French multinational Total, building new plant at its refinery at Immingham in North Lincolnshire, had appointed the US company Jacobs as main contractor. Jacobs in turn had removed the sub-contractor Shaws and appointed IREM – Italian/Sicilian – to take on the sub-contract.
...[more]
The fight for journalism
[WORKERS, MAR 2009]
Newspaper offices across Britain are in uproar as proprietors attempt to force through job cuts and pay freezes. Unlike some industries, publishing is not broke, and most of the employers trying to save on labour costs are making profits that other capitalists would give their right arms for.
...[more]
Rulings from Luxembourg that threaten our trade union organisation
[WORKERS, MAR 2009]
As industrial workers in the oil and other industries show signs of life and reveal that the emperor has got no clothes, even using the unmentionable M-word, migration, the malign effect of European Union membership and legislation is oh-so-slowly becoming apparent to even some of its closest adherents.
...[more]
It’s not a crime to watch football, is it?
[WORKERS, MAR 2009]
Occasionally the state reacts dramatically against the rights of the people, bringing in the police or army against strikers, perhaps, or enacting openly repressive laws. But usually the process is more incremental, a gradual whittling away of rights and customs won by working people over generations, as in Britain today.
...[more]
End Israeli oppression
[WORKERS, FEB 2009]
The horrific attacks on the Palestinian population of Gaza by the Israeli military demand new clear thinking about this 60-year-old problem.
...[more]
The ‘free market’: farming’s road to ruin
[WORKERS, FEB 2009]
Walk into a supermarket in Britain, and you’re often hard pushed to find fruit and vegetables grown this country. Depending on the whims of the global market, even British onions can be hard to find. Instead, we are presented with lettuces from Spain, beans from Uganda or Guatemala, strawberries from the USA. The only constant is that prices just seem to go up all the time.
...[more]
Read the history: Yes, barriers on free trade can stimulate economic development
[WORKERS, FEB 2009]
The “stabilise, liberalise and privatise” mantra has been imposed on developing countries by international financial institutions since the 1980s. But it has not gone unopposed. A fascinating book* written by two senior UN economists explodes the myths behind the mantra.
...[more]
Healthcare tourism is not the answer
[WORKERS, FEB 2009]
Is health-care tourism to replace adequate healthcare provision? There has been much in the news recently about what is becoming known as cross-border health care – the growing trend for people to be treated in a country other than their own.
...[more]
Running out of ideas? Print money!
[WORKERS, FEB 2009]
When all else fails, print money. How economics is too important to be left to capitalists – and that workers will always pay the bill – is well illustrated by events from over 80 years ago, in the period just after the First World War.
...[more]
2009: There is a future, and it begins here…
[WORKERS, JAN 2009]
In a land swamped by doubt and diffidence, we declare there is “a way through” the gloom. There is “a way out” of relentless harassment, encirclement, and destruction of all we hold dear.
...[more]
Proposals to ease meat hygiene regulations don’t pass inspectors
[WORKERS, JAN 2009]
We have heard much in recent months about the parlous state of what are passed off as pay campaigns in the public services, particularly in local government. One pay campaign hasn’t yet received much coverage but is an interesting and so far successful one.
...[more]
How Cuba dealt with economic disaster
[WORKERS, JAN 2009]
Without a working class alternative to capitalism, there is the probability that we will get dragged down with capitalism and face disaster. Such alternatives do not magically appear. They must be fought for by workers and they will come about only by a working class taking responsibility for its own future. It may sound a hard thing to do but there are examples of workers taking responsibility for their own future that we can learn from.
...[more]
Three books to start off the new year
[WORKERS, JAN 2009]
The ills of finance capital could fill entire libraries – here are three books that look at different aspects of its failure.
...[more]
Light, not darkness: rebuild all our electricity-generating industries
[WORKERS, DEC 2008]
It is nearly 30 years since the dismantling of Britain’s state owned energy industries started – first gas, then coal, then electricity generation and all the twists and turns over nuclear, the National Grid etc. The concept of an integrated energy industry, with a mix of fuels guaranteeing heat, light, industry, protection against the elements and nature is in tatters.
...[more]
A crisis out of control – and it’s a crisis for the working class, too
[WORKERS, DEC 2008]
As we watch the daily reports of the credit crunch and the recession, two main thoughts strike most of us. Firstly, governments are unable to control this crisis of capitalism, and secondly, what do all these huge sums of money mean and where do they come from?
...[more]
Invest now in a future for rail
[WORKERS, DEC 2008]
Massive fare increases well in excess of inflation will hit rail passengers once again at the New Year. Tickets will cost between 6 per cent and 11 per cent more, hitting workers already having to contend with the effects of the financial crisis.
...[more]
No to the Common Market, the EEC, the European Union!
[WORKERS, DEC 2008]
In our final article to mark the 40th anniversary of the CPBML by looking at the past four decades through the eyes of Workers and its predecessor, The Worker, we look at the fight against the European Union.
...[more]
Credit crisis: don’t just blame the bankers
[WORKERS, NOV 2008]
It is an ill wind that blows no one any good: the BBC demonstrates the truth of this old aphorism. As economic twisters roll around the international money markets, so the BBC is supplied with a surfeit of ready meals for its various fast news outlets. Economists, financiers, politicians and commentators are summoned to portentous studios to be verbally examined by grave, morally superior interviewers. Then there are those parodies of popular democracy, the phone-ins. There we hear a litany of crisis and despair, with a little panic from modest savers who have so little, and yet so very much to lose.
...[more]
Construction: lessons from a picket line
[WORKERS, NOV 2008]
Following the sacking of 16 British workers at the new power station being constructed in Langage near Plymouth, a picket line was mounted on the morning of 7 August and respected by some 200 workers of various nationalities including Polish and Portuguese, demanding that the 16 be reinstated. By 09.00 the gates were locked and passes withdrawn from those outside the gates. The main contractor, Alstom (a French multi-national), was demanding that the contractors on site whose workers were involved, obtain repudiation of the dispute from the unions (Unite – Amicus and T&G – and the GMB) and sack the workers.
...[more]
Book review: The hidden history of one of the unsung heroes of the English revolution
[WORKERS, NOV 2008]
The Houses of Parliament are one of the busiest tourist attractions in the whole of Britain. They are considered remarkable for many reasons; in fact they are remarkable only really for one. That is the statue outside the building of Oliver Cromwell. He was the only person – not Guy Fawkes, as the popular joke runs – who entered Parliament with honest intentions. Where Fawkes would have destroyed Parliament to subject England to a Catholic dictatorship, Cromwell entered Parliament in 1653 ordering it to “take away this bauble”, meaning the crown of England.
...[more]
1992: The response to Thatcher – Rebuild Britain
[WORKERS, NOV 2008]
Absolute decline and deindustrialisation ravaged our working class in the 1970s and 1980s. Following the call of our Ninth Party Congress in 1991, The Worker featured applications of the Rebuild Britain line. We espoused it then, but continue to do so now, when the need is even more urgent as the decay of our country has deepened and widened.
...[more]
Exclusive: Hurricanes – Cuba fights back
[WORKERS, OCT 2008]
The recent hurricanes that have caused so much loss of life and damage in the Caribbean and southern United States are considered by the Cuban Civil Defence Authority to be the worst for 60 years, partly because of their strength and partly because there were so many in close succession. Hardly surprising, then, that many people are asking the question ‘why does Cuba manage to keep the loss of life so low compared to other countries?’ The answer lies in both Cuba’s values and working class organisation.
...[more]
What’s happened to the financial markets?
[WORKERS, OCT 2008]
The unravelling of financial markets that has been taking place now for the past twelve months should not be seen as a crisis but as a continuum of absolute decline, a trend first identified by our party in 1976. The current contradictory mess has one central feature, namely that Britain produces little new wealth and has been accessing international capital to create domestic credit.
...[more]
Book review: The Gods That Failed
[WORKERS, OCT 2008]
The Gods That Failed: how blind faith in markets has cost us our future, by Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson, paperback, 326 pages, ISBN 978-1-847-92030-0, Bodley Head, 2008, £12.99.
...[more]
2000: Nothing free about the free movement of labour
[WORKERS, OCT 2008]
The subject of migration– both immigration and emigration – is one that many on the so-called left refuse to deal with. Yet it is an issue that won’t go away. In this groundbreaking article in November 2000, Workers took the issue head on. Who benefits? Not the workers here, and not the countries where the migrant labourers come from, either.
...[more]
TUC: Back to basics
[WORKERS, SEPT 2008]
The annual congress of the TUC rolls round this month and it is time to take stock again of the health of the labour movement. The TUC agenda will deal with all the supposed pressing and politically correct agendas of the activists (not the members) who will be present.
...[more]
North Yorkshire, American style
[WORKERS, SEPT 2008]
US INDEPENDENCE Day, 4 July, this year saw a large-scale demonstration outside the largest spying base in the world, Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire. Organised by the "Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases", the "Independence FROM America" event has been for 20 years an annual feature in the calendar of those concerned with US belligerence around the globe and British acquiescence in it.
...[more]
The NHS: We don't know how lucky we are
[WORKERS, SEPT 2008]
"I heard on the radio the other day that, per head of population, Cuba had more people who were 100 years old than anywhere else in the world. The report also stated that the general life expectancy had risen to 80. Those two facts are remarkable, and would be remarkable in any other country, even incredible in most, but taking into account the context of life in Cuba with people struggling against the backdrop of the American economic and material blockade..."
...[more]
The politics of 'failure': Education is not just an academic question
[WORKERS, SEPT 2008]
How is it possible for a school to be rated "Good" by OFSTED, be in the top 10 per cent of improved schools, to receive commendations for those improvements and then be branded a "failing school"?
...[more]
1979: Thatcher Out!
[WORKERS, SEPT 2008]
Following the 1979 General Election, our Party quickly reassessed the political situation facing workers and concluded that it was not just business as normal for capitalism, that in fact the post war bourgeois consensus had been ditched and that Thatcherism was a dangerous governmental stance which was set to undermine and destroy the organised working class. We changed the basis of our line from 'Don't Vote, Organise for Revolution' to "Thatcher Out".
...[more]
Fighting by numbers
[WORKERS, JULY 2008]
The First World War was described as war by railway timetable in that once the order to mobilise had gone out and the troop trains had started to roll, then the war was supposedly unstoppable. The looming dispute over pay in local government has all the hallmarks of slow motion painting by numbers.
...[more]
The NHS at 60: not given to us by Labour, but fought for and won by workers
[WORKERS, JULY 2008]
The National Health Service came into being on 5 July 1948, and has played a major part in the quality of our lives ever since. Most people in the UK have known no other way of providing medical care. The NHS faces many threats and challenges despite all its successes. The alleged need to improve patient choice is pushing many changes, not all of them welcomed by patients and health workers.
...[more]
Intervene? Haven't Britain and America already done enough damage?
[WORKERS, JULY 2008]
In all the coverage of Zimbabwe, it is rarely noted that the US and British states have been imposing punitive economic sanctions on the country since 2001. Western academics and journalists instead portray the crisis in Zimbabwe solely as the result of the land reform or of Mugabe's mismanagement.
...[more]
Welcome to the 21st century: the return of the killer diseases
[WORKERS, JULY 2008]
Britain was supposed to see the end of infectious diseases. This feat of public health was achieved by a combination not of drugs, doctors and hospitals but of clean water, proper sewage systems and better nutrition. Of course there were medical advances such as vaccination, antibiotics and widespread availability of barrier contraceptives, combined with greater knowledge and awareness of illnesses.
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1982: War in the South Atlantic
[WORKERS, JULY 2008]
The Falklands War was probably the most important foreign policy event in domestic terms in the 1980s. It occurred when Thatcher was deeply unpopular, giving her the chance to gain support.
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The battles over pay: still too many generals, not enough in the front lines
[WORKERS, JUNE 2008]
The manoeuvres around the pay offers, potential pay disputes and who is really saying what their members mean in the trade unions – or even if the members have spoken at all – are what are shaping the choreography around pay in local government.
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Marx was right!
[WORKERS, JUNE 2008]
So long as we were able to kid ourselves that capitalism was working, however cruelly, and would see us out, we could avoid the hard intellectual task of trying to understand how it all works. Now it clearly doesn't, so we have to try and do for our time what Marx did for his.
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Forty years on: a May Day celebration of the founding of the Party – with music
[WORKERS, JUNE 2008]
In celebrating the bold move to found a new party of our working class 40 years ago, we're not having a reminiscence session or wallowing in nostalgia. A vital stream has flowed, influencing our class ever since, breaking away from moribund, social democratic thinking.
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Imperial ambitions: US and EU rebuffed as they seek to control around the globe
[WORKERS, JUNE 2008]
The United States and the European Union are hell bent on interfering in the internal affairs of other countries in order to secure puppet governments that will do their bidding and open up to their capitalists. There are currently three obvious cases that illustrate this.
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1972: the US lashes out in Vietnam – and fails
[WORKERS, JUNE 2008]
In the 1970s, both Labour and Conservative governments continued to support the US government's wars of aggression against Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. This complicity was one of the most shameful acts in British history.
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Construction: contracts for the companies, insecurity for the workers
[WORKERS, MAY 2008]
A cursory glance around Britain's towns and cities reveals construction work being undertaken nearly everywhere one looks, and one could be forgiven for thinking that the industry is thriving. Representing some 10 per cent of GDP and with 2.1.million workers, it continues to grow. Indeed, such is the demand for labour that for the next five years, an additional 90,000 workers are needed annually.
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Going to the Dog
[WORKERS, MAY 2008]
If ever a commodity was associated with a particular region or city, surely Newcastle Brown Ale must have been it. The iconic blue star on the label glowed above the brewery next to St. James Park where it was also emblazoned on the Magpies' black and white shirts. Legends about the one-time potency of a bottle of "Dog" were exchanged across many a bar, along with suspicions about more feeble brews emanating from the South, Teesside for example.
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Primary education – who decides?
[WORKERS, MAY 2008]
When schools minister Jim Knight told this year's conference of the teaching union ATL that a class size of 70 can work "very well" he was greeted with jeers from the delegates. Maybe because they actually have experience of teaching, and he only has his own public school background to go on – probably with class sizes of a bit less than 70 (the private sector average is 10–15).
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They say they want freedom for Tibet, but what they want is to break up China
[WORKERS, MAY 2008]
What are we to make of the protests against the Olympic torch relay combined with calls to 'Free Tibet'? Let's start with the US award to the Dalai Lama of the Congressional Gold Medal in October 2007.
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1974: The fight against the Social Contract
[WORKERS, MAY 2008]
As part of the celebration of our 40th anniversary, we look at our party's warnings about the dangers of voluntary emasculation inherent in the Social Contract introduced by the Labour Party in 1974.
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Castro leaves office, and the US's dream of Cuban collapse fails to materialise
[WORKERS, APR 2008]
Fidel Castro will not stand for election again. Announcing his decision in February, he wrote, "This is not my farewell to you. My only wish is to fight as a soldier in the battle of ideas. I shall continue to write under the heading Reflections by Comrade Fidel. It will be just another weapon you can count on."
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Progress in the NHS: it's up to us
[WORKERS, APR 2008]
Last July, amid a fanfare of publicity in the trade press, and even some national news coverage, Professor Sir Ara Darzi became a well known name. It was he who had been commissioned by NHS London (the capital's Strategic Health Authority) to undertake a review into the health service in London, looking at all of the different clinical specialities, the services delivered and the settings in which they're undertaken, and was charged with the task of proposing recommendations for their improvement.
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EU Constitution: Referendum now!
[WORKERS, APR 2008]
THE HOUSE of Commons voted on 5 March to deny the British people a referendum on the EU Constitution. Only a handful of Labour MPs stood by their party's manifesto commitment for a referendum.
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1971: British troops out of Ireland, Ireland one nation!
[WORKERS, APR 2008]
The issue of northern Ireland is a test of workers' internationalism, today just as it was from 1922 when Ireland was split and Northern Ireland annexed.
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The London Underground unions have taken up a vital struggle over jobs and safety...
[WORKERS, MAR 2008]
Over 7,500 members of the RMT and TSSA unions are mounting a joint campaign in defence of safety standards and staffing on London Underground (LUL).
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Goodbye public ownership, hello to the £56 billion subsidy
[WORKERS, MAR 2008]
When the Labour Government of 1945 nationalised coal, railways, road haulage, gas, electricity and a range of other assets including the Bank of England, they did so not from a sense of introducing socialism, although there was a high level of support for socialism, but because the economy was in ruins at the end of World War II.
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There is a future for British oil and gas – but not if entrusted to corporations and the EU
[WORKERS, MAR 2008]
With workers in the North Sea oil and gas industry joining forces to boost their strength (See article in Workers February 2008), it is an apt time to take a look at what is a strategic part of British manufacturing and energy assets.
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Give capitalism enough room and it will wreck any industry – even football
[WORKERS, MAR 2008]
Why are there so many overseas football players in the English and Scottish professional leagues? There were always many Scots and Welsh with English clubs and Irish in both leagues, but few moved outside that circle. In some games in the Premier League 15 or more players from abroad are on the pitch. Even in Scotland and the English lower divisions there are many overseas players, in a far greater proportion than occurs in other countries.
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1969: Labour turns on the trade unions
[WORKERS, MAR 2008]
Quite soon after the birth of our Party, the social democratic Labour government headed by Wilson followed up an attempted wage freeze by moving to emasculate the trade unions with a set of proposals in a White Paper promulgated under the slogan, In Place of Strife. In the February 1969 issue of our paper, The Worker, our party responded to the government's threat advocating wholesale opposition to the proposed legislation.
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North Sea oilfields: workers flex their muscles in the industrial battleground
[WORKERS, FEB 2008]
Workers in the offshore oil and gas industry are getting better organised and flexing their muscles on pay, conditions and safety. On 13 February the result will be announced of the 2 January ballot on the merging of the RMT and the Aberdeen-based Offshore Industry Liaison Committee (OILC).
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European Union plans to annex Kosovo
[WORKERS, FEB 2008]
THE EUROPEAN Union is preparing for the annexation of part of a sovereign country, egged on by the USA. Having encouraged the break-up of Yugoslavia by offering first German and then EU recognition to a breakaway Croatia, the EU then offered Slovenia membership, sent troops to Macedonia and along with the US encouraged Muslim separatists in Bosnia Herzegovina with the US actually arming them.
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Midwifery in 21st–century Britain: death rates on the rise
[WORKERS, FEB 2008]
BACK IN 2003 Jacqui Smith Minister of State for Health stood in front of the Royal College of Midwives and said: "We have seen tremendous improvements in the care women and their babies have received in the last decade but I know that midwives are not the complacent type and that you continue to strive to develop care and services."
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Railways: struggle ahead on the line as bungling employers look for more profit
[WORKERS, FEB 2008]
The failings of the nation's fragmented and privatised railway were highlighted over the Christmas period as major engineering works overran, and huge fare increases were announced. Network Rail, brought in to overcome the chaotic and dangerous situation on the tracks after privatisation, has failed to deliver thanks to its continuing reliance on the contracting system condemned after the Hatfield and Potters Bar crashes.
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1969: Focus on the engineers, and on Britain
[WORKERS, FEB 2008]
Amid world turmoil and struggle, our party was formed in April 1968. Our founding chairman, Reg Birch, had issued a call to all interested persons in the labour movement and beyond to join our founding congress, which thus went on to create the only revolutionary communist party that Britain has ever known.
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Financial services: not so much an industry, more a short-cut to debt and dependency
[WORKERS, JAN 2008]
When US home owners can't pay their mortgages Northern Rock collapses, and the entire British economy, so reliant upon the so-called financial services "industry", is thrown into jeopardy. (See "Northern Rock: when the merry-go-round had to stop".)
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Northern Rock: when the merry-go-round had to stop
[WORKERS, JAN 2008]
Northern Rock is not an aberration. Take the trouble to understand what is unfolding there and you open a window on the present parlous state of capitalism in Britain and the world. Finance capital has built a house of cards on the "safe as houses" mortgage market.
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London's guides point the way over the Constitution
[WORKERS, JAN 2008]
While the TUC prepares to abandon any remaining vestige of democracy by reneging on its own massive vote for a referendum on the EU Constitution (on the grounds that some people don't want one!), the list of grass roots union members demanding their say grows by the day.
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There is an option in dealing with Iran – leave it alone
[WORKERS, JAN 2008]
What do we do about Iran? The question is so often posed, along with the fatuous "doing nothing is not an option", that it has become almost impossible to suggest that in fact doing nothing is the only sensible plan.
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The smashing of the Industrial Relations Act
[WORKERS, JAN 2008]
In 1970 a lead article in our Party newspaper The Worker gave an early warning against the coming corporate state. We reproduce the article below. By way of introduction, the Labour Party had started the attack on our trade unions with the Wilson government's "In Place of Strife", a 1969 white paper introduced by employment minister Barbara Castle, which proposed to curb the power of the unions but was never passed into law.
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