Britain

The London Hands off Venezuela campaign held an excellent meeting at the Walkers of Whitehall pub just off Trafalgar Square after the anti-war demonstration on March 19, 2005. Hands off Venezuela had a stall at the demonstration that attracted a lot of attention, where DVDs, pamphlets and leaflets were distributed on the revolutionary events in Venezuela.

We are very happy to publish this leaflet that has been distributed in West Yorkshire. The authors of the leaflet are a small but committed group of young Socialists who are based in the area.

Twenty years ago this month, the heroic twelve-month long struggle of the British miners to defend their jobs and their communities came to an end. The BBC drama Faith broadcast on February 28 on these events was like a breath of fresh air, an antidote to that earlier filth masquerading as ‘impartial documentaries’. For the first time in the national media the role of the state – its specially created national police force, its media, its secret services, and all the weapons employed by the ruling class to fight the miners – was vividly exposed.

Tony Blair has called the general election for May 5. He did this as opinion polls show a sharp fall in Labour support, down to 37% of the electorate, with the Tories close behind at 34% and the Liberal Democrats at 21%. This would indicate another Blair victory but with a much reduced majority and with significant layers of the working class voting for nobody. There will be no street parties this time.

Way back in 1959, the then Tory prime minister, Harold Macmillan, went into an election with the slogan that Britain has “never had it so good.” Now, according to Gordon Brown, the UK has enjoyed, under his stewardship, the longest period of sustained economic growth since 1701! However, it does not say much for capitalism and the British variety of it that the longest period of economic growth in its history is just seven years.

Jamie Oliver’s television programme has highlighted the scandal of junk food school meals being served up to British children by private firms. In some cases a pathetic 37p is being spent per child. This is the inevitable consequence of allowing profit hungry privateers anywhere near our children’s health and education.

The cornerstone of a freedom established almost 800 years ago is now under threat from a Labour government. The latest reactionary piece of legislation hands power to the Home Secretary of the day to hold those he claims to be suspected terrorists under house arrest indefinitely.

We republish this article on the referundum on the EEC Common Market, written by Ted Grant in 1979. The article explains that the struggle against a capitalist common market needs to be linked to the struggle of changing society on socialist lines, as the struggle against the European Constitution today must also be.

We publish this article written by Ted Grant just before the general election in Britian in 1979. The article demonstrates that the Tory policies were doomed to failure because of the sickness of British capitalism and that the reforms offered in the Labour Party programme were unattainable on a capitalist basis. The only way to carry out these reforms and take society forward was the nationalisation of the means of production, and the creation of a planned economy under the democratic control of the working class.

Elections can provide us with a snapshot of the political mood of society at a given moment. Yet if we restrict ourselves to who won and who lost they can teach us very little. This is the editorial from the current issue of the British Socialist Appeal.

Thousands of workers gathered in Coventry (UK) at the end of November to protest against the closure of the Jaguar plant in Brown’s Lane with a projected loss of 1150 jobs. From the December issue of Socialist Appeal.

The Scottish Socialist Party, once heralded by many on the left as the most successful socialist experiment in recent times, is in the process of tearing itself apart after sacking its founder and leader Tommy Sheridan as the party’s convener. Officially he is now simply a “backbencher”.

In her usual style Naomi Klein provided many interesting facts, but failed to reach any concrete conclusions of how we can or whether it is actually necessary to abolish capitalism. In essence she would like another kind of capitalism, a more humane capitalism, which of course is utterly utopian.