Dawn Stuart is a left trade union activist working for Belfast City Council. She is currently standing for the General Executive Council of the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU) on a programme of union democracy. This is especially important since the bureaucratic removal of Mick O'Reilly and Eugene McGlone from their positions in the Irish region. The following is her election statement:

Well it was a landslide. It was an unprecedented result. No, I don't mean a Labour landslide or that it was unprecedented that Labour won a complete second term for the first time. No, I mean that for the first time since every person of 21 years and over was allowed to vote (and it was 1928 before women got the vote), the No Vote party polled more than the party with the largest number of votes.

A young Italian anti-capitalist demonstrator has been shot by police during the anti-G8 demonstration in Genoa today. It has been confirmed that the police fired into the crowd, not into the air. A further fifty or so demonstrators were wounded, one of them critically.

We publish below a translation of the December 1998 editorial statement of the Socialisten (Swedish Marxist journal). It was written because their was some debate at the time over the question of "housemaids". The fact is that a lot of wealthy families "employ" immigrant women to do their housework. They get low wages, no taxes are paid and they have no rights or social security at all. It is a totally black market. The proposal then was to make this market legal, by granting tax-exemptions on these services.

The New York Times of Saturday, March 27, quotes Laura Leslie, a senior from Miramonte High School, San Francisco: "I don't want to see another thing like what happened with Hitler, with a terrible person taking over countries". Laura reads the newspaper and listens to the news, and in her innocent way sums up the message of the propaganda war-supporting machine. She is not to be blamed for oversimplifying what is going on in Kosovo and why her country is at war again. The media and the President try to convince you that this is true and that you should support the men and women of your armed forces for the sake of your values and your children's future. But I would like to offer you a

Tony Blair, Jack Straw, William Hague and Ann Widdecombe have all expressed their disgust and outrage at the malicious vandalism melted out to the statue of Sir Winston Churchill in Parliament Square.

Thousands of students participated yesterday (April 20th) in Spain in a national day of action against the bombing of Yugoslavia. The protest was called by the Students Union (Sindicato de Estudiantes). Thousands of students participated in meetings in the schools to discuss a resolution drafted by the Students Union opposing NATO's intervention against Yugoslavia and proposing a Socialist Federation of the Balkans with full democratic rights for all nationalities as the only way forward for the people of the Balkans.

ANZHERO-SUDZHENSK, Russia - For some reason, the Soviet system had a way of playing cruel jokes on this coal-mining centre in the Kuzbass industrial region of Siberia. One such malign whim was to locate the city administration building hard by the heating and electrical generating plant. Ever since, two immense chimneys have towered over the municipal offices, pouring out dark smoke. In winter the snow here is black; in the autumn rains, the forecourt outside the building is covered with grey sludge.

An interview with Vera Dimitrievna Arfanas, chairperson of the workers' committee of the OAO "Rosselmash" factory, published in the Russian Marxist paper Rabochaya Demokratiya (Workers' Democracy), issue no 45, August 1998

On the 23d of January the first congress of the workers' and strike committees from Syberia and Far East of Russia was held in Anzhero-Sudjensk (Kemerovo region). 155 delegates from Kranoyarsk, Barnaul, Tuva, Khakassia, Kuzbass, Tomsk, Novosibirsk, Tyumen', Cheliabinsk, Samara regions attended the congress. They discussed a report on the last year railroad war and exchanged views about the further steps by the workers movement. The delegates highlighted the necessity of revolutionary struggle and overthrown of the regime. They pointed that the state power will be the central question for the workers' movement in Russia. A few resolutions on political situation, on the struggle against

The new war in Chechnya is a further evidence of a shift of power in Russia in the direction of the military. The generals are now clearly in the saddle. Not only are they deciding the war agenda in Chechnya, but they are doing so without regard to the opinions of the Kremlin clique. Boris Yeltsin is now an irrelevance. But the army caste will not pay any attention to the rest of the so-called government of Russia which they regard as the source of all their troubles. Once having got a taste of political power, they will be all the more inclined to go one step further.

May Day in Moscow. A mass of red flags in brilliant sunshine. The demonstrators - mainly members of the Communist Party (CPRF), numbering about 50,000, made quite an impressive showing as they streamed across the river Moscow up to the ancient walls of the Kremlin. The entrance to Red Square was blocked by a row of burly policemen. Yeltsin does not want the Square used for demonstrations - at least, not anti-government ones. The meeting is held outside the walls, next to the onion-shaped Byzantine domes of the Cathedral of Saint Basil and a huge poster announcing that "Christ is Risen".

As the Good Friday Agreement stumbles from one crisis to another, hopes have been raised that the new "concessions" given by the provisional IRA on weapons will be sufficient to draw the Unionists into another power sharing executive and assembly with Sinn Fein.

The suspension of the Northern Ireland Assembly is the latest demonstration of the inability of capitalism to solve the national question in Ireland. Below we look at the reasons for the breakdown in the current talks, the future prospects for the IRA, the unionists, and the possibility of a socialist solution.