The Socialist Issue 248

IN THESE elections millions, probably a majority, will not vote. No wonder. All of the major parties - New Labour, the Tories and the Liberals - are basically carrying out the same policies.

They all support privatisation of public services. They all put the interests of big business before the interests of ordinary people. Where they run local councils they are all cutting our public services to the bone.

But not voting will not stop our public services being butchered. What is needed is a completely different kind of political party - a party that is made up of ordinary working- class people and fights for our interests.

Today, more than ever before we need a party that will stand up for us. That will fight to defend us against the billionaires who run this society for profit instead of people's needs.

The Socialist Party has a long and proud record of struggling to defend working-class people. For example, a decade ago, we led the battle against the poll tax which successfully brought down Thatcher and defeated the tax.

In the last three years we have had Socialist Party councillors elected in Preston, Coventry and Lewisham, London. Between 1983 and 1992 our three socialist MPs lived on the average wage of the workers in their areas and not the inflated salaries of parliament. We are standing across the country in these elections.

We are involved in hundreds of campaigns up and down the country, including the fight against privatisation, for better pay, to stop council house-off sell offs, for free education, and to stop the pollution of our environment.

As well as these day-to-day struggles, we also fight for socialist change. We want real socialism - a democratic society for the needs of all instead of the profits of a few.

Time For A Real Change

IN 1997 Britain celebrated as Tory misrule was ended. New Labour said: "It's time for change." But what kind of change have we seen?

Dave Nellist, Leader of the Socialist Party Group on Coventry city council

Cuts, closures and job losses have continued. New Labour policies seem no different to Old Tory ones. People didn't vote for school closures, increasing numbers of pensioners in poverty, and the privatisation of our services.

New Labour's real nature was starkly demonstrated when Blair formed a 'special relationship' with the most anti working-class leader in Italy - the hated Berlusconi.

All the three main parties are establishment parties who won't listen and won't change things. They stand for the millionaires not the millions. Socialists are out to build an alternative - but we need your help.

End Privatisation

IN NEW Labour's Britain privatisation rules. If your train doesn't arrive, if you're denied a hospital bed, if your education services are cut, if your libraries are closed then chances are it's because big business has decided it can't make enough money.

Privatisation means massive risk-free profits for the fat cats and poor public services for us. The Railtrack fiasco shows that privatisation doesn't work.

The government claim that privatisation can offer good public services. This is rubbish. Private companies exist to make a profit. They will only invest if they think they can make money.

When they invest in our public services, their profits are coming from the taxes we've paid. That means money is being transferred directly from our services into the fat cats' pockets.

For example, the new privately financed hospital in North Durham will cost £22 million more than building an identical new hospital in the public sector, yet New Labour have opted for the private option!

But it's no surprise that the survey New Labour commissioned on the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) decided in favour of privatisation. The company that carried it out - sleaze-ridden Arthur Andersen - has been involved in £10 billion worth of PFI contracts. This means it has made millions from the privatisation of our services!

Council Tax - Crippling Working-Class Families

YEAR IN, year out council tax bills increase. But while we struggle and scrape around to pay the council tax the services we receive for it are ever more decrepit or non-existent.

The council tax is a highly unfair way of organising local taxation. It favours the rich and penalises working-class people.

The highest level of council tax (paid by someone living in a mansion) is only three times the lowest level of council tax (paid for example by someone living in a one-bedroom council flat).

So while if someone in a one bedroom flat is paying £500, someone living in a mansion will only be paying £1,500.

The council tax is also unfair because it is based on property values which do not always accurately reflect the wealth of individuals.

The Most Expensive Childcare In Europe

THERE ARE 6,000 nurseries in Britain. Only 240 of them are run on a "not for profit" basis.

There are only eight day nursery places for every 100 children under five. On average the cost of pre-school childcare for two children is £6,000 per year, more than the average family spends on housing.

In Britain childcare is worse regulated, harder to obtain, and more expensive than in any other country in the European Union.

Lack of decent childcare means that many parents, in particular women, do not have the choice of going out to work. Others are forced to rely on informal childcare.

The Money's There

NEW LABOUR claims that they can't afford to provide high-quality public services.

In fact privatised services often end up costing more than public ones. Just look at Railtrack. The government subsidised Railtrack to the tune of around £1 billion a year.

Now the big City firms have been promised around an extra £1.3 billion (at least £300 million directly from the taxpayer) in compensation for their failure to run a decent railway!

New Labour can find money when it suits them. So far they have spent £326 million on the war in Afghanistan.

The fact is that New Labour is a party of big business. They've come to power after 18 years of the Tories giving money to the rich - and carried on doing the same thing.

Brown has already leaked that this year's budget is likely to include tax increases for working class people - but not for big business - who are going to receive a tax cut of £500 million!

Britain is a rich country. It is not a lack of wealth but New Labour's love affair with big business and privatisation that is responsible for the deterioration in living conditions and public services.

Overcrowding And Teacher Shortages

TONY BLAIR claimed education was his top priority but Labour's policies are failing our children.

Years of underfunding and mounting pressure on teachers has led to a widespread shortage of teachers, and overcrowded, under-resourced classrooms.

Now Blair has announced the end of comprehensive education and the wholesale re-introduction of selective schools. He is inviting big business, companies like McDonald, Shell and Schweppes, to make profits from our schools.

If New Labour's plans are fully realised, tens of thousands of working-class young people are going to be condemned to second-class sink schools that 'teach' students how to work in a burger bar or a petrol station.

Yet to provide decent education for all is achievable. To reduce class sizes for all schools to the level they were ten years ago would take around 27,000 extra teachers.

This, combined with the cost of repairing our crumbling school buildings, would cost around £5 billion a year - this could be paid for just by reversing the changes in National Insurance for companies that the Tories introduced while they were in office.

Education, Education, Education?

Labour's plans to end comprehensive education will hit all working class families hard, but Black and Asian students will be hit amongst the worst. Our schools need a massive injection of public funding, not shortages and selection.

SAM DIAS, Socialist Party councillor, Lewisham.

The Housing Crisis

The result is an ever more intense housing crisis. There are around 200,000 single homeless people in London alone. Millions of people are being forced to live in substandard, overcrowded private rented housing.

Once transferred out of council control, tenants lose their secured tenancy agreements for less protected 'assured' tenancies. On average rents increase immediately by £10 a week.

There is a desperate need for a large increase in the amount of affordable, pleasant, good quality social housing available. Yet New Labour has not reversed Tory policy, instead it has stepped up the council house sell-offs.

Public spending on housing has fallen dramatically. In the 1970s local authorities spent an average of £10.2 billion a year on housing. In the 1990s that had fallen to £7.2 billion (1998 prices).

From 1999 to 2001 only 400 council houses were built in the whole of Britain! This compares to 28,000 other types of 'social' housing where rents are more expensive, and which are almost always run by commercially orientated housing associations.

Lord Best, director of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, summed up the situation when he said: "House building is the worst since the early 1920s. The key to easing homelessness is actually simple. Build more affordable homes."

The previous Tory government did all they could to prevent councils building new homes. They made it illegal for councils to spend the £6.5 billion that had been received from the sale of council houses on building new council housing.

New Labour has only partially reversed this policy - allowing 25% of the £6.5 billion to be spent. Even this amount would be enough to create at least 150,000 new or refurbished homes on a national basis.

Yet, that would only be a fraction of what is needed and possible. After all in the 1930s half a million public homes were built every year. To fully solve the housing crisis it would be necessary to do the same again and more.

"Lewisham New Labour council spent a fortune trying to get tenants to agree to vote yes for their homes to be sold off. Every house received a flash video, with promises of all kinds of repairs and modernisation if they voted for privatisation.

"Local tenants groups, with the support of the local Socialist Party, ran a campaign on a shoestring budget, but the message went home "sell-off will mean less secure tenancies and higher rents". A majority of tenants voted 'No'.

"Of course tenants still want their homes repaired and refurbished but not if the price is privatisation. On the Honor Oak estate, which myself and Socialist Party councillor Sam Dias represent, a ferocious campaign has been fought for refurbishment. As a result the council have been forced to spend £14 million refurbishing council stock."

IAN PAGE, Lewisham Socialist Party councillor

Why Vote for a Socialist Alternative?

WE NEED councillors who, instead of kow-towing to big business and central government, will fight for the interests of working-class people.

The Socialist Party is contesting seats across the country in this election. Our candidates have already got a long record of leading local campaigns.

We are also supporting other candidates that campaign in the interests of working- class people (including other socialists and trade union and community anti-cuts candidates).

In the last three years we have had our first councillors elected in Preston, Coventry and Lewisham.

Those councillors have been consistent and determined defenders of public services and campaigners against cuts.

Even though, at this stage, we do not have a majority on any council they have been able to play a leading role in helping their communities defeat New Labour's cuts.

If a Socialist Party councillor is elected in your ward they will fight equally hard against the cuts taking place in your area.

Nor do we intend to stop at individual councillors. More and more people are looking for a socialist alternative to New Labour's Tory policies.

We aim to win a majority on councils in coming years in order to launch an all-out campaign to improve the living conditions of working-class people.

In the 1980s we played a leading role in Liverpool City Council. Between 1983 and 1987 the council built over 4,000 council houses with front and back gardens, created 2,000 jobs, built sports centres and even a park.

To do so, the council successfully defied the Tory government's insistence on cuts and yet more cuts. Tens of thousands marched in support of the stand taken by the Liverpool council.

Today we are faced with a New Labour government that is little different to the Old Tory one - it demands cuts and yet more cuts in just the same way.

But a council led by the Socialist Party will be just as determined to mobilise support for policies that would provide decent public services as we did in Liverpool in the past.

In doing so. we would could win the support of the majority of the population - only 11% of people support New Labour's privatisation policies.

Socialist Party councillors, whether they are at this stage in a small minority, or in the future when they hold the majority in some councils, will be the most consistent campaigners against cuts and privatisation and to improve jobs and services.

At the same time we explain that the market economy does not work. It means poverty for the majority and unimaginable wealth for a few.

It is only on the basis of a democratic socialist society that we could begin to build a society that really meets the needs of all instead of just the profits of a few.

Vote Socialist Alternative

Hands Off the Post Office

LAST WEEK, following an initiative by Socialist Party councillors, Coventry city council unanimously voted to oppose post office privatisation.

Rob Windsor, Coventry Socialist Party councillor

Our motion calling for the total halting of all privatisation plans was amended by Labour, who called for the government to 'rein in' the postal commissioner and 'modify' his plans. Normally, New Labour amend our motions out of existence but they were in a tight spot with imminent local elections.

Labour worry that this privatisation could trigger a hurricane of opposition amongst working-class people. Like the poll tax it will affect everyone.

During the debate we said we didn't just want the regulator "reined in" we want it dismantled. And we made it clear that the New Labour government are responsible for this privatisation.

Finally I said that I did not want the motion to sit doing nothing but to be part of a wider, active campaign opposing privatisation. The Tories and the one Liberal also voted to oppose privatisation.

No doubt the Tories have their eye on the rural postal services that would be devastated by the closure of 3,000 post offices which would be "unprofitable" areas for private delivery firms.

We have written to Billy Hayes, Communication Workers' Union (CWU) general secretary, about the resolution, with a copy to local CWU reps.

We'll see whether the council will do anything on this issue but The Socialist Party will step up our campaign against this and other privatisations.

Sharon Escalates War Against Palestinians

"THE STATE of Israel is at war", declared Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Not that anyone could be in any doubt as Israeli Defence Force (IDF) tanks rolled back into the Palestinian areas of the West Bank. 20,000 IDF reservists have also been mobilised for the occupation.

Earlier, IDF tanks and troops smashed their way into Yasser Arafat's compound in Ramallah, forcing the beleaguered Palestinian President and his entourage into a few rooms without food, water, and electricity. Sharon has bombastically called Arafat "an enemy of the free world". He is also considering exiling him.

As the IDF noose tightened around Arafat's neck, thousands of Palestinians were rounded up, blindfolded and handcuffed and taken for interrogation by Israeli troops. There have also been execution-style shootings of Palestinian police by IDF troops.

By unambiguously declaring a "war against terror" Sharon is going all-out to destroy the Palestinian Authority structures and render Arafat "an irrelevancy". Not that this will stop the suicide bomb attacks within Israel as the destruction of the Metza cafŽ in Haifa which killed 14 Israelis shows.

On the contrary, by further weakening Arafat's authority the leadership of the 18-month intifada (uprising) could pass into the hands of the Al-Aqsa/Tanzeem guerrillas and those Islamist groups allied to Hamas. These groups can only gain recruits from IDF reprisals that collectively punish Palestinians for the suicide bombings. These 'punishments' have subsequently driven young Palestinian men and women to sacrifice themselves for their national rights.

US imperialism

The Israeli invasion and the Palestinian bombings come only days after the Arab League summit in Beirut, Lebanon, agreed a Saudi Arabian-sponsored 'peace plan'. It also follows the visit by US president George Bush's special envoy - general Anthony Zinni - to broker a new ceasefire. The US has also backed a United Nations security council resolution which calls for a ceasefire and a resumption of the collapsed 'peace process'.

None of this diplomacy has made a jot of difference to the fighting on the ground. George Bush who has backed Sharon's military responses cannot now easily put the genie back in the bottle. It was Bush whose "war on terrorism" against the Taliban/Al Qa'ida regime in Afghanistan gave the green light to Sharon to pursue his war against the Palestinians.

The US administration would prefer that Sharon eased the IDF siege in order to facilitate getting some 'moderate' Arab regimes to support the next phase of the Bush's war, i.e. the invasion of Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein.

Even Tony Blair - who uncritically supports US imperialism and who has recently despatched more British troops to pacify Afghanistan - is getting cold feet about a US-led invasion force of Iraq as domestic opposition to this war grows.

The Israel/Palestine war could spill over into a wider regional conflict - a real fear of US imperialism. In recent days IDF troops have exchanged artillery fire with Hizbollah guerrillas operating in southern Lebanon.

In many Arab and Muslim countries there have been angry demonstrations and protests against both Israel and the US.

Sharon hopes that by militarily re-occupying Palestinian areas and through mass arrests he can disarm "the terrorist networks". But this repression is unlikely to dampen down Palestinian demands for their own state.

Moreover, the continuing annexation of territory by Jewish settlers, the refusal by Israel to allow the right of return of Palestinian refugees, the economic stranglehold and the daily humiliation and harassment of Palestinians at IDF checkpoints, is providing an ever growing reservoir of volunteers for the intifada.

Suicide bombings

However, while armed resistance to the IDF occupation is justified, suicide bombings by Palestinians of ordinary Israelis in Israel is proving counter-productive. Moreover, such attacks, by producing a climate of fear and revenge among Israeli Jews, can only play into the hands of the reactionary Israeli ruling class.

But despite the bombings and the strong Israeli culture of military service, 360 Israeli refuseniks have signed a letter refusing to serve in the IDF beyond the 'Green Line' - the pre-June 1967 border. So far, 14 have served or are serving jail terms.

Also, during the period of the intifada there has been a series of strikes and industrial struggles by Israeli trade unionists against the government's neo-liberal policies of privatisation and against the bosses' attempts to offload the current economic recession onto the backs of the workers through higher unemployment.

The economic, social and political interests of the Israeli working class are irreconcilable with those of the Israeli capitalists.

Alongside a mass struggle of Palestinians under their own, democratic control, the Israeli working class have a critical role to play in ending oppression and guaranteeing Palestinian national rights by establishing a workers' government.

A socialist government in Israel and a socialist Palestinian state - as part of a voluntary socialist confederation of states in the region - and an international struggle for socialist change, could utilise resources to end the region's endemic poverty and reconcile the democratic rights of all, thereby ending wars and conflict.

That is why it is an urgent task of socialists to build genuine workers' parties throughout the Middle East based on a consistent socialist and internationalist programme.

Despite the political difficulties arising from the current phase of the Israel/Palestine war, Socialists of Maavak Sozialisti in Israel are fighting for this programme of the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI).

More information see 19 March CWI statement - Carnage brings Middle East to brink of war. www.socialistworld.net (A shorter version is available in April's Socialism Today

Eyewitness Report By Socialist From Ramallah.

ON 3 APRIL 4,000 people, Palestinians and Jews, took part in a demo at A-ram junction - the IDF checkpoint at the entrance to Ramallah. The event, organised by radical women's organisations, was meant to be a quiet parade followed by trucks of supplies.

The checkpoint divides a Palestinian neighbourhood in two, and many residents from the Israeli side of the checkpoint joined the parade. The parade was stopped by the IDF immediately when we got to the checkpoint, and became a peaceful demo, with only women allowed to be on the front (the organisers' decision).

Many came to a demo for the first time in their life and many others came for the first time after more than 20 years.

In one-on-one conversations we realised that in spite of the war, many Palestinians do not have illusions in the capitalist regime of Arafat. Some of them have been unemployed for years. A Palestinian demonstrator told me: "I am unemployed for two years now. I have a wounded boy at home and I cannot give my kids a feeling of security. We must live here together, but the leaderships cannot give us a peaceful life, only the simple people can bring peace. It must come from below. Individual terror sends the Jewish masses to the hands of the nationalists".

As this conversation ended I went as far to the front as was allowed for men. In a minute I saw people running from the front - that was the end of the peaceful part.

The IDF started attacking the demo with shock grenades and tear-gas. The demo regrouped a few hundred metres from the checkpoint. When everybody thought the attack was over, it started once again, and this time a big force of the Israeli police joined the army. Soon 4,000 people were running.

Another police force was waiting in the next junction ready with gas grenades and clubs, so the demonstrators ran directly into the gas. Almost all of the protesters had already been hurt when the police started breaking up the demo with clubs.

More than 20 demonstrators were wounded. A Palestinian demonstrator showed us the blood on his trousers and told us what the police have done to his friend: "They pushed him on the road and started beating him with clubs." The police stopped the medical services from getting help to the wounded demonstrators for two hours.

In spite of the repression, this demo may be the beginning of a serious protest movement against the war. But it will not be based on the discredited pro-Oslo organisations like Peace Now, which did not take part in the demo.

The war will bring a growth of this movement, and provide opportunities for socialists to offer the solution of a socialist Israel alongside a socialist Palestine as a part of a socialist federation of the Middle East. This solution can only be achieved by a mass struggle of the Jewish and Palestinian workers.

The comrades of Maavak Sozialisti will keep fighting against the occupation and offering a socialist alternative and strategy for the anti-war movement.

Thatcher - Destroyer of industry and champion of the rich

"THE QUEEN is dead; long live the King". Not one but two political departures and obituaries have been accorded Thatcher, hated initiator and symbol of the capitalist counter-revolution against the rights and conditions of the working class in Britain and worldwide in the last two decades.

Peter Taaffe, general secretary, Socialist Party

The first was when the mighty anti-poll tax revolt in Britain, with 18 million non-payers and led by Militant (the bulk of whom are now members and leaders of the Socialist Party), consigned her to political oblivion in 1990.

On that occasion the mood was ecstatic amongst working people who believed that the political "Dark Ages" had finally come to an end. At London Bridge Station, the tannoy announced that she had resigned and people "danced down the escalators"!

There was spontaneous cheering, and nearly a party on the platform. Workers held meetings and walked out of factories, while Glasgow students walked out at dinnertime to hold a party outside the local Tory offices.

Press commentators speculated that it was Europe and any other number of issues that toppled her. But Thatcher, in her memoirs of her last years in power, acknowledged that it was the poll tax that did for her.

She wrote: "[We] did not believe that Europe was the main [issue]: it would not be crucial in a general election. Most people were worried about the community charge and that something substantial could be done about that.

"I intervened to say that I could not pull rabbits out of a hat in five days. John MacGregor supported me: I could not now promise a radical overhaul of the community charge, no matter how convenient it seemed." Facing an electoral massacre if she remained, Tory MPs plunged in the dagger and she was gone.

But, it seems, not completely as she continued on the 'fringe' to haunt Tory conferences and the Tory leaders that followed her. Now the 'Mummy' will never return; doctors have instructed her to give up all speaking engagements and any lingering hope of a further 'political life'.

And yet, like John Brown's body, her body may be a-mouldering in the grave but her spirit lingers on. What is Blair and his policies but Thatcherism with a grimace?

Thatcher came to power not to 'modernise' Britain, but in order to redress the class balance of forces in the 1970s in favour of the rich, the bosses and the capitalists. Never again, reasoned the capitalist leaders of Britain, would they experience the humiliation they felt at the hands of the miners in the 1972 and 1974 strikes. They got their revenge in the defeat of the miners' strike of 1984-85.

However, that was not preordained. Thatcher was lucky in her opponents; Galtieri, the Argentinean general who invaded the Falklands in 1982, led an even more incompetent dictatorial regime than her own.

In Britain she also confronted the trade union leaders, 'generals' of the working class movement, whose idea of giving battle to the capitalist enemy was from the outset to raise the white flag.

Class brutality

THATCHER WAS determined to defeat the miners as a means of cowing the British working class. The struggle of the miners between 1984 and 1985 was of epic proportions. If only these lions had not been let down by the right-wing donkeys of the TUC.

Thatcher, to paraphrase the Roman historian Tacitus, "created a desolation and called it peace". The pit villages of Yorkshire, South Wales and Scotland, with the guts torn out of them, plagued by unemployment, drug addiction and social disintegration, are still monuments to the defeat of the strike.

On a national scale it was as if an invading army had left in its wake an industrial wasteland, unprecedented social turmoil and the ruined lives of millions.

The brutal treatment of the miners was followed by the smashing of the printworkers at the behest of press baron Murdoch, the abolition of the Greater London Council and effective local government, the isolation, defeat and disqualification of the heroic 47 councillors in Liverpool, the banning of trade unions at GCHQ and the introduction of the most repressive anti-union laws in the whole of the industrialised world.

These arose in the main not from any 'personal' qualities or lack of them by Thatcher but were determined by the decline of ailing British capitalism. Capitalism as a whole approved of what she was doing. The 'liberal' capitalist critics of Thatcher objected more to her 'tone' than the real content of what she did to the British working class.

Thatcher invested her measures with a brutality and class venom that enraged working-class people and continues to do so to this day. Moreover, the capitalists paid a heavy price for Thatcher's preoccupation with mad monetarist ideas, strict control of the money supply, no subsidies to industry, etc.

The consequence was the collapse of manufacturing industry by 14% in the crisis of 1981-83. British capitalism has never recovered from the blows that she inflicted.

There was an aroused, and deep-seated hatred, not just of Thatcherism but of the Tory party and all that it stands for. Its last two leaders have been joke figures. Its current leader IDS is more of a stand-up comedian than a serious politician as he seeks to convince us that the Tories now "represent the poor"!

Blairism

THATCHERISM, AS personified by Thatcher and her heirs in the Tory party, is utterly discredited. However, Thatcherism in the form of Blairism is the major vehicle of the British ruling class.

Blair has transformed the Labour Party into a capitalist party. He has gone much further than Thatcher herself in privatising industries she dared not touch, for example air traffic control.

Rather than abolishing Thatcher's iniquitous anti-union laws the Blair government if anything, has reinforced them.

It is no accident that Blair has joined hands with the hated right-wing prime ministers of Italy and Spain, Berlusconi and Aznar. Italian workers refer to Blair as "Blairsconi" and his party as "Forza Blairi". Berlusconi wants to abolish article 18 of the labour laws, which gives Italian workers the right to go to tribunal against 'unjust' sackings and get them overturned.

The "Anglo-Saxon model" of neo-liberalism is the one first introduced by Thatcher. Blair is the high priest of this credo in Europe and throughout the world at the present time.

Just as the author of these ideas earned the scorn of the British people Blair, a second edition of Thatcher, is well on the way to receiving the same kind of treatment. In the last opinion poll 54% of the population believe that he is a "disappointment" as prime minister. He is an unapologetic, blatant spokesperson of capitalism.

The Italian workers in mighty demonstrations, such as the three million that engulfed Rome on 23 March, showed the mass rejection of Thatcherism and its modern exponents Blair, Berlusconi and Aznar. This movement, which is only in its first beginnings, will shatter the present phase of capitalist globalisation and the neo-liberal policies that go with it.

Under the impact of a worsening economic crisis and a mighty re-emerging working class, even the capitalists will be compelled to search for 'reformist' alternatives, going back to the pre-Thatcher period, of "managed capitalism", for solutions to the insoluble contradictions of capitalism.

Thatcher herself is utterly discredited and in the next period any lingering support for her ideas will meet a similar fate. The ruling class can twist and turn, searching for an alternative within the confines of their system.

For the working class however, the solution lies in breaking out of the framework of capitalism and opening up the road for a new society, a socialist society. Once this is achieved, as it will be, monuments to Thatcher and Thatcherism will be put in a museum of antiquities alongside other examples of capitalist barbarism.

The Socialist 5 April 2002	New Labour: The Bosses' Friend
New Labour: The Bosses' Friend	May Council Elections: Socialist Party Manifesto 2002: Standing for the millions not the millionaires Time For A Real Change End Privatisation Council Tax - Crippling Working-Class Families The Most Expensive Childcare In Europe The Money's There Overcrowding And Teacher Shortages Education, Education, Education? The Housing Crisis Why Vote for a Socialist Alternative?
Hands Off the Post Office	LAST WEEK, following an initiative by Socialist Party councillors, Coventry city council unanimously voted to oppose post office privatisation. By Rob Windsor, Coventry Socialist Party councillor
Sharon Escalates War Against Palestinians	"THE STATE of Israel is at war", declared Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Not that anyone could be in any doubt as Israeli Defence Force (IDF) tanks rolled back into the Palestinian areas of the West Bank. 20,000 IDF reservists have also been mobilised for the occupation. More ... Eyewitness Report By Socialist From Ramallah.
Thatcher: Destroyer of industry	Champion of the rich: "THE QUEEN is dead; long live the King". Not one but two political departures and obituaries have been accorded Thatcher, hated initiator and symbol of the capitalist counter-revolution against the rights and conditions of the working class in Britain and worldwide in the last two decades. Peter Taaffe, general secretary, Socialist Party

New Labour: The Bosses' Friend

2 May Council Elections

New Labour: The Bosses' Friend

Giving...£500,000,000 in tax breaks for big business

Giving...£1,300,000,000 in handouts to fat cat Railtrack shareholders

Socialist Party Local Election Manifesto 2002

End Privatisation

Defend Public Services

Standing for the millions

not the millionaires

Vote Socialist Alternative

Time For A Real Change

Dave Nellist, Leader of the Socialist Party Group on Coventry city council

End Privatisation

Council Tax - Crippling Working-Class Families

The Most Expensive Childcare In Europe

The Money's There

Overcrowding And Teacher Shortages

Education, Education, Education?

SAM DIAS, Socialist Party councillor, Lewisham.

The Housing Crisis

IAN PAGE, Lewisham Socialist Party councillor

Why Vote for a Socialist Alternative?

Vote Socialist Alternative

Hands Off the Post Office

Rob Windsor, Coventry Socialist Party councillor

Sharon Escalates War Against Palestinians

US imperialism

Suicide bombings

Eyewitness Report By Socialist From Ramallah.

Thatcher - Destroyer of industry and champion of the rich

Peter Taaffe, general secretary, Socialist Party

Class brutality

Blairism