The Socialist Issue 249

ONE OF the wheels of New Labour's privatisation bandwagon came off when tenants of Britain's largest landlord, Birmingham City Council, voted by a 2:1 majority to reject plans to sell off council housing to a group of private landlords.

This was a major political defeat for Tony Blair and the right wing council leaders.

Clive Walder

The council tried every trick in the book to coerce tenants into voting for privatisation.

Despite spending millions of pounds on propaganda, showing seductive pictures of new bathrooms and double glazing on buses, plastering the city and their own vehicles with posters urging people to vote, making a video with failed soccer manager Ron Atkinson - which was widely regarded as a joke by people who bothered to watch it - and flyposting litter bins (something we'd be prosecuted for!) Birmingham tenants still voted against privatisation.

Although the council's high pressure campaign to get people to vote 'Yes' undoubtedly wound people up it was the experience of privatisation that was the main factor in the resounding 'No' vote. 61,500 people voted in a high turnout of 65.5%.

The anti-privatisation campaign took on a David and Goliath dimension because of the council's massive advantage in terms of money and personnel. UNISON, Defend Council Housing, the Socialist Party and others had to make do with cheaply produced leaflets advertising public meetings and word of mouth.

Anti-privatisation campaigners demolished the council's business case and painstakingly warned tenants of high rents and less secure tenancies. We explained what had happened on estates already privatised in Birmingham and elsewhere.

The scale of this victory shouldn't be underestimated and shows us that a determined campaign with the facts can beat a well-oiled and slick PR machine.

The council are already criticising Birmingham tenants for making their choice by saying that they may have to wait 30 years for their housing repairs!

The Socialist Party did not campaign against privatisation so that tenants could live for evermore in sub-standard housing. We believe that housing should be improved and will now demand that the government write off the council's housing debt and allow the money currently spent on debt repayments to be spent on renovation and building new houses.

With their privatisation plans now in tatters, if councillors won't pressurise the Blair government for properly funded public services then they should stand aside for socialists who will.

This victory should give confidence to all those fighting New Labour's privatisation mania.

Vote for Socialist Party candidates in the local elections on 2 May

A Socialist council would launch a programme of mass council house building alongside a programme refurbishing existing stock.
If it was necessary to spend more than the 25% of funds that the government has released, we would be prepared to defy New Labour an spend more in order to provide good quality, affordable, democratically controlled public housing.

Coventry

Socialist Councillors make a difference

COVENTRY SOCIALIST Party will he standing in eight seats in the local elections on 2 May. One of our main tasks is to get Dave Nellist re-elected for his second term as a socialist ' councillor.

Since Dave was elected in 1998 we have caused huge waves on Coventry city council. There are now three Socialist Party councillors, making the Socialist group the second opposition group after the Tories.

Supporting council workers

AFTER NEW Labour lost nine seats in the 2000 local elections, the council was forced to ditch its ultra-Blairite former leadership and reverse its single status attacks on pay.

The Socialist Party played a big role in telling council workers what the deal would mean - our councillors were the only ones to vote against it.

Defending our hospitals

WE ARE still the only councillors campaigning to keep our hospitals. The Walsgrave PFI hospital deal could be the most expensive health rip-off ever! The cost has risen from around £194 million in 1998 to a staggering £330 million now. And it's on an out-of-town site where nobody wants it.

When councillors tried to move a motion on this recently, New Labour just wanted the deal to "go ahead without any more fuss".

Yet one week later it was announced that a fully private 70-bed hospital is to be built on part of the land. So the new hospital will have fewer beds than Coventry's current two NHS hospitals and will now have to jostle for space with a private hospital which NHS patients won't have access to.

Campaigning against housing privatisation

WHEN COUNCIL housing was sold off, Socialist councillors were pilloried for "opposing tenants who need repairs". This is scandalous coming from Labour councillors whose lack of fight for funds for housing during the Tory years led to the desperate state of council housing in the city.

We were the only ones to point out that much bigger private loans for repairs would result in higher rents, less security of tenure - and the demolition of housing seen as "uneconomic", without replacement.

Everything we warned of is coming true. We exposed the scandal of new tenants getting weaker tenancies in a city where evictions have gone up by 45% since privatisation, according to housing charity Shelter.

Standing up for tenants' rights

THE NEW landlord, Whitefriars Homes Group, announced late last year that it wanted to close the Manor Guild House, a hostel housing 156 homeless men. The building is in bad condition but many of the men see it as their home.

We took up the campaign, saying that either refurbished or rebuilt accommodation should be provided on site for residents who wish to stay, with extra bed-spaces for future homeless men.

Clearly, Whitefriars are reluctant to even consider this option - their bankers have told them that the building and its residents are not "economically viable".

They hide behind talk of wanting to find the residents "better homes" but ignore the sense of camaraderie and community amongst long-standing residents.

When our councillors raised this at a meeting they were accused of "scaring and worrying vulnerable people". One resident told us that Whitefriars' reps privately admitted that they had been "backed into a corner" by a campaign that they weren't expecting.

But residents are getting organised. With the assistance of Socialist Party members, 80 have signed a pledge that they will refuse to leave if closure goes ahead.

More proof of "social cleansing" by Whitefriars is the recent proposal to demolish a high rise estate in Hillfields in St Michaels Ward. Local tenants, helped by our members, resisted these attempts before.

Tenants have again risen to the challenge and will step up their campaign if there are any further moves towards demolition after a consultation excercise.

Socialists do not believe in bad high-rise housing. But we stress that any housing demolished should be replaced by new housing. This is not the deal on offer in Hillfields.

New Labour says it wants to build strong communities yet in two parts of the city it is shattering them.

Prioritising the needs of working-class people

LOCAL PEOPLE are sick of the lack of investment. Whilst the council invests £20 million in a land deal related to a new stadium in the city, they tell local residents that there's no cash for their communities.

One tower block in the city centre is part of a lighting display that supposedly predicts the weather by colour code! This cost £400,000.

Socialist councillors voted against this and asked for local street lighting to be prioritised but the council ignored this. Yet residents of that same block have been plagued by glue sniffers and intravenous drug users because Whitefriars won't provide a working intercom.

Building a community fightback

Israel / Palestine:

Who Can Live Like This? Who Can Die Like This?

THE WORSENING situation in the West Bank has horrified millions of people around the world.

This "major assault" was implemented even before the ill-fated Saudi "peace plan" and US envoy Zinni's attempt to enforce a ceasefire in the region got off the ground. All the major cities in the West Bank (Nablus, Jenin, Ramallah) are the latest venues for brutal military force, assassinations and the attempted crushing of an entire people by the Israeli regime.

The Israeli army (Israeli Defence Force - IDF) has used anti-aircraft weaponry to pummel buildings. Electricity and water supply infrastructure has been destroyed. House-to-house searches have led to the assassination in cold blood of young, Palestinian policemen and random killings of other Palestinian civilians. Thousands have been rounded up.

"Who can live like this? Who can die like this?" asks Dr Atari from Ramallah Hospital.

The Israel/Palestine war is igniting mass social discontent throughout the Middle East, threatening to topple many of the region's pro-US regimes. In countries such as Egypt and Jordan, run by semi-dictatorships, thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators have taken to the streets clashing with riot police.

In Arab and Muslim countries there have been many demonstrations condemning both the Israeli government and the US administration.

This huge anger threatens to undermine the pro-Western regimes in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Oil prices are rising as a result of Sharon's war and the growing instability threatens the world economy. Iran and Iraq have threatened to force OPEC to interrupt oil supplies to the US and the West. As a result of these pressures, the US administration has been forced to intervene with the latest speech by US President George Bush.

US administration’s belated intervention

"ENOUGH IS enough" said Bush referring to the mounting violence in Israel and the occupied territories and calling for a cease-fire but it is too little too late. Israel's prime minister Ariel Sharon has continued to extend the siege and occupation of Palestinian areas.

Bush's intervention follows weeks of silence while Israeli tanks and troops rampaged through the West Bank. Only when the war threatened to spiral out of control, thereby scuppering his plans to invade Iraq, did he call for a halt to Israel's military incursions.

The delay in delivering a policy statement on the Middle East is due to the splits in his cabinet.

However, it appears that secretary of state Colin Powell has won the upper hand for now by arguing that by backing Sharon, isolating Arafat and ignoring Arab opinion it could jeopardise US imperialism's regional strategic interests.

Feeling the ground shifting below his feet, Bush is clearly concerned that the next phase of US imperialism's 'war on terrorism' is coming unstuck. This explains why Bush now calls for an Israeli withdrawal (to Israel's pre-1967 border as demanded by UN resolutions 242 and 338), an end to settlements and has reiterated his backing for a Palestinian state.

Needless to say Bush put most emphasis on condemning Yasser Arafat for failing to halt the Palestinian suicide bombers and issued warnings to Syria and Iran (who back the Hizbollah guerrillas operating in southern Lebanon) to "stay out" of the conflict.

Bush has dispatched secretary of state, Colin Powell, to broker a ceasefire and restart the failed Oslo 'peace process'. But while the beleaguered Palestinian president, Yasser Arafat, clutched at the opportunity of a ceasefire, Sharon seems determined to militarily dismantle the Palestinian Authority which he describes as the "terrorist entity".

The CWI is campaigning for:

The immediate withdrawal of all Israeli forces from all Occupied Territories - the Gaza and West Bank. Stop the aggression against the Palestinians.

A mass struggle throughout the region against imperialism and capitalism - the root cause of the conflict.

The right of Palestinians to resist the Israeli occupying forces. For a mass struggle to fight for genuine national and social liberation. For the establishment of popular, democratically controlled grass-roots committees to provide leadership to the struggle. The right of these committees to provide democratically controlled armed defence.

The mobilisation of workers and youth internationally to aid the Palestinians' struggle for democratic, national and social rights and for a socialist solution in the Middle East.

An end to Sharon's war of reoccupation and his reactionary, capitalist government, An end to the use of Israeli soldiers as cannon fodder by the Israeli ruling class and army generals. For the right of all conscript soldiers and reservists to refuse to serve in the Occupied-Territories.

A united struggle by Israeli Jews and Israeli Palestinian workers, youth and community activists against Sharon's aggression and the occupation. End institutionalised racism and discrimination towards Israeli Palestinians. For a struggle of the Israeli working class - both Jewish and Palestinian - to overthrow capitalism.

A struggle by the masses of the Arab states against the corrupt, reactionary, capitalist ruling Arab elites. For a socialist Middle East.

Middle East at War

New pamphlet from the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI)

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Eye-witness: A-Ram protest - a pointer to the future

THE POSSIBILITIES for a united struggle between Israeli Jews and Palestinians against the occupation were shown during the demonstration organised at the A-ram military checkpoint outside Ramallah last week.

Thousands of Israeli Jews and Palestinians jointly took part in this courageous and radical demonstration, including members of Maavak Sotzialisti ('Socialist Struggle'), the CWI section in Israel.

Protesters included many young people who had never before participated in political protest as our Eyewitness report from a Socialist in Ramallah explains:

ON 3 APRIL 4,000 people, Palestinians and Jews, took part in a demo at A-ram junction - the Israeli Defence Force (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 at the front (the organisers' decision).

Many came to a demo for the first time in their lives and many others came for the first time in 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.

State brutality and repression

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 had 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.

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.

Israeli socialists' statement

MEMBERS OF Maavak Sotzialisti, the Israeli section of the CWI, call and actively campaign for the immediate withdrawal of the Israeli army from all of the occupied territories in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Extracts from a statement by Maavak Sotzialisti ('Socialist Struggle')

We support unconditionally the Palestinians' right to self-determination and an independent state, including the right to resist the Israeli occupying forces with arms.

We explain to Jewish workers and youth that Sharon's capitalist "national unity" government cannot bring them security anymore than it can provide decent jobs and living conditions.

We also explain to reserve and regular soldiers alike that they should not die in vain in this war against the Palestinian masses, which will only increase suicide attacks against Israeli civilians.

This is why we support the more than 1,000 Israelis who have refused to serve in the occupied territories.

At the same time, we believe that the tactic of suicide attacks against Israeli citizens is counterproductive and does not serve the cause of Palestinian freedom, since it drives Israeli workers and youth to the arms of rightwing reactionaries like Sharon.

We call on the Palestinian masses to form grassroots popular committees in order to democratically control their struggle for national and social liberation and to appeal to Israeli soldiers and workers to join them in toppling all of the rotten capitalist regimes in the Middle East.

We will continue to fight against this war of re-occupation, this reactionary government and the millionaires that it represents, and for the masses of the region achieving the only solution to war, oppression and poverty - an independent, socialist Palestine alongside a socialist Israel as part of a voluntary socialist federation of the Middle East.

The Socialist Alternative to War and Oppression

SHARON'S BLOODY war of reoccupation in the West Bank and Gaza has destroyed whatever hopes lingered for the 'peace process' in the Middle East.

Many working people around the world will now be asking if there can ever be a lasting solution to the Palestine / Israel question.

Niall Mulholland

Socialists believe there is an alternative to war and national oppression, but this can only come about as part of a united struggle by the working class of the region against capitalism and imperialism, as the history of the conflict has amply illustrated.

The modern state of Israel was created in 1948, when Jews fled the Nazi Holocaust and persecution to a new 'homeland' in what was then Palestine. The right wing Zionist leaders carried out the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, using brutal paramilitary methods and 'terrorism'.

Initially, socialists opposed the formation of the Israeli state, pointing out that it would only be realised through the oppression of other peoples. Furthermore, as Leon Trotsky prophetically pointed out, it would be a "bloody trap" for the Israeli Jews themselves. The Israeli ruling class promised a "land of milk and honey" for its people but have only delivered decades of crisis and wars and, in recent years, also economic decline.

One of the main reasons Israel has been able to survive is because of enormous economic and military aid from US imperialism, which sees Israel as its key client state in the strategically vital region.

Socialists call for the expulsion of imperialism out of the region, and for the right of self-determination of Palestinians. However, how can these demands be won?

Capitalist states – no solution

WE BELIEVE that it is incorrect to call for the replacement of the Israeli state by a 'secular democratic Palestinian state, with rights for Israeli Jews', as the PLO leadership used to, and unfortunately many on the Left internationally continue to do (and they do not always pay any reference to the rights of Jews).

The development over decades of a national consciousness amongst the Jewish population of Israel is a concrete fact that has to be taken into account. On the basis of capitalism, the Israeli population, with the back-up of its large armed forces, would fight to the bitter end to prevent the liquidation of their 'homeland'. Israeli Jews fear they would be outnumbered and oppressed in a Palestinian state.

On the other hand, to say to the long suffering Palestinians that they should accept minority status within a 'democratic Israel' is equally rejected. Given that a supposedly 'independent' Palestinian Authority has meant an actual increase in poverty and oppression, what chance would Palestinians have of justice and equality as a minority within the borders of a capitalist Israel?

A socialist confederation of the Middle East

SOCIALISTS THEREFORE call for an independent socialist Palestine and a socialist Israel as part of a wider voluntary socialist confederation in the region.

This is not some abstract option, but the only practical solution that corresponds to concrete conditions and the consciousness of the Palestinians and Israeli Jews. In fact, the majority of the population in the West Bank and Gaza now supports the idea of a separate Palestinian state.

However, on the basis of capitalism the goal of a genuine independent Palestine will never be fully recognised, as the sorry and short life of the Palestinian Authority (PA) has shown. The Israeli ruling class and US imperialism do not want the creation of a truly independent Palestinian state, as they fear it would act as a radical rallying point for the poor and exploited throughout the Middle East.

The corrupt and despotic ruling elites in the Arab states, despite their fake support for Palestinian rights, also fear the establishment of an independent Palestine, seeing in it the beginning of the end of their rule.

The struggle for a socialist Palestinian state and a socialist Israel allows socialist activists to win the ear of both Israeli and Palestinian working people and forge the unity of the oppressed throughout the region. This demand exposes the reality that there is no capitalist solution and points to the conclusion that workers and youth need to build a class alternative to the bosses' parties.

On the basis of building socialism - a society based on need not profits - Israeli and Palestinian workers can decide democratically, and without a hint of coercion or compulsion, the exact character and borders of a future society. The most contentious and sensitive issues, such as refugees, water and land rights, and the status of Jerusalem, can then be resolved.

Resources would be equally shared, as part of a planned economy, controlled and run by the working class. A socialist federation would see the free movement of peoples. A dramatic rise in living standards, including a massive house-building programme, would transform the issue of the right of Palestinian refugees to return. Jerusalem, today a disputed city, would probably be agreed as a ‘shared capital city'.

Only such a programme, allied to a common struggle on the economic and class issues, can offer a way out of the present grim cycle of wars and national hatreds.

What Lies Behind...

The Oppression of Women

In the first article in an occasional series on Marxist classics Christine Thomas looks at Friedrich Engels' book, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State

Apart from a few deluded "post-feminist", most people would agree that women are still discriminated against and oppressed. The facts are all-too-familiar; women earn less money than men, still have the main responsibility for looking after children and household tasks - even when they work full-time.

One in four women will experience domestic violence at some time in their lives and two women are killed by their partner or ex-partner every week. Many women will ask why this is still the case and what can be done to change it.

The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State gives a Marxist explanation of women's oppression and how to fight it. But can a book written as long ago as 1884 still have relevance today?

Engels argues that the institutions and social arrangements of capitalism are not universal and have not always existed in their current form, but are a product of particular historical circumstances.

Social institutions change as the economic basis of society changes; they are linked to how production and reproduction is organised and how we produce what's necessary to secure a living. Of course this is not a simple, direct relationship: a complex interaction takes place.

Women's oppression, Engels argues, has not always existed but developed in conjunction with the rise of private property, the division of society into classes and the development of the family as an economic and social institution.

These ideas had revolutionary implications - if the institutions and social arrangements of capitalism have not always existed then they can be changed. This potentially threatens the stability and existence of capitalism itself.

It was particularly explosive to question the universal nature of the family in the late 19th century. The family was essential for consolidating and extending the capitalist class' wealth. It also played an important role in bringing up and socialising the next generation of workers, instilling discipline and deference to hierarchy - all necessary for the stability and functioning of the capitalist profit system.

Women's role in the family also underpinned women's subordinate position in the workplace and in society generally.

Double exploitation

FOR MOST people today, families are about personal relationships. But the family also still plays a vital economic and social role for capitalism. It's the place where women (and it still is mostly women) work unpaid bringing up children and often caring for elderly and sick relatives.

In 1997 it was estimated that women's unpaid work in the home saved Britain's capitalist economy £739 billion a year!

When governments promote 'family values' they're not thinking of the well-being of family members but how much money they can save on public services by making women take up the slack in the home, or how to avoid the benefit and housing costs that arise when relationships break down (estimated at £5 billion a year).

And if things go wrong - which, given the pressures most families are under, sometimes happens - the family and women in particular are scapegoated rather than placing the blame where it really lies - on the capitalist system itself.

As socialists, we want to see a society where relationships are freed from the economic and social pressures and constraints which this system places on them; where women are not treated as second-class citizens but have full equality and freedom from discrimination and oppression in every aspect of their lives.

Engels argues that for this to happen, there has to be a fundamental change in the way that society is organised and structured - away from a system based on private ownership of the means of producing goods and wealth.

The capitalists, who make enormous profits out of the double exploitation of women, promote the idea that it is impossible to organise society in a different way to the current system, to make us think that it's always been like this.

But it hasn't, as Engels explains in the Origin. Scientific evidence discovered since Engels' time backs up his premise that the family, as a social institution, has not been around for all time, and that societies have existed where there was not a systematic and institutionalised oppression of women.

Societies have existed, often referred to as hunter-gatherer societies, where the basic social arrangement was the kinship group or band, not the family. These societies were not divided on the basis of class, had no private ownership of the means of producing goods and wealth, and no exploitation of one group by another. They were based on the values of co-operation, mutual dependence and a complex network of socially accepted rights and responsibilities.

Engels of course was working with the limited scientific knowledge of his day, so some of the detail has since been found to be incorrect. For example, the complicated evolutionary sequence of stages which he outlines to explain how kinship groups (which he calls gens) developed.

Also, he thought that women's contribution to the group was looking after children, when in fact they were also responsible for gathering food which made up as much as 80% of the diet of hunter-gatherer societies.

Class society

ENGELS ARGUES that the "the world historic defeat of the female sex" came about with the rise of private ownership of the means of production, the division of society into classes and the development of the family, which grew out of, and gradually replaced, the communal band as the basic unit of society.

There is general agreement that a revolutionary change took place independently in many parts of the world around 8,000 to 10,000 years ago, based on changes in production and technique and new ways of obtaining the essentials of life.

By learning to cultivate crops and domesticate animals, societies could produce a surplus over and above the group's immediate needs, In turn, this laid the basis for specialisation and the division of society into a class of exploiters and exploited.

The family arose as part of this process of control and inheritance of the means of producing wealth and society. Women of the ruling class shared in the wealth of exploiters but were themselves oppressed within the family.

Under slavery for example, in Roman times, men (fathers and husbands) controlled women's sexuality. The crime of adultery, which could potentially put a question mark over the paternity of children and wealth inheritance, was subject to severe punishment.

The ruling class used the legal system, religion and ideology to legitimise, institutionalise and perpetuate women's oppression and second-class status to suit its own economic and social interests.

As class society from slavery to feudalism and then to capitalism, the family’s structure and role also changed. Capitalism has adopted and adapted the family to meet its own needs, which themselves vary, giving rise to contradictions.

So for example, capitalism needs women's unpaid work in the home but, especially over the last 30 years or so, has also become more and more dependent on women's cheap labour in the workforce.

Fighting back

BUT WITH so many women now in the workplace, the potential for collective struggle both as workers and as women has increased, as Engels himself foresaw.

To secure real equality, women need to organise collectively, linking up with working-class men, who are themselves economically exploited, to change the system.

Capitalism as an economic system is based on exploitation, oppression and inequality, which is reflected in and reinforces the discrimination and oppression which women still face.

Socialism on the other hand, based on co-operation and equality, would lay the basis for real economic independence for women, public provision of quality childcare and other services women need, freedom to organise our personal relationships as we choose and an end to violence, sexism and abuse.

The Origin of the Family was a groundbreaking book, revealing the material basis of women's oppression and explaining how to end it. It is of course a product of its time, with gaps and mistakes due to the scant scientific evidence available in the late 19th century.

But the general ideas outlined by Engels are still valid today. To get the most out this book it should be read in conjunction with other Marxist publications which developed, built on and updated Engels' basic revolutionary ideas.

The Socialist 12 April 2002	We Can Beat Privatisation
We Can Beat Privatisation	Birmingham tenants' victory: ONE OF the wheels of New Labour's privatisation bandwagon came off when tenants of Britain's largest landlord, Birmingham City Council, voted by a 2:1 majority to reject plans to sell off council housing to a group of private landlords. This was a major political defeat for Tony Blair and the right wing council leaders.
Socialist Councillors make a difference	Coventry: COVENTRY SOCIALIST Party will he standing in eight seats in the local elections on 2 May. One of our main tasks is to get Dave Nellist re-elected for his second term as a socialist ' councillor.
Who Can Live Like This? Who Can Die Like This?	Israel / Palestine: THE WORSENING situation in the West Bank has horrified millions of people around the world. More ... US administration’s belated intervention What the CWI is campaigning for: A-Ram protest - a pointer to the future: THE POSSIBILITIES for a united struggle between Israeli Jews and Palestinians against the occupation were shown during the demonstration organised at the A-ram military checkpoint outside Ramallah last week. Israeli socialists' statement: Extracts from a statement by Maavak Sotzialisti ('Socialist Struggle') The Socialist Alternative to War and Oppression: SHARON'S BLOODY war of reoccupation in the West Bank and Gaza has destroyed whatever hopes lingered for the 'peace process' in the Middle East. Many working people around the world will now be asking if there can ever be a lasting solution to the Palestine / Israel question.
The Oppression of Women	In the first article in an occasional series on Marxist classics Christine Thomas looks at Frederich Engels' book, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State

We Can Beat Privatisation

Birmingham tenants' victory