Archive for April 2000

7 April 2000

Rover: Workers' action to save jobs

100,000 MARCH WITH ROVER WORKERS: OVER 100,000 working-class people marched through Birmingham last weekend to show their anger at BMW's plans to shut down Rover...

7 April 2000

Council elections: Our Socialist Alternative to Labour

A BANNER on Saturday's Rover demo said: "Tony Blair - if we lose our jobs, you'll lose yours." An effigy of Blair behind it showed a worker stabbing him in the back with a cardboard axe!...

7 April 2000

Bosses profit - while workers suffer

THE MASSIVE demonstration in Birmingham directly resulted from the world car industry's crisis of overcapacity, writes Bill Mullins.

7 April 2000

Putin - the potential dictator

AS WAS expected, acting President Vladimir Putin won Russia's Presidential election. He gained just over 52% of the vote, just enough to secure victory in the first round. ROB JONES reports from Moscow...

14 April 2000

Reject the Racist Lies

A MISERABLE band of 50 National Front fascists attempted a march through Margate last Saturday, trying to cash in on the anti-asylum seeker climate being encouraged by New Labour and the Tories, writes Helen Redwood.

14 April 2000

Crisis in the Car Industry - Double dealing Bosses

THE ROVER crisis shows that BMW are typical capitalists, they're double-dealing hypocrites. Rover's last owners were prepared to fiddle the profit and loss accounts to justify whatever they wanted to...

14 April 2000

Rover: Where did all the money go?

THE BIG car companies always play one country off against another. BMW threatened to move Rover 75 production to Hungary in 1998 unless the government coughed up £250 million to develop the Longbridge...

14 April 2000

MSF Activists say "Take over Rover"

DELEGATES TO West Midlands Regional Council of Manufacturing Science Finance (MSF), one of the main trade unions with members at Rover, have backed a demand for public ownership...

14 April 2000

The Fat of the Land

TONY BLAIR claims that he intends to abolish poverty in Britain within 20 years. The Sunday Times Rich List 2000 suggests that the opposite is happening - the gap between wealth and poverty is widening...

14 April 2000

Can a wealth tax bridge the gap?

Comment: BARCLAYS BANK boss Matthew Barrett could get a £30 million bonus on top of his annual salary of nearly £1 million as his reward for closing branches and sacking workers...

14 April 2000

Fight Back Now!

§ £30 million for Fat Cat bankers: TONY BLAIR said a few weeks ago that he finds being Prime Minister "tougher than expected". Millions of working-class people in Britain find living under Blair's New Labour government tough too...

21 April 2000

The first rush of the storm

What we think: IT WAS almost inevitable that as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) gathered in Washington to issue its upbeat forecast for the world economy, the biggest stock market panic since 1987 followed...

21 April 2000

Strike back at Performance Related Pay

TEACHERS ACROSS the country have angrily rejected New Labour's plans for Performance Related Pay (PRP), writes Martin Powell-Davies (Lewisham NUT).

21 April 2000

Can Socialism save the planet?

LAST YEAR, more refugees were created by environmental disasters than by wars. Recent disastrous floods in Venezuela and Mozambique show the increasing toll of environmental catastrophes. Mozambique's floods may have caused the country more devastation than 16 years of vicious civil war. Does capitalism's lust for profits cause environmental as well as economic problems? How would socialism tackle the issues? BILL HOPWOOD writes.

21 April 2000

Justice for Janitors

Last Saturday police arrested and charged dozens of striking Los Angeles janitors and their supporters who had blocked a road junction. This 2000 strong was part of the Janitors struggle for better pay. Gene Pepi from Socialist Alternative, the Socialist Party's US counterpart, reports.

21 April 2000

Protests grow Against Market Mayhem

IT'S BEEN a particularly rough week for the capitalist bosses. Firstly, 10,000 protested in Washington against the World Bank and IMF's exploitation of the Third World...

28 April 2000

Greewich says: Save Our Schools

IAN PAGE, a Lewisham Socialist Party councillor and the Socialist Alliance Greater London Assembly candidate for Greenwich and Lewisham, is backing the 'Save Our Schools' campaign against Greenwich Labour council's proposals which would lead to school closures and privatisation, writes Onay Kasab.

28 April 2000

The Fighting Origins of May Day

MAY DAY is the traditional celebration of international working-class solidarity. Its origins lie in great struggles in the late 19th century and the martyrdom of workers' leaders executed in Chicago...

28 April 2000

Zimbabwe: A Desperate Regime

ON 18 April Zimbabwe marked 20 years of independence but most Zimbabweans had little to celebrate. The economy is in ruins, there is mass unemployment and poverty. But there is also a growing opposition...

28 April 2000

Strike Back at Jobs threat

WITHIN WEEKS of Rover's break up and massive job losses, thousands of workers at Ford's Dagenham may now also face the axe. The combined job losses at Ford and Rover could amount to 150,000!...