The Socialist 12 May 2005

NHS - Stop the profit vultures

Defend public services

Everyone has a right to education

Join the G8 protest

1945 - Victory in Europe: When 'liberation' meant socialism

Blair battered but what's the alternative?

Rebuilding SSP support under a third Labour term

Discontent with the 'Blair project'

Polarisation widens in Northern Ireland

Coventry - the best campaign ever

Building a base in Lewisham

Big vote for socialism in Bolsover

Left victory in firefighters' union

Workers demand justice on pensions

Amicus conference: Size isn't everything

UNISON health conference: Fight low pay and privatisation, defend pensions

Previous issues, etc

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Join the G8 protest

EVERY FIVE seconds a child dies from hunger and disease, yet global food aid has actually fallen by 50% over the last five years. The promises of politicians seem increasingly hollow when measured against these stark facts.

Thousands of mainly young people will be protesting at the G8 summit in Gleneagles on 2 July hoping to put pressure on the leaders of the world's richest countries to "Make poverty history".

Yet only 4% of the wealth of the world's richest 225 people - $40 billion - would be enough for basic healthcare, food, safe water, sanitation and education for all of the world's people (UNDP Human Development Report).

The $168 billion that the US has spent on the invasion and occupation of Iraq could fully fund world anti-hunger programmes for the next seven years, or AIDS programmes for 16 years.

These leaders preside over the madness of an economic system, capitalism, that enriches a few at the expense of millions; that sees its interests in killing and oppression on a mass scale; that pollutes and destroys our environment. How can they be made to see reason?

Only a socialist world can end the madness. Only ordinary people - the working class along with young people, the middle classes, the poor - have the power to overthrow capitalism and use the vast resources in the world for the benefit of humanity.

International Socialist Resistance, the Socialist Party and representatives from many other sections of the Committee for a Workers' International will be going to the G8 at Gleneagles to put that alternative.

We demand:

Immediate write-off of the debt burden without conditions.
For an immediate increase in aid. For democratic control of aid and its distribution by elected committees representing the working class, trade unions and the poor.
Bring into public ownership the 500 major multinationals that dominate the world economy, under democratic working-class control and management.
Support for the working class and poor masses in their struggle to overthrow the corrupt pro-capitalist governments of the neo-colonial world.
Make capitalism history. For the building of a socialist planned economy internationally to abolish poverty, hunger and disease.

ISR, an international organisation of socialists, will take part in the demonstrations at the G8, putting forward socialist ideas. We're co-organising an international youth camp with the International Socialists, the Scottish affiliate to the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI).

The CWI is an international socialist organisation with members in 40 countries around the world, including the International Socialists in Scotland and the Socialist Party in England and Wales.

We will organise a coach going from the camp each day to take people to the protests and meetings which are planned for the counter-summit. There will be an opportunity to participate in political discussions with socialists from all over Europe.

Go to G8 page for more information