The Socialist 29 August 2012

Con-Dems win gold for hypocrisy!

Paralympics, Atos scandal, Remploy closures... Con-Dems win gold for hypocrisy!

Build for a 24-hour general strike!

The Julian Assange case

Galloway's ignorant comments

Gove stole our exam grades!

Crisis services handed over to charity food banks

Them & Us

Building workers fight pay cut threat

Sparks protest at London Crown House site

Local government pension scheme

Sheffield recycling workers to resume strike action

Lobby the TUC for a 24-hour general strike

Jobs and homes, not racism

East Midlands: Save our ambulance service

NHS: Unions must defend national pay bargaining

TUSC councillor rejects Walsall cuts 'consultation'

Prison work - £3 a day is exploitation for profit

Women's prisons - Con-Dems' 'reforms' mean cuts and privatisation

Norway: Mass murderer Anders Breivik gets life sentence

Kazakhstan: Human rights campaigner Vadim Kuramshin freed

Leon Trotsky: A revolutionary's life

Fight council tax benefit cuts

The 'madness' of building homes

Notting Hill carnival-goers support Lonmin miners

Socialist Party summer camp

Why I joined the Socialist Party

Save our computer server!

Previous issues, etc

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Notting Hill carnival-goers support Lonmin miners

Socialist Party members joined thousands of Londoners at the Notting Hill carnival on Bank Holiday Monday, campaigning for solidarity with South African Lonmin mineworkers.

The excitement of the carnival didn't prevent a steady flow of people, particularly from Caribbean and southern African countries, from approaching the stall.

Clearly the memory of the anti-apartheid struggle and the role the miners played in that period still resonates with people who became politically aware in the 70s and 80s. Many people we spoke to on the stall were quick to point out the similarities between the behaviour of the old regime towards workers' struggle and the massacre at the Lonmin mine where at least 34 miners were shot by police.

Two South African workers described how little the African National Congress (ANC), the ruling party in South Africa since 1994, had done to change the day-to-day lives for the majority of people there.

Although some people we discussed with saw the struggle as a battle between white mine owners and black workers, other carnival goers were well aware of ex-trade union leaders and ANC apparatchiks being on the board of the mine company.

There was wide support for the Socialist Party's call to nationalise the mines and use the enormous mineral wealth of the country to raise the living standards for South African workers.