Green Party welcomes pro-cuts ex-council leader
To his ward, he’s the councillor who pushed to close his own library and his town’s main tourist attraction. To the Caerphilly borough, he’s the one-time council leader who oversaw massive cuts while pouring money into the hands of management consultant Perago. To the Green Party, however, Sean Morgan is apparently a potential asset.
The councillor, who both left Labour and resigned as council leader in September, has claimed that he disagrees with the direction of the Labour Party over the past year. This would be a bit more believable if he’d ever made a serious stand against the slashing of vital community services. Fellow Nelson ward councillor Brenda Miles actually did oppose the plans to slash libraries and leisure centres this year, and lost the Labour whip over it. It looks far more likely that Morgan is looking for a vehicle to keep his career going. He tried to ingratiate himself in a Your Party meeting in October, and is rumoured to have tried approaching Plaid Cymru as well.
The Greens have welcomed in this ex-council leader. But what demands will they put on him for what he needs to do? Will they tell him to go to the council chamber and move a budget to reverse the Labour council’s austerity?
A party that truly fights for the interests of working-class communities is needed now more than ever. Making sure councillors fight for a clear, no-cuts programme is a vital demand to fight for in Your Party. No doubt other careerists will look to jump ship if Your Party takes off, and demanding serious anti-austerity action will be important for filtering out the Sean Morgans of the world.
Geraint Thomas, Caerphilly Socialist Party
‘The Butcher of Baghdad’: Dick Cheney dead at 84
Former Republican vice-president Richard Cheney has passed away from his long-standing heart condition at the age of 84. Although both liberals and conservatives within the US political establishment have paid tribute to Cheney, much of the global working class will certainly not share the same grief.
Cheney is most notorious for being vice president during the George Bush administration from 2001 to 2009, when he enjoyed influence over many areas of policy and day-to-day government administration not seen in previous VPs. He played a role in supporting further tax cuts for big business, screening potential Supreme Court nominations, as well as being a key architect of the Patriot Act in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. The Act entailed a programme of mass surveillance and various other attacks on the civil liberties of US citizens, including the use of illegal detentions and ‘enhanced interrogation’, more commonly known as torture.
Mr Cheney will most certainly go down in infamy for his part in the illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq. No stranger to foreign war crimes with his involvement in previous Republican administrations, Cheney played a key role within Bush’s White House in advocating for military intervention, as well as the false case that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. In reality, however, despite a vibrant anti-war movement at the time, the only mass destruction in the Middle East was caused by the US- and British-led ‘coalition of the willing’, which claimed the lives of over a million Iraqis and led to the rise of religious extremism across the region. Following the invasion, Iraqi oil drilling contracts were handed over by occupation forces to Halliburton, of which Cheney was formerly Chair and CEO.
Following the end of the Bush administration in 2009, Cheney took a step back from frontline politics due to the aforementioned health issues and was even given a heart transplant in 2012. However, in a rare intervention during the 2024 presidential election, Cheney came out of retirement to formally endorse the Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, citing President Trump (ironically) as “a danger to democracy”. In reality, although Trump proved to be little different himself, the Harris-Walz ticket was a continuation of hawkish neocon foreign policy abroad and big-business politics at home. The Biden-Harris administration played a key part in aiding the ongoing Palestinian genocide in Gaza, so this intervention was very on-brand as the final public act of ‘the Butcher of Baghdad’.
Despite his demise, his politics still live on, as the Trump administration currently seems intent upon an intervention in Venezuela; only a mass working-class movement can challenge the drive to war over natural resources in the service of big business.
Conor O’Neill, Liverpool Socialist Party
Austerity education
Like many other parents of a three-year-old, we have spent this autumn visiting schools, to decide which ones to apply for when he starts in September.
The three schools we have visited have all been different in various ways. Something they have had in common was headteachers who, during the tour, referenced the effects of austerity.
One spoke about how impossible it is to get access to the services of a speech and language therapist. Another about redundancies in what used to be the county’s school music service. And another about how the use of coaches for school trips is no longer affordable; they are now limited by what can be reasonably reached using local public transport.
Marketisation of our education system means we are asked to choose between about half a dozen schools within walking distance of where we live. To help us make up our minds – Ofsted, exam league tables, and ‘vibes’. Who knows…
But we will continue to fight against austerity, in support of education workers fighting back, and for a new party that demands the wealth and resources are taken out of the hands of the super-rich to pay for the education our kids deserve – school trips and music lessons included!
Thomas Asher
