Archive for March 2004

6 March 2004

European Greens Unite - But Are They A Radical Alternative?

Die GRÜNEN, Les Verts, the Green Party - the German, French and UK Green Parties, along with 29 other European Green parties, are now one party standing on one platform...

6 March 2004

Haiti: Aristide Forced Out As Us Sends Troops

THE PRESIDENT of Haiti, Jean Bertrand Aristide, the former "radical slum priest", fled the country on 29 February, under pressure from the Bush administration and the threat of armed rebels...

6 March 2004

Council Tax - Unfair And Regressive

THE COUNCIL tax has become Britain's most hated tax. Millions struggle to pay ever- rising council tax bills while local authorities use the courts and bailiffs to retrieve arrears. In the next few weeks, we should all find out how much our council...

6 March 2004

What Socialism Would Mean For Women

TO CELEBRATE International Women's Day, ELEANOR DONNE looks at the situation facing women in Britain today and what difference socialism would make to their lives...

6 March 2004

How Socialist Councillors Fought The Cuts

SOCIALIST PARTY councillors in Coventry made a stand and ensured that jobs and services were saved in this year's council budget. The original budget demanded service cuts and 200 job cuts, including front-line social workers for children...

6 March 2004

Activists Say Build A New Workers' Party

Liverpool: REPRESENTATIVES OF two famous groups of Merseyside workers - the sacked Liverpool dockers and the 47 surcharged Liverpool councillors from 1983-1987 have started to organise a campaign to build a new mass party of the working class...

6 March 2004

NUS / AUT nation day of action 25 Feb

Leicester: On the NUS nation day of action 150-200 University of Leicester students assembled on the lawn outside the Vice Chancellor’s office. Striking AUT lecturers joined us...

6 March 2004

Fees UP Teaching hours DOWN Students ANGRY

SUSSEX University students are angry at the lack of teaching hours. One undergraduate said: "People will lose the incentive to come to university. You're barely getting an education. I have one seminar of one and a half hours per week,...

6 March 2004

Fascists Threaten Socialist Party Stall

NEAR THE end of Lincoln Socialist Party's weekly campaign stall, one of our members had his petition board knocked out of his hand by an individual shouting that we "weren't welcome"...

6 March 2004

Iraq War Continues To Haunt Blair

WHEN KATHARINE Gun decided to leak the e-mail she had received at GCHQ urging British intelligence to spy on the UN in the run up to the Iraq war she thought...

6 March 2004

Strike Against Low Pay

NINETY THOUSAND PCS members in JobCentres and benefit offices in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) are preparing to take more national strike action in our fight for decent pay...

6 March 2004

March Against Liars And Occupiers

NO MATTER how often Tony Blair tries to sweep it under the carpet, the war on Iraq keeps reappearing...

13 March 2004

Russia: Sham Presidential Election Will Increase Putin's Power

ON 24 February President Vladimir Putin sacked Premier Mikhail Kazyanov and the Russian government with just three weeks to go to his re-election bid for President. ...

13 March 2004

Socialist Students "Empire Defeated" Book Tour

Monday 15 March, 1pm. Meeting room 1, Fulton House...

13 March 2004

Celebrating International Women's Day

On International Women's Day - End the sexism, end low pay!...

13 March 2004

Miners' strike 1984-85: "A Civil War Without Guns"

TWENTY YEARS ago, on 5 March 1984, Yorkshire miners walked out on strike against Tory government plans to impose a massive programme of pit closures. They saw it as the first step to a complete rundown of the mining industry...

13 March 2004

NUT general secretary election: Standing For Change

IN THIS year's election for National Union of Teachers (NUT) general secretary, classroom teachers will be voting for change...

13 March 2004

Coventry Residents Insist: "You Won't Destroy Our Community"

"THE LAST thing you're going to get is my house," Reg Lee told developers to the cheers of a couple of hundred residents, packed into Coventry's Wood End community centre on 5 March...

13 March 2004

Striking Nursery Nurses Say No To Low Pay

Scottish nursery nurses: ONE OF Scotland's most significant disputes for many years has escalated dramatically recently. Almost 5,000 nursery nurses, overwhelmingly women, are in their second week of all-out strike across Scotland's local authorities...

13 March 2004

Civil Servants Vote For Two-Day Strike

OVER 100 civil service union PCS members, delegates from Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) branches, met on 6 March. They voted for a national two-day strike immediately after the Easter holidays in their struggle against low pay...

13 March 2004

Thatcherite Policies X 3

THE COUNTDOWN to the general election has begun. All three mainstream parties have begun to showcase the policies that they think will excite the voters. Strip aside the spin, however, and the policies revealed will not excite, but will horrify, most...

13 March 2004

We've Had Enough!

Protest Against Blair: LABOUR'S SPRING conference is in Manchester on 12-14 March. And Saturday 13 March will see workers from Manchester and beyond marching to show Labour we've had enough!...

13 March 2004

Time To Protest 

A YEAR ago on 20 March the US and Britain invaded Iraq. Within a few weeks, they bombed and slaughtered thousands, stage-managed the pulling down of Saddam Hussein's statue and then proclaimed victory.

20 March 2004

A Teachers' Leader On A Teacher's Salary

NUT general secretary election: Socialist Party member Martin Powell-Davies is campaigning to stand in the general secretary election in the National Union of Teachers (NUT). With a fighting programme to change the NUT and defend and improve teachers' pay and working conditions,...

20 March 2004

Support Nader's Campaign

US presidential election: THE MOMENT the radical, third party candidate Ralph Nader announced his run for president, the entire political establishment - from the liberal intelligentsia to the strategists of corporate America - unleashed a torrent of abuse and condemnation...

20 March 2004

Campaigning To Change Society

I was always "Socialist minded" from my late teens. I took part in CND marches. I had worked with the homeless in London aged 19 so had seen the results of capitalism at the sharp end. I used to get mad every time I saw Maggie Thatcher on...

20 March 2004

Building An Alternative To Blair And Capitalism

A YEAR ago, on 20 March, millions demonstrated around the world against Bush and Blair's bloody imperialist attack on Iraq. In Britain, protesters included tens of thousands of school students who went on strike against a war that would slaughter thousands...

20 March 2004

Ending the US-led occupation

Is it possible and what will follow?: MILLIONS OF people will protest worldwide against the imperialist occupation of Iraq on 20 March. ...

20 March 2004

Madrid Bombings Unleash Anti-War Anger

"THE REPLY of Iraq and Afghanistan is here" said one note left at Atocha station in Madrid. This summed up the mood of many throughout Spain just hours after the bombings which left 200 dead and 1,400 injured...

20 March 2004

Capitalism Means War and Terror: Build The Socialist Alternative

"YOUR WAR - our dead" chanted crowds on the streets of Spain last weekend. The mass outpouring of grief and rage at the horrendous Madrid bombings became intertwined with anger at the government...

27 March 2004

Venezuela: Opposition In Dirty Tricks Campaign

TWO PREVIOUS attempts by Venezuela's right-wing opposition to overthrow the twice elected radical national government of President Hugo Chavez have failed...

27 March 2004

Clarke Exposes Bush's Iraq Agenda

OVER A million anti-war protesters marched worldwide last Saturday to mark the 12-month anniversary of the US-led war on Iraq...

27 March 2004

Sharon Opens The "Gates Of Hell"

THE BRUTAL assassination of the spiritual leader of Palestinian Islamic organisation Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, was met with outrage from Palestinians...

27 March 2004

Millions Worldwide Say 'End The Occupation'

20 March protests: MILLIONS OF protesters worldwide took to the streets on 20 March, the first anniversary of the Iraq War. Members of the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI - the socialist international organisation to which the Socialist Party is affiliated)...

27 March 2004

Liverpool city council: The Council That Took On Thatcher

TWENTY YEARS ago Liverpool city council took on Margaret Thatcher's Tory government and won a famous victory against cuts and privatisation...

27 March 2004

Defending Teachers, Defending Education

Martin Powell-Davies: SOCIALIST PARTY member Martin Powell-Davies has now secured enough nominations in the general secretary election of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) to proceed to the next stage of the election...

27 March 2004

Build A Campaigning NUS

National Union of Students conference: THE 21ST century has seen a new generation of students become radicalised. First in the anti-capitalist movement and then on a far larger scale, in the anti-war movement, it has been young people - predominately school, college and university students...

27 March 2004

Mass Action To Defeat Fees

IN 2006, students whose parents earn the average income will have to pay 70% of their fees, instead of the 25% they pay now - according to a recent study by the House of Commons Library.

27 March 2004

Job Cuts - Now Is The Time To Act

GORDON BROWN'S message to public sector workers this week couldn't have been any clearer: "You will pay for New Labour's public finance crisis by losing your jobs"...

27 March 2004

Angry Workers Vote For Action

"I had taken the day off on leave on budget day. But when I heard the news of the cuts I felt I had to come into work and contact other union activists...

27 March 2004

Stop The Jobs Slaughter

Defend Public Services. GORDON BROWN dropped a budget bombshell. Over 40,000 civil service jobs are to be axed. Thousands more could go through 'efficiency' savings.