Archive for May 2000

5 May 2000

Oppose Hague's Asylum Lies

TORY LEADER William Hague is spreading racist lies about refugees. He warned that more supporters of the far-right National Front would take to the streets if New Labour didn't stop asylum seekers "flooding...

5 May 2000

May Day Protests

Police try to take revenge: OVER 6,000 anti-capitalist protesters gathered in Parliament Square, central London on May Day. Like the J18 and N30 protests before, it was impressive for bringing thousands of people behind an explicitly...

5 May 2000

Teachers refuse to cross the performance pay threshold

THE DECISIVE vote at National Union of Teachers (NUT) Conference for a ballot for strike action has been angrily opposed in the press and by the NUT's right-wing general secretary, Doug McAvoy, writes Martin Powell-Davies.

5 May 2000

Tackling the propaganda

DAVID AARONOVITCH, a columnist for the Independent, launched a vitriolic attack on the teachers' strike decision...

5 May 2000

Capitalist restoration and the struggles of the Russian workers

Boris Popovkine is a worker activist in the independent miners' union from Vorkuta, Russia, and a member of the Committee for a Workers' International...

5 May 2000

Take Over Rover

TONY BLAIR has said he will "work night and day" to save Rover jobs. This is a turn around from last month when Labour said they were powerless to stop BMW selling the plant to asset-stripping venture...

12 May 2000

Elections 2000: Looking for an alternative to Labour

NEW LABOUR received a decisive drubbing at last week's local elections, while the Socialist Party celebrated successes, including the election of a third councillor in Coventry...

12 May 2000

Socialist success panics Labour in Coventry

ONE IMMEDIATE consequence of the Socialist Party's success in Coventry was a split in the Labour Group...

12 May 2000

Left lessons in London elections

CONTRARY TO to earlier opinion poll indications, the turnout in the London mayoral elections and Greater London Assembly (GLA) elections was less than 34%, writes Jim Horton.

12 May 2000

Putting socialists on the map in Carlisle

ON 4 May we celebrated getting 24.5% of the vote (305) in Botcherby ward in Carlisle in our first election campaign, writes Paul Wilcox (Candidate), Craig Johnston (Election Agent), Louise Van Der Hoeven (Branch Secretary).

12 May 2000

Election analysis 2000

SOCIALIST PARTY members stood as candidates in the English local elections and the Greater London Assembly elections and received creditable votes, given the limited resources and lack of media coverage our party has, writes Carlisle Botcheby.

12 May 2000

Labour's meltdown is Left opportunity

WHEN TONY Blair first made plans for a London Mayor, the last thing he envisaged was the election of Ken Livingstone...

12 May 2000

Northern Ireland: Why the IRA shifted on arms

THIS TIME there can be no doubt that the latest IRA statement on decommissioning is indeed a "seismic shift", writes Peter Hadden, Belfast.

12 May 2000

Will the unions break with Labour?

THE BEGINNING of the trade union conference season and the battle over the selection of Labour's London mayoral candidate has opened up the whole issue of trade union support for the Labour Party...

12 May 2000

Labour's Running Scared At Socialist Success

LAST WEEK'S elections delivered a decisive blow against New Labour's pro-big business policies. Ken Livingstone's victory, the Socialist Party winning a third council seat in Coventry and the excellent...

19 May 2000

Workers halt health sell-off

ANCILLARY WORKERS at Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield reacted angrily when they heard the Trust board were going to discuss a paper recommending market testing catering, domestic, portering, security and transport services, writes Adrian O'Malley and Mick Griffiths, Wakefield and Pontefract Hospitals UNISON.

19 May 2000

Livingstone's London

HE'S BEEN in the news every day, he's spoken out on the major issues affecting Londoners, he's advocated a 'new style', 'inclusive' politics, he's asked Tony Blair for more money for London, writes Paula Mitchell.

19 May 2000

Students still say - don't pay the fees

AT THE lobby of Ken Livingstone in London, part of Save Free Education (SFE) day of action, PETER LEARY, non-payer at Goldsmith's College and one of the organisers of the occupation at Goldsmith's last year, spoke to Molly Cooper...

19 May 2000

Occupation in Kent

THE UNIVERSITY of Kent is implementing cuts for students by changing its examination policy. The changes mean that, for the first time ever, almost 300 students will have to sit three, three-hour exams...

19 May 2000

Don't fall for divide and rule

THE SOCIALIST Party opposes attacks on asylum-seekers' rights from the media, the far-right, Tory leaders and the New Labour government...

19 May 2000

South Africa general strike signals turning point for workers

In the biggest mobilisation since the early 1990s, on 10 May the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) led more than four million workers - half the workforce - in a general strike that brought major centres and several towns to a standstill for several hours...

19 May 2000

Save Jobs, Sack the Bosses

THE GOVERNMENT'S car industry and manufacturing crisis is far from over, despite Phoenix's acquisition of Rover for £10, writes John Dale, Bolsover.

26 May 2000

The Battle against Right wing bigotry

THE PRIVATE referendum currently taking place in Scotland on Clause 28 may turn out to be the last throw of the ill-fated 'Keep The Clause' campaign led by Brian Souter, the anti-gay and right-wing Christian boss of Stagecoach, writes Lionel Wright.

26 May 2000

Is this the nuclear industry's dying days?

Nuclear power - child of the nuclear arms race.: LAST SEPTEMBER British Nuclear Fuels' (BNFL's) reprocessing plant at Sellafield, Cumbria was hit by a major scandal...

26 May 2000

Lenin's lasting legacy

Review: Lenin: A biography by Robert Service. Published by Macmillan, and reviewed by MARK WAINWRIGHT...

26 May 2000

Movement grows of workers and students in Brazil

IN BRAZIL there has recently been an upsurge in public-sector strikes in the education sector affecting universities and secondary schools, including the University of São Paulo (USP) the country's largest university...

26 May 2000

Students occupy to stop expulsions: Fight the fees

MOST UNIVERSITY students can't afford to pay tuition fees - and many are not doing so. But more and more universities are taking severe action against them, writes Paul Hunt, Coventry University.