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Protest against the G8 Rostock 2007
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ISR demonstrating at the G8 in Edinburgh 2005 |
One hypocrite will now replace another! Blair has been recounting his so-called achievements and includes among them his so-called triumph at the July 2005 Gleneagles G8 meeting. He claims to have made massive steps forward towards making poverty history and combating climate change. How has history judged his success?
Sarah Sachs-Eldridge
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change most of the technology needed to stop climate change already exists. However, a UK government report says that the UK is unlikely to meet its target of reducing greenhouse gases by 20% by 2010.
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ISR demonstrating at the G8 in Edinburgh 2005 |
According to the African Progress Panel, headed by Kofi Annan, the G8 are only 10% of the way to their target of boosting assistance to Africa by $50 billion a year by 2010.
Neither Blair nor Brown nor any of the leaders of the G8 countries put a high value on the lives of workers, the poor and the oppressed.
In 2005 International Socialist Resistance (ISR) members from eleven countries joined the hundreds of thousands on the Make Poverty History demonstration in Edinburgh in protest against the destruction of lives across the world and against the devastation of the environment.
As we chanted and marched we were horrified by the news that Gordon Brown had joined the demo. What a fraud!
Under his watch as chancellor the number of children living in poverty has increased by 200,000 over the last year! This is a direct result of his policies of privatisation, low pay and cuts in essential services. In Walthamstow a direct result will be the cutting of all free school meals in the borough!
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ISR demonstrating at the G8 in Edinburgh 2005 |
One of Blair's last jobs as premier will be to attend the G8 meeting in Rostock, Germany. There he will encourage Angela Merkel, German premier, and other G8 leaders to further take up the Tory policies his government has pursued on cutting wages and services.
With Bush, France's Sarkozy and other well-known heroes of the fat cats in attendance he will certainly get a warm welcome from the meeting.
However a cooler reception will greet them from the thousands of youth and workers who travel to Germany to voice their opposition.
Angela Merkel is taking her cue from Blair and Brown on how to treat the democratic right to protest. On top of the enormous wall that has been built to protect the summit, the German police raided the flats and offices of leftwing activists saying they had evidence that a terrorist organisation was planning to disrupt it.
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ISR demonstrating at the G8 in Edinburgh 2005 |
Despite this, ISR members and trade unionists will be travelling to Germany to participate in the anti-G8 protests and to raise the ideas of a socialist alternative against the capitalist ideas of the G8.
The bankruptcy of the ideas of the G8 leaders, which put profit first, which put our services in the hands of the market, which aim to divide workers and young people and which lead to poverty, death and destruction have been proved time and again.
We campaign to defend the conditions of working and young people and to fundamentally change the way society is run, taking it out of the hands of the G8 leaders and their fat cat bosses.
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The coronavirus crisis has laid bare the class character of society in numerous ways. It is making clear to many that it is the working class that keeps society running, not the CEOs of major corporations.
The results of austerity have been graphically demonstrated as public services strain to cope with the crisis.
The government has now ripped up its 'austerity' mantra and turned to policies that not long ago were denounced as socialist. But after the corona crisis, it will try to make the working class pay for it, by trying to claw back what has been given.
- The Socialist Party's material is more vital than ever, so we can continue to report from workers who are fighting for better health and safety measures, against layoffs, for adequate staffing levels, etc.
- When the health crisis subsides, we must be ready for the stormy events ahead and the need to arm workers' movements with a socialist programme - one which puts the health and needs of humanity before the profits of a few.
Inevitably, during the crisis we have not been able to sell the Socialist and raise funds in the ways we normally would.
We therefore urgently appeal to all our viewers to donate to our Fighting Fund.
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