Every day it's becoming clearer who will pay for this brutal war. Hundreds of ordinary Afghans have already been killed and injured.
In one bomb attack, eight members of one family died, including four boys under eight years old. Those who don't die immediately can't be saved because the hospitals have no electricity or blood.
Half a million desperate refugees have left their homes since 11 September. At least 15,000 have made for the border with Pakistan. Inside Afghanistan itself, hidden from the TV cameras people are dying of hunger.
And for what? Even if US and British troops topple the Taliban and capture bin Laden, that will not bring terrorism to an end. Terrorism is rooted in the poverty, inequalities and oppression which this capitalist system is responsible for. Only by changing the system which breeds these conditions will we be able to look forward to a peaceful future.
This war is expected to cost the world economy at least £470 billion. In Britain the cost could be £13 billion - that's £200 for every woman, man and child.
The global economy was in trouble even before 11 September but the war is making things much worse. Britain will not escape.
Already 36,000 jobs have gone since the attacks on the US, including the thousands of redundancies announced at Rolls Royce (see page 11). More than 100,000 jobs are expected to go before Christmas.
Thousands of jobs have been lost in the airline industry. But not everyone is complaining. The private jet industry increased its business by fifteen per cent last month as top executives put their own interests first.
Innocent Afghans and working class people should not have to pay the price for Bush and Blair's war.
The Socialist Party and our sister parties internationally are involved in building anti-war movements around the world.
A national demonstration has been called for 18 November in London to oppose the war. We will be campaigning to make this even bigger than the last demo which was 50,000 strong.
Join us on the demonstration. Get involved in the anti-war movement. But don't stop there. Join with us to fight for a socialist world, free from poverty, war and terror.
Assemble 12 noon, Speakers' Corner, Hyde Park, London.
THREE HUNDRED people marched in Waltham Forest, north-east London from the town square to the town hall to protest about cuts in social services. It was extremely lively and noisy.
The favourite chant was: "Buckley, Buckley, Buckley, out, out, out", Buckley being the leader of the council.
There were lots of UNISON members whose jobs are under threat and many of the groups whose services are being cut. There was a big contingent from Handsworth nursery, members of the Alzheimers Association, pensioners groups, and many other community groups facing cuts.
The council want to cut nearly £7 million by April and £2.6 million right away. This will mean the closure of three children's day nurseries, two elderly people's day centres, numerous cuts to social work teams and community development and there will be compulsory redundancies.
80% of social services across the country are also facing cuts. But this is extremely short-sighted. According to Ron Wallace, head of community services in Waltham Forest, the budget overspend isn't due to his mismanagement but increased spending on the "heavy end" of social services.
But this "unprecedented increase" is due to the policies of the New Labour government. These cuts might be at the "lighter end" ie nurseries, day centres for the elderly. But if you get rid of this safety net people will just fall through and put more pressure on the "heavy end", with no savings.
Also the authority is relying heavily on agency workers. It can't recruit social work staff because it is the third poorest payer in London and has the reputation of being a badly managed authority.
Undoubtedly these cuts will result in deaths. It could be a social services 'spectacular' such as a child murder or simply a pensioner passing away this winter, lonely and cold because a day centre has closed.
Unison is linking up with community groups to fight these cuts. We are holding a second organising meeting and many groups are proposing occupation of their nurseries and day centres. Unison is organising a ballot in six weeks time to bring the whole of social services out on strike. And we are hoping to expand that to other service areas where budget cuts are threatened.
At the lobby Socialist Party speakers explained that we stood against New Labour in the general election and would be doing the same in the local elections. We called on people there to join us and stand as anti-cuts, anti-privatisation candidates and already people are coming forward to stand against New Labour councillors.
"New Labour have tried to encourage people like me to go out to work and claim Working Families Tax Credit. Now I'm going to lose my job if my daughter's nursery closes".
"We are working with vulnerable elderly people. They need care not despair".
"I've got three grandchildren at Handsworth nursery. My daughter was given ten weeks notice that the nursery was closing. She's having to phone around private nurseries which charge up to 100% more than council nurseries. This is the end of affordable childcare".
ONCE YOU disentangle the web of deception that's growing around the current war, then it's clear that the US and British governments are preparing to enter a new, even more brutal stage of the conflict.
The incursion of US special troops into Afghanistan has been accompanied by statements from Tony Blair and Colin Powell that a more extensive ground war is about to begin. Given the expectations that the Bush and Blair administrations have built up this was their inevitable next step.
However, despite a Pentagon spokesperson saying: "The Taliban know that we are going to hit them hard and often" there is growing anxiety and anger about where the war actions of Bush and Blair are leading.
The Daily Mirror editorial summed it up on 22 October when it asked: "What exactly is the mission of Enduring Freedom? Every war needs a strategy and an end game. Yet it's hard to understand our current strategy and even harder to work out how this war on terrorism will end."
US vice-president Dick Cheney had partly given the Mirror their answer the day before when he speculated that "this war... may never end - at least not in our lifetime."
The Daily Mirror, along with some other newspapers, while generally toeing the government line, has struck an increasingly critical note in the last week. What has become abundantly clear in that time is that US forces are killing hundreds of innocent civilians, UN aid workers and others without achieving their objective of causing splits in the Taliban.
The Western powers' clearly now have a huge problem on their hands about the shape of a post-Taliban Afghanistan. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw's recent statements where he outlined proposals for 'rebuilding' Afghanistan contained an admission that Western powers have abysmally failed wherever they have militarily intervened.
How can we trust this government or the Bush government to tell the truth about what will happen in this war and afterwards? Indeed, the British government has used this war as an opportunity to sweep under the carpet every embarrassing bad news skeleton they had in the closet.
Militarily the Western powers want to try to get Osama bin Laden and the Taliban out of their hair before the Afghan winter and the Islamic holy month of Ramadan begins in mid-November. That is a crucial and probably impossible objective given that the Soviet troops tried and failed for ten years to drive the Mujahadin out of Afghanistan.
Even if they achieve some limited 'spectaculars', that will be just the beginning of an intensification of their problems. Their rush to use ground forces is not unanimously endorsed, even among the governments of the coalition and, as the inevitable casualties of such an adventure mount, a fresh wave of opposition is likely to grow.
APART FROM trying to build a stable Afghan nation, the imperialist powers will have to deal with a likely increase in terrorist activities against them. There is also the continuing slide into war in the middle East, where the daily toll of deaths has sharply escalated following the recent assassinations of an ultra-right wing Israeli minister and a leading member of Hamas.
Moreover a prolonged and bloody war could become a lightning conductor for the growing anger and disquiet in Britain against the job losses, economic slowdown and deceptions of the Labour government.
A new anti-war demonstration has been called for 18 November, which could become a massive show of strength against war and against the Labour government. If that demo is built for in every workplace, school, college and community, given the 50,000-plus size of the demo on 13 October, then hundreds of thousands could be mobilised.
As well as building the anti-war movement, socialists have a responsibility to build new mass parties of the working class internationally to struggle for a socialist world without terror and war.
THE UNITED States is now dominated by the growing anthrax scare. It started in Florida, spread to New York City and reached Washington DC with 31 US Senate workers testing positive for anthrax exposure as a result of a letter mailed to Senate majority leader Tom Daschle's office.
This prompted an unprecedented step, closing down the House of Representatives and several giant US Congressional buildings. At the same time a new anthrax case was reported in New York, in an office of Governor George Pataki.
These developments have caused widespread fear and panic throughout the country, and will have tremendous political implications.
Coming after the massive terrorist attacks of 11 September, the anthrax attacks have increased the calls for even more drastic action, further restrictions on democratic rights and civil liberties and expanding the US war on Afghanistan to Iraq.
Immediately speculation focused on Iraq and Saddam Hussein as being responsible for the terrorist attack. If clear evidence emerges linking the Iraqi government to these attacks, the Bush administration will feel tremendous pressure to lash out and widen the war to also include Iraq.
But any such move could be fatal for Bush's extremely fragile international coalition. Attacks on Iraq would greatly stiffen Arab opposition to the war and lead to massive popular mobilisations, threatening many of the reactionary governments in the region currently backing Bush's war.
The anthrax attacks have also added fuel to politicians' demands for further measures to "crack down" on the terrorist threat in the US by undermining democratic rights further and giving increased powers to the police.
The real meaning of this assault on democratic rights is revealed in recent reports about the over 600 people - overwhelmingly immigrants - immediately detained following the 11 September terrorist attacks.
200 of the 600 arrested remain in detention, yet not one has been charged with any involvement in the terrorist attacks. They are detained on the flimsiest of grounds, usually for trivial immigration infractions or traffic violations.
Clearly their main crime is that they "looked" like a possible terrorist, i.e. Arab or Muslim. This strengthening of police powers will do nothing to stop future terrorist attacks - as the anthrax attacks so unfortunately show - but will be used primarily to repress any challenge to the power of big business, whether by unions or the anti-globalisation movement.
AFTER WEEKS of intensive bombing, with US ground forces in use and casualties growing, voices are calling for an end to the military campaign.
As an alternative to bombing Afghanistan, some anti-war activists, such as ARROW, raise the idea of a United Nations (UN) settlement to bring the terrorist forces to justice and provide a new government for Afghanistan. They invoke UN law to oppose continued military action. Should socialists support these demands? Can the UN play such a role?
In fact even the UN themselves seem doubtful of taking any such action. Last week John Negroponte, US ambassador to the UN, held top-level talks with UN secretary-general Kofi Annan and Lakhdar Brahimi, UN special representative for Afghanistan.
The talks appear to raise the possibility of a UN peacekeeping force in Afghanistan to replace USA forces once their immediate mission is completed. UN forces would then bring together the disparate opposition forces with 'moderate' parts of the Taliban and form a new government under the possible leadership of the former king.
This 'mission impossible' horrifies experienced UN workers. "We've been burned too often. What have they got in mind? For how long? What would the mandate be? The conditions are not there for deploying troops, let alone anything else." (Observer 21/10/01)
Last year, the Security Council recognised the need "to enhance the effectiveness of the UN in addressing conflict". Just weeks before this meeting a UN report, reflecting on failed missions in the Balkans and Sierra Leone, said: "Over the last decade, the UN has repeatedly failed to meet the challenge (of protecting people from war) and it can do no better today."
A BRIEF look at the UN's record shows that capitalist countries have found it impossible to prevent or resolve conflict. In reality they have piled problems on top of problems.
Formed in 1945 to replace the League of Nations, which had failed disastrously to prevent the Second World War, the UN rapidly fell into crisis as the Cold War developed and the USA's and USSR's superpower interests collided.
As it seemed to unite world powers around a document of international laws, many saw it as an independent body rising above the individual interests of competing nations.
In fact particularly since the USSR collapsed, the UN is increasingly dominated by USA, which uses its position as the world's only superpower to its own advantage.
The USA uses its economic power to politically buy friends and intimidate opponents. During the last few weeks, there have been frantic international negotiations between the USA and its allies but completely outside the UN.
These steps have been taken despite the US's dominant position. Opposition voices within the UN frustrated the USA in the past, particularly over Iraq in 1998 when the USA and Britain restarted its bombing campaign. Nations with their own competing interests clashed with the USA and voted against supporting bombing, leading to the breakdown of the security council.
The USA still prefers independent action, rather than using the UN as a fig leaf to legitimise its actions. During the Kosova crisis, the bombing of Serbia was carried out under NATO's flag, a more reliable cover for US military action.
Bush's USA outrageously appointed ultra right-wing Republican John Negroponte as its representative to the UN. Negroponte was involved in funding and arming the Contra paramilitaries that fought Nicaragua's elected left-wing government in the 1980s.
Other members of the powerful Security Council include Russia, which under Putin carried out the mass bombing of Chechnya and flattened its capital Grozny, and China which ruthlessly suppressed pro-democracy activists in Tiananmen Square in 1989. The UN institutionalises contact between rival state terrorists.
UN LEADER Kofi Annan was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize days before the attacks in the USA. Yet the UN has failed to prevent war in Africa (Rwanda, Congo, Sierra Leone and throughout West Africa), in the Indian sub-continent (Kashmir) in Europe (former Yugoslavia), or the middle East, (Israel/Palestine).
They have also failed to provide stable peace agreements or democratic governments, more often imposing governments and restricting democratic rights.
In Bosnia the UN runs a protectorate, an undemocratic, unaccountable government that carries out a neo-liberal economic policy of privatisation and attacks on ordinary workers' living conditions.
The USA have acted alone with Blair whose diplomatic tour has offered inducements to disreputable allies and threatened any country failing to collaborate. This approach angers both the UN and some European allies, such as European Commission president Prodi.
Pakistan's military dictator Musharraf has received increased aid, been freed from sanctions, had its debt restructured and been given a say in Afghanistan's future government. The European Commission has given $1.35 billion trade concessions. Oman's feudal monarch has been promised $1 billion of US arms.
Other powers in the UN are helpless to oppose the US superpower. The US government's freedom ultimately is limited by the social forces on the ground and the threat they pose to US allies in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.
Protests throughout the middle East - and later in the USA itself - will have the most constraining effect on USA imperialism. But only if these movements adopt a socialist programme can real solutions to intractable problems be found.
EVEN IF the perpetrators of the 11 September attacks can be captured, the UN has no authority, particularly to the Arab masses, to carry out a fair trial. The UN's failure to oppose the US-backed Israeli invasion of Lebanon means that the Arab masses see it as a hypocritical force with no legitimate authority.
Historically the UN and the major capitalist powers have failed to remove from government or bring to justice those guilty of crimes against humanity. After the war Nazis were allowed into the USA and Latin America.
More recently the sheltering of figures such as the Shah of Iran, or current allies such as Pakistan's dictator Musharraf, shows that the USA, UN and its allies have no mandate to carry out a trial.
Even when Pinochet was under house arrest in Britain, the courts failed to put on trial a military dictator responsible for the murder of thousands of socialists, trade unionists and workers in the 1970s in Chile.
ONLY THE organised working class has the legitimacy to put on trial the perpetrators of acts of terror or state terror. If those who carried out the 11 September attacks should be in the dock, so should such capitalist leaders as Kissinger and Thatcher who were responsible for acts of genocide in the past.
The UN cannot bring justice for those that have died in the USA and Afghanistan.
The USA will still act independently of the weak UN where it sees fit while its current policies increase the world's instability and lead to more innocent people's deaths.
Those that look to the UN as an instrument of justice are ignoring a bloody history of class injustice. The USA and the UN will solve nothing but endanger everyone.
The Socialist Party and the Committee for a Workers' International are striving to build mass socialist forces worldwide to unite the working class against their wealthy, powerful oppressors and fight to remove the economic problems for workers and the poor.
In Afghanistan we believe that only the ordinary workers and poor peasants - through a struggle for socialist change - can ultimately bring the Taliban, Northern Alliance and other reactionary forces to justice.
A socialist world, ending the poverty that is the principal cause of such conflict, would provide the basis for real world peace and allow the perpetrators of terror and state terror to be brought to book.
RAILTRACK'S DEMISE was a fitting end to its whole shameful history of sleaze, incompetence and worst of all accidents which killed and injured many passengers and rail workers.
With breathtaking arrogance, the City of London and many financial commentators in the press demanded that "poor shareholders" be compensated. If not, they argued, shareholders will refuse to have anything to do with New Labour's future plans for private sector investment into public services.
These same people are the first to demand that social welfare payments should be taken off the "undeserving poor and welfare scroungers".
Now they want and expect to get taxpayers' money (read workers' money) for the black hole that Railtrack got itself into.
Of course they don't offer to pay back to the taxpayers the handouts that they got as shareholders over the last few years - estimated at £700 million. The Railtrack board awarded the shareholders £88 million in October just before they were declared bankrupt.
New Labour are desperate to avoid being accused of "re-nationalisation" but for the "shocked" city investors this is what it is. The financial pages of the Independent (10 Oct) called it "confiscation".
Has the New Labour government taken a turn to the left? Has it, in effect, re-nationalised Railtrack?
The government has declared that Railtrack's successor will be a "not for profit trust" (dubbed Newtrack) with a "financial cushion provided by a loan facility promised by the government". This "cushion" will be "up to £1 billion" available through the Strategic Rail Authority.
Byers, the transport secretary, is now likely to offer ex-Railtrack shareholders "bonds" in "Newtrack" in an effort to head off legal action by the big institutional investors.
Despite all this financial juggling The Independent points out that this will mean in effect "that the government will always have to provide the new company with sufficient subsidies to pay interest to its bond holders" (22 Oct).
Based on this it seems likely that Byers is preparing to give the big institutional investors a guarantee of continued payouts of taxpayers' money, whilst at the same time guaranteeing that the state will always ensure that the trains are kept running.
New Labour have not take a sudden lurch to the left. They have done what previous governments have done, both Tory and Labour. When faced with a major crisis of a key part of the British economy which, if allowed to collapse, would cause major damage to the profits of companies, they have implemented "state capitalism" - nationalising for the benefit of the profit system as a whole.
In 1971 the Tory government was forced to nationalise the bankrupt Rolls Royce aero-engine company because of its importance to the defence industry as a whole. Railtrack shareholders can be 'sacrificed' in the interest of other private companies who depend on rail transport, including for getting their workers to their place of work.
Of course we welcome the ending of private ownership of Railtrack. But we would go much further and demand that the whole of the rail industry, including the 20 or so train operating companies, are also taken out of private ownership and brought back into the public sector. Otherwise the new company will become a bottomless treasury for the private train operators to subsidise their profits.
We are totally opposed to the government handing over any more cash to the private owners of Railtrack. Instead we demand that if individual shareholders depend on their shares as a means of keeping their heads above water then they should be "means tested" to prove it just as those who seek state benefits have to at the present time.
Railtrack workers who were given shares in lieu of wages should of course be compensated including protecting their pension benefits.
A worker paying towards his or her occupational pension scheme is in effect deferring a part of their weekly wage to the day they retire and are entitled to reimbursement. That is not the case for the fat cats who were only too willing to take the profits in the form of share dividends when they could.
The state now owns Railtrack. The government will appoint the ten to fifteen directors who will run the "not for profit trust" board as well as the "supervisory board" above it, just as they do with NHS trusts.
There will be no private shareholders who will go along to annual company meetings and elect the board according to the amounts of shares they own.
What happens now of course with any private company is that the big shareholders don't bother turning up and cast their block votes by proxy whilst the little shareholders who attend the AGM will moan but have no power to change anything.
The Treasury will decide the amount of money it will channel annually to the trust through the strategic rail authority.
So, despite Byers' attempts to set as much distance as possible between the New Labour government and the day to day running of the railways, the angry commuter waiting in vain for the 7.54 am train to Waterloo will increasingly blame the government when it doesn't turn up.
The rail industry will continue to be starved of proper investment by a Treasury that will see its income from workers' taxes and other forms of taxation suffer a dramatic fall as the recession hits and people lose their jobs.
AS SOCIALISTS, we demand that the rail industry be properly funded and investment is put in to ensure that rail safety is the number one priority, including the rapid fitting of the train stopping system that ensures no more Ladbroke Groves take place.
Rail workers are the real experts on the industry. They know where investment is required to ensure proper safety and the efficient running of the system.
The rail unions must have a major say in the running of the industry. That means direct representation on the board of a wholly publicly owned rail industry.
We don't want fancy worker directors on obscene levels of pay who are not directly answerable to the workers as Byers seems to be proposing. Instead they should be directly elected by the workers through their own union structures with the wages of an average railworker.
If they fail to represent the real interests of the rail workers they should be brought to account and removed if necessary to be replaced by others who will.
The working class as a whole must also have a direct say in the industry. This is the section of society which has no financial interest in the return on capital invested but does have an interest in creating a system to meet the needs of the population as a whole.
The trade unions are the mass organisations representing the working class. They, along with consumer groups, passenger groups and others, including political parties which fully support the concept of public ownership, should have representation on the rail board.
It is clearer than ever before that a democratic socialist transport plan needs to be introduced to ensure the integration of all forms of public transport, including rail, the bus industry, air transport and London Underground.
THE ASSASSINATION of Israel's Tourism Minister arch-right-winger Rahavam Zeevi by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) has destroyed Western imperialism's current diplomatic attempts to put a lid on the Israeli-Arab conflict.
The PFLP shot dead Zeevi in retaliation for the assassination of its leader Abu Ali Mustafa by an Israeli hit squad last August.
The response from Israeli prime Minister Ariel Sharon has, predictably, been lethal. Within 24 hours Israeli Defence Force (IDF) tanks had rolled into Palestinian Authority (PA) controlled areas on the West Bank killing three Palestinians, including Atef Abayat the head of the Tanzim militia in the Bethlehem area linked to Yasser Arafat's Fatah group.
At the time of writing 25 Palestinians, including a ten-year-old child, have died in ferocious gun battles between Palestinian militia and IDF forces.
Ariel Sharon claims his intrusion into PA territory is temporary and that his cabinet's actions are to root out 'terrorism'. He even cites George Bush and Tony Blair's justifications for attacking Afghanistan to justify this occupation.
However, according to the Jerusalem Post, Sharon never had any other strategy in dealing with the Palestinian Authority apart from a military one.
In fact, in order to stop Zeevi's National Union party resigning from his governing coalition, Sharon had earlier promised the slain tourism minister that he would not permit any future meetings between foreign minister Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat.
Only when he came under pressure from George Bush and Tony Blair (anxious to keep Arab and Muslim states in their 'grand coalition against terrorism'), did he withdraw IDF forces from Hebron. That prompted Zeevi's resignation.
The US and British governments must be mortified by these events. Both had publicly committed themselves to kick-starting the collapsed 'peace process' by promising Yasser Arafat a "viable Palestinian state".
In return, Arafat had brutally suppressed Hamas-organised demonstrations of university students in Gaza in support of Osama bin Laden. Now even the prospect of yet another ceasefire attempt looks remote.
Indeed, Sharon's government is demanding that the 20 or so PFLP members rounded up by Arafat's security apparatus be handed over to Israel. An impossible demand since this would mean Arafat signing his own death warrant amongst the Palestinian masses.
After six years of corrupt rule combined with a collapse of living standards and a second year-long intifada (uprising) in which over 500 Palestinians (and over 100 Israelis) have been killed, Arafat's support is crumbling fast.
More measures aimed at cracking down on his Islamist opponents like Hamas and the more secular PFLP can only further undermine his support.
In Israel, Sharon has declared Zeevi's killing as important as the attacks on the USA. Official national ceremonies were held, both public and commercial TV channels went into mourning mode. The extremist whose party had little support when alive was in death suddenly embraced as a national hero by the media.
However, the Israeli government's response does not enjoy universal support amongst ordinary Israeli's. Many hate the government for its ruthless pro-big business policies of cuts in social spending and privatisations.
A Gallup opinion poll taken a day before the assassination said 61% favour the creation of a Palestinian state, although 58% oppose including any part of Jerusalem in the new nation.
Moreover, 36% favour a unilateral withdrawal from the West bank and Gaza, 37% favour maintaining the present situation where the PA has limited control over areas of the West Bank and Gaza. A further 22% want to recapture all the territories from the Palestinians.
Several Labour MKs (Members of the Knesset - Israel's parliament) said their party should leave the coalition if the invasion doesn't end, but Peres and defence minister Ben-eliezer cling on, claiming: "This is not the right time to quit".
Clearly, if a genuine workers' party existed that articulated social and economic justice for Israelis and argued for a socialist resolution of the outstanding national question then a democratic Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel could be possible.
The events of the last week alone demonstrate the impossibility on the basis of capitalism solving the explosive national question in this area of the middle East.
A solution can only be found through the struggle of the working class and the poor of the region fighting for a democratic, socialist Palestine alongside a socialist Israel as part of a socialist confederation of the region.
This would mean fulfilling the national aspirations of the Palestinian masses through the establishment of an independent state and genuine stability and prosperity.
This also necessitates guaranteeing the national rights and answering the security fears of the Israeli Jewish population.
Just as importantly it means ending the poverty and social deprivation that exists throughout the region. This requires the building of a mass movement to overthrow oppressive Israeli capitalism and the reactionary Arab elites that dominate the middle East.
THE POPULAR Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) was formed in 1967 after Israeli forces occupied the West Bank during the six-day Arab-Israeli war. Its leader from its inception until 2000 was George Habash.
The PFLP achieved notoriety when it carried out a terrorist attack at Tel Aviv airport in 1972 and again in 1976 when it hijacked an Air France plane to Entebbe in Uganda.
Its ideology was a mixture of Arab nationalism and Stalinism. It denounced the rulers of Arab countries, apart from Libya and Iraq, and at different times it was pro-Moscow and pro-China. During the 1970s it rivalled Yasser Arafat's Fatah group in the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) for influence.
Today it numbers a few hundred members with its headquarters in Syria. The PFLP opposed the 1993 Oslo 'peace' accords between the PLO and Israel.
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What the Socialist Party stands for
The Socialist Party fights for socialism – a democratic society run for the needs of all and not the profits of a few. We also oppose every cut, fighting in our day-to-day campaigning for every possible improvement for working class people.
The organised working class has the potential power to stop the cuts and transform society.
As capitalism dominates the globe, the struggle for genuine socialism must be international.
The Socialist Party is part of the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI), a socialist international that organises in many countries.
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http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/9220