The Socialist issue 366

16 October 2004

TWO WEEKS ago, two thousand people in a hall in Bournemouth – overwhelmingly wealthy, male and over sixty – dominated the entire media, as every aspect of the Tory Party conference was pored over…

CIVIL SERVICE union PCS members are balloting for a one-day strike to defend jobs and services. Meetings are taking place all over the country…

Iraq – Withdraw The Troops

THERE IS justifiable revulsion, shared by the socialist, at the videoed public beheading of Ken Bigley. However, Ken Bigley’s brother, Paul, was right when he said that "Blair has blood on his hands"…

NIGERIA’S FIFTH general strike since June 2000 stopped the entire country when the four-day stoppage started on 11 October. This protest was again provoked by a jump in fuel prices…

Fight Back Against A Future Of Pension Poverty

THE NEW government report on pensions could be political dynamite. It shows that British capitalism can only offer future old age pensioners deep poverty after retirement…

THE EUROPEAN Social Forum (ESF) is now celebrating its third year, following previous gatherings of over 50,000 people in Florence and Paris…

The Socialist Party at the ESF:

(also sponsored by International Socialist Resistance, the Committee for a Workers’ International and Socialist Students)…

ON 15 FEBRUARY 2003, the planet was swept by a tidal wave of demonstrations. From Greenland in the north to the Auckland Islands in the south, around forty million took to the streets to try and halt the looming invasion of Iraq. Like 1968, 2003…

MANY PARTICIPANTS at this week’s European Social Forum in London will be looking for an alternative to the capitalist system. The socialist ideas and programme of the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) explains the causes of exploitation,…

COMMENTING ON last November’s ESF in Paris, the Guardian columnist George Monbiot acknowledged that the official anti-capitalist movement has "scarcely attempted to tackle the big issue: what should be done about capitalism…

‘Social Europe’ – just another form of capitalism: European workers, civil servants, pensioners and the unemployed have come under ferocious attack in the past year and a half from their governments and the private and public sector bosses…

ITALY IS the country in which the anti-globalisation and anti-war protests of the new century have brought the greatest numbers onto the streets – up to 3 million on 15 February, 2003…

International Socialist Resistance (ISR) and Socialist Students’ members have, in the last few weeks, spoken to thousands of young people throughout the country at university Freshers’ Fairs, schools, colleges and workplaces…

The Lessons Of Chile 1970-73

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IN THE second of our articles celebrating 40 years of the Militant newspaper (now the socialist), Roger Shrives looks at how we reported and commented on the tumultuous events of Salvador Allende’s government in Chile from 1970 until the vicious coup by the reactionary general Pinochet in 1973…

Germany: Socialist councillor sacked: ON 26 September Marc Treude was elected as councillor in Aachen for the left-wing electoral alliance "Together against social cuts". On 8 October he was sacked by his employers at Cinram for organising resistance against 350 lay-offs…

SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE (the Socialist Party’s counterpart in the US) were recently invited to participate in a "Presidential debate watch" event at Kennedy High, Minneapolis…