Workers' Liberty

It was a tragedy for the British working class and its labour movement that Michael Foot, who has died at the age of 96, was its political leader when it faced its life-and-death confrontation with Thatcherism at the beginning of the 1980s.

Albert Booth, former “Old Labour” Cabinet Minister, lifelong socialist and trade unionist, and my much-loved uncle, has died aged 81.

According to a recent article by Mark Smith in "Scotland on Sunday", a “controversial new history" which contains "new revelations unearthed by Stirling University historian Dr.

A rolling wave of right-wing politics threatens to engulf Britain in the period immediately ahead. The first thing we have to do is tell ourselves the truth about it.

A coalition to stand trade union and left general election candidates was announced at the Saturday 7 November conference on political representation called by the rail union RMT.

The 18-year period of rule by the Tory Party, which was ended on 1 May by the election of a New Labour government, was one of profoundly radical change. The bourgeoisie remade and reshaped institutions and social relationships and, to a considerable extent, the working-class itself.

On 4 October, I attended the 70-strong Lille and district conference of the New Anticapitalist Party, the revolutionary socialist party founded in February by activists of the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire and many other independent socialists.

The British left is still infected by nationalism. There are a number of reasons for this.

This pamphlet explains how Scottish nationalism came into being, how it was shaped by economic and political developments and how it has, unfortunately, shaped the workers movement.

About 60 socialists, activists and trade unionists attended a Tyneside Socialist Forum open meeting about left unity on 15 July.

Many trade unionists will have had, or will shortly have, a discussion at their branch about the "People's Charter".

Open letter to the left from the SWP; and the AWL's reply
An open letter to the left from the Socialist Workers Party

It’s time to create a socialist alternative

An appeal to socialist and working-class organisations and activists

There are striking parallels between the SWP's attitude to Islam over the last period and the way the Communist Party used to relate to Irish Catholic immigrants in Britain. I had some experience of that.

For a while, over forty years ago, I was involved in the work of the Communist Party among Irish people of devout Catholic background in Britain, people from the nearest thing to a theocracy in Europe, where clerics ruled within the glove-puppet institutions of a bourgeois democracy.

The mass outrage against the politicians that has come with the publication of the details of their petty greed in claiming expenses is fully justified.

Such reports as that:

• A Tory MP charged it to his expenses when he got the moat around his big house cleaned;

• Another Tory grandee drew expenses for having a crystal chandelier installed;

Tony Blair and his friends may not be very good at ideas, policies, principles and such like, but there is one thing they do know about: the media.

Published for use with the London AWL study course on the history of British Trotskyism and the AWL. Full text here.

Bob Pennington died in 1997. He was a leading activist or organiser first for the "Healy" Trotskyists, then for the "Solidarity" group, then for the "Mandelite" IMG.

Bob Pennington died in 1997. He was a leading activist or organiser first for the "Healy" Trotskyists, then for the "Solidarity" group, then for the "Mandelite" IMG.

1959 seemed to mark a nadir for the radical left in Britain. The Tories had just won the third general election in a row. The right wing was triumphant in the Labour Party.

The "L'Etincelle" faction of Lutte Ouvriere has been expelled by LO, and will continue to work with the LCR on the project of a new united anti-capitalist party in France.

The fragmented left faces a new situation in the light of the blocking off of any possible challenge to Brown through the Labour Party; the failure of Respect; and the Socialist Alliance and the rise of the BNP. The Convention of the Left is an attempt to bring together those on the left opposed to the Labour government’s attacks on the working class and to debate and formulate alternative anti-capitalist strategies. Initially there will be a five day event in Manchester from 20-24 September running in parallel with Labour’s own conference.

LAMENT FOR MISSING COMRADES

Call back the dead! My hero friends of old
Who fled their place in our unequal war
And sank in private Iife; those who grew cold

One of the results of the current financial and economic crisis is that the ideas of the economist John Maynard Keynes have been pulled of dusty library shelves and are now being peddled as a possible

Page 1: Stop the BNP - for a working class campaign against fascism
Page 2: Israel/Palestine - Two states for two peoples!

The split between the SWP and Galloway-sycophants in Respect has politically destabilised and reduced both sides. Destabilised in the sense that the SWP was presented with the problem of sticking to its perspective of building a populist alternative to New Labour whilst the Galloway faction lost its best organisers and activists.

For the third time in 15 years Silvio Berlusconi has won a convincing victory in the Italian elections of 13-14 April. His rightwing People of Liberty party, along with his ally Umberto Bossi’s populist and racist Lega Nord (supported in wide areas of the north), has been guaranteed comfortable majorities in both houses of the Italian parliament.

By Hugh Edwards

Particularly since it expelled the bulk of its founders and trade union activists in 2006, the Workers Power group has been notable for combining rhetorical u