Solidarity 073, 12 May 2005

Why did the LibDems get the anti-war vote?

Pete Radcliff, an AWL member, stood in Nottingham East under the banner of Socialist Unity. He got 373 votes, or 1.2% of the poll, about a third of his score in 2001. He writes about the lessons of the campaign The result was disappointing, but there were many useful things about this socialist election campaign other than the final tally of votes: we put across a working-class socialist message; we held together at least a portion of the socialist vote from 2001, as a base which we can build on in the future. The score in Nottingham East was partly due to being squeezed by the Greens (who did...

Cynics through and through

By Bruce Robinson In Manchester Withington, the Liberal Democrats overturned an 11,524 Labour majority with a 20% swing to win the seat by 667 votes. Early in the campaign, I was called by a Lib Dem phone canvasser. When asked why I wasn’t going to vote for them, I said “It’s because you’re a bunch of cynical opportunists.” (Not the whole reason, but a good enough starting point!) The Lib Dem campaign bore this out. The seat is well suited to saying different things to different people: it includes large numbers of students, big council estates, some posh enclaves and growing numbers of...

World workers' news round-up

ARGENTINA Last month a judged ordered that a public notice of ownership be posted at the ceramics Zanon factory in Argentina. The notice would have allowed a venture capitalist or the previous owner to buy Zanon Ceramics for pennies. More than 470 jobs and the workers’ administration of Zanon could have been in danger, as a new owner could have immediately requested their eviction of the factory. However as no “interested parties” registered, the judge had to close the registry and it cannot be re-opened. Zanon workers and their supporters are now lobbying the courts to declare the factory...

Against the odds in Pakistan

Trade unionists in Pakistan face a daily struggle to organise. The unions have often been hijacked by reactionary political parties. Farooq Sulehria of the Labour Party Pakistan tells the story. In Pakistan people often take on two jobs or have some small business after work to survive. All our governments, whether khaki or civilian, have had the same IMF-World Bank dictated neo-liberal agendas: privatisation, downsizing, and an end to subsidies. It may have been different had there been a workers’ party built by trade unions. But Pakistan’s trade unions are too weak and divided to build even...

Can we make poverty history?

The basic statement of the Make Poverty History campaign, and a response by No Sweat TRADE INJUSTICE, DEBT AND LACK OF AID Today, the gap between the world’s rich and poor is wider than ever. Global injustices such as poverty, AIDS, malnutrition, conflict and illiteracy remain rife. Despite the promises of world leaders, at our present sluggish rate of progress the world will fail dismally to reach internationally agreed targets to halve global poverty by 2015. World poverty is sustained not by chance or nature, but by a combination of factors: injustice in global trade; the huge burden of...

The trouble with Northern Ireland

Why is Northern Ireland so intractable? Sean Matgamna looks to the intricacies of Irish history and the peculiarities of the Six County entity for an explanation. There are two distinct peoples in Ireland, who see and define themselves differently and antagonistically, the Catholic “Irish-Irish” Nationalists and the Protestant “British-Irish” Unionists. Ireland, which had been ruled by England since the 12th century, was partitioned in 1920-21 into Six and 26 Counties entities. The border dividing the Six and 26 Counties does not coincide, or even approximate to, the geographical location of...

The trouble with Northern Ireland: part 2

Read part 1 here . REFORM THE SIX COUNTIES? The entity designed for majority-Protestant self-rule was to have a new political mechanism transplanted into it. A statelet designed to let Protestants rule was to be reformed in such a way as to abolish majority rule, and in its place put institutional power-sharing — guaranteed by law — between Catholic and Protestant parties. But in the 33 years since, majority, Protestant, Home Rule was abolished, stable power-sharing has, again and again, proved an impossible task. The failure so far of the Good Friday Agreement is only the latest in a long...

Writing on the wall

Tescopoly Health inequality Childhood obesity TESCOPOLY The announcement by Tesco boss Terry Leahy that his company made £65 million profit per second last year was greeted with joy by the capitalist community. Declan Curry of the London Stock Exchange was only surprised at how muted the announcement was. “We should not be ashamed of profit,” he said. Tesco says it will “create” 25,000 jobs next year. Each Tesco worker makes the company an average of £95,000 a year, but most of them are paid the minimum wage, and Tesco has lobbied politicians constantly against even that. Tesco workers are...

Platform: Nuclear Politics

While George Bush hypocritically rails against nuclear proliferation in Iran, the US and Europe are colluding in extending nuclear energy in the countries affected by the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. This survey — we have edited it slightly for reasons of space — was published recently on the Schnews website. “On the 1 May, me and my parents went to the countryside, to have a nice day together in the sun and gather some dandelions. We walked around, ran in the fields, played, dined on the grass and collected a whole bag of flowers. Happy, tired and covered with dust, we came home. “Next evening...

Being Skint

Duncan Morrison reviews “Skint”, BBC1, Mondays, 10.35pm The documentary series Skint has reminded me how valuable good documentaries can be. Using a not quite fly on the wall style, the makers ask questions to their subjects as they go through their lives. They follow a number of people and families in the Birmingham area as they struggle to make ends meet. These are Britain’s poor. One of the central settings throughout the series is the “Cash Converter” store. The sympathetic manager of the store is regularly seen taking the few items of any value that these people possess. Then the struggle...

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