Workers' Liberty

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DO official Labour politics offer any real hope today? Or must serious socialists, and even serious democrats, look instead to the revolutionary left?

CONFESSIONS OF A TRIDENTINE* BOY
(THE PRO-CATHEDRAL, ENNIS, 1950-53)

“It has been said: ‘Ireland is one huge monastery’.
In spite of exaggeration [this] correctly
emphasizes the fact that religion and the
supernatural are a vital element in Irish life.
At every twist and turn of the day a man is reminded
of the affairs of the soul. Thus he meets priests
and nuns, he passes by churches and convents;
he hears bells ringing for Mass, the Angelus, etc.
— The whole atmosphere is conducive to spirituality.”
— The Furrow,
Organ of Maynooth College,
Ireland’s leading seminary.
1954.

[Glossary, and notes
on the Pro-Cathedral, Ennis, c1950,
and on religion in Ennis then, below.]

Download pdf (attached).

Trade is a vital part of the neoliberal economic, political and ideological regime that now dominates the world economy and most national states.

One of the most visible impacts of capitalist globalisation has been the massive expansion of low-paid (and often semi-casual) jobs in the service sector.

Was advocating extra-parliamentary direct action to bring down the elected Thatcher government anti-democratic? Are 'by democratic means' and 'by parliamentary means' identical concepts?

Former Labour leader Michael Foot, who we debated in this pamphlet in 1982, and on the same issues at a public meeting in 1993, has just died. While sending sympathy and condolences to his family, friends and comrades, we draw the attention of socialists and labour movement activists to this debate as part of the discussion on Foot's political legacy.

Socialism and Democracy: Workers' Liberty special issue (no.17), January 1994
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Download the pamphlet as a PDF:

• Debate from 1982 between Michael Foot, then Labour Party leader, and John O'Mahony (Sean Matgamna), with a 1994 introduction

• Appendices, including texts on socialism and democracy by James P Cannon, Max Shachtman, V I Lenin, and Hal Draper.

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Read it online:
Introduction: Democracy, direct action, and the class struggle
Michael Foot: My kind of democracy (part 1)
Michael Foot: My kind of democracy (part 2)
John O'Mahony: Introduction
Chapter 1: Is Direct Action Against Thatcher Undemocratic?
Chapter 2: The Appeal to History
Chapter 3: The Scarecrow of Stalinism
Chapter 4: Superstition or Struggle?
Appendix 1. Labour Party: the sham of "one member, one vote" - John Bloxam and John O'Mahony
Appendix 2. PR, democracy, and socialism - John O'Mahony
Appendix 3. Marxism and democracy - James P Cannon
Appendix 4. The movement of the majority - James P Cannon
Appendix 5. 1917 was a democratic revolution - Max Shachtman
Appendix 6. Lenin on Democracy and Dictatorship
Appendix 7. Democracy in the Russian Revolution - Leon Trotsky (1918)
Appendix 8. An Eyewitness Account of the Russian Revolution - Hal Draper

Appendix 7 and appendix 8, included here, were not in the printed version of January 1994.

Robin Blackburn, author of Banking on Death, or, Investing in Life: The history and future of pensions, spoke at the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty London forum on 17 February 2005.

The pension issue is the one which has proved time and again that it can get really large numbers of working people fighting for their rights and for a better world.

The NUT National Executive has agreed to canvass its members for a boycott of some SAT tests. Teachers must now renew their campaigning against the testing culture. Pat Yarker looks at the background to the years of testing and targets in state schools.

Number 2/3 of Workers' Liberty magazine is a special issue on "The new world disorder: war and imperialism". For contents, and links to download articles from the magazine as pdf files, read on.