Workers' Liberty 24, September 1995

Survey: education, diary of a tubeworker & labour news

Student debt explodes: HE, FE (Daisy Forest, Ed Whitby) Out Proud and Organising (Daisy Forest) Diary of a tubeworker: Phew, what a sell out! Troops used against firefighters dispute (Chris Jones) The rail sell out Strike against casual labour Defeated council plans library closure To download PDF click here

Editorial

Download PDF Editorial: All dried up Ireland, one year after the ceasefire

The roots of Blairism

The summer’s wave of criticism of Tony Blair is impressive in its breadth, from the left represented by Alan Simpson and Ronnie Campbell, through Tribune and centre MPs such as Richard Burden, to the traditional right wing of the party represented by Roy Hattersley. The disquiet voiced by union leaders John Edmonds and Bill Morris is important in demonstrating the depth of concern in the trade unions at what a Blair government has in store. But Blair’s leadership style, his modernising of the Party and his policies are organic to an ideological restructuring of Labourism which has deep roots...

Ernest Mandel 1923-95

Ernest Mandel, the foremost post-Trotsky Trotskyist for many decades, died in his native Belgium on 21 July, at the age of 72. He joined the Trotskyist movement at the age of 16 in 1939. Showing a fortitude and a courage difficult for us to imagine, in 1940 Mandel and other young Trotskyists set about reorganising the Trotskyist movement under the guns of the Nazi occupation forces. Arrested, Mandel persuaded his guard to help him escape. He survived a period in a concentration camp. From the middle ‘40s, Mandel was a central leader of the reorganised Trotskyist movement. Over fifty years he...

In memory of Jo Walker and David Hague

At about 9.30pm on Sunday 2 July, a minibus returning to Lancaster from our Workers’ Liberty 95 summer school crashed on the motorway between Preston and Lancaster. David Hague, a close friend of the Lancaster comrades, was killed outright. Other people suffered varying degrees of physical injury, but all recovered, except our comrade Jo Walker, who died after a week in intensive care on 10 July. We print below our impressions of and tributes to David Hague and Jo Walker. Jo as a comrade By Lancaster AWL Jo Walker joined the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty ten months ago, after meeting Lancaster...

The Orange Order and its Catholic counterparts

Rioting has ceased in Belfast, but cases of intimidation of workers by Orange hooligans are still occurring. In the shipyards and docks Catholic workers are still being driven out. Non-Catholic clergy are making strenuous efforts to restrain such intimidation. They visit areas where intimidation occurs and seek to restore tolerance. In the South the pogroms have also ceased. Labour and other bodies have passed strong protest resolutions. Three hundred families burn out and from 500 to 700 workers deprived of employment - those are the nett results of the Belfast pogroms. Rioting has ceased and...

Why Bosnia must defeat Milosevic

Branka Magas is a Croatian socialist living in London and the author of The Destruction of Yugoslavia (Verso). She talked to Martin Thomas about the nature of Karadzic's Bosnian-Serb military regime and the case for siding with the Bosnian government in the current war [1992]. Bosnia's declaration of independence in 1992 was preceded by a referendum in which a large majority of the population voted in favour. Those Bosnians who found themselves under the control of the Serbian-dominated Yugoslav army were not allowed to take part in the referendum. If Milosevic was so confident that the...

The SWP: a relapse into the worst of Trotskyism

I do not disagree with the points that Jim Higgins made ( Workers' Liberty 19) about Cliff and the IS Opposition. However I am not convinced that a discussion about the specific issues involved in that struggle is a sufficient explanation for the bust-up. I think there is something in the nature of Trotskyist organisations, something about the dynamics of relatively small organisations which are marginal to the working class, and something about the Leninist-Trotskyist tradition which leads to sectarian degeneration. So, I think there was something predetermined about the fight in IS. The...

Ireland: one year after the ceasefire

And now, Sir, as we approach the first anniversary of the Provisional IRA ceasefire, will you tell us please, what do you think of Britain's role in Ireland? Should Britain just get out - "Troops Out Now" - or does it have a necessary role to play in securing a political settlement? A progressive role, perhaps? What do you think, Sir? "We cannot make peace on this island unless the British government faces up to its historic responsibilities. They can't say you sort it out among yourselves and then we'll come aboard. The British government has to be proactively involved in creating a level...

The real John Maclean

The Glasgow socialist John Maclean (1879-1923) devoted most of his adult life to the overthrow of capitalism. He joined the avowedly Marxist Social Democratic Federation around 1902-3, and remained a member of the SDF and its successor organisations, the Social Democratic Party and the British Socialist Party, up until 1920, the year in which the BSP provided the basis for the launch of the Communist Party of Great Britain. In contrast not only to the jingoism of H.M.Hyndman and other BSP leaders but also to the equivocal response of the centre grouping around E.C.Fairchild, Maclean...

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