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By Alan Woods
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Tuesday, 25 November 2008 |
 He is the hero of the hour, the man who, if we
are to believe the media, single-handedly has saved the world financial system
from meltdown. When all around were panicking and in despair, here was a man
who kept his head and threw billions of pounds at the banks, a veritable 21st
century miracle! That man is Gordon Brown, a man who dances to the tune of the
bankers and capitalists, not the workers who voted Labour into power.
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By Socialist Appeal Editorial Board
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Monday, 03 November 2008 |
 Sooner or later the financial tsunami will run into the sand, but in its wake the real economy will be left in recession. The immediate crisis will have abated, but the sludge, mud, sewage and devastation lasts much longer. They're still mopping up the mud from the 2007 floods… how long will the recession last and how deep will it go?
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By Terry McPartlan in Britain
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Friday, 17 October 2008 |
 Now a policy of wage restraint during a serious financial crisis is, sooner or later a finished recipe for an intensification of the class struggle in Britain. Already the strike figures for this year - before the recent financial meltdown - have outstripped last year's figures
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By Mick Brooks
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Wednesday, 08 October 2008 |
 In the early hours of this morning (08.10.08), the government and the financial authorities have finally agreed an ambitious plan to save the banks. They present the £50bn bail-out as decisive action to stop the rot. In fact their hands were forced, and there’s no sign that it will stem the panic on UK stock markets in any case.
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By In Defence of Marxism
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Friday, 03 October 2008 |
 On Wednesday around 100 people gathered
in Bolívar Hall in London to attend what was a very successful
launch of the English language edition of Alan Woods' latest book,
Reformism or Revolution - A Reply to Heinz Dieterich. The
debate revealed that as capitalism world enters into a deep crisis,
the ideas of genuine socialism are alive and well. Now is the time to
spread the ideas of revolutionary socialism. (Including the audio file of Alan Woods' speech).
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By Fred McDowell
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Thursday, 24 July 2008 |
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Back in 1976 the Lucas Aerospace Company in
Britain
was preparing to sack 20% of its 18,000-strong workforce. The Shop Stewards
approached their members for technically viable means of using the existing
equipment and human expertise to make socially useful products instead of
weapons. The result was a 6-volume document which revealed that workers have
the know-how to run industry. What was lacking was the capital. For that you
need to expropriate the capitalists.
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By Dudley Edwards
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Thursday, 24 July 2008 |
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Today Trades Councils in Britain have been
consciously relegated to the sidelines by the trade union bureaucracy, but in
this article, written at the time of the struggle against the Heath
government's ill-fated Industrial Relations Act [1971] Dudley Edwards outlined
the history of the trades councils in Britain and pointed to their potentially
vital role.
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By Eric Hollies
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Monday, 21 July 2008 |
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For ten years Gordon Brown has been mouthing the phrase "no return to boom
and bust". Now we see it is meaningless, as the British economy slides into
recession, possibly the worst for decades.
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By Kate Smart and Barbara Humphries
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Monday, 07 July 2008 |
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The British National Health Service was set up sixty
years ago, officially on July 5th 1948. It was the result of years of struggle
on the part of the working class for a free universal health service. At its
height it was as close as you could get to a communist principle under
capitalism. Over the years the capitalists have been working hard to drag us
back to the dark days when the poor could not afford decent healthcare.
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By Socialist Appeal Editorial Board
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Thursday, 03 July 2008 |
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Pressures
have been building up in British society. High house prices, fuel and food
price increases and pay restraint and cuts particularly in the public sector
are all having a huge effect on workers. It's obvious that there's going to be
a change and the longer it is delayed the worse the storm is when it eventually
breaks.
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By Ted Mooney in 1971
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Tuesday, 01 July 2008 |
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This article was
originally published in 1971 in the Militant
International Review under the title Marxism
and the Pilkington Strike – A lesson from history.
The Pilkington glassworks had entered into dispute and had come up
against the problem of the stifling control of the bureaucracy over
their union, the GMWU. The Socialist Worker
advised the workers to leave and set up a new union. The Marxist
tendency, gathered around the Militant,
advised against this and events later confirmed the correctness of
this position.
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By Michael Roberts
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Tuesday, 24 June 2008 |
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British capitalism is in big
trouble. The official annual inflation rate has hit 3.3%, its highest
level for 16 years. The governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, has
been forced to send a letter to the Chancellor of Exchequer, Alastair Darling,
to explain why the Bank has been unable to keep inflation from rising at more
than 2%, which is the target set by the government for the
Bank.
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By Rob Sewell
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Friday, 13 June 2008 |
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The political landscape in Britain is changing before our
very eyes. This morning’s prominent TV news is of the tanker drivers’ strike,
showing scenes of pickets with Red Flags turning away lorries at Shell
refineries. The next item is the deepening government crisis, followed by a
warning from Gazprom that oil prices could reach $250 a barrel. It was like a
typical news bulletin of the 1970s.
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By Ed Doveton
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Tuesday, 10 June 2008 |
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This is a two-part article looking
at the decline in the quality of life for working people in Britain today.
The first article focuses on the workplace, where there has been relative
decline in wages and deterioration in the conditions of employment. The second
part looks at the attack on the 'social wage'. Real wages, i.e. purchasing
power has been declining and the overall infrastructure of what once was an
advanced welfare state, has been crumbling.
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By PTUDC
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Thursday, 05 June 2008 |
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Lal Khan was speaking
in Birmingham on June 1 at a meeting organised
by the local PTUDC, where he outlined the developing crisis in Pakistan and
highlighted the need for socialism as the only answer to the problems of the
workers and peasants.
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By Rob Sewell
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Tuesday, 27 May 2008 |
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The New Labour government is on the rocks. The wreckage of
Blairism, under the leadership of Gordon Brown, was dealt a further crushing
blow at the Crewe and Nantwich by-election. A 7,000 Labour majority was turned
into a 7,000 Tory majority in a swing of 17.6%. It was the Tories' first
by-election gain in 30 years.
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By Terry McPartlan
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Tuesday, 27 May 2008 |
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The Crewe by-election, with an 18% swing to the Tories,
confirms that they are on target for a landslide win in the next general
election. Railway workers and other working class people who have voted Labour
for generations have finally had enough. The betrayals and disappointments of
New Labour have caused these electors to break the habit of a lifetime. Make no
mistake about it. Mass working class abstentions have done for Brown and his
witless crew.
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By Michael Roberts
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Monday, 12 May 2008 |
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Up till recently, Britain’s main high street banks had
not seemed to have suffered much – they were all announcing big profits and
there was little talk of large ‘writedowns’ of worthless assets. But now the
Royal Bank of Scotland has announced that it lost £4bn in the last three months
as a result of the world’s great credit crunch and it must write off £5bn in
loans and debt securities that it had on its books as worthless. The credit
crunch is going to hit Britain in a big way.
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By Darrall Cozens
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Monday, 12 May 2008 |
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"Britain has been hit by what trade unions have called the biggest wave of
work stoppages since the Labour government came to power 10 years ago, with up
to 400,000 public sector employees going on strike." (Reuters: Headline and
opening sentence Friday, 25 April
2008)
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By Rob Sewell
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Monday, 12 May 2008 |
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New Labour suffered a humiliating defeat in the recent
local elections, but those left groupings who were hoping to capitalise on
Labour's difficulties also found themselves in a mess. As Ted Grant explained,
the working class always ignore these sectarian grouplets on the fringes of the
labour movement and in times of struggle always turn towards their
traditional organisations.
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By Socialist Appeal Editorial Board
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Tuesday, 06 May 2008 |
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The Tory victories in the local elections on May 1st mean that the
Conservatives will almost certainly go on to win the next general election and
form the next government. Theoretically the Labour leadership could turn the
situation round, but they seem incapable of changing their disastrous course.
New Labour is in meltdown.
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By Socialist Appeal Reporters
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Tuesday, 22 April 2008 |
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Last weekend the Socialist Appeal held its national
conference, the proceedings of which revealed important steps forward in the
development of the tendency in both the youth field and the trade unions. The
mood was one of enthusiasm and determination to build even further on the past
year's successes.
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By a Socialist Appeal Reporter
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Friday, 28 March 2008 |
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At a recent public meeting in London a couple of hecklers were attacking John McDonnell for being a member of the Labour Party. A veteran trade union activist answered them by comparing the Labour Party with a house that has been overrun by rats. The task of the working class is to clean up the house and get possession of it once again.
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By Socialist Appeal
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Tuesday, 25 March 2008 |
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This British Perspectives draft document (2008) is part of a
wide-ranging discussion about the likely development of events in
British society. It looks at the crisis of capitalism worldwide and how
this affects British capitalism and also looks at how this impacts on
the trade union movement and the political situation as a whole.
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By In Defence of Marxism
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Wednesday, 19 March 2008 |
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We are delighted to announce that Socialist Appeal, Marxist voice in the British labour movement, has a newly designed website. Check it out!
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By In Defence of Marxism
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Thursday, 06 March 2008 |
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Alan Woods was invited to speak at Eton, the most
prestigious private school in Britain
(known as a "public" school in English), by the school's Orwell Society. Alan
gave a very clear explanation of why society needs to be changed and why the
only direction it can go in is socialism. We believe the points raised and the
answers given provide a very good outline of what Marxism stands for today.
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By Mick Brooks
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Thursday, 28 February 2008 |
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A debate in the British Parliament on the nationalisation of
Northern Rock, involving John McDonnell MP, has revealed that billions of
pounds are to be diverted away from the intended purpose of preventing a banking
collapse, into the pockets of the Rock's management. It seems the directors of
Northern Rock had set up a financial institution called Granite, the real
purpose of which was to carry out tax evasion!
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By Rob Sewell
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Tuesday, 29 January 2008 |
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"The London police on strike. After that,
anything can happen", said Sylvia Pankhurst in 1918. The ground is certainly shifting in Britain. There has
been a continual build up of public anger at the government's attempt to impose
a 2% limit on public sector pay. The Police are getting a paltry 1.9% rise, in effect a pay cut.
They were furious and making all kinds of threats against the Home Secretary
Jacqui Smith and Gordon Brown.
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By Mick Brooks
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Tuesday, 22 January 2008 |
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New Labour fears that if Northern Rock collapses large
sectors of the financial system could follow. And that would reverberate
throughout the economy. Recession is on its way. A financial collapse could be
the trigger. The right thing to do is nationalise Northern Rock, and with it
take over the whole banking system.
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By Caron Walker
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Monday, 21 January 2008 |
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Since 1979 UK child
poverty has doubled. In 2006, 3.8 million children were living in poverty in
homes on less than 60% of average income. Although this is a fall of about
600,000 since 1998, this still leaves 500,000 children above the Government's
own target. This is not the whole picture either - poverty in the whole
population is increasing.
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By Rob Sewell
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Tuesday, 08 January 2008 |
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Towards the end of last year we witnessed the collapse of another
attempt to create a party to the left of Labour. The RESPECT party,
which was founded in 2004, was the latest effort to establish an
electoral alternative to Labour. It succeeded in winning an MP, George
Galloway, as well as a few dozen councillors up and down the country. However, the
whole project soon went pear-shaped.
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By Richard Vivian
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Tuesday, 08 January 2008 |
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Tommy Sheridan is facing yet another fight in his colourful career as Scotland's best known
socialist. He has been arrested on suspicion of perjury arising from his widely
publicised defamation case against the News of the World for which he was
awarded £200,000 damages.
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By Barbara Humphries
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Friday, 04 January 2008 |
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It
is fashionable today among some on the left to refer to some golden age of "old
labour". They use this to argue that in the past it was a workers' party but
now it is no longer. The Blairites on the other hand claim that the party was
too "left-wing" to be elected. But there has never been such a golden age. If
you look at the record of Labour governments, they have all been responsible
for cutting living standards and carrying out an imperialist foreign policy.
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By Michael Roberts
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Thursday, 03 January 2008 |
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Andrew Glyn died from a brain tumour on 22 December 2007. He was 64 years old. A fellow of Corpus Christi College
in Oxford since
1969, he was a leading socialist economist for all that time.
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By Mick Brooks
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Wednesday, 19 December 2007 |
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In 1970, just like today, the Labour Party seemed dead from
the neck up. After six years of desperately disappointing government, Labour
had been unceremoniously bundled out of office. The Tories were back, aiming to
put the boot in to the working class.
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By Rob Sewell
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Friday, 16 November 2007 |
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One year ago today comrade Phil Mitchinson
died tragically of a heart attack. He was without doubt a very talented comrade
who devoted his time to editing the Socialist
Appeal and helping to build our tendency in Britain and internationally. Here
Rob Sewell remembers Phil and the role he played.
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By Owen Jones
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Friday, 02 November 2007 |
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Marxists have always maintained that
at some stage the intensity of the class struggle affects even the “armed
bodies of men” of the bourgeois state. Such an example was the police strike in
Britain at the end of the First World War. In the late summer of 1918 the sight
of 12,000 furious Metropolitan constables marching on Whitehall sparked panic
among ruling circles in Britain. Under the leadership of the National Union of
Police and Prison Officers, militantly class-conscious policemen conspired to
overturn their role as the subservient body of the State.
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By Maarten Vanheuverswyn
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Tuesday, 30 October 2007 |
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King Abdullah of Saudi
Arabia is occupying the headlines of many newspapers with
his comments that Britain
failed to act on intelligence that could have prevented the 7/7 London bombings. Beyond
the response of the bourgeois media, what is the real relationship between the
West and Saudi Arabia?
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By Alan Woods
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Thursday, 18 October 2007 |
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Comrade Phil Lloyd has died in Swansea at the age of 74. He joined the
tendency led by Ted Grant back in the 1950s. He was a pioneer of the Marxist
tendency and played a key role in its development. Alan Woods was one of the
youth that that Phil Lloyd helped to recruit and educate. Here Alan remembers
the man and fighter.
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By Rob Sewell
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Thursday, 11 October 2007 |
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Some 130,000 postal workers in the Communication Workers
Union were due to return to work yesterday after taking successful strike action in
defence of terms and conditions.
However, many workers were scandalized to discover that
management had imposed new attendance times without their consent.
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By Socialist Appeal - www.socialist.net
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Thursday, 11 October 2007 |
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Last week speculation reached fever pitch in the press over whether or not
Brown
would call a snap General Election after only three months as prime
minister. The Tories were languishing in the polls and the young Turks of
New Labour's front bench were keen to launch an election. Then new polls
showed a different picture. However, there is little enthusiasm amongst
traditional Labour supporters and there are
dangers of an economic crisis.
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By Andy Blake, secretary, London 7 CWU (personal capacity)
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Thursday, 11 October 2007 |
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British postal workers have just finished finished four days of industrial
action (5/6 October and 8/9
October) over a bitter row over pay and conditions. This will be followed by
a rolling programme of strikes until the dispute is resolved. This article,
written just before the dispute started, comments on the situation.
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By Labour Representation Committee - www.l-r-c.org.uk
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Friday, 21 September 2007 |
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We are making available to our readers an appeal by the Labour
Representation Committee on the issue of internal party democracy. On Sunday
Labour Party conference kicks off. If Brown’s proposals are accepted it appears
that from next year CLPs and affiliates will no longer have the right to take
resolutions to Party conference.
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By Michael Roberts
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Wednesday, 19 September 2007 |
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Over the past 15 years
production has risen at about 3% a year in the OECD countries, while money
supply, mortgage and company debt, personal borrowing and the massive so-called
derivatives market based on this credit has increased at over 25% a year!
Result? A huge bubble which is now bursting, starting with Northern Rock.
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By Mick Brooks and Dan Morley
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Thursday, 06 September 2007 |
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The collapse of Metronet , the consortium entrusted with upgrading the
London tube, spells the collapse of the whole notion of 'Public Private
Partnership', otherwise known as the Private Finance Initiative.
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By Fred Weston
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Thursday, 06 September 2007 |
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The tube workers' strike, the strike of prison
officers in August, the call by rank and file police to be granted the right to
strike, and other similar disputes mark an important change in Britain. The
workers of this country have had enough and they are starting to fight back.
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By Socialist Appeal - www.socialist.net
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Tuesday, 04 September 2007 |
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This is the final part of the British Perspectives document. The issues which it
covers are the trade unions and the Labour party, and the Marxists'
orientation towards the mass organisations. Also covered is the
importance of the youth, emphasing the importance of theory and the
training of Marxist cadres for the enormous events that impend in
Britain and elsewhere.
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By Socialist Appeal - www.socialist.net
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Tuesday, 04 September 2007 |
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In this section we deal with the question of the Blair government, the
increasing abstentions of the working class, and the growing discontent
affecting all sections. It also deals with the Conservative party, the
natural party of the ruling class, which has shifted to the “centre”
ground and won back
a layer that voted Liberal Democrat.
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By Alan Woods, 10 September 1997
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Monday, 03 September 2007 |
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Ten years ago in Britain, at the time of the sudden death of
Diana, we witnessed an outburst of popular feeling without precedent in recent
British history. It was an entirely new phenomenon, reflecting an entirely new
situation in Britain. Here we republish Alan Woods’ article written in 1997 which
looked at the serious crisis the monarchy and the British establishment were
facing at the time.
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By Socialist Appeal - www.socialist.net
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Tuesday, 31 July 2007 |
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On Thursday 18th July comrades of the British Socialist Appeal showed their
solidarity with the Peoples Youth Block (BJP) by protesting outside the
embassy of El Savador against the repressive measures employed by the
government. A letter of protest was received, signed by leading trade
unionists from the NUJ, PCS, CWU, ASLEF, UNISON and the TGWU.
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