Monthly Archives: April 2008
A BATTALION of 600 British troops will be sent to Kosovo, Defence Secretary Des Browne announced yesterday, after NATO requested extra soldiers to ‘maintain public order’ in the Serbian province, which under orders from Britain, the US and Germany has declared independence. Theoretically the troops are...
We are gathering to ‘remember the dead and fight for the living’, RMT leader Pat Sikorski said at the rally at City Hall on International Workers Memorial Day, an event marked all over the world. The 100 strong, rally of trade unionists and bereaved families campaign groups rallied first outside...
‘I think, good on the striking workers at Grangemouth,’ said Simon Gough, from A E Gough and Sons in mid-Wales, as more than 100 cash-strapped road hauliers drove into Westminster for a demonstration over fuel prices yesterday. He summed up the mood of the majority of the lorry drivers at...
Workers on the second day of their two-day strike over pensions at the giant Grangemouth oil refinery in Scotland yesterday remained defiant and determined to win. Pickets, angry at plans of the refinery’s private equity owners Ineos to end final salary pensions for new entrants, shouted ‘shame on you Jim...
THE just concluded 48-hour strike by the Grangemouth oil refinery workers was a magnificent success and showed to the entire world the power that this section of workers has to successfully defend their pensions and their basic rights, especially after the immediate shut down of the Forties oil pipelines. This...
Striking Grangemouth workers have issued a direct appeal to the people of Scotland. They took out a series of adverts in the Scottish media yesterday (Monday 28th April), to explain to the people of Scotland the reasons for their strike and to ask for their understanding and support. Seven adverts were...
DAVID Miliband yesterday urged the Labour Party to rally behind Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who is facing mounting opposition in the working class because of his openly Tory, pro-banker policies. Miliband, the foreign secretary, posing as a wise man told Andrew Marr that it would be ‘fatal’ if the party...
Angry delegates at the British Medical Association (BMA) Junior Doctors Conference in central London on Saturday voted for action to restore free accommodation for junior doctors in their first year after graduation, or get them adequate compensation. Emergency motions taken in the afternoon condemned the government-backed move as a 20...
The 1,200 striking workers at the Grangemouth oil refinery yesterday made it clear they are determined to defend their pensions. Unite members walked out of the plant carrying their branch banner and waving trade union flags at 6am for a two-day strike. As a result of the strike, BP has shut...
Over 400,000 teachers, college lecturers and public and civil servants held a magnificent one-day national strike on Thursday, with a militant turnout on marches and rallies across the country. Hundreds of very angry public sector workers rallied at the Forum in Norwich on Thursday morning. Members of NUT, PCS, and UCU...
THE depth of the capitalist world crisis has set the US juggernaut lurching forward once again. This time it is threatening Syria, and by implication North Korea with the same treatment that Iraq received from 1990 onwards, that is sanctions, starvation and invasion. There is nothing novel in the...
Sunday’s two-day strike by 1,200 workers at Grangemouth oil refinery will go ahead, said Unite joint general secretary Tony Woodley yesterday. Speaking before addressing a mass meeting at the plant, Woodley said: ‘There’s no possibility of withdrawing the strike action. We need to understand what we’re dealing with here. ‘We’ve got...
OVER 20,000 striking teachers, college lecturers and civil servants from every London borough marched through the centre of the capital yesterday, with marches and rallies being staged in towns and cities all over Britain at the same time. The members of the National Union of Teachers, University and College Union...
THE leaders of the National Union of Teachers (NUT), the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), the University and College Union (UCU) and the TUC joined forces yesterday in a 20,000 strong march in London to urge the government to act over public sector pay. They made their call...
United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) on Thursday announced it is unable to continue its operations in the Occupied Palestinian Territories due to the Israeli cut-off that has seen the agency run out of fuel. This followed Wednesday’s UN briefing meeting on...
TENS of thousands of teachers, college lecturers and civil servants are striking today against government-imposed pay cuts. As a result of the action by the 270,000-strong National Union of Teachers (NUT) about 7,500 schools will be closed, colleges will shut their doors as a result of the walk-out by 27,000...
Leon Trotsky OUR REVOLUTION Essays on Working Class and International Revolution 1904-1917 Collected and Translated by MOISSAYE J OLGIN Introduction 9. War or peace? This essay was published in the New York daily newspaper Novy Mir on March 7 1917. Trotsky left the US to return to Russia at the end of March 1917, and arrived at the Finland station...
Hayes and Harlington Labour MP John McDonnell yesterday called for the 10p tax rate to be restored in full. He was speaking after Prime Minister Brown was forced to make a retreat and announce that Chancellor Darling was preparing a package of measures to compensate the 5.3 million low-paid workers...
Leon Trotsky OUR REVOLUTION Essays on Working Class and International Revolution 1904-1917 Collected and Translated by MOISSAYE J OLGIN Introduction 8. The growing conflict This essay was published In the Novy Mir daily paper in New York, where Trotsky was in exile, on March 6th 1917. AN open conflict between the forces of the Revolution headed by the city proletariat and...
WITH another 100 million people no longer able to afford the food they need to live, two international meetings were underway in London and New York yesterday. In London, Prime Minister Gordon Brown hosted a international meeting for the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) to address what it described...
‘The abolition of the 10p tax rate has dealt a body blow to millions of low paid workers,’ UNISON General Secretary, Dave Prentis said yesterday. The leader of the 1,350,000-strong public sector workers’ union was speaking as it emerged that the Brown government could face defeat on the issue in...
Essays on Working-Class and International Revolution 1904-1917 Collected and Translated by MOISSAYE J OLGIN 7. Internal Forces of the Russian Revolution (Appeared in the New York daily paper Novy Mir on March 4 1917.. Trotsky was in exile in the US at the time) LET us examine more closely what is going on. Nicholas has...
The Bank of England yesterday launched a scheme to allow banks to ‘swap temporarily their high quality mortgage-backed and other securities for UK Treasury Bills’. It noted: ‘The main category of assets will be securities backed by residential mortgages. Securities backed by credit card debt will also be eligible.’ Explaining the...
THE Bank of England yesterday launched its government-backed scheme to allow the major banks to swap their dodgy mortgages for UK Treasury Bonds, in a desperate bid to build up the cash in their vaults so that they can carry on doing business. The scheme is indemnified by the Treasury,...
Leon Trotsky OUR REVOLUTION Essays on Working Class and International Revolution 1904-1917 Collected and Translated by MOISSAYE J OLGIN Introduction 6. On the eve of Revolution This essay appeared in the New York Daily paper Novy Mir on February 27 1917. Trotsky was in exile in the US at the time THE streets of Petrograd again speak the language of 1905....
CHANCELLOR Darling yesterday admitted that the Labour government, cold-bloodedly, in the last budget, abolished the 10p tax rate for the lower paid, knowing that it would affect over five million low paid workers – at the same time as it was once again lessening the tax burden on the...
Chancellor Darling admitted yesterday that ‘of course’ he knew that abolishing the 10p tax rate would affect five million low-paid workers. However, in an interview with BBC’s Andrew Marr he refused to pledge that he would reinstate the 10p tax for the lower paid. Darling’s remarks stiffened mounting opposition from Labour...
Leon Trotsky OUR REVOLUTION Essays on Working Class and International Revolution 1904-1917 Collected and Translated by MOISSAYE J OLGIN Introduction 5. Revolutionary anniversaries REVOLUTIONARY anniversaries are not only days for reminiscence, they are days for summing up revolutionary experiences, especially for us Russians. Our history has not been rich. Our so-called ‘national originality’ consisted in being poor, ignorant, uncouth. It...
EX-US president Jimmy Carter, who negotiated the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, yesterday called the Israeli blockade of Gaza ‘a crime’ and said that all of the attempts to undermine Hamas have proved to be counter-productive. Carter was speaking in Cairo. When he arrived in Israel, the...
The Jean Charles de Menezes Family Campaign has responded with anger at claims that the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) report into the Jean Charles’ shooting was being delayed for ‘political reasons’. The family demanded an immediate explanation from the MPA. It was alleged that the MPA report is critical of Metropolitan...
For the second time in a week 50,000 school youth demonstrated in Paris on Thursday against the cutting of teaching posts in colleges and lycées due in September; many teachers and parents joined in and police reported 37 arrests. During the past three weeks school youth have been on the...
Seven mothers on hunger strike in the family unit in Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre (IRC), near Bedford, yesterday managed to get a message out to the world. The mothers have been on hunger strike since Thursday the 10th of April. The group includes two breastfeeding mothers. The protest involving up...
PRIME Minister Brown has made an appeal to the Wall Street bankers to be honest, surely a contradiction in terms. He wants them to publicly disclose that they are really bankrupt, as the sub-prime mortgage crisis suggests. Of course, they are never going to make such a declaration, since the response...
By Irish political journalist John Coulter THE racist British National Party has confirmed it will contest the next Northern Irish council elections. Mid Ulster, Upper Bann, Craigavon, Portadown and Dungannon – all with substantial ethnic minority communities – are the BNP’s key target areas. Tensions between the BNP and anti-racist organisers in...
Leon Trotsky OUR REVOLUTION Essays on Working Class and International Revolution 1904-1917 Collected and Translated by MOISSAYE J OLGIN Introduction 4. Preface to our round trip AT the Stockholm Convention of the Social-Democratic Party, some curious statistical data was circulated, showing the conditions under which the party of the proletariat was working. The Convention as a whole, in the person of...
Leon Trotsky OUR REVOLUTION Essays on Working Class and International Revolution 1904-1917 Collected and Translated by MOISSAYE J OLGIN Introduction by MOISSAYE J OLGIN THIS is an essay of triumph. Written on January 20, 1905, eleven days after the ‘Bloody Sunday,’ it gave vent to the enthusiastic feelings of every true revolutionist aroused by unmistakable signs of an approaching storm....
The British Medical Association (BMA) yesterday slammed pressures being put on GPs by private companies running out of hours services to cut down on hospital referrals and visits to patients to maximise profits. Dr Laurence Buckman, chairman of the BMA’s GPs Committee told News Line: ‘We deprecate any attempt to...
THE Zionist leadership has begun to beat the war drums against Iran, louder than ever, in reaction to the continuing crisis that the US faces in Iraq, and that it faces in Gaza and in the Lebanon, a crisis which is becoming ever more intractable. In Gaza it is now...
THE Reading Employment Tribunal has dealt with the last 23 claims for unfair dismissal against Gate Gourmet London arising out of the mass sackings that took place at the Heathrow factory on August 10-11 2005. It found that six of the 23 claimants were unfairly dismissed, among them S Dhillon...
DELEGATES at the UNISON Health Conference in Manchester yesterday voted to ballot over the government’s staged three-year pay deal. The UNISON leaders had previously accepted the deal but the Health conference rejected this and delivered a blow to the Brown government. A UNISON spokeswoman told News Line: ‘An emergency motion was...
PRIME MINISTER Brown said yesterday that he will not be diverted from taking ‘unpopular’ decisions to ensure Britain gets through the global credit crunch. Afterwards the Bank of England confirmed that a further £15 billion had been put into the banking system to try to ease its no-cash crisis,...
Leon Trotsky OUR REVOLUTION Essays on Working Class and International Revolution 1904-1917 Collected and Translated by MOISSAYE J OLGIN Introduction by MOISSAYE J OLGIN THIS is an essay of triumph. Written on January 20, 1905, eleven days after the ‘Bloody Sunday,’ it gave vent to the enthusiastic feelings of every true revolutionist aroused by unmistakable signs of an approaching storm....
Soaring factory prices have seen UK producer inflation reach its highest rate, 6.2%, in nearly 17 years in March. Annual ‘output price inflation’ at 6.2%, the highest annual rate since May 1991, is up from 5.9% in February, said the Office for National Statistics (ONS). ‘Input prices’, paid by firms for...
Essays on Working Class and International Revolution 1904-1917 Collected and Translated by MOISSAYE J OLGIN Introduction by MOISSAYE J OLGIN THE essay, ‘The Proletariat and the Revolution’, was published at the close of 1904, nearly one year after the beginning of the war with Japan. . . It was a thrilling time, full of political hopes and expectation. Yet,...
DOCKWORKERS of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union have decided to stop work for eight hours in all US West Coast ports on May 1, International Workers’ Day, to call for an end to the war with Iraq. The motion carried by the dockworkers calls the war an imperialist...