Socialist Fight No.11
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Socialist Fight Issue No. 11 Winter 2012 Price: Concessions: 50p, Waged: £2.00 €3 Editorial: TU leaders must fight for needs budgets! No Cuts; Build the Rank and File fightback! The Counihan Homelessness Campaign In Kilburn Square fighting Brent Council’s attempt to drive the family out of Brent Contents Page 14: Plebgate, experts and the prosecution Page 25: ‘Liberation’ in Libya today, By the service, By Michael Holden. Liaison Committee of the Fourth International. Page 2: Editorial: TU leaders must fight for Page 15: Statement by the Irish Republican Page 29: Refutation of Prof. Grover Furr needs budgets! Prisoners Support Group, Letter to the Irish By Mike Ely and Socialist Fight. Page 4: 200,000 March against Austerity in Post, From Charlie Walsh. Page 32: The True Levellers or Diggers By Laur- London, By Graham Durham. Page 16: Lights and Shadows from Fifty Shades ence Humphries Page 5: The Third Grand Old Duke of York of Grey, By Aggie McCallum. Page 33: Defend the DSM of South Africa. Demo: TU leaders must fight for needs budg- Page 17: Jim Fixed it for the Ruling Class Child Page 34: Socialist Fight: For an International ets!, GRL flyer for TUC demo. Abusers, By Antonio Las Sogas & Brighid O'Duinn. Solidarity Campaign with the striking minework- Page 6: The Counihan Campaign and the Hous- Page 18: Tree planting ceremony for Terence ers of South Africa. ing Crisis By Gerry Downing. MacSwiney (1879-1920), Lord Major of Cork, By Page 35: Solidarity with Marikana Miners, By Page 7: The true role of the National Shop Stew- Austin Harney. Ailish Dease. ards Network, By Laurence Humphries. Page 19: The Basque Country – fracture point?, Page 36: Facebook debate on the class nature of Page 8: 28 EIS workers sacked on Crossrail pro- By Cormac Mac Gall. Stalin’s "counterrevolutionary workers' state". ject….. .So we fight back! By CR+F. Page 21: US election, By John Leslie and Wayne Page 39: COMMUNIST UNIVERSITY 2012. Page 9: The Truth about Hillsborough, By Roy DeLuca. By Laurence Humphries and Gerry Downing Bentham. Page 22: Police brutality incident exposes the Page: 40: International day of action, Letter to Page 12: :The Anti-Fascist Network ,By John role of cops under capitalism, by John Leslie. the Irish Post, IRPSG to visit Derry for Bloody Beirne. Page 23: Letters pages. Sunday 2013. Page 13: List Of Irish Republican POWs, IRPSG. Socialist Fight is produced by the SF Editorial Online: www.scribd.com/Gerry%20Downing Caixa Postal 09 - cep 01031-970 São Paulo - Board, The Liga Comunista are at: http:// SP - Brasil Contact: PO Box 59188, London, NW2 9LJ, lcligacomunista.blogspot.com Signed articles do not necessarily represent Email: [email protected], [email protected] the views of the SF EB. ,đoàn kết là sức mạnh, Jedność jest siła, ykseys on kesto اتحاد قدرت است ., ,Unity is strength, L'union fait la force, Es la unidad fuerza, Η ενότητα είναι δύναμη אחדות ,યુનિટિ થ્રૂ .િા , Midnimo iyo waa awood, hundeb ydy chryfder, Einheit ist Stärke, एकता शक्ति, है единстве наша сила, vienybės jėga, bashkimi ben fuqine Ní neart go chur le céile, pagkakaisa ,الوحدة هو القوة ,unità è la resistenza, 団結は力だ“ , A unidade é a força, eining er styrkur, De eenheid is de sterkte ,היא כוח ay kalakasan, jednota is síla, 일성은 이다 힘 힘, Workers of the World Unite! Socialist Fight Page 2 TU leaders must fight for needs budgets! No Cuts; Build the Rank and File fightback! fights for the class independence of the work- ing class not only in Britain but internation- Editorial ally. Central to this task is the fight to abolish the anti-union laws, the cover behind which he Greek and European sovereign TU bureaucrats hide their class-collaboration Duncan Aldred, chairman, Vauxhall Motors wel- debt crisis continues to worsen, sev- with the employers. comes the deal that instituted a two-tier work- eral countries in the Euro area cannot It is obvious a severe housing crisis is devel- force at Ellesmere Port. He hailed the repay or re-finance their government oping in Britain, the NHS is being totally pri- “groundbreaking” levels of flexibility and could Tdebt without the assistance of the dreaded vatised and local councils are about to be require workers to work round the clock to meet troika, the IMF, EU and ECB. This sovereign reduced to being the paymasters of priva- production targets if necessary. Wages have been debt crisis is threatening the solvency of whole tised and decimated local services. Tory Bar- nations and the survival of the Euro and the cut by almost half for new starters. Pension and net council is pioneering for the rest a US- European Union itself. health plans have been abolished. Unite’s Len style total privatisation of all services. McCluskey was unrepentant: “From a position of This has had dire consequences for the Greek To defend the working class locally we need uncertainty earlier this year, there is now a poten- working class and poor, the fascist Golden to develop local campaigns like the Counihan Dawn is advancing, food kitchens have sprung tial for a future at the plant until 2020 and be- Homelessness Campaign in Brent to become up and real poverty and hunger has begun to yond. Importantly this move will also bring com- national campaigns demanding needs budg- reappear in Europe for the first time since the ponent supplier plants back into the UK, a devel- ets and decent social housing for all. end of WWII. Greece shows us all our futures opment that strengthens our manufacturing base under this rotten and crisis-ridden global capi- The privatisation of the NHS is proceeding generally.” However, he said he recognised that talist system. apace and local campaigns are tending to Ellesmere Port's good news could spell bad news degenerate into ‘Keep our A&E, cut theirs’. Labour’s “cuts too far too fast” for other GM operations in Europe. So British jobs Hypocritical Tory and Lib-Dem councillors for British workers at any cost is his chauvinist anti Chancellor Ed Balls told the Guardian, “The were allowed on the platform at a recent public want to know that we are going to be Hammersmith demo without challenge from -internationalist class-collaborationist outlook! ruthless and disciplined in how we go about ‘revolutionaries’. Rival local campaigners labour movements in South Africa or interna- public spending”. And at the Labour Confer- ripped down posters for neighbouring cam- tionally or by former national liberation move- ence, “we cannot make any commitments now paigns in Charing Cross hospital, a patient re- ments leaders like Ireland’s Gerry Adams. that the next Labour government will be able ported. NHS TU militants must fight for needs These latter have become defenders of Imperi- to reverse particular tax rises or spending budgets under workers’ and users’ control alist privilege while former comrades like hold- cuts.” here too. out Republicans Marian Price, Martin Corey The official leadership of the working class Internationalism and Gerry McGeough are effectively interned internationally are bureaucratised functionar- and Republicans in Maghaberry are denied The striking miners of South Africa are the ies and career politicians who are dependent vanguard of the international proletariat. The basic democratic rights and are strip searched on the capitalist system itself for their privi- brutal and pre-planned massacre of the 34 and tortured because the state refuses to ad- leged lifestyles. So their greatest fear is the miners on 16th August is a sharp manifestation here to the Agreement of August 2010. Every mass movement of the working class which will of the International crisis of capitalism. Every former national liberation leader and corrupt threaten that lifestyle. We need a new revolu- trade union bureaucrat envies the ‘good for- class conscious worker on the planet has a tionary leadership. duty to support and work for the victory of tune’ of the ANC and former NUM leaders and Their strangle-hold on the Rank and File of the these strikes because they are fighting not just wants the same for themselves. movement is stronger now than ever. They for the future of the South African working As the crisis deepens Imperialism goes to war actively foster the two tier workforce to split class but for us all. against the semi-colonial nations like Iraq, and divide us. We saw this in Ellesmere Port, in Afghanistan, Libya, Syria with Iran next in line. A great many of the ANC and NUM leaders the London buses and in countless other work- have become multi-millionaires by serving the This is revealing inter-Imperialist rivalries the places; new starters are second class TU mem- like of which we saw before WWI and WWII. A interests of Imperialist finance capital. Former bers, with lower pay rates and far worse condi- NUM leaders like Cyril Ramaphosa, Kgalema whole swath of former leftist have supported tions. these predatory wars and proxy wars. We fight Motlanthe, Gwede Mantashe and James Mot- Almost all left groups do not fight these sell- latsi have used their union positions to become for the Anti-Imperialist United Front to defeat outs or prepare for the coming class war in any exploiting capitalists themselves. The gap be- all these attacks. serious way. The National Shop Stewards Net- tween rich and poor in South Africa is now A Real Crisis work, Unite the Resistance and the Coalition of even wider than in the days of apartheid and This is a real crisis of capitalism, it cannot be Resistance cosy up to the left bureaucrats, among the world’s worst. The Marikana miners resolved by expanding debt and pushing for from Crow to Serwotka, with Len McCluskey’s were massacred by Zuma’s police to protect growth as the Keynesian reformist falsely treachery alibied and excused by all as the next this path to obscene privilege for today's ANC promise.