MARXISM 2004 starts in two weeks time. It is the biggest festival of socialist ideas in Europe. Over 200 different meetings, forums and debates will take place on everything from \"Iraq: war and resistance\" to \"Life after capitalism\", from \"What sort of democracy do we want?\" to \"Islam, secularism and socialism\".
THIS WEEK'S Socialist Worker is a must for everyone who has been involved in the Respect campaign or who voted Respect. It gives the results, the analysis and the arguments about the future that you will not read anywhere else. You can't rely on the BBC-they switched from the elections to Top Gear just as the European results were coming out!
VETERANS OF the Second World War rightly remembered this month the suffering in the D-Day landings 60 years ago. But the official D-Day celebrations peddled a double myth. First, that the leaders of Britain and the US were driven by principled opposition to fascism. Second, that it was the intervention of the British and the US military that was decisive in beating Germany.
EVERY RESPECT activist and voter will want a copy of next week's Socialist Worker. It will have results and analysis telling the truth about what the votes show. The paper will be printed early, on Monday evening, and be with sellers on Tuesday. It will include:
Leading Respect candidates George Galloway and Lindsey German urge supporters to keep up the campaign until the ballot closes
Hardly a week passes without racist scare stories in the press directed against refugees and asylum seekers. The racism is not just directed against asylum seekers. Two new reports give damning evidence of the rise in racism against Muslims since 11 September 2001.
THE LIBERAL Democrats are trying to grab the anti-war vote. But they dropped opposition to the war once the bombs starting raining down on Baghdad. Mark Oaten, the Liberals' home affairs spokesperson, said on Radio 4 last Thursday, "We took the view that when the military action happened, when the vote was taken in the Commons, that the worst thing we could do would be to undermine our troops. When the troops went into action we took the moral judgement to support them as best we can. On the fundamental issue of troops it would have been wrong to call for the troops to withdraw. It is still wrong."
Millions will never forgive Blair for the war. But even before the war, his policies turned people against New Labour. Helen Shooter looks at seven years of betrayal
Hysteria gripped the press last week over rising oil prices and the prospect of new fuel protests. JOSEPH CHOONARA looks at the politics behind the panic
VIV FROM Manchester told me how Socialist Worker went down with the firefighters who took unofficial action against the government's "modernisation" plans last week. "We got a really good response from all the stations we visited. Over two days we went to some 20 stations and we sold copies of the paper at every one. We also sold 15 at the firefighters' mass meeting. They really liked the coverage of their dispute in the paper, but they weren't just interested in their own dispute. The troops out of Iraq petition went down well and the firefighters were really interested in Respect."
With one week to go to the Thursday 10 June elections Respect's campaign is winning an audience
ALFIO NICOTRA is heading the European Parliament list for Rifondazione Comunista in the central Italy constituency, which includes Rome.
