IF YOU believed the lifestyle supplements, TV ads and government talk of an "aspirational society" you would think most people in Britain had never had it so good.
The Northern Star was the paper of the first ever mass working class movement-Chartism. Chartism got its name from the fight for a Charter that would expand the right to vote. But it also focused wider social issues into a movement that struck fear into the ruling class. The Northern Star was the lifeblood of the movement-as educator, organiser and agitator.
IN 1998 a relatively unknown train driver from Leeds, Mick Rix, won the general secretary election in Aslef. He was the first in a series of new left wing trade union leaders now known as the "awkward squad". Their election signalled a wider radicalisation taking place inside Britain's trade union movement.
"As we move into a new political order, where all mainstream parties have become the same, it is important for all working class people to have a choice that has a clear agenda for socialist politics." Bill O'Dowd, chair of Stratford 1 RMT union branch
WE WANT Socialist Worker to be part of every strike and every campaign. Socialist Worker sellers in Leeds told me about meeting a worker from the Hydro Aluminium Motorcast factory:
DELEGATES COULD potentially humiliate Tony Blair at Labour's conference. It will be a test for the union leaders-if they really used their power they could wound Blair fatally and force his resignation. Party managers will find it very hard to keep Iraq off the agenda and, if there is a proper debate, then there will be motions directly rejecting what the government has done.
POSTAL WORKERS are facing a crucial few weeks which could determine what happens in the industry for years to come. Trade unionists in other industries will also be watching developments intently. Royal Mail managers have gone on the offensive after the shock announcement last week that postal workers had voted by 48,038 to 46,391 against strikes over pay. The outrageous assault from management provoked unofficial strikes in Oxford, and also forms the backdrop to the strikes over London weighting planned in the capital.
What's the reaction in the US establishment to what's happening in Iraq?
I COME from Derry in Northern Ireland. I'm in London as a journalist covering the Saville tribunal into the Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry in 1972. Men of the First Battalion of the Parachute Regiment came into our area and shot dead 14 of my neighbours, and wounded 13 others, as thousands of us watched. It took a campaign of 26 years of the relatives of the dead and the surviving wounded before we forced Mr Blair and the Labour government to set up a new inquiry.
TONY BLAIR likes to give the impression that widespread anti-war opposition across Britain has not swayed his government's actions. The facts show this is a lie. The Hutton inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly has exposed how Blair's obsession with undermining anti-war resistance has driven every twist and turn in recent British politics.
WHAT WAS staggering before the war was how the media failed to ask even obvious questions about US and UK government claims about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. Scott Ritter, the chief weapons inspector, claimed that by December 1998 Iraq had been "90-95 percent", that is "fundamentally", disarmed. That was one thing almost never discussed. Another was that when the inspectors left Iraq in December 1998 they were pulled out by the UN. Yet Tony Blair, Jack Straw and the rest of them said the inspectors were kicked out. And they were almost never challenged by the media, who parroted that same line.
