AN IMPORTANT conference held in Cairo, Egypt, last December attracted 400 delegates and launched the International Campaign Against US Aggression on Iraq. The conference issued a declaration against war and globalisation. The key points of the declaration include:
RENEWED determination swept through fire stations and control rooms as members of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) heard that their union has called a snap strike on Tuesday. Some 100 FBU brigade secretaries and other officials met at the TUC headquarters on Friday of last week.
HOME-OWNERS are all middle class. If you've bought your house or got a mortgage you're a property owner, got a stake in the system, been bought off. Any activist must have come across such comments. It was an argument popularised in Britain during the years of Margaret Thatcher's Tory governments in the 1980s. She pushed the notion of a "property-owning democracy".
IT IS no coincidence that at a time when British troops are getting ready to invade and occupy Iraq, Channel 4 should televise an expensive celebratory history of the British Empire. The series is presented by one of the country's leading Thatcherite historians, the appalling Oxford professor Niall Ferguson.
POLITICIANS AND pundits have marked the new year with panic over the state of the global economy. They fear that global capitalism could slide into even greater instability, and slump.
THE HORRIFIC killing of two young women in Birmingham on New Year's Eve has sparked a debate-and a moral panic-about gun crime. Newspapers are screaming about "warfare on our streets". They say our inner cities are awash with gun-toting crack cocaine dealers. Politicians and the police line up to point the finger of blame at hip-hop and rap bands.
CLAIM: Gun crime has almost trebled in most cities over the last year. FACT: The number of offences in which firearms were reportedly used rose from 16,000 in 1994 to 19,500 in 2001. The vast majority of these offences involve people mucking about with air rifles. They are offences of vandalism-annoying but not lethal. There is a huge difference in offences where firearms are said to be "used" and those in which firearms actually go off which are much lower.
DONALD RUMSFELD, the US defence secretary, is urging George Bush on to attack Iraq. He demands war because "Iraq has nuclear and chemical weapons capacity". But one of the US's top daily newspapers, the Washington Post, last week underlined Rumsfeld's gross hypocrisy.
FLEXIBILITY is trumpeted by the New Labour government. Flexible working practices, we are told, will benefit both workers, who will be able to spend more time with their families, and bosses, who will gain a happier and more productive workforce. A government study which made headline news last week suggests most workers also want more flexible work.
THE BRITISH government is playing a key role in devising a new world trade agreement that will clear the way for multinationals to grasp even more control. The General Agreement on Trade in Services (Gats) will act as a weapon in the privatisers' armoury.
Secret cabinet documents from 1972 have just been released to the public. They reveal how working class action terrified the highest levels of government. And they show how solidarity action between workers humbled a powerful right wing cabinet. The Tory government began 1972 full of confidence and determination to hold down workers' pay.
The events of Bloody Sunday influenced the growth and development of the IRA, which was committed to the armed struggle against the British and Protestant state. Hundreds of angry young men and women flocked to join the IRA. A number of the leaders of the IRA came to the conclusion, however, that while the British army could not militarily defeat them, they could not defeat it.
