PRESSURE from trade unionists, Labour Party activists and Londoners has forced Blair to put Ken Livingstone's name onto the ballot paper for Labour's candidate for mayor of London. Blair knew that the London party would have split in two if he blocked Livingstone.
Used to replace others RAY IS 19 years old. He was homeless for a year but now has his own flat in Sheffield. He was offered a placement on the New Deal. Ray signed onto a computing skills course. He hoped that would enable him to get a job. But the reality did not match the hype:
"YOU Marxists believe in violent revolution," is a charge put by establishment politicians and mainstream newspapers. These people claim that, unlike Marxists, they stand for peace and non-violence. This is the utmost hypocrisy. Such people organise and cheer on the most barbaric violence when it is in their interests.
GEORGE MONBIOT is one of Britain's best known environmental campaigners. He writes a regular column in the Guardian and is writing a book due out next year on "the corporate takeover of Britain". Socialist Worker spoke to him in the run up to next week's protests against the World Trade Organisation.
"IF YOU defend yourself against a racist attacker, you get a life sentence like Satpal Ram. If you don't defend yourself, you end up six feet under like Stephen Lawrence." So said Lawrence family solicitor Imran Khan to a packed public meeting last week at the House of Commons called by the Free Satpal Ram Campaign.
THE MONEY collected for the Socialist Worker appeal has now reached £136,380.62. In the last week we received donations from many workplace collections, including: £4 from Jaguar in Solihull, £10 from Blackburn College, £14.98 from De la Rue Printers in High Wycombe, £17 from UCLH hospitals, £18 from Frenchay Hospital in Bristol, £23.50 from Oxford City Council workers, £25 from Kirklees housing workers, £27 from Newcastle General Hospital, £40 amongst Huddersfield postal workers, £80 from BT workers in Bristol St Pauls, £5 from Rolls Royce workers in Bristol, £6 from Sheffield Southey Green housing association, £10 outside Manchester Royal Infirmary and £16 at a Sheffield Trades Council
THOUSANDS OF people are set to demonstrate over the next two weeks against student poverty and the World Trade Organisation's plans to squeeze the world's poorest people. Socialist Worker reports on a demonstration against Third World Debt and looks forward to the other protests.
PROTESTS ARE to take place across Britain on Tuesday 30 November as part of a show of worldwide opposition to the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The WTO is made up of trade ministers from 134 countries who are due to meet in Seattle in the US.
THERE IS only a week to go to the national demonstration against student hardship, on Thursday 25 November. It is set to be a brilliant show of opposition to New Labour's tuition fees and for the return of student grants. There is stacks of enthusiasm for the demonstration, but not much time left to ensure there is the biggest turnout possible.
"WE HAD no other option but to strike. We just couldn't go on being ground into the dirt." That was how Essex bus driver Roger Martin explained why workers at Eastern National went on strike over pay. The company is owned by FirstGroup, Britain's biggest bus operator.
DOES FREE trade benefit rich and poor alike? A few thousand rich and powerful individuals will be pumping out the message that it does as they meet in Seattle for the World Trade Organisation talks this month.
SOCIALIST Worker editor Chris Harman opened the conference with a session on the "New World Disorder". He argued that the starting point for socialists is the huge political and economic instability across the globe. "People should cast their minds back ten years to the euphoria of the ruling class at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall," Chris said.
