Class Follow

AUGUST IN Edinburgh. And as the global middle class descends on the Scottish capital for the International Festival and Fringe, it can seem that the entire city is nothing more than a bourgeois cultural playground.

TEACHERS AT the annual general meeting of the EIS, Scotland's biggest education union, voted for an industrial action ballot to reduce class sizes recently. If negotiations with the government are not successful by December 2004 action should follow in next spring.

Trade unionism is among the earliest and longest lasting forms of working class organisation. It arises from workers' need for mutual solidarity to deal with the twin pressures of a competitive "labour market" and employers' power in the workplace.

MY PARENTS worshipped the 1960s Labour leader Harold Wilson. He talked the language of the \"white-hot heat of the technological revolution\". He spoke of an end to deference and elitism. It was exciting to hear that as a youngster. Wilson unexpectedly lost in June 1970. I became a part of the great working class upsurge against Ted Heath's Tory government.

DES WARREN, who died last Saturday after suffering from pneumonia and complications, will always be remembered as a great fighter, a true hero of the working class movement. He and Ricky Tomlinson were the Shrewsbury Two, jailed for picketing in 1972. I was also a builder on strike at the time. I remember Des Warren as a giant of a man in every respect.

ROYAL MAIL plans to scrap a longstanding service, the Newspaper Registration Service. This allows registered newspapers to send papers on a first class service for second class rates.

"THIS IS not the time for politics. We must show our unity against the terrorists, regardless of class or party." So proclaimed all the mainstream politicians in Spain and Britain after last week's bombings. But the governments supporting last year's war did not lose one minute in trying to squeeze the political advantage for themselves.

At the heart of capitalism is an ongoing class struggle between capital and labour. That is the ABC of Marxism. But the alphabet has more than three letters. Class domination in capitalism is interwoven with many other sorts of human oppression. These provide a basis for divisions among the exploited. Disadvantaged groups have been held down on the grounds of being "different", and they in turn have fought back.

THE SOCIALIST Worker special issue produced to mark 20 years since the miners' strike is going down a storm. Ken Capstick, who was the NUM union branch delegate at Stillingfleet colliery during the strike and is a former Yorkshire NUM vice-chair, says, "I am pleased that Socialist Worker has produced this special edition to celebrate the struggle of the miners. We were right to fight the brutal Thatcher government. We have to learn the lessons from the strike-that the state will be used to crush workers' resistance and we need to stand together as a class."

I CAN'T get out of my mind the photo that appeared on the front page of the New York Times on 30 December. It showed a young man sitting facing a class of sixth graders in Blairsville, Pennsylvania.

NIGEL, WHO was known to many socialists in London, died after a long and dignified fight against cancer last Thursday. He will be remembered by all who knew him for his dedication to the struggles he was involved with. Nigel was an active trade unionist in Natfhe at Hammersmith College. He hated racism and all forms of class privilege.

THE RATS stayed aboard the sinking ship. Tuesday's vote on top-up fees left Tony Blair and the New Labour clique holed below the waterline. But he survived because 85 percent of Labour MPs bailed him out by disgracefully voting to price working class children out of university.