Class Follow

Allan Leighton, the chairman of Royal Mail, combines a readiness to spout management theory bollocks with a steely readiness to wage class war. One minute he is like David Brent, the boss played by Ricky Gervais in the TV series The Office. The next minute he is a hard-faced axeman.

GLASGOW IS a city with a rich socialist tradition. The roots of its reputation go back to the First World War when the Red Clyde was part of a great wave of working class revolt that swept Europe. The impact of the war made munitions centres like Glasgow fertile territory for labour unrest and socialist agitation. It produced many fine working class fighters, including Britain's greatest anti-war socialist, John Maclean.

THE ANTI-WAR movement has a huge impact on trade unionists in Britain. The two million strong Stop the War Coalition demo on 15 February transformed the working class movement in this country. It deepened the swing to the left inside the unions, which has been reflected in almost all union elections.

THERE'S AN old song, to the tune of the Red Flag: "The working class can kiss my ass/I've got the foreman's job at last..." Cynical it may be, but it expresses a truth. Time and again, workers' representatives get sucked into the bosses' system.

SOCIALIST WORKER is different from all other newspapers. It does not just report events that happen - it aims to help people fight back. The paper creates a space for activists from the movement and working class people to tell their side of the story. And it lets people know that others are fighting the same battles as they are.

AROUND 120 people recently packed into a local meeting called by the Residents Against Port Expansion group in Harwich. The group has taken on the giant multinational Hutchisin Whampoa, which is planning to build a massive automated container dock. This will be just a few hundred yards from a working class residential area. The meeting had trade unionists, environmentalists and Socialist Alliance members.

"THE TEXTILE workers are like the coal miners in Britain, to make a comparison. They are a very old section of the working class and have a long history going back to the mid-19th century. They have been involved in many struggles and formed the backbone of the city for many years.

CHARLIE MOORE, a lifelong socialist, trade unionist and working class fighter, died last week aged 89.

"IT'S ABOUT time the low paid stood up and gave the politicians and the fat cats a good shaking," says Annie, a striking nursery nurse from Edinburgh. She is one of thousands of workers across Britain who are fighting to end poverty pay and stop bosses treating them like second class citizens.

THIS YEAR is the hundredth anniversary of the birth of the writer and socialist George Orwell. BBC2 is showing documentary - drama George Orwell: A Life in Pictures this Saturday, which charts both his artistic and political development. The most intriguing question about Orwell is how an Eton schoolboy went on to become perhaps the greatest critic of class privilege and tyranny writing in the English language.

THE SENSE that New Labour has betrayed its working class supporters ran throughout the GMB union's congress in Blackpool this week. Delegates voted unanimously to review the donations to MPs who do not share the "aims, values and priorities of the union".

OVER 70 protesters staged sit-downs outside the gates of the nuclear dockyard in Plymouth last Saturday. The demonstrations followed news reports that HMS Tireless, a nuclear submarine based at Plymouth, was damaged after colliding with an iceberg. More than ten "T" class submarines are based in Plymouth, all having the same design fault.