Elections Follow

THE ELECTION for the new leader of Unison, Britain’s biggest public sector union, begins on Tuesday of next week. Jon Rogers is the United Left candidate for Unison general secretary. The debate in the elections will centre on the union’s relationship with New Labour.

GEORGE BUSH and Tony Blair say the elections scheduled for the end of this month will bring democracy to Iraq. But the democracy they are talking about is the rule of the occupiers under the cover of an elected Iraqi assembly.

A PACKED selection meeting last Sunday launched Respect’s election challenge across the four constituencies in east London where it got its best results in last June’s European and London elections.

‘How can they talk about elections?’Christmas eve, there is a cold wind, the temperatures in the desert dip below freezing. A group of us, all doctors, decide to try and reach Fallujah. There are stories of disease and hunger.

Speaking to a recent campaigners’ conference, the director of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals recalled how German chancellor Gerhard Schröder once dismissed a group of environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs) with the comment, "You are not exactly a mass movement." Why should small NGOs be of any concern to an elected chancellor in the comfort zone between elections?

IN 1953 Britain overthrew the democratically elected government in British Guiana (now Guyana), which was then a British colony with an element of self government. The April 1953 elections had resulted in victory for the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) under Cheddi Jagan, a popular nationalist government committed to a redistributive economic programme intended to reduce poverty.

RECENT elections reveal three main themes. Firstly, the bulk of the population, which has long been suffering from neo-liberal policies and increasing immiseration, is now open to real social and economic alternatives.

"I know it’s trendy, but I registered as an independent. I think I’m going for Ralph Nader." Colby Buzzell US soldier stationed in Iraq on his voting intentions in the US elections

THE VOTES received by Respect in the Leicester South and Birmingham Hodge Hill by-elections (Socialist Worker, 24 July) really put Respect on the map.

RESPECT’S RESULTS in the Leicester South and Birmingham Hodge Hill by-elections have rocked the political establishment.

THE MAINSTREAM parties were all desperately scrambling for every vote as campaigning drew to a close in the Leicester South and Birmingham Hodge Hill by-elections this week.

ON THURSDAY 15 July Tony Blair faces two key parliamentary by-elections—and the Respect coalition is coming to get him.