National News
Blair sneaks into Chilcot before dawn
FORMER Prime Minister Tony Blair arrived for his second session with the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq War at around 7.30am in the dark to avoid being confronted by demonstrators who want to see him tried as a war criminal for his role in launching the illegal invasion of Iraq.
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Target pressures leave rail accidents unreported
AN INDEPENDENT investigation carried out by the Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB) — published under embargo today (25 January) has concluded that up to 40 per cent of lost time injuries to workers within Network Rail and its contractor companies over the past five years have not been reported as required by law.
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A week of protests
PUBLIC sector workers and their supporters took part in a rallies in Carlisle,
Wigan, Kingston-upon-Thames, Manchester and Dover protesting against against budget cuts and job losses.
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BA cabin crews vote to fight on
BRITISH Airways cabin crew members of Unite have voted in support of industrial action by a huge margin.
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NHS trust faces 20 per cent cut
THE PUBLC sector union Unison reacted with dismay and anger to the announcement last week that the Heart of England NHS Trust is to cut 1,600 jobs — 20 per cent of the total.
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100 per cent cuts for domestic violence charities
CHARITIES providing support and assistance to the victims of domestic violence are facing funding cuts of up to 100 per cent as local authorities implement government spending cuts.
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International News
Night of terror at Moscow airport
by Dimitri Sudakov in Moscow
FOLLOWING the terrorist attack at Moscow’s busiest international airport, the general public is trying to understand how a suicide bomber was able to enter the international arrivals building with a bomb in his suitcase.
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Scandals weaken Berlusconi’s grip on power
by Eric J Lyman in Rome
GIANFRANCO Fini, the Italian politician who brought last year’s political crisis to a head when he urged Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to step down in November, said again on Sunday that it would “be a good idea” for Berlusconi to resign, and called for a new round of elections.
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Australian unions step up pressure
by Christian Edwards and Fu Yunwei in Sydney
AUSTRALIAN unions are beginning to follow the example of their American counterparts in campaigning against cheap imports and trade liberalisation, putting the Prime Minister Julia Gillard and her cabinet in a dilemma.
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Palestinian solidarity Second anniversary of Israel’s war on Gaza
by Karen Dabrowska
TWO YEARS after the war on Gaza, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) is trying to build the biggest, broadest coalition of support for the Palestinians.
A major rally in central London last week began with a minute’s silence for the 1,400 Palestinians who were killed between 27th December 2008 and 18th January 2009 when Israel attacked the Gaza strip and destroyed the infrastructure, which cannot be repaired due to the blockade.
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Features
Along the British Road
by Eric Trevett
JOHN ANTHILL’S letter in the 1612 issue of the New Worker (7th January 2011) made the case for opposing the Labour Party in great detail. He argued that the Labour Party is not a party of the working class and that revolutionaries should oppose it in elections. And he argues that the New Communist Party strategy for working class unity is mistaken and flawed.
Dermot Hudson’s contribution in the 1614 issue of the New Worker (21st January 2011) goes much further and he says that the Labour Party is not working class but a bourgeois party. He goes on to say that the Labour Party is part of the capitalist state machine.
We in the New Communist Party believe that these arguments are wrong and an example of good people getting frustrated at the right-wing policies of the Labour Government and anti-working class policies that pave the way for the return of a much more anti-working class government.
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BP and Rosneft - an alliance to spite the US
by Vitaly Salnik
ROSNEFT and BP will establish a global strategic alliance as the two oil giants decided to exchange their shares last week. Russia’s Rosneft will receive five per cent of BP’s shares and will thus become the largest minority shareholder of the global oil giant. BP plc will receive 9.53 per cent of Rosneft’s shares to become the second shareholder of the company (after the Russian Federation government, which holds 10.8 per cent). The deal is evaluated at approximately $7.8 billion.
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A very short history of ‘the Communist Party’
by Robert Laurie
Robert Griffiths and Ben Stevenson The Communist Party 1920-2010: 90 Years of struggle for the working class & humanity London: Communist Party of Britain History Group, 2010 pp. 44. £3.00 from left bookshops or £4.00 including postage and packing from the CPB, Ruskin House, 23 Coombe Road, Croydon, London CR0 1BD.
ROBERT GRIFFITHS and Ben Stevenson, general secretaries of the Communist Party of Britain and its associated Young Communist League, have produced this pamphlet to provide an outline history of the Communist Party in Britain.
Given the constraints of space the pamphlet gives a useful outline account of the general history of the Communist Party of Great Britain but the account of the demise of the party leaves something to be desired. To this reviewer it is impossible to see how an organisation founded in 1988, as was the Communist Party of Britain, can claim to be “re-established” when the Communist Party of Great Britain continued to exist, transforming itself into the “Democratic Left” at its final congress in 1991.
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