Lead story

Ukraine: crack down on the left

by our European Affairs correspondent

The shaky truce in Ukraine is holding despite sporadic skirmishes along the ceasefire lines and around Donetsk airport while prisoner-of-war exchanges continue and more humanitarian aid from Russia pours into the liberated areas of the self-proclaimed people’s republics in the east.

But while the Kiev regime has accepted limited autonomy for the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, many believe that this is just a ruse to provide a breathing space for the Ukrainian army and the fascist militias to re-arm for another offensive with the support of imperialism. Nato is beefing up its forces along the Russian border and the Kremlin says that “the deployment of complete and self-sufficient group of forces in the Crimean direction” has become one of Russia’s priorities.

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Cornish firefighters oppose cuts

FIREFIGHTERS in Cornwall have slammed proposed cuts in the frontline Fire and Rescue Service which they say will compromise cover and put public safety at risk.

The cuts have been put forward by Cornwall County Council as part of plans to slash £196 million from the budget over the next four years.

The cuts include proposals to drive down firefighter numbers through “vacancy management”, introduce detrimental crewing systems, cut community safety work and make direct cuts to frontline cover by cutting fire officers, frontline firefighters and frontline fire engines in the county.

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Editorial

Wages still falling

MEDIA economists greeted Monday’s inflation figures from the Office for National Statistics as good news for low-paid workers — the rate of inflation has fallen to 1.5 per cent from 1.6 per cent in August. After a lot of chit-chat they admitted this was the Consumer Price Index — the Retail Price Index inflation rate, which includes housing costs, is 2.4 per cent. But, “good news”, that has also fallen from 2.5 per cent a month ago.

Wage inflation is still stuck at 0.6 per cent — well behind either of the figures given above, so the value of wages is continuing to fall and those on modest and low incomes face even more hardship — but, according to the media, they should be rejoicing that it is not even worse.

Food prices have actually been coming down because of rivalry between giant supermarket chains. But housing costs are still rocketing — as are travel costs, domestic fuel costs and childcare costs..

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In Memoriam Eric Trevett 1931-2014

In Memoriam Eric Trevett 1931-2014

ERIC TREVETT, the President of the New Communist Party of Britain, passed away on Saturday 6th September. A life-long communist, internationalist and peace campaigner, Eric worked with Sid French on the Surrey District of the Communist Party of Great Britain for many years fighting for peace and struggling against revisionism within the old communist party.

They opposed the revisionist line of the CPGB as expressed in its programme, The British Road to Socialism. They had fought within the party for many years against this departure from Marxist-Leninist ideology through the CPGB’s internal democratic centralist structure. But in 1977, when the revisionist leaders moved to violate their own rules and basic communist norms and expel Sid and Eric to push through a more blatantly revisionist programme, the formation of a new party became inevitable.

[ In Memoriam Eric Trevett 1931-2014 ]