Lead story

Tories’ criminal housing policy

by Daphne Liddle

A GIANT 50-storey circular block of flats, known as the Tower and looking like a huge AA battery, sits on the Thames South Bank at Vauxhall. It has become a symbol of the madness of capitalism in advanced decay after the Guardian newspaper last week revealed that more than 60 per cent of the 214 luxury apartments in it are owned by foreigners, bought as investments and not to live in. Around a quarter of the flats in it are owned by offshore tax-haven companies.

Meanwhile Londoners are increasingly being evicted from their more humble homes for being unable the pay the soaring rents that rise from day-to-day as house prices increase. The flats in the Tower sell for up to £51 million but average at £2.2 million.

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Tories’ criminal housing policy

Lexit rally declares ‘Pull away from the EU!’

by Theo Russell

HE EUROPEAN Union (EU) received a relentless battering last week at a packed meeting at Friends House, central London organised by Leave.eu, also known as “Lexit”. Speakers from Britain, Ireland, Greece and Catalonia condemned the EU as a project promoting exploitation, war and racism.

Brid Smith, one of two TDs for the People Before Profit Alliance in Ireland, said: “Ireland has higher contributions per capita to the EU ‘Troika’ than Greece, Portugal or Spain, and the people of Ireland will be paying nine billion Euros each year until 2054.”

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Lexit rally declares ‘Pull away from the EU!’

No Fourth Reich in Austria — yet!

by European Affairs correspondent

ANTI-FASCISTS throughout Europe breathed a collective sigh of relief on Monday when they heard that the far-right Freedom Party had lost the final round of the Austrian presidential election. But it was a close-run race that was only settled with the count of postal votes. Norbert Hofer, the leader of the Freedom Party (FPO), was pipped at the post by Alexander Van der Bellen, the former leader of the Green Party standing as an independent, who won by just a margin of 0.6 per cent of the vote.

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No Fourth Reich in Austria — yet!

Editorial

Zionist false accusations exposed

THE RELATIONSHIP between the labour and socialist movement and Judaism goes back a long way, and is based on a common struggle against extreme right-wing fascists, Nazis and exploiters. It was strong in pre-revolutionary Russia where the Jewish Bund was part of the Russian Social and Democratic Labour Party for a while, until there was a falling out over the Bund wanting to remain a separate ethnicity-based group within the party whereas Lenin and the Bolsheviks wanted stronger unity based on class.

In London’s East End in the first half of the last century there was a strong Jewish and socialist solidarity based on the same fight against capitalist exploitation, poverty and attacks by racists and fascists such as Oswald Mosley. Both the Labour Party and the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) included many Jewish people in their membership at all levels, including leadership. It was class solidarity — an injury to one is an injury to all.

But in recent decades — as the Labour Party leadership broke with its original socialist ideals, and the concept of class awareness and solidarity — it attracted into its membership young opportunist careerists who quickly rose to the top. But these young people came imbued with the outlook and ethics of the imperialist ruling class. It was natural that those amongst them who were Jewish — and others who were Christian — identified with the aspirations of the Zionist State in Israel.

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Zionist false accusations exposed