National News
Union calls for action on rise in domestic violence
THE GMB general union last week called for urgent action after a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to the Ministry of Justice revealed a 17.2 per cent increase in applications for domestic abuse court orders in England and Wales between 2012 and 2016.
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Britain’s snooper state in the dock
THE EUROPEAN Court of Human Rights (ECHR) last Tuesday began hearing a landmark case as a group of civil liberty campaigns challenge the lawfulness of Britain’s surveillance laws and its intelligence services.
The case, described by campaigners as a “watershed moment for people’s privacy and freedom of expression across the world”, is being brought by Amnesty International, Liberty, Privacy International, and 11 other human rights and journalism groups — as well as two individuals — based in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas.
The case is the latest stage in a protracted effort from the organisations to challenge Britain’s extremely wide-ranging surveillance powers following startling revelations by the US whistle-blower Edward Snowden.
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RMT members standing rock solid in guards dispute
RMT MEMBERS stood rock solid in action on Wednesday morning at the start of strike action against five rail operating companies to defend the role of properly trained guards on trains for the safety of passengers.
Workers on Southern, Greater Anglia and South Western Railway are striking for 48 hours, whilst staff on Merseyrail and Northern have walked out for 24 hours.
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DWP fights to block publication of Universal Credit docs
THE DEPARTMENT for Work and Pensions (DWP) has launched a legal challenge to block the publication of a series of reports into Universal Credit.
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DWP Plymouth PCS successful strike against closures
MEMBERS of the civil service union PCS employed by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) at Plymouth Benefit Centre last week staged a successful strike against plans to close the centre. If the closure had gone ahead 50 jobs would have been lost and another 350 workers would have been forced to relocate.
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Skule Newz
by our Scottish political correspondent
CURRICULUM for Excellence (CfE) is the name given by the Scottish National Party (SNP) to their flagship education reforms that are “intended to help children and young people gain the knowledge, skills and attributes needed for life in the 21st century, including skills for learning, life and work,” which is supposed to produce “confident individuals”, “successful learners”, “responsible citizens” and “effective contributors”, whatever that means. Nobody in the teaching profession can give an indication of what these things actually mean in practice. One cynical, or realist, teacher observed that switching round the adjectives would make no difference to the meaning.
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Bad day for Britain First in Bromley
by New Worker correspondent
THE NEO-FASCIST organisation Britain First (BF), notorious for violent attacks on mosques, has problems. Its leaders Paul Golding and Jayda Franzen have a number of court orders against them, and Golding is obliged every Saturday between 2pm and 4pm to sign in at his nearest police station. As he lives in Penge, south London, that police station is in Bromley, next to Bromley South Rail Station.
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Film review by Brent Cutler
Kingsman: the Secret Service (2014). 189 minutes.Director: Matthew Vaughn. Writers: Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn (screenplay). Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons (comic book).
Stars: Colin Firth, Taron Egerton, Samuel L Jackson
Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017). 201 minutes.Director: Matthew Vaughn. Writers: Jane Goldman, Matthew Vaughn (screenplay), Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons (comic book).
Stars: Taron Egerton, Colin Firth, Mark Strong
THERE IS nothing like resurrecting old and discredited myths; but if it’s got to be done make a blockbuster film or two. This was clearly the case with the two Kingsman films: Kingsman: the Secret Service (2014) and Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017).
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Review by Dermot Hudson
Seán Murray: Marxist-Leninist & Irish Socialist Republican by Seán Byers (2015). Irish Academic Press:Ireland; 228pp. ISBN paperback: 9780716532972 amd ISBN hardback: 9780716532965. €24.99—€44.99.
IRISH communist history is a painfully neglected subject with very few books on the subject and the Communist Party of Ireland itself has not produced much historical material. The publication of this political biography by Seán Byers therefore fulfils a need. Whether it does this adequately is for the reader to decide.
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International News
Cuba emphasises the significance of the Great October Socialist Revolution
Granma
CUBA yesterday highlighted the significance of the Great October Socialist Revolution, after a floral wreath-laying ceremony at Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s Mausoleum and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow.
“In the world that we want and we will build, we must all remember that moment of the Revolution,” said José Ramón Balaguer, a member of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) Central Committee Secretariat and head of its International Relations Department.
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Ukrainian army shells Donetsk
Doni (Donetsk) News
THE KIEVSKY district of Donetsk City of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) was heavily shelled by the Ukrainian Army last night (5th November).
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UN gives Myanmar a month
by William M. Reilly at the UN
THE UNITED Nations Security Council on Monday issued a presidential statement both complimenting and criticising Myanmar for its action and inaction in its violence-wracked Rakhine State, and gave the government one month to get its act together.
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Solidarity shown with Venezuela in LA
Workers World (US)
CONSUL General of Venezuela Antonio Cordero, visiting from the Consulate in San Francisco, told an invitation-only meeting in Los Angeles that the Bolivarian Revolution is maintaining popular support despite the efforts of US imperialism to undermine it.
Workers World Party members John Parker and Nathan Norris were at the meeting, along with organisations representing Latin and Central American liberation struggles.
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Features
100 years ago: How Kornilov triggered the Russian Revolution
by New Worker correspondent
A REVOLUTION in Russia in February 1917 had swept away the power of the Tsar and brought a western-style bourgeois democratic government to power led by Social-Revolutionary (SR) Alexander Kerensky.
The masses of the Russian people were suffering a heavy toll from their country’s participation in the First World War. Hundreds of thousands of young men had been flung into the front-line, ill-equipped and ill-led, mainly for the benefit of the western imperialist powers of France, Britain and the USA against the German, Austrian and Turkish imperialist powers.
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People-centred policy keeps the Chinese communist party robust and strong
by Zhong Sheng
THE 19TH National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in October has given the world a clear picture of where China is heading. A review of China’s development path makes the world more curious to find out the recipe behind the success of CPC.
“Is the CPC really for the people?” a Spanish scholar on East Asian studies posed this question two years ago when focusing his research on the motivation of CPC’s reforms. His answer was: “Time will tell.”
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From Marx to Lenin: ‘Whose state? Our state’ —meaning all nationalities
by Deirdre Griswold
AS WE explained in part two of this series, in the early years of the Bolshevik Revolution deep social advances were codified that made it the most enlightened country in the world regarding women’s rights and the elimination of state suppression of lesbians and gays.
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Another Khrushchev denigrates the Soviet Union
by Dmitriy Sudakov
SERGEI Khrushchev, the son of Nikita Khrushchev, recently said that Russia was never able to catch up with the USA. He also claimed that the rule of law in today’s Russia is in question, just like in the immediate post-Soviet period. Khrushchev Jr made these remarks during a lecture at the National Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas, where about 200 people came to listen to him, the Las Vegas Sun reported.
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