New Worker Banner

The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain


National News

Bob the Builder

by New Worker correspondent

IN THE construction industry there are at present many battles over safety issues, including many concerning the rights and wrongs of actually working at this time. At the site of a new gas power station near Scunthorpe workers successfully demanded to be sent home because they were being forced to use fingerprint machines to clock-in to the site, which would spread coronavirus. Further north, construction unions Unite and GMB are demanding that Balfour Beatty furlough workers at the TeesREP renewable energy site in Teesport and other sites.

[Read the complete story in the print edition]

SNP Wars

by our Scottish political affairs correspondent

SCOTTISH National Party (SNP) Councillor Ron MacWilliams has got himself suspended by his party for daring to criticise the Scottish government. His offence was that of criticising the government for its slow response to the coronavirus crisis. But everybody has been doing that; even the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail have made many critical comments about the supply of personal protection equipment (PPE) for NHS employees.

Councillor MacWilliams is a member of the SNP and his target was the government of Nicola Sturgeon, so the Inverness councillor has been put into “administrative suspension, pending the full disciplinary process… at a later date” by the SNP’s National Organiser Angus MacLeod.

[Read the complete story in the print edition]

Pure Spin

by our Scottish political affairs correspondent

Health Secretary Jean Freeman boasted that she had reached a deal with local authorities to increase the pay of adult care workers to the real living wage of £9.30 per hour. This covers all hours worked, including sleep-overs and personal assistance. An agreement is also in place for sick pay in cases where workers are ill or self-isolating.

This announcement, made at a daily briefing about how wonderfully the SNP are handling the crisis, was immediately criticised by Labour health spokeswoman Monica Lennon, who pointed out that: “Social care workers have been underpaid and undervalued for too long and there is a long way to go to secure the pay and conditions they deserve. Many of them will continue to earn under £10 an hour so the Scottish Government’s pay announcement, combined with dangerous PPE shortages and harrowing working conditions, is not a cause for celebration.”

[Read the complete story in the print edition]

Corbyn blames internal opposition for 2017 election defeat

Sputnik

FORMER Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said that the party would have secured a victory in the 2017 general election if it had not been for a leadership challenge against him the previous year.

In an interview with the Benn Society last week, the Islington MP said that the attempt to remove him from office cost Labour victory in the 2017 election, which it narrowly lost.

[Read the complete story in the print edition]

Ho Chi Minh in Newhaven

by New Worker correspondent

HO CHI MINH is revered in Vietnam as the father of the nation whose communist-led guerrilla army drove the French and Japanese imperialists out, and defeated the American invaders in a war that ended in 1975 with a people’s government and a united country.

[Read the complete story in the print edition]

Movable Types

REVIEW

by Ben Soton

The Caseroom by Kate Hunter, May 2017. Fledgling Press: Edinburgh. Paperback: 368 pp. ISBN10: 1905916221; ISBN13: 9781905916221.

The Caseroom brings to life the Edinburgh print industry in the late 19th and early 20th century, in terms of both the living and working conditions of the time.

[Read the complete story in the print edition]

International News

US imperialism is more dangerous than COVID-19

by Ed Newman

IRANIAN President Hassan Rouhani says US imperialism is a virus that is “more dangerous” than coronavirus for the international community. “Independent and freedom-seeking nations like Iran and Venezuela have always been under pressure as a result of Washington’s excessive demands and bullying,” Rouhani said on a phone call with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Monday.

[Read the complete story in the print edition]

Cuba shares what it has

by Ventura de Jesús

ANOTHER CUBAN medical brigade has arrived in Italy. This time in Turin, with 21 doctors, 16 nurses and a logistics co-ordinator joining the first brigade in Lombardy, the epicentre of the pandemic in the country, to save lives without asking anything in return because solidarity has no price.

[Read the complete story in the print edition]

Building a community with a shared future

by Xiang Bo

THE FIGHT against the COVID-19 pandemic shows the importance and urgency of building a community with a shared future for mankind, an official at the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (LPRP) has said.

[Read the complete story in the print edition]

The next crisis

by Ed Newman

IN JUST three or four months the coronavirus, the virus that causes COVID-19, the disease which has brought the whole world to the brink, dismantled all the forecasts on the possible economic performance of developed and poor countries, and placed us on the threshold of another crisis.

[Read the complete story in the print edition]

The Orange Lodge in Canada

by Brian Major

MANY progressive folks living in Canada consider the historical legacy of Protestant-based community organisations to be a positive one. As examples of this progressive legacy they often point to Tommy Douglas, the first social-democratic premier of Saskatchewan, and Joey Smallwood, the first premier of Newfoundland and Labrador who spoke positively of Mao Zedong and the birth of the Peoples’ Republic of China in 1949.

Both men were also prominent members of the Grand Orange Lodge of British America (sometimes called the Orange Order), whose membership also included John A Macdonald, John Diefenbaker and other prominent Canadian business leaders. It is important, particularly for progressive folks in Canada, to assess closely the history of the Orange Lodge.

[Read the complete story in the print edition]

Features

How Vietnam contained the pandemic

by Joshua Hanks

THE CORONAVIRUS pandemic has started to reveal stark differences in the emergency responses of countries all over the globe. The USA now has the most COVID-19 cases in the world after a slow and uncoordinated response by federal and state governments.

Shortages of ventilators, ICU beds and personal protective equipment (PPE) have put pressure on a medical system that was already struggling to meet basic needs. Especially in rural areas and communities of colour, hospital closures and shortages of staff and funding have put many at an elevated risk for the ravages of COVID-19.

[Read the complete story in the print edition]

Warhol, Pop Art and its legacy in Latin America

by Roxana Baspineiro

ANDY WARHOL was one of the most influential US artists of the 20th century and important figures of Pop Art in the 1960s. Although the rise of this movement has its bases a decade earlier in the UK, it developed more influence and success in the USA, with Warhol being its most commercial benchmark that rapidly globalised the trend around the world, reaching Latin America as well.

[Read the complete story in the print edition]

The puppet Hitler was ready to sacrifice Berlin for

Sputnik

SEVENTY-FIVE years ago, from January to May 1945, the Allies began the final push for the heart of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich, knocking down one puppet regime after another and counting down the days to the Nazis’ surrender.

As the last and most loyal Nazi German ally and source of crucial industrial and energy reserves, Hungary was the one puppet state that Hitler was prepared to sacrifice Berlin for to try to defend, says Nikita Buranov, journalist, historian and member of the Russian Military Historical Society.

[Read the complete story in the print edition]