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The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain

Please note that due to the new national lockdown and to keep our workers extra safe, as of 6th January the national office will be closed until we can make other arrangements that still keep our workers safe. In the short term the New Worker will be produced remotely, but will not be printed. The New Worker in full can be followed online, All our workers will be working remotely and should be able to get back to you on email. To contact anyone in the office, please email the New Worker task id enquiries@ newworker.org and your message will be directed to the right person.

Lead story

Imperialism puts on liberal clothes again

WATCHED by an attentive audience of 200,000 wooden poles with flags on them, Joe Biden achieved the remarkable feat of staying awake during the entire length of the inauguration ceremony in Washington that saw him become the 46th President of the United States of America. Because his name is not Donald Trump, this changing of the guard has been welcomed in Britain by the Telegraph and Mail just as much as his normal cheerleaders in the Guardian

Read the full story here >> Imperialism puts on liberal clothes again

Trade Unions and COVID

This week we focus on how Britain’s trade unions are responding to the impact of the COVID crisis on both the workers who have been laid off by it and those who have had to work even harder than normal because of it. This response has been concerned with both dealing with the immediate issues and looking ahead to the future.

Read the full story here >> Trade Unions and COVID

To Lose One Leader…

REVIEW by Theo Russell

OSCAR Wilde’s quip to the effect that “To lose one parent, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness” applies in spades to the leadership of the Scottish Labour Party.

Read the full story here >> To Lose One Leader…

The Serpent

reviewed by Ben Soton

Maybe I am too old, maybe I was always boring, but I have never understood the attraction of wandering around Thailand with a rucksack, smoking soft drugs and claiming to be discovering myself. The Serpent, BBC1’s latest Sunday night drama, would put off the most hardened backpacker, however. It is the story of the fraudster and serial killer Charles Sobhraj, played by Tahir Rahman. Sobhraj, born in Saigon in 1944, was the son of a Vietnamese shop worker and Indian businessman. His early years were arguably a product of the French colonial rule in Indo-China.

Read the full story here >> The Serpent

Editorial

Making things for ourselves

The recent revelation that £123 million has been spent air-freighting essential personal protection equipment (PPE) from the People’s Republic of China to Britain since the beginning of the pandemic is a damning reflection of the state of the British manufacturing industry. Whilst this might gladden the hearts of Richard Branson and the shareholders of British Airways despairing over the empty seats on their aeroplanes, this demonstrates a remarkable weakness in the British economy in that such vital items cannot be easily manufactured at home. (We shall leave the question of stockpiling for emergencies for another day.)

The World War Two Air Raid Precautions first aid kit sitting near the Editor’s desk is composed entirely of British-made items, albeit from raw materials from around the globe.

The need to rebuild British manufacturing is not based on nostalgia for those days however, nor for the more distant industrial revolution era when the British textile industry swamped the world with its machine-made products that caused misery to hand producers in Britain and India. Now that Saville Row and similar products are more or less all that is left of the British textile industry, it is not surprising that there was no switch in production from glad rags to PPE. (That is not to deny the continued existence of sweatshops in Britain, of course.)

Read the full story here >> Making things for ourselves