Britain

Peugeot is planning to move production from its Coventry plant in the UK to Slovakia. There labour costs are one quarter of what they are in the UK. Capitalists have no concern for their workers. They go where they can maximise profits. The only answer is nationalisation under workers’ control.

The number of people diagnosed with asbestos related diseases has been growing. This reveals the widespread use of this extremely toxic substance, which was not only used in industry but is present in many buildings today. Claims for compensation cost. That is why insurance companies have been lobbying – successfully – to get the laws changed in order to reduce payouts.

Despite the almost incessant rainfall Britain is officially in a drought. There can be no doubt that climate change is contributing to changing weather patterns to adversely affect our water supply. This is a foretaste of what conditions will be like here in the not too distant future if something is not done to halt and reverse the destruction of our environment on a global scale.

Labour suffered a heavy defeat in England's local council elections, but Blair is desperately clinging on to office for now. In an attempt to cover up Labour's losses and to shore up his support Blair quickly moved to sack several high ranking ministers and promote loyal supporters. What Blair has installed is a Final Days administration. It is a bunker cabinet. Blair is finished and so is Blairism. These elections illustrate a growing class polarisation taking place in British society.

In Blackpool over the May Day Bank holiday, the British shop workers’ union USDAW, representing some 330,000 workers, passed a resolution unanimously supporting the Venezuelan Revolution and affiliating to the Hands Off Venezuela Campaign.

“The British working class is entering a period when it requires the greatest belief in its mission and its strength. To gain this there is no need for any stimulants like religion or idealist morality. It is necessary and sufficient that the British proletariat understands the position of its country in relation to the position of the whole world, that it has become clear about the rottenness of the ruling classes and that it has thrown out of its way the careerists, quacks and those bourgeois sceptics who imagine themselves to be socialists only because they from time to time vomit in the atmosphere of rotting bourgeois society.” (Leon Trotsky, Writings on Britain, Volume

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The workers at the Peugeot plant in Ryton (near Coventry) risk losing their jobs and livelihood. Darrall Cozens reports on the latest situation after interviewing John Cummins, Deputy Convenor from Amicus, about the trade union plans to keep the plant open.

Hands Off Venezuela made a very good intervention in May Day. At the beginning of the march in Clerkenwell, a large stall was set up behind a massive HOV banner selling literature and t-shirts. The new HOV magazine was on sale throughout the demonstration.

Eighty years ago an earthquake shook the very foundations of British capitalism. In the greatest display of militant power in its history, the British working class moved into action in the General Strike of 1926. For 9 days, from May 3, not a wheel turned nor a light shone without the permission of the working class. In such a moment, with such power, surely it ought to have been possible to have transformed society? How can such a position have ended in defeat? (by Phil Mitchinson, originally published in May 2001)

On the 80th anniversary of the 1926 general strike in Britain we look at what led to it and why it eventually was defeated. In spite of the tremendous militancy of the British working class, the top leaders of the trade union movement proved to be only too willing to compromise and get the workers back to work.

Like vultures waiting for an animal to die before ripping it to pieces, private “investors” are watching as Blair destroys the National Health Service preparing the ground for more and more privatisation. The grandparents of today’s British workers struggled for a fully funded free healthcare system. Now we have to struggle to win it all back.

Tony Blair has been pushing the line that the National Health Service has never had it so good. He lives on another planet obviously. Anyone who uses the NHS or works for it knows that a systematic attack on the very concept of free healthcare is taking place.

The decision to close the Peugeot car plant at Ryton in Coventry and cease production of the best-selling 206 model was compared by one worker at the plant to knowing that a loved one was dying of cancer yet being shocked to know that death is at the doorstep. There is no time to lose if this struggle to save jobs is to win!

When Blair was first elected he promised his government would be ‘whiter than white’, a phrase meant to distance himself from the sleaze of the Major years. Now Blair is immersed in sleaze himself. From the lies over the Iraq war we now have the scandal of selling peerages to the biggest bidder. Blair has done his utmost to destroy the Labour Party. It will be up to the trade unions and the ranks of the party to rebuild it as a fighting workers’ organisation.