In Further News

March 2012 - British police state repression worse than ever.

The construction workers know all too well about political blacklists. SLP members have themselves been the subject of them. It was well known that the bosses were in collusion in depriving left leaning employees of their livelihoods. Now, however, Steve Hedley, an RMT organiser, has come out with evidence that the police have in some cases provided the bosses with 'blacklist' information. Now we know already from the Leveson enquiry of the collusion between police, the media (Murdoch etc.) and capitalist politicians. This latest evidence provides another piece in the jigsaw of our repressive state apparatus. Surely it must be illegal for any group in society to deprive people of the right to work. Surely, the consequences of such conspiratorial actions should be heavy prison sentences and huge fines for the guilty parties.

In an astonishing contrast to this reality, our unelected, undemocratic, primitively backward, hereditary, head of state has claimed what a 'tolerant' society we are living in. This toleration clearly does not stretch to those of us within British industry etc. wishing to express left wing opinions and as a result being deprived of livelihoods. The actions against British workers stretch far back but examples include those involving the miners, the Shrewsbury two in the construction industry, the print workers (where Brenda, now Lady Dean, asked Murdoch to sue and thereby 'break' her own union). Neither does the 'toleration' reach those youngsters imprisoned and fined for merely using modern technology to refer to last summer's class based riots.

We, as a party of the left, must demand that all evidence on the blacklists, including the detestable figures operating and colluding in them should be made public with appropriate sentencing etc. applied to the guilty perpetrators, as indicated above. We must also ask for hefty compensation for the subjects of such blacklists which are reminiscent of Nazi Germany and the McCarthy era in America.

March 2012 - Miliband's Party backs plan for slave labour.

In one of the most pathetic, waffling political interviews of recent times, Harriet Harman revealed on BBC Daily politics (Friday 16th March) that Labour would back sanctions against any unemployed youngsters that refuse any work offered. The ConDem coalition's efforts in this area have in practice meant loss of benefits for any refusing to join or backing out of schemes. In effect, jobseekers have often been asked to work for free for hugely exploitative companies. No wonder the public outrage has caused companies such as Tesco to back out of publicly accepting this free i.e. 'slave' labour.

Besides attacking young working class career aspirants, Labour also gave political cover for the further privatisation of the Health service. On an earlier edition of the same BBC programme, Diane Abbott said of the current ConDem Health Bill, 'we shall unpick the worst aspects' of it. Plenty of wriggle room there then. Labour began many of the Health Service privatisations when in power and Blair and Brown's party actually fortified the anti-trade union legislation. They also implemented student tuition fees.

Talk about a chocolate fire screen for these vicious capitalist attacks. The fact is that the New, Blue Labour Party finds it difficult, after implementing these privatisations and attacks on our class when in government, to find anything to disagree with. This is why they are a completely ineffective opposition and why any support from the working class for their self-serving, largely corrupt M.P's and vicious capitalist agenda is totally misguided.

March 2012 - Sup with the Devil and you need a long spoon - Article by Ken Capstick.

SENATOR JOHN McCAIN is a warmonger working in the interests of American big business. He is currently running a massive campaign for all-out war on Syria, calling for U.S. military intervention and air-strikes that could easily lead to a wider global conflict. As in Libya he sees great opportunities for himself and U.S. big business to get richer whatever the cost to human life.

The interesting thing about McCain's activities is best understood when his Gaddafi-era activities in Libya are examined. This angel of death worked closely with Gaddafi promoting American business interests during the Bush presidency then switched sides when Gaddafi came under attack. Gaddafi shook hands with McCain, Condoleezza Rice and Tony Blair and thereby ensured his own, and his family's, downfall. He supped with the devil.

The article below, published by consortiumnews.com, and written by Morgan Strong a former professor of Middle Eastern history, who was an adviser to CBS News "60 Minutes" on the Middle-East, is a fascinating insight into McCain and his sinister activities. In this article he exposes the self-interest of this treacherous, little man who four years ago ran for President of the United States. This lengthy article makes for compelling reading.

The following article is interesting despite it's obvious U.S. anti-Gaddafi propaganda.

To see the article here.

March 2012 - The Bankers' Gravy Train Ploughs on - Article by Ken Capstick.

Regardless of the mass destruction to the world's economy caused by the élite of the capitalist system bankers continue to think that the entire wealth of the world belongs to them and them alone.

People are losing their jobs, pensions, savings, and houses. Wage cuts and attacks on the welfare state including the NHS are rampant while this greedy low-life continues arrogantly to believe that they are the "wealth creators" the world cannot maage without. In reality they destroyed the world's wealth created by US not by THEM.

Last week Barclays footed the £5.7million increase in Bob Diamond's tax bill that he incurred when he moved to London from the U.S. The bank is also set to "reward" him, this year with a package worth a staggering £27million in pay, shares and perks. Don't forget we are told that the austerity measures are necessary, not just by the Tories and Lib Dems but by New Labour as well. Furthermore it has been reported that 238 senior staff at Barclays received average bonuses of £1.2million. If that is true it amounts to a mammoth £285.6million.

It doesn't stop there, two other top bankers were said to be about to receive £16million. In a wild orgy of greed disclosed by the City massive pay and bonuses will be awarded to bosses at Barclays and taxpayer-owned Lloyds and RBS. Lloyds and RBS chiefs Antonio Horta-Osorio and Stephen Hester are in line for awards worth up to £8.2million and £7.9million respectively, despite presiding over combined losses of £5.5 billion last year. They always threaten to leave the country if we stop these handouts. We should tell them to go and take their empty brains with them. Incompetence by executives led Bank of Scotland to the brink of collapse, according to a stinging report by the City's watchdog.

Barclays has just been caught trying to cheat taxpayers out of £500million while Diamond helps himself to £27 million in pay and perks. Less than two weeks ago Barclays was prevented from using two 'highly abusive' loopholes to dodge tax. Despite the furore over Diamond's pay, two other unnamed senior executives received pay and bonus awards last year of £6.7million and £6.5million. It is thought that these executives are Rich Ricci and Jerry Del Missier, the co-heads of Barclays' investment banking arm.

Barclays' chairman Marcus Agius defended the bank's bonuses. He said: 'Barclays needs to operate commercially and that includes setting remuneration for our executive directors appropriately.' Well he would say that wouldn't he, he's one of them? In reality they are stealing the world's wealth, corralling it unto themselves and creating the biggest transfer of wealth from poor to rich that has ever taken place. No wonder people are rioting in the streets. Steal a pair of trainers you go to jail, loot billions of other people's wealth you get a knighthood. They never condemn their class they honour them.

Data provided by Barclays shows that £100 invested in shares in 2006 was worth just £29 at the end of 2011. So this is wealth creating is it?

Stephen Hester, the chief executive of RBS, stands to get a total package of £7.9million. Those who attended Congress may remember me saying he would get the bonus he supposedly gave up one way or another – well clearly he has. They tried to dupe people into thinking he gave his bonus up. He "gave up" a £963,000 bonus earlier this year, bowing to intense public pressure, but his package includes deferred bonuses paid in shares of up to £6.2million which can be realised in 2014 and 2015. These are only the tip of the iceberg.

They are robbing us all blind, filling up their swollen, personal bank accounts by raiding ours. It is the biggest bank heist of all time. John Hourican, the man responsible for winding down RBS's failing investment bank at a cost of over 3,500 jobs, netted £3.2million. By my reckoning that's £914 per job destroyed by this wealth creator. He will also receive £4.19million at the beginning of April under a share incentive scheme relating to 2009 at the height of the crash. That's a declared total £7.4million or £2,114 per job he destroyed. How many could have kept their jobs if he had been sacked instead; and what about the wealth of those and their families whose jobs have gone in this sick system?

EXHAUSTION - Lloyds boss Antonio Horta-Osorio, who waived a £2.4million bonus after taking two months' leave due to exhaustion, was handed shares worth a maximum of £3.2million, which he can realise in 2015. He is also in line for shares worth up to £2.4million in 2014 and he is exhausted.

FOOT NOTE - Six young soldiers lost their lives last week in the Bush/Blair war in Afghanistan while one of their" tank commanders", Harry Wales, was in the Caribbean dancing, playing rugby with a bunch of kids, playing volley ball, apparently beating Usain Bolt in a race and generally soaking up the sun. Now that's better than serving in Kandahar - don't you think?.

March 2012 - Syrian invasion mimics Libya.

The Lebanese M.P. Asem Konsoa has reported that 18 French officers, 100 French paratroopers and 70 Lebanese fighters have been captured in Homs by Syrian forces. This reminds us of the British special services troops that were captured in the early stages of the Libyan Nato aggression.

The conflicts in these Countries would be better classified as foreign colonial interventions rather than internal uprisings. The interesting point about the French news, however, is the almost complete silence from the British mainstream media. Whether the facts are confirmed or not, this censorship is an absolute disgrace, proving the point that our mainstream media are not fit for purpose – as we learn every day from the Leveson enquiry.

March 2012 - Exploitation the key to the Middle East.

To understand what is happening in Syria. Iran, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq etc. is fairly straightforward if we take note of the words of W. Ramsey Clark. He was, after all, the U.S. Attorney General from 1967-1969 and therefore at the heart of U.S. thinking on foreign affairs and policy.

He has recently stated that American policy is to eliminate all Arab governments that are independent of U.S. control. The destabilisation and military intervention in these Countries is for America's geopolitical and economic interests with resultant exploitation as the primary concern.

He further states that the U.S. is a military dominated society but their people are (unlike ourselves) unaware of it. The events of 9/11 have been exploited for foreign policy ends and Clark goes on to say that an informed people would never put up with it.

This makes it all the more sickening for us in Britain that our foreign policy is so much in hock to the Americans and that people like Blair, Hoon, Brown, Straw, William Hague, Cameron, Fox, Douglas Alexander, the Miliband brothers, Clegg, Menzies Campbell have no independent minds from what the U.S. in its exploitative world aggression is telling them to pour forth in their public pronouncements.

March 2012 - IT'S NOT THEIR FAULT – Article by Ken Capstick.

People in Britain should not feel guilty about debt, it's not their fault. Debt is the unpaid wages of the working class. Anti-Trade Union laws were instituted to facilitate the drive to a low-wage economy and increased profits. The contradiction is that a low-wage economy is at odds with high-street spending. Low wages are only one leg of the drive for higher profits because there will be no profits unless people can buy goods. To square this circle debt of all kinds is thrust on hard up families but especially credit-card debt and this creates a contradiction in itself. More families sink into poverty as low wages fail to service ever increasing debt levels and sooner or later there will be another crash as people default.

In this present crisis not only people default but companies, sovereign nations and even banks themselves default. It is a systemic collapse of capitalism. Now they are out to convince us that it is all our fault. We have all been "living beyond our means" by borrowing too much to live the high-life when the truth is that credit card debt in particular has been used to buy the necessaries of life NOT luxury living. Now, some would say that these are the ramblings of an unreconstructed Marxist but tomorrow, Monday 05 February, the magazine "Which" will produce a report and its findings are shocking. It concludes that 1 in 5 cash-strapped shoppers has to borrow money to buy the necessaries of life such as groceries and other basics as wages stay low and prices rocket.

Even before the cuts and austerity measures have begun to bite anywhere near as deep as the government plans, 43% of Britons report that they are just managing to keep their heads above water, 1 in 3 are finding life difficult and 20% have gone into debt to buy their daily essentials. Forty percent of people are changing their lifestyles by staying in and not socialising. Older people who have saved all their lives are being mugged and robbed just as surely as if they had their handbags snatched or pockets picked in the street. Interest rates are near zero so that they are in effect making interest-free loans to the banks while dipping into their savings in order to live, faced with inflated prices. This is how the system is stealing money and transferring it to the coffers of the bankers and the rich, the real looters who have committed fraud and grand larceny on an unprecedented scale and faced no charges unlike those who joined the London riots last year.

These people, who are being robbed, are not the perpetrators of this economic collapse; they are the victims of it. When they hit back we should never condemn them.

The bankers though continue to collect their obscene salaries and bonuses and collect their debts, conveniently forgetting that they are in debt to us. They owe us billions. These criminals are never condemned by their class. Now Britain's biggest mortgage lender the Halifax has announced that interest rates will increase from 3.5% to 3.99% in May which follows RBS-NatWest which increased its rates from 3.75% to 4% on Friday. Why? Borrowing is at an all time low for these banks that wrecked the world's economy. The Bank of England interest rate has been at an all time low of 0.5% for three years. It is greed, greed and more greed that will lead to more household debt and more homelessness as repossessions mount. In fact, it could be seen as deliberate house grabbing by the banks to improve their sagging balance sheets with real brick and mortar assets – calculated property theft. Massive repossessions have taken place all across America as ordinary hard-working families now live in tent cities. Britain will be next. Child poverty is already high and, as these banks run riot and loot people's property, it can only increase. On top of this credit card firms have been raising interest rates on the unpaid wages of working people. The average credit card charges are now 17.32% as against 15.73% in 2009.

"We are all in it together" we are told, well it doesn't look like it to me. Another massive transfer of wealth from poor to rich is taking place right under our noses and more and more people will be well and truly "in it".

February 2012 - Action against the banks.

The Fitch ratings agency has recently come out with the observation that the actions taken in Iceland following the financial crash of 2008 have been far more successful than those of Greece, Ireland, Britain etc.

When the Parliamentarians in Iceland were under pressure from Western governments , including the US and Britain to bail out the banks, thereby impoverishing the population at large, they were pelted with missiles and subject to public animosity to the extent that they caved in to the pressure and the bankers were told in effect to 'get lost'.

Fitch agency has commended the 'unorthodox' approach of the Icelanders and compared it to the capitulation to the bankers' demands in other countries. The relative effects have been dramatic improvement and an upturn in Iceland's financial situation. This compares to the continuing economic downturns in countries that have succumbed to the bankers' demands, including Greece, Ireland, Britain, Spain, Portugal, Italy etc, etc.

February 2012 - Miliband speaks from the heart - of corrupt banking misinformation sources.

One of the major factors affecting the ongoing Capitalist crisis is the freezing up of inter-bank lending. A large element affecting this has been the 'off balance sheet' recording of vast bank liabilities that Governments and banks do not wish the public to know about. The liabilities arose from housing and other property crashes, credit default swaps etc. If they were properly recorded, it would be obvious to the people that many banks are insolvent, doomed and would be correctly described as 'zombie banks'. The bankers are aware of this situation in their own banks and therefore do not trust the likely 'dodgy' information coming out from their rivals. They are not, therefore, prepared to lend to each other.

Why are the banks allowed to secrete these huge 'off balance sheet' liabilities? After all, accounts submitted to Companies House etc. should have the sanction of professional auditors. The fact is that these auditors have been colluding in the cover-ups. It has been more the case of them turning a blind eye to vast misinformation than having any wool pulled over their eyes. The same large accountancy/audit firms operate either side of the Atlantic and the US seems to be investigating this chicanery a lot more than our own Serious Fraud Office etc. The UK, European, US and other Governments all find it politically convenient to allow these 'off balance sheet' items to remain covered up. In keeping the 'zombie banks' as trading entities, rather than shutting them down, they are pumping in public funds that are putting the livelihoods and futures of generations of the working class in jeopardy.

Bearing in mind the discreditable records of these huge International auditing collaborators with the rotten banks and some of Capitalism's most hated institutions, why then should the Labour leader, Ed Miliband flaunt his pro Capitalist sleaze agenda by holding press conferences at these institutions? It is a direct slur upon any public sense of financial propriety and is in effect a huge insult to the working class. It is condoning the continuation of the evils of Thatcherite Capitalism whose banner was taken up with relish by Blair and Brown's New, Blue Labour.

February 2012 - Saltley Gate.

Photos from the Saltley Gate 40th anniversary where Arthur Scargill and Ken Capstick both gave speeches which can be viewed on our homepage.

February 2012 - Socialist Labour Party congress 2012.

To read the minutes from our congress, held in Blackpool in January, please click here.

February 2012 - Arthur Scargill on Saltley Gate.

The time was about ten o'clock and there was a hush over the Saltley area. 3000 miners altogether, Welsh miners singing, Yorkshire miners, Nottinghamshire miners, Midlands miners. And yet nothing happened. You could see apprehension on the faces of the police. Here we had a situation where miners were tired, physically and mentally, desperately weary. They had gone through nearly six weeks strike action, they had gone through a three months' overtime ban. they had gone through the worst battling encountered in strike action in any time in recent years. Their comrades had been arrested, one of them had been kicked to bits and yet they were still battling on. I readily concede that some of the lads were a bit dispirited that no reinforcements were coming. And then over the hill came a banner and I've never seen in my life as many people following a banner.

As far as the eye could see it was just a mass of people marching towards Saltley. There was a huge roar and from the other side they were coming the other way. They were coming from five directions, there were five approaches to Saltley; it was in a hollow they were arriving from every direction. And our lads were just jumping in the air with emotion - a fantastic situation.

I heard the police talking - Sir Derek Capper was one, Donaldson his deputy - the tactic was simple: get the pickets coming from the east to go through to the west and get the pickets from the west - the striking engineers - to go through to the east. East to west, west to east. past each other. I got this megaphone and Iʼm yelling like hell: ʻWhen you get to the picket line, Stop! Stop!ʼ !. They were trying to tell me to shut up and I said "You try today, no bloody shutting up today. These boys are coming to our picket line.ʼ And they were piling up like sandwich cake. as far as the eye could see they were just pouring in. Saltley, the area of Saltley was now just a mass of human beings, arriving from all over, with banners.

The only time this crowd opened up was when a delegation of girls from a womenʼs factory came along all dressed in bright white dresses. They plunged through and one of the lads shouts: ʻGo on officer, tell them they canʼt come. Try and hold them.ʼ And no police officer moved, you know. Whoʼd have dared trying to stop those girls coming into that square? Nobody. The crowd was absolutely dense by this time. We were in the centre of it and everybody was chanting something different; some were chanting ʻHeath Outʼ. ʻTories Outʼ. ʻSupport the Miners", ʻGeneral Strikeʼ, a hundred slogans were being chanted. I got hold of the megaphone and I started to chant through it: ʻClose the gates! Close the gates!ʼ and it was taken up, just like a football crowd. It was booming through Saltley: ʻClose the gatesʼ. It reverberated right across this hollow and each time they shouted this slogan they moved and the police. who were four deep, couldnʼt help it. they were getting moved in. And Capper, the Chief Constable of Birmingham, tool a swift decision. He said ʻClose the Gates" and they swung them to. Hats were in the air, youʼve never seen anything like it in your life. Absolute delirium on the part of the people who were there. Because the Birmingham working class had become involved - not as observers but as participants."

January 2012 - ConDem electoral lies lead to higher education attack upon the working class.

Following their highly publicised and blatant lies at election time, the LibDem decision to back Tory increases in University tuition fees has proved to be the most vicious attack upon the working class. With a wholesale lack of job opportunities, it would be logical for working class students with the appropriate qualifications to look to take degree courses, with the hope that in three years or so, the jobs market might have substantially improved, as well as their own career prospects.

The official figures just released show that despite what would logically be an expected increase, the financial attack has been devastating. University applications from UK students have in fact fallen. As a result of the £9000 per annum and more fees in English Universities imposed by this reactionary government , the decline was 9.9% in England. This compares to a much smaller 1.5% in Scotland where the fees don't apply.

This proves conclusively, once and for all, that such financial attacks directly impact upon the education and career prospects of the least advantaged in Society. They are also a further obstacle to social mobility.

The Socialist Labour Party is, of course, committed to their total abolition.

January 2012 - The BBC apologise to the Socialist Labour Party.

The Socialist Labour Party can now report that following communication with SLP President Andrew Jordan the BBC have apologised for branding the SLP "now defunct".

The apology has met the criteria laid down by the Party in the letter sent to BBC Director-General on January 10th 2012 and so the Party now accepts the apology.

A written apology was sent to the Party and an on-air apology is scheduled to go out on BBC Radio 4 on Sunday 29th January 2012.

Upon accepting the apology SLP President Andrew Jordan noted his anger that such a 'mistake' could have been made. He suggested that if the BBC had looked at election results from 2011 they would see that the SLP beat or achieved a similar number of votes returned when compared to the BNP, Green Party and UKIP.

Perhaps if the BBC gave the SLP as much media coverage as any one of these political parties throughout the year then programme editors would not make such mistakes.

The Socialist Labour Party would like to thank all those members and supporters that reported the BBC to Ofcom over this matter.

January 2012 - Throwing good money after bad politics.

To comment on the current stance of some of the UK's largest trade unions means we must also touch upon the internal grief of the Labour Party.

No wonder the leaders of the Unite, GMB and other Labour Party fund contributing unions are nearly blowing gaskets. The leadership of the Labour Party have opted for the course of largely accepting the Tory-led agenda of cutting public benefits and making the working class pay for the folly and bankruptcy foisted upon the UK by irresponsible bankers and financiers.

This holds out the prospect for British workers of lower pay, worse terms and conditions and ever growing likelihood of unemployment under any future Labour government. What an appealing outlook for their members!

One reason for this stance of the Labour Party Leadership is their almost complete social disconnection with the British working class. Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls, for instance hails from a privately educated background. Leader, Miliband hails from a privileged Zionist academic family background having lived for a spell in the extremely politically 'rightwing' U.S.A.

The Labour Leadership only use for the working class is to demand their votes at election time. In between elections, they wish to have nothing to do with them. So rather than biting the Trade Union hands that partially feed them, the latest action would be more akin to kicking the living daylights out of the workers and their representatives.

One of the SLP's major functions as a political Party is to point out the illogical stance taken by the Trade Union leadership with regard to the Labour Party, when good Trade Union money could, in contrast, be poured into a worthwhile organisation that would truly represent the best interests of the British Working Class. Socialist Labour is this organisation.

January 2012 - A New Years message to all our members and friends.

The Socialist Labour Party wishes seasons greetings and a happy New Year to all members and friends of the Party. We look forward to the coming year with great optimism as one of the very few growing political parties in Britain and at the same time reflect upon the work of comrades that we have lost, including in the past year, both here and abroad. We have great battles and challenges ahead as the crisis of Capitalism reaches ridiculous proportions. One example is that the coalition government are proposing to allocate half of the National Health Service for the use of private patients. Once more, public assets are being given to the least needy. We must ask why the enemies of the NHS like Cameron are allowed to use its facilities when the truly needy will, as in the US health care system, be priced out of using them.

December 2011 - TIME TO END THE NIGHTMARE OF CAPITALISM.

As the Capitalist system lurches from crisis to crisis in it's death throes the lies from the apologists for the system grow apace. We are told repeatedly on the media that no-one foresaw this and no-one foresaw that when the truth is that many on the left including the Socialist Labour Party have been predicting for years the very crisis that the main stream political parties find so stupefying. The mainstream media have, of course, given no coverage of these truthful predictions. Instead, the only coverage given is to those economists and politicians whose track records have proved that they shouldn't even have got past the starting stall.

As the top one per cent in society desperately try to hang on to their ill gotten fortunes at the expense of the rest of us, their tactics are becoming ever more corrupt and vicious. Apart from tax fiddles and Government handouts, they provide themselves with their own security forces and secrete themselves behind walled-off private city areas where entry is via high security gates. The bosses treat their workers ever more like wage slaves.

Cornwall Council, for instance, is proposing that care workers be electronically tagged so that their itineraries can be monitored. We must presume that should workers secure too much rest time then appropriate action such as electronic shock therapy can be taken. On the subject of electronic shocks, we learn that the Capitalist lackey British police has greatly increased it's use of taser stun guns. One force in East Anglia has increased use of these horrible weapons by 800 per cent in the past year.

Prime Minister Cameron's buddy Jeremy Clarkson has spouted that striking public workers should be shot in front of their families. Apparently, these comments were scripted for him by the BBC. The Corporation are obviously flying their true fascist anti-working class colours alongside Clarkson. It seems some of Cameron's other close associates such as Rebekah Brookes and Andy Coulson fall into the same despicable and unsavoury category since they have been accused by fellow journalists of being the scum of the earth. This relates to lies and cover-ups over 'phone hacking and letting subordinates carry the can. On the subject of lies, Mark Sewotka accused Tory minister Francis Maude live on BBC Newsnight of spreading them in relation to the Union strike action. Whatever else we think about Capitalist politicians like Maude and Labour's Lord John Hutton concerning pensions, what can be said with certainty is that they have the personalities and charismas of garden slugs. Maude stated on the same programme that life is going to be tough. He had the working class in mind. We must make sure that it is his class that suffers. On the subject of lies on a large scale, we learn that during the Lehman crisis in 2008 America, the US Government secretly poured 7.7 Trillion dollars into Banks so that their chief executives could tell the public that they were solvent. This was in order for the same Banks to publicly call for above board extra Government funding! Insider trading concerning Hank Paulson, his Goldman Sachs colleagues and the outcomes for large American housing corporations in 2008 has also been exposed. The US Financial system has proven to be corrupt from top to bottom.

Meanwhile in Britain, with the desperate need for affordable housing, the official figures showed that related house starts in Britain for the six months from April amounted to 454. Wow! , that might even fill a street or two. As a result of these sort of policies pursued by all recent Capitalist governments, we already have homeless dying on the streets of towns like Newquay in Cornwall even though winter weather has barely begun and this is scarcely the coldest part of Britain.

Meanwhile, in order to solve the Capitalist crisis, the progressive British Capitalists are dreaming up wonderful financial schemes like building more toll roads. Why don't they go the whole hog and call for highwaymen to patrol them? Similarly, British peoples' medical records are to be made available to private firms. This amounts to financial exploitation of all aspects of our physical being including illness, birth, death etc.

Capitalism has run out of sensible ideas and gone belly up. Socialism is the future! The fight to secure it won't be easy but the benefits to humanity will make it worthwhile. The Socialist Labour Party is prepared to lead the fight!

December 2011 - European lives to be governed by 'Dark Forces'.

The scandal of unaccountability within the European Union has been well and truly exposed with the ousting of the 'elected' leaders of Italy and Greece. The unelected authorities in Brussels have replaced them with former Goldman Sachs Bankers and financiers. The populations of both Countries have had no say in this. The decisions have been made by the unelected Bankers who appear to receive orders from the US via Berlin and Paris.

The latest calls coming from French and German leadership are for closer financial integration in Europe with the need for more political treaties being imposed on member Countries. As a Country, we have had to fight to maintain a semblance of political independence, the latest large scale conflict being with the German axis formation in WW11. Nowadays, control over other European States is achieved via large scale financial invasion rather than via force of arms.

We would not be so worried if we could rely on our leaders acting in the interests of the 99per cent. Following the lies about European trading alliances which have morphed from Ted Heath's original assurances into full scale political unions via successive treaties, we cannot rely on the mainstream British political parties. Labour, Tories, Nationalists and mini-me Tories have proved to be under dominant influence of the one per cent of bankers and financiers.

Although we cannot get our message across in the Capitalist media, because of widespread censorship, the British people know that the SLP has continually spoken the truth about what our true relationship should be with regard to both Europe and the rest of the World. We are not prepared to have our socialist democratic voice , on behalf of the working class, trampled on and British history teaches us that we know how to deal with any imposed tyranny!

Sept 2011 - The views of a British Tax expert.

There's a sickening dimension to today's agreement between the UK and Switzerland that is getting to let thousands of wealthy tax criminals off the hook – without them ever being held to account or even having to admit to their crimes.

At the moment the UK government is turning this deliberate blind eye to massive, large scale, organised looting of the UK's tax system it is also bringing criminal charges against more than thirty young people who recently took part in a in a wholly peaceful UK Uncut demonstration against tax avoidance.

They are facing criminal charges in the UK for having leaflets condemning tax avoiders when at exactly the same time the government was negotiating a deal to make sure that tax criminals were let off without ever facing the consequences of their crime.

This is a sickening indictment of the UK criminal justice system, our respect for free speech, the values of this government and the fact that we live in a society where it is now a crime to criticise the criminality that did and does pervade much of the financial services sector that deliberately promotes tax havens to facilitate crime of the sort which those using Switzerland have just been excused of.

No wonder people are angry. They have every right to be. We are being led by moral cowards who excuse crime whilst prosecuting those who exercise the supposed human right of free speech to criticise those facilitating it. It's Cameroon and Osborne who should be in the dock, not the Fortnum and Mason's protesters from UK Uncut.

August 2011 - Bankers and Capitalist politicians to clean up their own mess?

The Capitalist Press are coming out with main page headlines like 'Rioters to clean up own mess'. In contrast, what we should be seeing is corrupt Bankers, Capitalists and their stooge politicians cleaning up the vast financial mess that they have inflicted upon us.

They have had to call in the 'nanny state' to clean up after them following the 2008 debacle so that we have been forced to sell up the futures of our children and grandchildren in order for them to maintain their luxurious lifestyles. The vast corrupt gains of banksters and other Capitalist crooks far outweigh any gains from pilfering of our demonised youth. Yet what prison sentences do they receive? Unlike Bernie Madoff who got 150 years, no investigations or charges against these major fraudsters have been made when in reality they should be having similar term sentences to Madoff.

We should be going after them in order to seize their ill-gotten assets . If this means leaving them homeless, then so be it, since several poverty stricken working class families could probably fit nicely into the homes of these vermin.

August 2011 - North Africa and Middle East update.

It has been reported that Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch observers on the ground in Libya have completely refuted all major charges against the regime which were used by the Western colonial governments to justify war. They could find no use of African mercenaries, no evidence of rape, no use of helicopter gun ships or bombers. They could only find evidence of 110 deaths (including Gadaffi supporters) in Benghazi when some media reports had recorded thousands.

Since NATO's bombing campaign 'in order to protect civilians', however, the Libyan Red Crescent Society has reported over 1100 civilian deaths and over 6,000 civilian injuries from this bombing. The true reasons for the Colonial intervention have been reported as the following:- Firstly, Libya was on the verge of creating a $42 billion African investment bank offering African countries very low or zero interest rates on loans. This would have put the noses of the IMF, World Bank and other money sharks out of joint. Secondly, Libya was funding major African infrastructure projects, breaking the dependency on western imports. Thirdly, Libya saw its' and Africa's future more closely tied to China and Russia than Western colonialists. Finally, Gadaffi was asking for compensation from oil companies from the USA for the sanctions imposed upon the Country following the Lockerbie bombing.

Apparently, evidence has emerged that the CIA paid millions of dollars to witnesses in the bombing trial in order for them to change their stories and thus implicate Libya. Dr. Jim Swires, the father of a bombing victim has, along with many others, for years doubted the Libyan connection. He has recently been fearful that the 'set-up' Libyan Mr al-Megrahi would become another victim of a US 'hit squad' , the sort that operates in Pakistan etc.

The stirring up of trouble for those regimes in Africa and the Middle East which the 'West' wishes to destabilise apparently follows a blue print. Port cities are often chosen and a few snipers placed on roofs from which they pick off members of the population in order to create mayhem and panick amongst the rest. One of the most recently destabilised regimes is Syria, a longstanding supporter of the Hezbollah organisation in Lebanon which has in the past provided armed resistance to Israel. Up to date news reports speak of Israeli preparations for renewed war against Lebanon. Capitalism in crisis has a natural inclination to turn to war to solve it's problems.

August 2011 - North East Region - new officers appointed.

SLP National Officials would like to congratulate the following Comrades on their elections to the following posts of the North East Region. These being:

Regional President - Frank Harrison

Regional Vice-President - Tommy Geach

Regional Secretary - Chris Watson

Regional Treasurer - David Geach

August 2011 - SLP Party President Andrew Jordan comments on the riots.

Over the past few nights we have seen violence grip the streets of London which is now spreading across Britain.

I want to start by saying that this kind of violence, which has resulted in the sheer destruction of local communities and the deaths of innocent people, is totally and utterly wrong. Violence directed in such a way can never be justified. The people taking part in such acts must realise that the anger they are feeling is being released at the wrong people.

It is my firm belief that the root cause of so many young people going out and committing such offences is the fact that the Capitalist system in Britain has resulted in almost one million 16-24 year olds not being in any form of education, training or work. Many young people are left feeling as though they have no future and so nothing to lose.

The people of Britain must decide where we go from here, we cannot afford to continue with the present system as it falls apart around us. Only a Socialist system will tackle long term unemployment and guarantee the right to education and work which is being denied to many people in modern society. Only the Socialist Labour Party will ensure the investment in society that can take Britain forward.

August 2011 - Tinder Box Britain.

Prior to the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin managed a Russian émigré newspaper with the title 'Iskra' or 'Spark'. It was evident to brilliant minds like his that even the smallest event could spark off tumultuous consequences. So it has happened in Britain with the larger issue of the reported shooting dead by police of an individual in London. The conditions for wild events have to be in place, however and the British Establishment must bear full responsibility for the Tinder Box that is Britain in 2011.

The mantra of the Government has been 'we are all in this together' when referring to the ongoing austerity. Clearly, this grotesque lie has been well and truly exposed since Establishment 'millionaire' politicians have been sunning themselves on beaches near and far, no doubt sipping their champagne, whilst the masses in the inner cities and elsewhere can barely cobble together enough cash to feed themselves, let alone take holidays.

The attacks upon Britain's youth have been unrelenting from successive Capitalist (Labour,ConDem and Nationalist) governments. In order to gain education, youngsters have had huge debts placed around their necks and have had previous benefits such as Education Maintenance Allowance summarily withdrawn. The privileged Public School prats who have run our Country for years have been completely out of touch with the hardships that ordinary people have had to endure. Pensioners have frozen to death in winter because they have not been able to afford to keep themselves warm or feed themselves adequately. As has been seen on the T.V. young people are saying that they too cannot afford to feed themselves.

They have bleak employment prospects because of the continuing Thatcherite policies of mass unemployment. Many have little prospect of ever securing their own housing, bringing up happy and well fed families and having happy, fulfilled and meaningful lives. The vandalism of past Tory governments in decimating the livelihoods of mining communities can now be seen in operation throughout Britain. The bully boys (short for Bullingdon in some cases) use the police solely to protect their vested interests and treat the masses of poor and unemployed as 'non-people'- the 'disappeared' generation (if they ever think of them at all). Well, these people are certainly making their presence known at the moment! At least Britain's youth is showing the rest of the world that they will not stay downtrodden, that they have spirit and in the words of the great Thomas Rainsborough that 'they have lives to lead'.

The parallels with what is happening in our towns and cities to the situation in the USA are apparent so that over there, cities like Portland, Baltimore and former steel towns in that Country like Gary, Indiana are extremely run down and can offer little or no hope to their inhabitants. The parallels are probably so evident because both government systems operate Capitalist right wing Zionist agendas that require an 'underclass of long-term unemployment. The British Establishment will no doubt wish to see the working class split amongst themselves, a diversion from the reality that they (the Establishment) are the true culprits of Capitalist society's breakdown and should be behind bars for their corruption and exploitation.

The answer to all our problems is of course a SOCIALIST system where social benefits and costs are included in decision making and not the profits of rogue Capitalists! It is about time that Britain drew upon its historic socialist traditions and for the first time installed a truly Socialist Government! In case 'they' haven't noticed, CAPITALISM IS DRIVING US TO DESPAIR! and should be ABOLISHED ONCE AND FOR ALL!

October 2011 - British Media can't face up to anti-Capitalist surge.

The penny appears to have dropped amongst huge swathes of the working class that the whole rotten Capitalist system is rigged in favour of the most wealthy in society.

The group under the title 'Occupy Wall Street' are setting up permanent sites, not only in New York but now in hundreds of cities across the USA, as far as Los Angeles in California. They are protesting against the US political and financial system. The fact is that the wealthiest in society are contributing the least in taxation with the burden falling most heavily on the working class. Corruption and fraud are rife in the US but if the rich break any financial laws, then these laws are often amended retrospectively so that the culprits escape unscathed.

The main political parties are representing the interests of the top echelons of society. It is being said that the Republican Party is merely representing Wall Street. The Democrats, being similarly funded by Goldman Sachs etc. are also largely under the same financial influences. Democrat voters from the working classes are becoming increasingly disillusioned with the President, Obama, whose actions seem designed to benefit only the wealthiest in the Country. Foreign wars and interventions can be seen to be benefitting the arms companies and their Wall Street backers.

The subsequent wealth gap in the US is increasing month after month with the lower strata of society continually losing jobs and benefits. No wonder large numbers of the working class are up in arms calling for an end to the Capitalist nightmare. As Charles Hugh Smith, the economic commentator, has pointed out, some of the most impoverished in America and beyond regard themselves as 'middle' class rather than working class. It is in the interests of the ruling elite that people view themselves in this way since it is regarded as a way of defusing the natural inborn militancy and hostility to the Capitalist system of a growing majority of working class people. Commentators and protestors are noting that after the Arab spring, we are seeing the European and American summer and autumn. Meanwhile it is reported that the wealthy on Wall Street such as JP Morgan Chase Bank are buying off the police with millions of dollars, in effect providing their own 'private army' for use against the demonstrators.

We are not standing idly by in Britain, either. We have had the excellent examples of 'UK uncut' protesting against the wealthy tax dodgers. We have seen the class based riots of the summer. The latest anti-Capitalist group to form is (after the US example) called 'Occupy the Stock Exchange'. As in the US, working class people realise that we have a Con-Dem coalition representing the interests of the elite and big business. In fact some Tory M.P.'s have acknowledged that at their recent Manchester Conference, they found it almost impossible to shake of the corporate, big business lobbyists.

Labour, the official opposition at Westminster as well as the Scottish and Welsh nationalists have also proven to be in the pockets of 'Big Business'. In fact, Gordon Brown's government ,under the guidance of Darling and Mervyn King, poured billions of taxpayers money into the hands of the Bankers, in the same way as the current Con-Dems with the latest round of 'Quantative easing'. Current and future generations of the working class are meant to pick up the tab. So there is little point in the British anti-Capitalists putting any faith in the Labour 'lot'. The parallels with politics in the US are remarkable in the lack of political representation for those in society suffering the greatest financial burdens.

The pro-Establishment British media are having to be dragged 'kicking and screaming' into giving even the most meagre coverage to these potentially momentous events. Their attempted blackout of these latest working class uprisings against the Capitalist system are obviously becoming unstuck in a big way. Many mainstream journalists should, as with so many other political exposures, question their integrity in being involved in these cover-ups.

October 2011 - Beware the 'Bill of Wrongs'.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights which was adopted by the United Nations after the end of the Second World War is coming under attack from large sections of the British political 'right' who feel that it is inhibiting them from fully exploiting their powers over the British Working Class. It is also causing inconvenience to those in the British Establishment wishing to enforce wage slavery and to send British residents abroad for questioning under torture and incarceration without trial.

These same 'dark forces' of the 'right' are calling for existing protections to be replaced by a so called 'Bill of Rights'. Now there would be nothing wrong in principle for a 'Bill of Rights' which enhanced our freedoms and liberties and which gave protection from Capitalist exploitation, gave guarantees of personal security, protection from vicious Capitalist laws , guaranteed employment, a decent living wage, adequate affordable housing, leisure time, safety at work, guarantees of living happy and prosperous lives etc. In fact, what we are talking about is a Socialist Bill of Rights.

The political 'right' in Britain see things very differently, however. The sort of 'rights' they have in mind are the rights to be able to exploit to the fullest their fellow human beings in order to maximise their personal wealth. They envisage the rights for the richest in the Country to be able to send their children to the 'best exclusive public schools' where they don't have to mix with the working classes. These Schools, such as Eton cost tens of thousands of pounds per year for each child and provide the 'pillars of the Establishment' including numerous Prime Ministers (and the current idiot).

Another 'right' likely to be incorporated by these people would be the so called 'Right to buy', begun by the Thatcher Government and drooled over by much of the Labour Party. This enabling of some sections of the working class to privatise their formerly 'public' housing has been quite often a right to take on unaffordable debt. It is presently being resuscitated by the current 'Thatcherite' ConDem coalition but how it is supposed to work in practice is another matter.

Do people really want to take on large debts for so called 'assets' (more like liabilities), i.e. houses that are generally falling in value? At the end of the Second World War and with the possibility of Communism spreading to Britain, the panicking Establishment, via a Labour Government, was to some extent forced to 'buy off' the British workers. Wages, therefore, were made adequate for the man of the household to be able to single- handedly pay off the mortgage and support his family. Today, this is often impossible for both family partners if working. Wages have fallen relatively as a result of the exploitation of Bosses, failure of some unprincipled union leaders to fight to protect workers pay (in some cases coupled with vicious anti-union legislation) and influxes of cheap labour into the country via British Establishment backed European Union laws. Coupled to this is massive job insecurity (with short –term contracts etc.). How are people supposed to save for deposits on houses, let alone keep up the repayments on mortgages etc? Are we not going down a road that we have travelled before which has been one of the most damaging to our national financial standing? The Tory, LibDem, Labour, Nationalist consensus has been to maintain the running of the British economic engine based upon a housing bubble. With falsely inflated housing prices, people felt (often mistakenly) wealthier, bought more in the shops (e.g. on upgrading their homes) and willingly took on more debt. Sales of social housing and lack of any adequate replacement for it helped to create Government induced housing shortages which further inflated the property bubble. This was also to some extent 'buying' the votes of house owners for electoral purposes. Many on the British 'left' could see the dangers of this bubble expanding over the years but apparently it took Gordon Brown's idiotic, blinkered and complicit Labour Government completely by surprise when it blew up in the period 2007-8. The U.S. Government, pursuing much the same policies caused a similar housing bubble to explode in that country. The result is that property prices in both countries are still retreating with countless families being thrown out on their ears by unscrupulous, often fraudulent lenders. The same story has been true throughout much of Europe. With the ongoing pursuit of these devastating, failed housing policies, one can only say that the Capitalist political parties are economically 'one trick ponies', unable to learn anything from their past historical mistakes. One side effect of this 'Right to Buy Debt' has been the increase in rents payable for accommodation as a result of the shortages of available housing. Why should exploitative private individuals have the options of charging hugely inflated rents and bullying their tenants with threats of eviction? - yet further examples of the total unfairness of the vicious Capitalist system.

Another candidate for a 'right-wing Bill of Rights' would in all likeliness be a right of employers to ignore and withdraw health and safety at work restrictions and regulations. We have seen some of the probable effects of cutting corners for financial reasons with recent reported work- related fatalities. With the well led, strong NUM of the mid 1980's there would have been no question of not upholding the highest standards in Health and Safety. It is a pity that such standards have not been universal or even upheld.

Another likely measure would be the freedom of private companies to run schools and brainwash children with failed, obsolete, Capitalist, corporate mentalities and ideologies. There would also be the freedom for private companies to completely take over the prison system and as in America financially exploit inmates to the hearts content of their shareholders.

A further draconian measure from the reactionaries would be the introduction of more freedom to swiftly remove people around the World at the behest of the Americans. The purpose would be for torture abroad and incarceration without trial (removing any rights under habeas corpus). The Americans are currently ignoring any International laws concerning foreign abduction, torture, illegal regime changes, murder of political opponents on foreign soil etc. and many Labour as well as other Capitalist politicians have been complicit in these actions and their cover- ups. The U.N. has been sadly lacking in it's duty to uphold it's own Charter on human rights and other progressive conventions. It has appeared increasingly to be merely a tool of the World's current 'superpower', the United States. A right-wing Bill of Rights would enable the U.S. to have even more freedom to interfere in the direction of British policy and foreign affairs.

Such a 'Bill of Rights' from the British Establishment Capitalist political parties would in reality and in effect be a Bill of 'Wrongs' to be opposed by all progressive forces within society. We certainly would not object to change and the introduction of a SOCIALIST Bill of Rights because of the failures of UN Charters etc. We would willingly help with the dismantling of the current unprincipled Capitalist system, because we would be replacing it with one based principally upon TRUE fairness and human rights.

Sept 2011 - Breaking down the wall of silence.

The Cuban Five. Persecuted for stopping terrorism.

September 12 marked the 13th year of the unjust incarceration in the U.S.A of five men known as the Cuban Five. They are Rene Gonzales Schwerert, Lananina Salazar, Fernando Gonzales Lort, Antonio Guerror Rodriguez and Gerhardo Hernandes Nordelo.

They entered the U.S.A. city of Miami, on a mission to expose the paramilitary groups based in that city that regularly plot terrorist attacks on Cuba. Their attacks on Cuba have cost the lives of hundreds of people, including non- Cubans; they include several dozen bombings, assassination attempts and include the planting of a bomb in the 1970s on a Cubana airline flight, which killed all 73 passengers and crew. Because the anti-Cuba organisations operate with the apparent support and full knowledge of sections of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) it had been felt necessary to send the Five to discover the truth and expose to the world – including the US public – the extent and consequences of their actions.

The Five were betrayed and captured whilst actually passing information to the FBI and charged with spying. The people they exposed remain free. Ricardo Alarcon de Quesada the President of the Cuba National Assembly recalled that throughout all these years the Five have been subjected to cruel and inhuman treatment. They have been denied the right to see their wives. He condemned the "total silence imposed by the media dictatorship to extinguish the solidarity which they deserve and to conceal the truth. Hence the need to break down this wall of silence, the most important thing today," he stated. "The case of the Five is irrefutable evidence of Washington's complicity with terrorists," he affirmed, adding that the current U.S. administration will have to confront the dilemma of continuing or not the immoral cynicism of its predecessors.

Rene will have served his sentence on October 7. Phil Horowitz, René's lawyer, explained in a telephone conference from Washington that he has asked a Miami federal judge to allow his client to return to Cuba as soon as he is released to serve the three-year probation which was part of his sentence on the island, EFE noted. However, the prosecution is opposing the application, using the argument that René has not shown any remorse concerning the crimes for which he was sentenced, and is asking that he spend that three-year term in Florida where, as his attorney commented, he has no family. For full coverage of their unjust treatment and how to show your support log on to http://www.granma.cu/ingles/

Sept 2011 - Destabilization and the Confiscation of Assets: After Libya: Is Venezuela Next?

Article from venezuelanalysis.com

The Libyan rebels' August 23 attack on the Venezuelan embassy and compound in Tripoli went largely unreported, though fatalities were narrowly averted as Venezuelan ambassador Afif Tajeldine and the embassy staff moved to a safer location at the last moment and left Libya shortly thereafter. It transpired in the wake of the incident that Venezuela's embassy was the only one looted in the whole neighborhood, meaning that the attack which, according to eyewitness accounts, was guided by individuals of European appearance and military posture, specifically targeted the country's mission.

Venezuelan deputy foreign minister and permanent envoy to the UN Jorge Valero Briceño condemned the attack in the UN Security Council. In the meantime, Latin American commentators read the rebel hit against the Venezuelan diplomatic mission in Tripoli as a message to Chavez supposed to threaten him with being next blacklisted leader after the ousted Gadhafi.

It is widely expected that the approach the Empire put to work to destabilize Libya and Syria will in the foreseeable future be employed in Venezuela. Reuters mentioned the plan on August 17, saying that "Political violence in Venezuela threatens to undermine the outcome of next year's election whether President Hugo Chavez wins a new six-year term or not". Outbreaks of protests in Venezuela will be backed by vocal media campaigns launched by BBC, Euronews, CNN, Fox, Al Jazeera, etc. and will likely be paralleled by acts of vandalism and street killings perpetrated by terrorist groups which will sneak into Venezuela from other countries. On the whole, what Venezuela will face is an upgraded color revolution brand involving a stronger than ever component of armed violence. The Pentagon, the US intelligence community, the US Department of State, and the corresponding agencies of Great Britain, Spain, Israel, Canada, and others certainly have the task of preventing the re-election of Chavez in 2012 written into their agendas…

to read the rest of the article please click here: http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/6468

Sept 2011 - Did you know?

Did you know that Delaware has served as an internal tax haven in the United States and has done so since the late 19th Century? This is where many of the America's richest companies register to avoid or evade paying taxes.

What on earth is the justification for this kind of robbery? This loathsome bunch and their political supporters, of all main parties, have the bare faced cheek to tell us "We are all in it together."

TAX HAVENS ARE AN ABOMINATION!

It is said that there are only two certainties - death and taxes - well don't you believe it. There are scavengers that want all the benefits a society can give and give nothing in return, they run their businesses from these tax havens and even live there themselves. Strangely these parasites are not vilified by society, but every year many of them receive knighthoods, OBEs, CBE's or are made Dames of the British Empire. They get their own TV shows and we lavish even more money on them.

August 2011 - Toxic Sources.

The influence of the British media upon our near neighbours shouldn't be treated lightly. Going back a few years, Norway had an unexpected but important football win over England. The Norwegian commentator was ecstatic and poured out words in triumph that 'Maggie Thatcher, Sir Winston Churchill ' etc. etc. 'your boys took one hell of a beating'.

Similar influence should not therefore be overlooked in the case of the self-confessed mass-murderer Anders Breivik. Looking past the unsavoury company that he kept and his links with the far right in Britain, he was, apparently, heavily influenced by the Zionist right-wing commentator of the Daily Mail, Melanie Phillips. So much so that he has, according to reports, quoted her extensively in his writings. The Norwegians have obviously had much to concern them from far right influences. But what about the poor people of Britain?

Melanie Phillips, apart from her insidious tabloid journalism, has been a frequent member (almost a 'regular) on the panel of BBC 'Question Time'. She has also been a fixture on the BBC Radio production entitled the 'Moral Maze'. Her influence over the views of British subjects should not, therefore, be taken lightly. It would be hoped, therefore, that any rational, sensible British Government would take immediate steps to look into the likely malevolent effects of having these right-wing, Zionist views fed down our throats by an irresponsible British media and that every effort should be taken in the future to prevent such harmful influences from polluting our written media and airwaves!

July 2011 - SLP Wales AGM - new officers appointed.

The SLP wishes to congratulate the following members on their new appointments in our Welsh section. They are:

Wales President - Craig Jones

Wales Vice-President - Bob English

Wales Secretary - Liz Screen

July 2011 - What the papers DON'T say.

The incestuous relationship between the broadcast media, the written media and the main political parties in Britain has once again been shown to be highly detrimental to the wellbeing of our Country by the latest News of the World hacking scandal.

The Prime Minister is apparently extremely close friends with Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks, two people at the centre of the News International 'phone hacking conspiracy. Prominent TV political commentators such as Andrew Neil on BBC , Adam Boulton on Sky and media 'personality' Kelvin MacKenzie have close personal ties with Rupert Murdoch as ex and current employees. They may have some regrets, since would anyone seriously wish to be associated with an organisation where, reports say, permission for underhand investigations was required from 5 'Princes of Darkness'.

The Zionist Labour Party leadership (along with the Government) has apparently expressed the view that the immorality of the hacking operation should have no bearing on the decision as to whether Murdoch's News Corp. should extend its' British media dominance by taking a larger stake of B Sky B. .....Really? We all know the putrid Zionist influence over our media from the days of the Israeli- buried rogue (and probable agent) Robert Maxwell. His former Mirror Group employee Roy Greenslade has subsequently apologised, on behalf of the 'Mirror' to Arthur Scargill and the miners for the lies and scurrilous attacks that were launched by that media organisation alone. This has not stopped subsequent barbs being aimed from their papers, however, by their employees such as Paul Routledge.

This same malevolent influence is very conspicuous from the BBC as pointed out by peace activist Dr. David Halpin who has also noticed it in so called 'left 'daily publications. He is extremely critical and contemptous of the British media (BBC, Channel 4 News etc.) and still believes that doubts surround the death of Dr. David Kelly that members of Blair's 'Sofa' Cabinet should be in the dock over the Iraq invasion as well as Cameron etc. over Libya.

The fact that the latest 'phone hacking scandal has been largely suppressed by the 'red-top' papers leads to the conclusion that there are a lot of guilty secrets about with claims of thousands of 'phone hackings being mentioned. We learn that the original police enquiry could not uncover any of this ....really? The Press complaints commission headed by a Tory Baroness apparently failed to find evidence of this ...... really?

The dumbing down of politics by the broadcast and written media goes on apace. Socialist views can't get a look in, even though their relevance has never been so desperately needed with the collapsing Capitalist system there for all to see.

But what do we get from BBC Newsnight, BBC radio, Sky etc?.... Reviews of 'What the Papers Say'.

The lies and drivel (about media 'personalities', soap operas etc.) from the Capitalist newspapers are regurgitated and fed relentlessly to the public where they replace genuine news and relevance as to what deviousness, warmongering and immorality our Government is really up to in the World.

As has been recently observed, Lord Reith's successor at the BBC, the Director- General Frederick Ogilvie stated that his goal was to turn the BBC into a fully effective instrument of war...... You can say that again!

Talking of which, on the coming to power of a Socialist Labour administration in Britain, one of our first tasks might be to instigate a 'No-Fly Zone' over Rupert Murdoch's Wapping organisation.

* For more on Dr. David Halpin, please see the link below. He discusses the media and the dominance of 'Friends of Israel' groups in the main political parties. (David Cameron has stated that he is a Zionist.) 80% of the Tory party are members. No Labour M.P. can become a minister unless they are a member. He calls Lib Dem website treasonous. He says that the considerations of this foreign power equal or outweigh those of our own Country. Non of these interests are stated when M.P.'s debate relevant issues in Parliament. Blair appears to be Israel's ambassador to the Middle East.

See the video: http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/esp_sociopol_zion84.htm

July 2011 - Tolpuddle Festival 2011.

SLP members gave support to the 2011 Festival held from 15th to 17th July. The Party had a stall in the main Martyrs' Marquee which was operated by John Keaveney, Rob Hawkins, friends and family. Some members stayed in tents on the site but the majority arrived on the Sunday when the main march took place to honour the 19th Century trade union 'martyrs'. The Party was pleased to get its' message across during the festival and as can be seen from the 'photo gallery', we displayed our banners in the Sunday march. Some of our members were also attached to trade union delegations. Overall, we were very pleased with the goodwill shown to the Party from the public who in some cases gave us ideas for future campaigning.

June 2011 - Strike Action. Message from the SLP Party President.

Comrades, On Thursday, for the first time in a long time, UK-wide industrial action is being planned by several Trade Unions in relation to the Coalition Governments proposals over public sector pensions.

I want to give my support, on behalf of the Socialist Labour Party, to every single person on strike. The brave action taken by these Trade Unions and their members is showing the Coalition Government the depth of their anger at the ideological attacks of the 'ConDem' Government on their pensions.

Following Thursday, it is important that the TUC Trade Unions stay together to launch a co-ordinated wave of strike action should the Coalition refuse to back down from their vicious attack on working peoples money which they are doing to cover the mistakes of their financial terrorist friends who caused the financial problems in the first place.

We at the SLP will always support peoples right to strike and will fight any anti-Trade Union legislation the Coalition try to force through to help their ambition.

In Comradeship, Andrew Jordan Party President of the Socialist Labour Party.

June 2011 - The widening class divide.

The Divisions between the ruling class and the rest of us are becoming clearer as the Capitalist crisis rumbles on.

In Greece, the mass of the population are unwilling to accept the austerity measures being forced upon them by the international banksters and crooked financiers. The politicians trying to implement the measures are having to receive military style protection to keep the public at bay. Helicopter banners are being displayed by the protesters in the hope that this route of exit will be taken by the corrupt political leaders of the Country (as in the US exit of Vietnam and the Western stooge government in the Yemen etc.) The slogan 'No Pasaran' is shown on other banners. This was used by the Spanish 'left republicans' during their Civil War of the 1930's and Greeks are giving a nod of solidarity with the downtrodden Spanish masses. Loukanikos the dog is making a name for himself in his aggression against the military style police whilst at the forefront of the protest. The Greek public are demanding that the Country defaults on the unreasonable interest rates and debts being thrust upon them by the IMF, EU etc. Monies payable by the masses and state asset sales are going purely to maintain the lavish lifestyles and line the pockets of the international financiers and not to build the Greek economy.

Similar unreasonable demands are being made upon the British Public at this time. Workers are having their wages cut and terms of employment ripped up. They are being asked to work till a later age and pay more in contributions for inferior pensions. Safety at work legislation is being thrown in the bin by the bosses. Mass unemployment is being used as a weapon to drive down wages and conditions. Future generations are being asked to pay for the mistakes of Capitalist speculators and politicians.

What have the Capitalist Labour opposition to say about these attacks upon the British working class? Very little, because it has been Blair and Brown's Labour Government that has been the main architect and begun implementing these measures. When the ConDems launched an assault upon the structure of the NHS (demanding more privatisation etc), very few Labour members could be bothered to turn up in Parliament in order to debate and resist the attacks and so solid resistance has mostly come from within the NHS itself.

The same can be said for the Trade Union resistance to the attacks upon their members. Labour politicians have been unwilling to openly support strike action. There has been the same mealy-mouthed response and lack of support from the Labour Party that the miners received during their heroic resistance to Tory attacks in the 1980's.

As with the 1926 General strike and the 1984 miners strike, we have no doubt that the Labour Party will be doing all in its power to undermine workers resistance. It will be interesting to see which Union leaders are the first to be running to capitulate and selling their members down the river.

One thing is for certain, the Socialist Labour Party will never renounce the right to strike for ALL workers and will be solidly behind any working class resistance that may be forthcoming. This is a clear demarcation line between us and the Capitalist Quislings.

May 2011 - Obama's hideous values.

The U.S. President has been over here, pontificating on 'so-called' U.S. democratic values that are supposed to be shared with the British. Let us take a look at some of these 'values'.

He says that the 'free market' is essential for the progress of the world's population. This would sit neatly with the views of Thatcher and Reagan and subsequent British and U.S. Prime Ministers and Presidents and their respective political parties. The only problem is that the resulting free-for-all from decades of unfettered 'neo-liberalism' and 'free markets' has brought huge wealth discrepancy (poverty for the masses) and a Global financial crisis (crisis of Capitalism) that sees no end. What is more, the overall wealth and GDP's of ex-socialist countries that have adopted the free market have been seen to plummet.

When you are prepared to privatise everything that moves then moral outrages pile up on each other. One such case is the prison system. British Governments are more and more looking to the private sector to run our Jails (after the American model).

The USA has the highest percentage of prisoners in the world with at least 2.3 million people incarcerated. Racism is rampant with a hugely disproportionate number of 'blacks' behind bars – rather ironic when Obama's ethnicity is considered. The privatised prison system needs the numbers to be kept up in order to maximise revenues. So we had the case in Pennsylvania of thousands of children being put in prison for ridiculous 'non crimes' such as throwing a piece of steak. Two of the senior judges were found guilty of receiving huge amounts in paybacks from the prison privateers in return for shutting up the kids behind bars. Such are the sickening values espoused by Obama.

Again, we had the Obama promise to shut down Guantanamo. The idea for this camp probably originated in Britain (1660's) at the time of the Restoration of Charles the second. Old Commonwealth enemies of the crown were jailed on offshore islands where they could have no recourse to the law (e.g. of Habeas Corpus). Out of sight out of mind! Even in those times, it is unlikely that the necessity for so much torture in these places would have been felt when compared with what is going on in Obama's Guantanamo camp. But this is only one instance of extra-judicial incarceration. Foreign rendition of U.S. foes from around the world has been occurring, (with British and other Government collusion), to countries such as Egypt where torture has been rampant.

Again, Mr Obama we judge you by your actions, not words.

The U.S has also been a state founded principally on a 'War and weapons producing' economy. Its foreign interventions has seen millions of innocent people exterminated in the name of 'U.S. values'. Weapons such as those using agent orange and missiles tipped with depleted uranium have caused damage to lasting generations of civilians around the Globe (Libya is a current example).

The U.S. has been prepared to support vile Dictators who have downtrodden their populations in return for the Yankee dollar, whilst American Presidents have professed support for so-called democracy.

Current U.S. foreign policy is in the hands of Obama and the 'wicked witch of the west', Hilary Clinton. Whatever their so called values, we say that the British people should not touch them with a barge pole but should instead tell Obama and Co. precisely where they should stick them!

May 2011 - The new Blue Rinse Brigade.

The Labour Party is becoming more of a joke as the weeks go on. This week, we have been amused by the spectacle of Ed Miliband addressing an influential group in the party by the name of 'Blue Labour'. The aim of this group is apparently to influence the Party so that it attracts those members of the public who previously voted Tory. The mind boggles! Are we going to see the ranks of blue rinsed Trade Union leaders sitting at future Labour party conferences? There is no doubt about it, the current policies of the party are those that Thatcher's adherents were calling for all those years ago. It is so easy these days to move between any of the main parties because they are all pursuing the same right wing Capitalist agenda.

A major influence behind this grouping is one Maurice Glasman. He has recently been elevated to the peerage through Miliband's influence as 'Baron Glasman of Stoke Newington and Stamford Hill in the London Borough of Hackney.' You wouldn't think he would have much time for policy making after presenting his title. Anyway, it sounds like the Zionist leadership of the Labour Party are busily scratching each others' backs whilst ignoring the needs of the ordinary people of Britain who misguidedly vote for right wing, Capitalist, warmongering Labour M.P's in the hope that their lives will somehow be made more bearable. The penny appears to have dropped for these voters in Scotland. We must hope that it does for those still clinging to the wretched Labour Party elsewhere in the British Isles.

May 2011 - Unconstitutional and inappropriate.

Because the British Constitution is unwritten, then the SLP believes that our rights and liberties are unprotected and subject to the whims and fancies of whoever is ruling the political roost at any particular time. The so-called Constitution is said to have strengths from certain unwritten conventions which have evolved over the centuries. One such convention is that of 'Parliamentary privilege', which was flouted when police invaded the Commons and arrested a Tory M.P. The then Speaker of the Commons (Martin) was shown to be uninformed and out of his depth when not upholding this convention and went shortly afterwards.

After Cromwell's seizure of political power when head of the Army during the 'Protectorate' of the 1650's, for a short while, Britain had regional overseers called Major Generals who were appointed by the Lord Protector. This method of rule was not deemed popular by the Gentry and Aristocracy and so subsequent Governments tied the hands of the military (in theory) by making them subservient to the Crown and Parliament. Military commanders therefore took orders from political powers and did not, constitutionally, run the Country. We have to ask, therefore, why this convention is being subverted by the current Chief of the Defence Staff, the professional head of the armed forces, General Sir David Julian Richards.

This unelected, Establishment appointee is much like other appointed heads of the British armed forces. The 'Tatler' listed his school as one of the top Public Schools in the Country, a source, no doubt of countless other 'chinless wonders'. This week, the Public school twit announced to a Sunday newspaper that the terms of engagement on Libya should be changed so that direct attacks could be launched against the infrastructure of that Country, otherwise Gaddafi would survive in power. There are so many objections to be made against this outrageous statement. Firstly, it is immoral, since the infrastructure of a Country has to be built up over many years and there is little prospect of not causing huge loss of life to civilians etc. Not that morality or loss of life has ever had any bearing upon the policies of Labour or Tory Governments regarding foreign aggressions. Secondly, this has not been authorised by the UN resolutions on Libya, not that NATO or British Governments care a hoot about UN resolutions (as in the case of Iraq, or Israeli attacks on and expansion in Palestine). Thirdly and perhaps most pertinent to the above, Sir David Julian has no right to pronounce on British foreign policy and what we should be doing abroad, but should keep his trap firmly shut and take his orders in silence from the Government of the day which in theory should have at least a little bit of influence upon it from elected representatives! He really should read up on British history and try to get a flavour of our unwritten 'constitution'. We, of course, would wish for a written constitution which restores and defends hard fought- for rights and liberties, especially regarding Trade Unions, which have been decimated by succeeding Labour, Tory and other Capitalist administrations.

May 2011 - What's in a name?

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the current Managing Director of the IMF has been arrested in the US for an alleged sexually violent attack upon a female hotel worker. It has been stated that he was being lined up as the Socialist Candidate for next year's French Presidential elections.

He has been at the head of an organisation (IMF) that has been responsible for financially attacking and starving the world's working class. They have been driven to early graves in whichever Country the IMF has got its tentacles into and imposed its austerity measures on. We must ask the question, therefore, what on earth can this man have possibly had in common with the concept of, or anything else remotely related to, Socialism?

It just goes to show that you have to look at the contents of the tin very closely before you believe what it says on the label. It looks like the French 'left' have had a narrow escape.

May 2011 - Untimely and inappropriate.

James Connolly would most likely be turning in his grave. The Constitutional head of the British Army was today, at huge expense, being given a state welcome by the Country on whose behalf he fought against British oppression during Easter 1916 and on whose behalf he was shot in cold blood by a British Army firing squad.

Whilst this is upsetting to many elements in both countries, it is worthwhile trying to understand what exactly is going on here. It would seem that the modern way to gain influence over foreign countries is by financially dominating them. International finance in the form of the IMF, EU etc. are able to bully and give political direction to those countries that come under attack from International financial profiteering gangsters. Exceptionally severe terms are laid down for financial aid to these countries when it is required and this usually results in falling living standards for the poor and oppressed. As a result of Ireland, (part of Alex Salmond's 'Arc of Prosperity'), coming a tremendous 'cropper' when their economy imploded during the ongoing crisis of Capitalism (with property price crashes, banking collateral being wiped out and mounting unemployment) they have been forced to go cap in hand to the EU and IMF bankers. Because of the significant banking tie-ups between that country and Britain, the British Government are no doubt getting their 'hooks' re-established in the Emerald Isle via the new 'oppressive' lending terms and no doubt part of the ongoing deals are invitations of state visits at the highest level in order to highlight the new 'power relationships'.

The British have never lost their interest in the 'South' as recently revealed by disclosures that de Valera was fearful of attacks by Britain in WW11 and so gave up the names of IRA personnel in Britain as 'sweeteners'. We can recall personal stories e.g. of relatives in the British Navy shipwrecked off the coast of Southern Ireland during that War as a result of enemy action. They could have been held in the 'neutral country' for the duration but were introduced back into the 'North' via a pub on the border. Such cooperation can now be viewed in a different light as a result of these recent disclosures.

The political and financial value of Ireland is not of course the sole concern of Britain and the EU. Obama, the 'Uncle Tom' warmonger, is apparently visiting the Country next week in order to bolster his Irish 'vote' support ready for the next Presidential election. (He is also taking particular interest in Israeli affairs at this time, again no doubt with the US Jewish vote in mind.)

The tie ups between Britain and Ireland are very close and ongoing (as with family relations and trade). There is no doubt, however, that any of our relations who fought the Nazi hordes in WW11 did not do so in the hope or expectation that Public School, 'Hooray Henry', financial banking gamblers would through their uncontrolled recklessness bankrupt our Countries and leave us at the mercy of foreign Capitalist exploitation. Greece is currently being stripped of its assets by these Capitalist financial thugs. We must ensure that the same is not allowed to happen here or in Ireland but the current privatising Governments in both Countries don't fill us with any confidence in this regard. Truly Socialist Governments on the other hand WOULD give our populations the necessary protection from the global financial predators and terrorists (e.g. by following the ordinary people of Iceland's example in telling the bankers where to get off!)

May 2011 - May 5th Elections - The view from the left.

The SLP has emerged as the main electoral force on the left of British politics having outpolled the other 'left' parties that we have taken on. This gives us an excellent springboard since we are likely to benefit from the growing dissatisfaction with the capitalist, warmongering, Zionist-led Labour Party. The electoral strength of the Labour Party has been largely undermined in Scotland where the Nationalists have capitalised on the unpopularity of the main Capitalist parties at Westminster. Labour has in the past drawn much of its Westminster strength from it's Scottish base but this can no longer be taken for granted. Unpopularity with the Westminster Government coalition's vicious attacks on the working class have mostly focussed on the Lib-Dems (mini-me Tories) for their betrayal of any principles after having broken their covenants to the electorate over tuition fees, VAT rises, the NHS attacks etc. Because we have a co-ordinated programme and structure and are not distracted by the shifting concerns of various leftist alliances and single issue causes, the SLP is now quite properly established as THE party of the left in Britain.

April 2011 - How the British Political System stamps out Democracy.

Back in 1975, Britain had a referendum on whether or not to join the Common Market (or EU as it is today). We were told that this would be a purely trading relationship and that there were no hidden agendas. At the time, there were no rigid party political divisions on this issue but the majority of the 'left' in Britain voted 'No'. The British 'Establishment' wanted a 'Yes' vote and so expenditure on the 'Yes' campaign was roughly nine times that spent on the 'No' campaign. Unsurprisingly, the 'Yes' campaign won with two-thirds of the vote. On a level playing field there might well have been a 'No' vote majority. The trading relationship guarantee has come to nothing since the EU is now becoming a greater political and military union as the years go on.

The finances backing the 'Establishment' viewpoint are therefore crucial in moulding Britain's politics. Consequently, vast expenditures backing Capitalist party candidates in elections generally ensure that they are elected to Parliament and all other areas of political influence. These expenditures come from 'Big business', unsavoury Capitalists (tax dodgers etc.) with large fortunes, Capitalist pressure groups (including arms manufacturers, oil companies etc.) and also Capitalist system orientated trade unions. Many trade union leaders are on earnings and terms that divorce them from the rank and file and they become an 'aristocracy'. It is in their interests to maintain the system from which they are benefitting so much. There are, of course, principled exceptions to this, but under the last Labour Government (which took huge funds from Capitalist big wigs as well as from Capitalist orientated trade unions), many large unions sat back silently and allowed billions and billions of pounds to be pumped into banks and other Capitalist institutions in order to maintain the rotten corrupt Capitalist system when it hit the rocks.

Just before the Iraq invasion of 2003, a poll was done in a regional newspaper which showed that 96% of those polled were against any possible invasion. Huge protest movements marched against any action. Nevertheless, the British public were ignored and a resulting bloodbath and political shambles were the outcome. Despite the huge opposition, on BBC programmes like 'Question Time' and 'Any Questions' there was never a majority of the panel opposed to the invasion (i.e. reflecting the views of the British public). There would only ever on occasions be one token voice opposed to the Establishment viewpoint.

Again, on 'Newsnight', the Establishment agenda was thrust in our faces. The current propaganda on Libya is almost identical. This bias is a constant theme so that we may see just one token 'champagne' socialist on the odd occasion.

This media bias is also reflected in the world of journalism where the Establishment often co-ordinates the output of the newspaper media so that 'left' views are rarely represented. Socialist candidates in certain areas of the Country cannot even get their names in the papers when they are standing in elections so that they are excluded from the reported list of candidates in these papers. Again, the BBC and other media will do all they can to prevent any air time being given to left wing candidates. In the last General election, a Socialist Labour Party candidate for a brand new constituency was excluded from a BBC debate in which all the other candidates were invited. The Electoral Commission treat this much as the police investigating phone tapping at the News of the World did originally (i.e. 'they don't really want to know'). If airtime is given to Socialist candidates, the BBC representatives will throw questions like 'Why are you standing when you have no chance of winning?' (an actual first question). To Socialist Labour candidates, such questions are, of course, like water off a duck's back. Socialist candidates that do get into media debates are then given less time than mainstream Establishment candidates.

At the time of the English Civil War back in the 1640's, the Levellers were calling for 'annual' or 'biennial' Parliaments. The Chartists of the 1840's called for 'annual' Parliaments. Today we are stuck with mostly 4 or 5 Yearly Parliaments. Once in 5 years you get to put your tick in the box and then the new M.P. goes away and is 'worked on' by Capitalist pressure groups (and most often Capitalist party whips) and ends up ignoring the views of the people who voted for him or her. We are currently being given a referendum on the AV voting system. This is a huge irrelevance to the need for a TOTAL OVERHAUL of the British political system. Insomuch as it may marginally favour non-establishment parties then it might be worth supporting. The policy of the Socialist Labour Party, however, is for full proportional representation (after the French model).

Under pressure from the Levellers at the end of the English Civil War, the monarchy and the House of Lords were abolished almost overnight. Our current political system stinks. We have to look to our predecessors for guidance. So when we take on the Capitalist parties in elections, it is not that we approve of the existing British system, it is just that we will try to forward the case of Socialism wherever we can, undaunted by the rotten corruption and inequality thrown against us.

March 2011 - Nato's Fascist War - Reflections of Fidel.

I didn’t have to be a fortune teller to divine what I foresaw with rigorous precision in three Reflections which I published on the CubaDebate website between February 21 and March 3: "NATO’s plan is to occupy Libya," "Cynicism’s danse macabre," and "NATO's inevitable war."

Not even the fascist leaders of Germany and Italy were so supremely shameless immediately following the Spanish Civil War unleashed in 1936, an episode that many people have possibly recalled in recent days.

Almost exactly 75 years have passed since then; but nothing that can be compared to the changes that have taken place during 75 centuries or, if you will, in 75 millennia of human life on our planet.

Sometimes it would seem that those of us who serenely express opinions on these subjects are given to exaggeration. I would venture to say that rather, we are naïve in supposing that all of us should be aware of the deception or the colossal ignorance into which humanity has been dragged.

Article continues, click here.

March 2011 - TUC National Demonstration London.

The Socialist Labour Party gave support to Saturday the 26th's march to reverse the tide of cuts and attacks on the Working Class which have flooded down in recent years from the Capitalist parties of all descriptions in Parliament. We find it despicable that these same parties have, meanwhile, pumped hundreds of billions of pounds into the hands of the obscenely wealthy including bankers and other tax dodgers.

March 2011 - Disgraceful attacks on civilians by Nato dominated colonialist partnership in the Middle East

The old colonial powers of North Africa – America (colony Liberia), France (Algeria etc.) and Britain ( Sudan, Darfur, Somalia etc.) have launched strikes against Libya which Russia says are already outside the scope of the UN resolution 1973 which called for action to protect civilians . Humanitarian help to prevent loss of life in any conflict would be welcomed but in this case, unwarranted, outrageously powerful NATO partnership indiscriminate weaponry is being used, causing a growing civilian casualty rate. Putin in Russia has likened the action to a modern day crusade and opposition to the action,apart from in Russia is also rife in India, South America, China and all rational free thinking nations. Peaceful offers of mediation from countries such as Venezuela have not been pursued. The needs of the Capitalist weapons producing companies of the West have been the prime concern at the UN. To say that this intervention is selective is putting it mildly. Where was the 'humanitarian intervention' when Israel was doing a 'Guernica' on the helpless victims in Gaza. Where is or has been the assistance for the downtrodden victims in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemen, Egypt, Darfur etc.etc. Michel Chossudovsky at the Centre for Research on Globalisation says that the current illegal and aggressive acts form part of a US/Nato agenda and this alliance has brought in some 'figleaf' cover from reactionary Arab pro-western proxies. He says that the true reason for intervention has nothing to do with humanitarian issues but everything to do with oil. The actual reasons for the massive attacks on Iraq (causing a continuing horrific death toll) were not disclosed at the time, with blatant lies about weapons of mass destruction being substituted for the true ones, with oil grabbing, Israeli and weapons company interests being amongst these. The planning for the attacks on Iraq took months if not years. Despite this, the post conflict reconstruction and planning have proved to be almost non existent. Again, in the current situation, there has been virtually no time for post conflict planning but the obvious plot by the Western powers is to secure total dominance over Libya's oil production using a puppet regime in Eastern Libya. When asked about the effects of the French Revolution, Chou en-lai is reported to have told President Nixon in 1972 that it was 'too early to tell'

The 'ripple effect' from the current Western aggression might well have such an explosive outcome that future generations will look upon this as a major turning point in world history. As with the Iraq War, the House of Humbug (or Commons as it is often called) had a discussion on the current action and similarly, members sat like rows of nodding dogs in back windows of cars.(The nodding dogs of War). The benches, displaying tiers of feeble minded fascists covering the spectrum of Tories, mini-me Tories and Zionist led Labour (apart from a negligible few) were taking in with relish the lies and distortions from the same Establishment sources that lied about the causes of the Iraq War. These fascists only get elected because of the vast expenditures from big business and Capitalist pressure groups (including arms manufacturers) that they are able to use at election time. This has little to do with democracy and as with the Iraq War, the British public are largely against the current action and more firmly aligned to the views of the Socialist Labour Party.

March 2011 - An Article by SLP specialist on Libya, Dave Roberts, calling for Victory to the Al Fatah Revolution , Hands off Libya!

As the west gears up for intervention into Libya, the left in Britain with few exceptions are like rabbits in the proverbial headlights, transfixed by the brilliant glare of western propaganda. Many are either completely ignorant of the Gaddafi's  anti imperialist revolutionary history or prefer that their self opinionated pseudo left  intellectualism should not be disturbed by the very notion that the people of the previously poorest  and one of the most backward countries in the world, have through their own efforts, thrown off imperialism. Not only that but  within 4 decades, have gone on to build an economy and a society which  to the horror of western reactionary circles, is the envy of  the  revolutionary class conscious down trodden and poor of  Africa and the Arab world.  If they had bothered to read even a basic history text on  Libya's Green Revolution they would be rightly amazed by it's achievements, benefits which include universal suffrage, free life long education for all, up to post graduate level,  free medical and health care,  a guaranteed home for every Libyan and the highest per capita income in the Arab and African world (a per capita income which is a real average income rather than one based on the massive disparities in wealth to be found in western economies) .Unlike their Arab brothers and sisters in Egypt or Tunisia, Saudi Jordan, at the age of 16 they are entitled to join and attend their weekly held local peoples' committee and participate practically week in week out in the framing and delivery of policies and the allocation of resources that affect their daily lives. No wonder that participation rates in the political process exceed anything the "democratic" west can offer. A point lost on the BBC's Jeremy Bowen when he insisted that rebels were thirsting for democracy. Gaddafi correctly told him that he clearly knew nothing of the policy and practice of the authority of the people in Libya. 

 In setting off on the journey to bring Libya into the "modern " world Gaddafi has been conciliatory  to those elements in society who for reasons of the privilege or power they had held over the people through the mosques or through their previous patronage by western oil companies,  have  continued to resist the struggle for democratic and economic development. He guaranteed participation of the imams in the peoples' committees and ensured that the previous comprador class was no worse off as the wealth, education, health of all Libyans was raised to the remarkable levels they enjoy today. It is clearly these restorationist elements who are forming the backbone of the opposition, eyeing a chance for themselves of a "better" future under the local patronage of western oil companies or bringing Libya under  the  pan-islamist  resistance, rescuing it from what they fear as the westernising modernism and  growing secularism of the Green revolution. Unlike the opposition In Egypt or Tunisia the Libyan opposition have raised the royalist emblem of the western oil company imposed puppet King Idris and increasingly called for western imperialist intervention to secure their counter revolution. It should be glaringly obvious to all but the politically blind that the struggle in Libya is the complete opposite of the unfolding struggle across the rest of the Arab world. An understanding that  might explain why  Hague sent the SAS and MI6 on a secret mission to start  discussions to begin arming the opposition in Libya, whilst two weeks earlier Cameron was in Egypt gun running to the Military Junta. No calls for western intervention in Tunisia , Saudi Arabia , Jordan or Egypt then ?  No calls for the Bahraini or Saudi royals to be referred to the War Crimes Tribunal having invaded sovereign countries and killed unarmed civilians ?  Unlike the Left, British  Imperialism has a consistent class line-  support the Junta in Egypt, to hold back  generalised intifada and  destroy Libyan revolution.Why  ? because it has embodied, to date, the best organised and most resilient resistance in the Arab and African  world . Which is why Gaddafi was referred to by Nelson Mandela as one of the "greatest freedom fighters of the century", why The first country Mandela visited upon his release from 27 years in an apartheid gaol was Libya to thank Gaddafi for his consistent support for the ANC,  why he is supported  by and has supported Cuba, The Sandinistas, Chavez , The Palestinian cause The Irish national struggle etc etc  It would be a disaster for western oil companies and imperialism generally if any  of the Libyan lessons learnt in 40 years of anti-imperialist struggle began to infect the generalised Arab revolt  Which might explain why a country with a population the size of Wales albeit with better health and wealth indices ,is now  facing the combined political muscle and potential military threat of  the European union, NATO the United States etc. It is clearly a bigger ideological rather than military threat. Particularly at this time against the background  of  the continued worldwide  economic collapse of capitalism, it's drive towards generalised warmongering, and it's scramble to secure oil supplies and arms deals. 

That any of these truths should get in the way of western warmongering propaganda has led to an unprecedented campaign  to put the frighteners on  western middle class intellectuals, for example, the enforced resignation of Sir Howard Davies at The London School of Economics for accepting a donation from Saif Gaddafi's foundation after the University had awarded him a Ph.D. This despite the fact that there is hardly a university in the UK that has not taken money from the "Gaddafi regime" ,but,  as the Daily Telegraph pointed out, the real sin was  not taking the money but engaging in academic dialogue with the Libyan's on the practice of direct democracy in Libya. Saif Gaddafi had been asked to deliver the Ralph Milliband Lecture ( Yes the father of the Milliband regime and who according to the Daily Telegraph like Gaddafi was seeking  his own Third Way which was neither Soviet model of socialism or the obvious oppression of western capitalism)   It should be as clear as crystal, who are the reactionaries and who are the anti- reactionaries, who are the imperialists and who are the anti-imperialists in this pivotal struggle. Of course all class conscious ,anti-imperialist and progressive movements should stand shoulder to shoulder with the unfolding  Arab revolt but they should also stand for the victory of the Libyan Al Fatah revolution against  western counter revolution. It's one and the same struggle, although one doubts that much of the British left will understand that .

 Dave Roberts has visited Libya numerous times over the last 15 years leading a number of  European  delegations, participating in a number of International Roundtable conferences in Tripoli and Benghazi, facilitating academics in British universities to study the workings of direct democracy. He has toured the country extensively meeting with students, academics, health workers members of Peoples committees and the Revolutionary Committees Movement.

March 2011 - Nuclear Devastation in Japan

It is remarkable how Labour politicians , 'greens' such as Monbiot and assorted capitalist establishment idiots on the media still cannot abandon their calls for nuclear power in Britain despite the nightmare scenario that this sort of power production is wreaking on the population of Japan. The nutty 'know all' scientists cannot control the monsters that they are creating and true effects are being hidden by governments and politicians (including Obama) in the pay of the nuclear lobby. The US has already given Japan a good dose of radioactive devastation, affecting generations of people after Hiroshima and Nagasaki and now, the American company responsible for the apparently faulty designs of the Japanese reactors has (even this week) been touting for billions of pounds worth of reactors in India. Wikileaks have disclosed that huge amounts (billions) have changed hands in bribes in that Country alone. It would be interesting to see the scale of such corruption with regard to British politicians and spokespersons. It is also reported that bribery has been evident in obtaining clearance from the authorities for these apparently faulty designs. The obvious answer to this worldwide dilemma for safe power is CLEAN COAL TECHNOLOGY and other environmentally friendly options and the replacement and abandonment of UNSAFE NUCLEAR MADNESS (in weapons technology as well) Only one party has consistently adopted this, the only logical and rational way forward for the wellbeing of future generations:- THE SOCIALIST LABOUR PARTY !

March 2011 - Libya, Getting it Right: A Revolutionary Pan-African Perspective

The following article by Gerald A. Perreira is being reposted here from Pan-African News Wire. It was originally posted at Dissident Voice.

Thousands of Indians, Egyptians, Chinese, Filipinos, Turks, Germans, English, Italians, Malaysians, Koreans and a host of other nationalities are lining up at the borders and the airport to leave Libya. It begs the question: What were they doing in Libya in the first place? Unemployment figures, according to the Western media and Al Jazeera, are at 30%. If this is so, then why all these foreign workers? For those of us who have lived and worked in Libya, there are many complexities to the current situation that have been completely overlooked by the Western media and 'Westoxicated' analysts, who have nothing other than a Eurocentric perspective to draw on. Let us be clear – there is no possibility of understanding what is happening in Libya within a Eurocentric framework. Westerners are incapable of understanding a system unless the system emanates from or is attached in some way to the West. Libya's system and the battle now taking place on its soil, stands completely outside of the Western imagination.

This article continues, click here

April 2011 - Energy Matters

To suggest that renewable technologies alone can power Britain cleanly and securely is somewhat disingenuous. Britain currently generates 4.5% of its electricity from renewable sources and the thought of the British economy becoming a world leader in green technologies is derisory. We are already considered dinosaurs in this field by many other countries.

Change will not happen without legislation. Whilst we live in what is euphemistically referred to as a 'parliamentary democracy' no political party is going to put forward a manifesto pledge for a 'no-growth' economy or any policy which might bring fear of the lights going out. However hard we try, we are very unlikely to change the living habits of the majority of people in Britain.

In the meantime the problem of fuel security has to be addressed. Britain has never had an integrated energy policy. Governments of all shades have lunged aimlessly from one idea to the next with only the next four years to concern them.

In the last 25 years UK governments have squandered our most valuable assets. The privatisation of energy sources has led to profit a driven industry only concerned with profit instead of consumers or the environment. North Sea gas has been squandered and deep mines were closed for purely political reasons. The closing of deep mines should not be a cause for celebration by environmental campaigners. Hundreds of thousands of Welsh miners were thrown on the scrapheap, thousands of communities were destroyed and the rise of open cast mining inevitably followed.

Currently the UK is a net importer of energy. We import 8% of our oil, 32% of our gas and 70% of our coal. It is easy to believe that coal is a fuel of the past but globally the burning of coal increases year on year. It cannot so easily be dismissed as an energy source.

The UK burns 60 million tonnes of coal a year and 44 million tonnes of it is imported. This is totally insane. Not only do we have adequate coal reserves of our own but that which is imported is of vastly inferior quality, often produced in areas of very poor working conditions and political instability.

Climate campers were right to campaign against the Drax power station. However, the problem is not just that Drax burns coal. Why should the most modern of power stations produce more pollution than older, less efficient stations? The reason is that it burns the dirtiest form of fuel on the planet i.e. imported tar sands, shale oil and Petroleum coke. This power station made a pre-tax profit of £158 million in 2009. This is outrageous when that money could have been spent on quality coal and efficient filtering and processing facilities. In the 2006 Energy Review the Coal Industry argued for money to be spent on clean coal technology, carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). This advice was ignored. CCS, which has no emissions, could replace gas power plants, which emit more than half the carbon of non CCS coal plants, making an 80 percent carbon reduction by 2050 more achievable. Other technologies available for energy production with coal include Underground Coal Gasification. Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle, and Pressurised Fluidised Bed Combustion. None of these technologies are being taken seriously by Britain's privatised energy industries, not because they are unviable, but because they are expensive. The US, India, Brazil, China, Russia and others have vast reserves of coal and they will burn it. Only by forging ahead with Clean Coal Technology can we hope to influence what happens in the rest of the world. In 2006 something happened which sent shockwaves around Europe. Russia fell out with the Ukraine and the amount of gas which passes over the Ukraine to Western Europe was dramatically reduced. EU countries pay Russia $250 per 1000cu cm of gas whereas Ukraine was paying $50. This subsidy was unlikely to continue when Ukraine invited in the US and made moves towards the EU. When Ukraine took their gas from the pipeline anyway supplies to Germany, France and Spain fell by 30%, highlighting the vulnerability of transnational energy supplies. This is the real reason behind the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and the threats against Iran. The search for oil in the most remote regions of the world will surely bring greater disasters. The all powerful oil companies will prove very difficult to stop – even after the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Of course, no government will let the lights go out. In January 2010 when Britain suddenly experienced very cold weather there was a 45% surge in energy requirement. The only fuel flexible enough to have coped with this surge in requirement is coal. The government is now committed to producing at least 35 per cent of our energy from renewable sources by 2020. Alongside energy efficiency that may fill some but not all of the purported gap. The threat of nuclear power is again at the forefront of government policy. Those of us old enough to remember the 1970s kidded ourselves that we had won this battle. The campaign against a nuclear reactor at Portskewett in Gwent prevented the Severn Estuary from having the highest concentration of civil nuclear reactors in the world. The Chernobyl disaster stalled the nuclear lobby for a while but it is firmly back on the agenda again. None of this is meant to undermine the need to forge ahead with renewable technologies. Unfortunately Capitalism will thwart radical ideas because too much is at stake for the profiteers. The problem is not insurmountable but all options have to be kept on the table because there is no panacea.

Liz Screen, Socialist Labour Party Wales.

 

March 2011 - The Birmingham Six: Have we learned from our disgraceful past?

The Guardian 12/03/11 By Gareth Peirce

See Also at http://www.troopsoutmovement.com/latestnews.htm

At the trial in London last year of a young Muslim, one defence closing speech clearly interested the jury. In the case it was considering, it was being asked to infer involvement in terrorism from coincidences of association and the defendant's clear interest in radical Islam. The speech recalled another trial, that of the Birmingham Six, based equally on seemingly damning coincidences of faith, association and political loyalties. In that case six men, all Irish, all Catholic, had been drinking in a pub at New Street station in Birmingham before boarding a train to catch a ferry to Belfast. Within six minutes, bombs exploded in two pubs on the station precincts. The men, all carrying mass cards, were travelling to the funeral of a friend, an IRA man who had blown himself up whilst assembling a bomb. All were Republican sympathisers. All were convicted in 1975 of the murders of the 21 victims killed in the explosions in the pubs shortly after their train had left for the Heysham ferry. All were completely innocent. Applying lessons of past injustice to the present, the jury acquitted the young Muslim man.

On 14 March 1991 the Birmingham Six finally walked free. Today, 20 years on, it is vital to appreciate the horrifying detail of what happened to them, and how the truth was not acknowledged for 16 years. The annihilation of justice for others remains an ever-present spectre. The replaying of their triumphal re-entry into the street outside the Old Bailey triggers only partial recollection; Richard McIlkenny steady and philosophical, "Every dog has his day"; Billy Power, looking ahead, thinking of others – "Judith Ward, the Bridgewater Four." And Paddy Hill, burning with rage, "Justice? Those people in there don't even know how to spell the word." It had been his anger, sustained for 16 years, that scorched a route by which ultimately the six would escape. By 1980, he had written more than 1,000 detailed letters to lawyers, MPs, journalists; most never replied, almost all who did, answered similarly: "I'm afraid the odds against you are overwhelming." After all, as well as the coincidences, four of the six men had signed confessions to the bombings soon after they were pulled off the Heysham ferry, and three tested positive for elements of explosives.

For 16 years every other aspect of the case was disregarded; that the men were, in Paddy Hill's words, "tortured and framed" on arrest, beaten, subjected to mock executions, threatened with being thrown from a high building or a car on the motorway, and burnt with cigarettes; that their torturers were the infamous West Midlands serious crime squad, or that the scientist called to Heysham was the incompetent Dr Skuse. They were failed by everyone. Cut and visibly bruised when they were taken from the police station to the magistrates' court, the solicitors who saw them first succeeded in getting legal aid forms signed, but failed to log their injuries.

Within an hour they were in Winson Green prison, where they ran the gauntlet of a lynch mob of prison officers; by the end the teeth of two of the men and the blood of all covered the reception area; the evidence essential to establish in the future that the "confessions" in police custody had been beaten out of them had been obliterated.

The confessions were ludicrously thin, but anything would have done. Retrospectively the police are invariably excused: "After all, weren't they under extreme pressure to get convictions?" The bombs at New Street station had torn into the psyche of the country; support for the IRA in England, still then regarded romantically by many, was annihilated overnight. It was years until the IRA would admit to the bombings. It seems intended warnings had not been telephoned through. The men's homes were the targets of petrol bombs, and nooses were hung on their gates; their families fled, some changed their names, one wife had to move 17 times, and put her children into care for their own safety.

Nevertheless, if the six men were all innocent, how could they have been convicted, and how could the true facts have been suppressed for 16 years? They had a trial by jury after all, moved to avoid local prejudice from Birmingham to Lancaster Crown Court.

But even at the time the appearance of fairness was questionable; at the court, housed in a medieval castle, the trial judge made his views clear. As he reviewed the evidence, Lord Bridge signalled his own reactions: "I am of the opinion," he told the jury, "not shared by all my brothers on the bench, that if the judge has formed a clear view, it is much better to let the jury see that and say so, and not pretend to be a kind of Olympian detached observer."

He suggested that if Dr Skuse was wrong about his claimed findings of nitro-glycerine traces, that would mean he had wasted most of his professional life; if the mens' confessions were false and had been signed because of brutality, the enormity of the conspiracy within two police forces beggared belief. He considered it far from uncommon for criminals to seek relief from inner tensions by confessing.

The prosecution's evidence, bar the coincidences, was in fact hardly credible, but nevertheless swallowed whole. The confessions of the four who capitulated were brief; none described (nor could the police who fabricated them afford to describe) the process of constructing or planting the bombs: they were simply said to have been left in two pubs in "white plastic bags" – previous IRA bombs retrieved from the Birmingham area after telephoned warnings having been thus found. Later forensic analysis by an independent laboratory established that the bombs had in fact been contained in leather holdalls, an inconvenience that in no way interfered with the juggernaut of conviction.

Every appeal failed; at their first, Lord Widgery considered there was "no ill treatment beyond the normal". When the men sued the police for assault, the courts struck down their claims as impermissible attacks on legal certainty, "an appalling vista". By 1991, the year of their release, 18 senior judges in turn had relied on the mantra that the original decision of the jury must be given deference, yet themselves listened to new evidence piecemeal before rejecting it outright, substituting themselves for the jury as the fact-finding body rather than order a retrial. Two retired law lords, Devlin and Scarman, fired broadsides at so seismic a constitutional shift.

Nevertheless, the appeal ordered by the home secretary in 1987 was expected, finally, to ensure the men's release, hearing as it did weeks of dramatic new evidence; police officers on duty at the time had heard the threats and seen the injuries; a chart discovered in the handwriting of the officer in charge, a necessity if the false accounts of interrogations of six men at the hands of 12 officers from the serious crime squad were to match up. It contained inexplicable alterations; one interview claimed by Paddy Hill to have been conducted but denied by police at trial was written into the chart, but then crossed out. Dr Skuse, now retired on grounds of "limited efficiency", cut a pathetic figure, claiming to have authenticated his dubious on-site tests of 1974 the week before the appeal, this time in his kitchen. Hundreds of distinguished observers queued each day for entry to the court. When the court rejected the appeal, commenting "the longer this hearing has gone on, the more convinced this court has become that the verdict of the jury was correct", the men's expectations of immediate release were in smithereens, but so too was the reputation of British justice.

The very public catastrophe of the appeal, ironically, energised an immediate fight back. How could the brutal West Midlands serious crime squad remain unscathed, having rampaged unchecked for more than two decades? In the end its overconfidence was its ruin; one interviewee too many, shackled naked to a chair, had been half suffocated with a plastic bag to force a confession. Questionnaires sent out to every prison were returned revealing in unrelated cases the same fabricated police verbals. Officers on the periphery of events in 1974 hinted at the true picture; one Special Branch officer at the Heysham Ferry confided that the night before giving evidence at the trial he had rewritten his entire notebook to coincide with the evidence given by a colleague in court the day before as to the actual time of arrival in Lancashire of the West Midlands police. He excused himself, "you know how things were".

But in the end, it was the simplest of stupidities that concluded the matter. As the members of the serious crime squad had written (and rewritten) their false accounts, indentations on the pages underneath revealed how their books had been altered. Revelations of the efficacy of the forensic test in proving similar fabrications led to the disappearance from police storage in the West Midlands of dozens of potentially problematic notebooks. But for the Birmingham Six, their failed appeal in 1987 had secured for them one unexpected advantage; the notebooks in their case had been retrieved before the appeal, and retained by a separate police force, Devon and Cornwall. And so it finally came about that the six men emerged into the world.

Has there been a happy ending? Research shows the wrongly convicted suffer irreversible psychological damage far greater than that sustained even by the survivors of major physical trauma. Yet the state fails to provide any expert (or indeed any) aftercare; more than one appellant who has emerged seemingly triumphantly from the Court of Appeal has within weeks been reduced to sleeping on the pavements.

The six men are now five; Richard McIlkenny, the oldest, died in Ireland in 2006. The steadiest of all in prison, once outside his strong heart and spirit broke. Each man, from a devout community in which marriage and family are revered, has had to struggle with the spectre of estrangement; what has been rebuilt is not the same as that destroyed in 1974. Hugh Callaghan, Gerry Hunter and John Walker have carved out different lives, far from Birmingham. Billy Power has taken on responsibilities for generations of dependents and for prisoners still in jail; Paddy Hill's have extended even further. The compensation he received has funded MOJO, a tiny charity that takes on what the state ignores, advice for the wrongfully convicted and safe havens for them on release. Everyone wrestles with demons.

And we have created, without doubt, a new suspect community. The young Muslim man on trial last year faced a different construct. Had he been convicted wrongly, too, there would have been no fabricated notes to discover years later. Instead association and interest might, had the prosecution in his case succeeded, have been enough under yet more emergency legislation to establish support for terrorism. And if acquitted? Control orders exist so that secret courts can (and do) hear secret evidence to severely constrain the liberty even of a person exonerated by a jury.

At least, we console ourselves, we no longer torture terrorist suspects. But is that claim a delusion? If we connive, it makes no difference whether the torture has been outsourced or perpetrated close to home in Birmingham. By the bitter end the case of the six men achieved what the successful elimination of torture requires, a very public accounting. But the detail of the British role in the production of tortured "confessions" in Guantánamo, Pakistan and Morocco is likely never to be publicly exposed; claimed "national security" is intended to ensure permanent secrecy. Twenty years on, we must therefore ask ourselves if we have, in fact, learned anything at all from our disgraceful past.

March 2011 - Remember Rosemary Nelson.

Murder victim Rosemary Nelson 12 years ago today, 15th March 1999,Human Rights Solicitor, Rosemary Nelson, mother of three children, was murdered by a car bomb in Lurgan, north of Ireland. The 'Red Hand Defenders', a loyalist paramilitary group claimed it. She was highly respected and represented a number of high profile cases. She became a hate figure to the RUC Special Branch and repeatedly complained of death threats by police officers which she reported to the United Nations.  Judge Cory’s Inquiry (April 2004) recommended a Public Inquiry to investigate possible collusion between loyalist paramilitaries and British security services.  The Secretary of State for NI immediately announced there would be a full public inquiry, but the public sessions did not begin until April 2008. We still have not had the report of the Inquiry - see article below. It is important that the people of Britain know what has been done in their name.

 Legal Review of Rosemary Nelson Inquiry Findings.

TOM News 14/03/11. Final legal checks are being carried out on the findings of a public inquiry into the murder of Lurgan solicitor Rosemary Nelson, the British government has said. The inquiry team had already said it hoped to have its long-awaited report into the allegations of British security force collusion in the murder completed by the end of April.Britain’s secretary in the six counties, Owen Paterson, said his government’s lawyers are beginning their review of the inquiry’s report to ensure its contents do not endanger any individual or compromise ‘national security’.Mrs Nelson, a 40-year-old mother-of-three, died after a bomb planted by the loyalist Red Hand Defenders exploded under her car as she left her home in Lurgan, County Armagh, on March 15th, 1999. The lawyer represented a number of high-profile republicans, as well as acting for a Catholic residents’ group which opposed Orange Order marches in the Drumcree parade stand-off. She rose to public prominence when human rights groups raised concerns for her safety after revelations that she was being intimidated by British security force members and loyalists.

Written Ministerial Statement: Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Owen Paterson):

“In anticipation of the publication of the report of the Rosemary Nelson Inquiry, I have today asked a team of officials to commence the checking of the Inquiry’s report in relation to human rights and national security matters, as outlined below. I intend to adopt the same approach as was used for the checking of the report of the Bloody Sunday, Billy Wright and Robert Hamill Inquiry reports. As I informed the House in my Written Statement of 16 December 2010, the Nelson Inquiry intends to complete its report by the end of April 2011. I am responsible for publication of the Inquiry’s report, once it is delivered to me. I am advised that I have a duty, as a public authority under the Human Rights Act, to act in a way that is compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). To fulfil this duty, I need to take steps to satisfy myself that publication of the report will not breach Article 2 of the Convention by putting the lives or safety of individuals at risk. I am advised that these obligations must be met by me personally, in my capacity as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Although the Inquiry is also a public authority under the Human Rights Act, I am not entitled to rely on the Inquiry to satisfy my Article 2 obligations and I have a duty to assess this myself. I also have a duty to satisfy myself that publication will not put national security at risk, for example by disclosing details of sources of protected information. I have established a small team to assist me in carrying out this necessary exercise. The team will comprise the Northern Ireland Office’s principal legal adviser, two officials from the Ministry of Defence, one official from the Police Service of Northern Ireland and one official and one legal adviser from the Security Service, who are familiar with the sensitive material provided to the Inquiry Panel. This team will be granted access to the report under strict terms of confidentiality and for the sole purpose of carrying out the necessary checks, and they will report directly to me alone. Neither I nor any official beyond the members of the checking team will have access to the report until 24 hours before it is published. Sir Michael Morland has agreed that this team can carry out the checks on the Inquiry’s premises while the report remains in the custody of the Inquiry. I understand that the report will be made available for checking today.I want to publish the report in its entirety. Should any concerns about the safety of any individual arise, my first course of action would be to consider whether these can be addressed through alternative means. Were I to reach the conclusion, on advice, that a redaction to the text might be necessary, I would consult Sir Michael Morland. In the very unlikely event that any redaction was deemed necessary, my intention would be to make this clear on the face of the report.The report must be published first for this House, and I intend to publish the report as soon as possible once the report and the checking process has been completed. However, I acknowledge the importance of this Inquiry’s findings in the lives of a number of individuals. As with the publication of the Bloody Sunday and Billy Wright Inquiry reports, I intend to consider giving advance sight to those who were designated as Represented Parties by the Inquiry. I intend to discuss this with the Speaker of the House in due course.” END

What we can do to support the Nelson family· Write to David Cameron, Owen Paterson and your own MP demanding the Inquiry Report be published immediately - and encourage others to do the same. We mustn’t let the government delay publication in the way they did with the Saville Inquiry into Bloody Sunday. The Nelson Family need and deserve answers.

Raise the case in your Trade Union, Political Party or Community Group, write to newspapers and get on radio 'phone-ins, see TOM website for more details.

Contact details: David Cameron, 10 Downing Street, London, SW1A 2AA. E-mail: camerond@parliament.uk or fill in form at https://email.number10.gov.uk/Contact.aspx

Owen Paterson, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Office, 11 Millbank, London SW1P 4PN. -mail: patersono@parliament.uk or fill in form at http://www.nio.gov.uk/index/contact-us/enquiry-form.htm

Your own MP, House of Commons, London, SW1A 0AA

March 2011 - The attacks on Britain's youth

What do you call a Government that sets mounted police against unarmed workers? – Fascist! Fast forward from Orgreave 1984 to today's Britain. What do you call a Government that sets mounted police against unarmed schoolchildren and students? - again, Fascist! Socialist Labour is totally opposed to the alliance of State repression forces with crony Capitalist exploiters and a political elite who have bought elections through the spending power of big business – or Fascism as it exists today in the US, Britain and most of Europe.

March 2011 - Food and the environment

The world price of food is being driven up by unethical gambling from giant American investment banks who are using it as a source of financial speculation. The US is also requiring farmers throughout the world to substitute crops yielding sources of oil for corn crops etc. This is currently a major factor leading to the masses rising up in the Middle East and elsewhere. In this Country, it turns out that corrupt Parliamentary committees under the influence of GM companies and lobby groups have put lifetime gagging orders on scientists who have pointed out the dangers from GM foods. These include the reproductive failure of mice fed on GM foods. Scientists at Universities etc. are being funded by private companies to the extent that they are unable to criticise the Company actions for fear of financial and contractual (employment) threats.

March 2011 - The UK and the Middle East

Cameron and his cronies such as Hague just can't keep their sticky grubby fingers from meddling in Middle Eastern affairs. Obviously, they couldn't care less who they sell their weapons to provided that their oil interests are protected and this has kept Arab and African populations in the region under undemocratic subjugation. We support all those people who are hungry and unemployed and trying to throw off the yoke of failed western Capitalist exploitation and forced to bow the knee to fascist Zionism – much as we are in this Country where exploitative usury is being used as an extra control. We do not, however, back CIA and imperialist backed reactionary (e.g. pro monarchy) revolts whose only purpose is grabbing regional oil and further repressing the population.

March 2011 - Media Manipulation

We all know that we can't trust the words and actions of any of the state run and influenced capitalist media such as the BBC, CNN, Fox news etc. Unfair lack of coverage for parties of the left at elections is one obvious example. At Orgreave in 1984 we had the BBC altering the sequence of events for the news after the mounted police had charged the miners. The latter's retaliation was shown as the first event. The British Government, through it's media reported that the leader of Libya was heading for Venezuela. The BBC and Al Jazeera reported specific bombing by Libya of targets in Benghazi, a claim refuted by Russian military using satellite technology. Weapons of mass destruction Mr. Blair? …….. Anyone? Now Fox in the US have been caught out after having substituted booing noises for loud cheering of a politician who is not towing the Government/Fox consensus line.