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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!

 

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