The world has been alerted to the horror of the current refugee crisis by the photograph of Aylan Kurdi, a three-year old Syrian Kurd from Kohane, on the beach at Bodrum in Turkey, drowned after trying to make it with is family across to the Greek islands. In 1972, another photo of a young girl, this…
A STATEMENT FROM BRIAN HIGGINS, SECRETARY OF THE BUILDING WORKERS’ GROUP, ABOUT THE DEATHS IN QATAR
I knew there had been many migrant workers killed on world cup sites but was severely and profoundly shocked to hear on Channel 4 last night that 1,200 had been killed to date while working on world cup projects in Qatar.
Moving On Song
by Ewan McColl with 2 verses added by Eileen Penman (Dec 2005) Born in the middle o’ the afternoon In a horse-drawn wagon on the old A5 The big twelve-wheeler shook my bed You can’t stop here the policeman said Chorus: You’d better get born in some place else Move along, get along, Move along,…
Plane Wreck at Los Gatos
Words by Woody Guthrie, Music by Martin Hoffman The crops are all in and the peaches are rott’ning, The oranges piled in their creosote dumps; They’re flying ‘em back to the Mexican border To pay all their money to wade back again Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita, Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria; You…
Let them in
Mary McGregor outlines the humane response to the world’s migration crisis In this article, I intend not to use the following terms: migrants, asylum seekers and refugees. The media and establishment have successfully imbued each of these terms with negative connotations. They are conflated, misrepresented and fed into the narrative that this seeking to come…
THE TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP – THE TTIP OF THE PACIFIC
Cynthia Phinney of Labor Notes (USA) writes on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which she dubs the “NAFTA of the Pacific”. However, we in Europe will also be able to recognise it as the ‘TTIP of the Pacific’. SHOWDOWN NEARS ON FAST TRACKING OF THE BIGGEST FREE TRADE DEAL YET This spring the battle is coming…
Letter From A Contract Worker
I wanted to write you a letter my love, a letter that would tell of this desire to see you of this fear of losing you of this more than benevolence that I feel of this indefinable ill that pursues me of this yearning to which I live in total surrender… I wanted to write…
Latinos: The US Election And The Immigrant Rights Struggle
Dave Moore, a socialist in the US, reports on what an Obama administration means for immigrants’ rights. This is an updated version of an article Dave wrote for Red Banner. In the spring of 2006, immigrant uprisings swept across the United States, sparked by a vicious bill to criminalize undocumented workers. In city after city,…
Blame the bosses not ‘foreign workers’
The SWP gained some notoriety on the Left when it came out against Opposition to all immigration controls in the pre-split Respect. Now, no longer bound by Galloway’s Left British Unionism, Socialist Worker published the following useful contribution to the debate. Millions of working people across Britain are fearful and angry at the mounting economic…
Brown’s Appeal To British Chauvinism
Mary McGregor highlights the dangers to the working class movement of Brown’s speech to the TUC. I remember hearing the report of Gordon Brown’s speech to the TUC in 2007 and the phrase British jobs for British workers. As someone who has tried to fight the rise of nationalism, chauvinism and fascism all my adult…