Channel 4 showed Ken Loach’s latest film, It’s A Free World on September 24th 2007. We are reprinting this review by Corinna Lotz from ‘A World to Win’ website. It’s a Free World follows the director’s earlier feature about the Irish war of independence, The Wind that Shakes the Barley. Producer Rebecca O’Brian and writer…
May Day: Marching in the footsteps of immigrant workers
From an article in the US radical newsletter Dissident Voice (1.5.07) by Sharat G Lin Over 1.5 million people took part in May Day demonstrations in 2006 in what amounted to one of the single largest days of protest in US history. Many also participated in a general strike by refusing to conduct business, go…
No One Is Illegal
Affiliation to the No One is Illegal Campaign is to be debated at the SSP Conference on October. The attitude an organisation takes towards the rights of migrant workers throughout the world defines whether it is international socialist or merely national labourist. We are publishing the first chapter of NOII’s pamphlet, Workers Control Not Immigration…
Beggar
They all have their stories. This one, young and ageing, says that his stepfather was ‘a brutal bastard.’ And in those greying eyes that have seen far too much I can still sense the child whose world went upside down. But this lad has moved on, now dreams of survival on the harsh, concrete street…
Homelessness- Who Really Cares?
The experiences of a worker with the homeless in the voluntary sector The city of origin and writer’s name have been withheld because of the likelihood that the writer will lose their job if identified. For the last 2 years I have been a support worker in a Homeless Hostel, and I have observed first…
The Highland Midge
This is written for anyone who has ever suffered at the hands (or, more accurately, the mouths) of the Highland midge. Over the centuries the bear and the wolf have been hunted to extinction in the Highlands of Scotland, but it has never been remotely within the scope of possibility that its most voracious predator…
Elections in Greece: Positive Results for the Left
YK analyses the Greek election results and addresses the prospects and tasks for socialists That the Greek parliament would be significantly different, as a result of the 16th September elections, was more or less common knowledge in Greece. There had been three and a half years of extreme government incompetence and quite shocking scandals. These…
Iranian Workers Face Two Enemies
Yassamine Mather reports on the Iranian people’s need for genuine solidarity The threat of military air strikes against Iran is today probably stronger than ever before. Many commentators are speculating about possible ‘shock and awe’ attacks by Israel and the United States on Iran’s nuclear installations and other strategic targets. The US, this time supported…
From Operation Banner to Operation Helvetica
John McAnulty (Socialist Democracy, Belfast) looks at the changing face of British rule in Ireland In their usual astounding display of chutzpah Sinn Fein have produced a T-shirt depicting the IRA expelling a Brit soldier, claiming that the ending of ‘Operation Banner’ (the deployment of troops and the armed suppression of the civil population during…
Beslan
by Jim Aitken Eliot said the game was up after the First World War. How wrong! For after the Second we fell into a state of disbelief that still must make us shake our heads. And on then to Hiroshima, To Korea down to Vietnam, And all the other names we call- Cambodia, Timor, Iraq.…