Bernadette McAliskey speaks out against child abuse in the Six Counties. This article first appeared in the Irish News, 20th January 2010. As a matter of urgency — before this pretence of a democratic, secular and modern administration unravels itself in abject disgrace, it needs to exercise its responsibility for protection of children and young…
John Venables – The lynch mob and our ‘broken society’
Adam Ford of The Commune tackles the media hysteria over the Jon Venables affair In 1993, two year old James Bulger from Kirkby near Liverpool was abducted, tortured and murdered by two ten year olds, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables. The horrific case provoked understandable revulsion from the general public. Politicians gleefully seized on it…
Campaign to fight the Blacklist and to support Brian Higgins
Brian Higgins is Secretary of the construction workers’ union, UCATT branch in Northampton, and a prominent member of the rank and file, Building Worker group. He was sent a copy of a 49 page file, which The Consulting Association had on him. It dates back to 1976 and goes on till December 2006. He is…
The Alberto Durango Campaign
David Broder of the UBS Cleaners Defence Campaign outlines the problems faced by migrant workers when they try to organise On February 12th almost a hundred people demonstrated outside Swiss bank UBS’s London headquarters in protest at the victimisation of Alberto Durango. A Colombian migrant worker, Alberto was sacked by cleaning company Lancaster almost as…
Tibet – A country suffering from Chinese imperial repression
Rod MacGregor of Dundee SSP puts the case for Tibetan self-determination. The Indian town of McLeod Ganj takes its very Scottish sounding name from a British military officer, having been a garrison town during British rule in India. Though it is now over six decades since the British state gave up its imperial ambitions in…
Business as usual for Israeli Apartheid
David Landy, chair of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign writing in a personal capacity for the Spring 2010 issue of Resistance, the bulletin of the Irish Socialist Network When Barack Obama was elected, he made many pledges about bringing peace to Israel/Palestine, and there was some hope he would end the Bush Doctrine of supporting…
Iceland joins the ‘Arc of Resistance’
We are publishing this article, by Mimir Kristjánsson of the Red Party in Norway about the spectacular referendum victory in Iceland, which rejected the Icelandic government’s proposals to bail out the bankers. Brown and Darling had used the new antiterrorist laws to force the Icelandic government to comply with their demands. The Icelandic people decided…
Revive the Declaration of Calton Hill for the Diamond Jubilee
Angela (now Lewis) Gorrie argues the case for the following motion to SSP conference. Conference notes that the unelected First Secretary of State, Lord Mandelson, recently announced the Government’s plans to have an additional bank holiday in 2012 to allow the public to show their “pride and affection” for our unelected monarch on her Golden…
Independence Referendum
The Republican Communist Network’s motion to 2010 SSP Conference Preamble – not for voting on The issue of Scotland’s relationship to the UK remains a key political issue, whatever happens to the SNP’s proposed referendum bill at Holyrood. However, the favoured referendum option being advocated by the SNP – ‘independence under the Crown’ – would…
The new Hillsborough Agreement
John McNulty of Socialist Democracy (Ireland) examines the Hillsborough Agreement, the latest retreat in the ‘Peace Process’ following the earlier St. Andrews and Good Friday Agreements. The immediate response of the world’s media to the latest Irish settlement, a common response when they shy away from any analysis, was to carry out a series of…