Workers' Liberty 41, July 1997

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A round up of news from WL41 Download PDF Articles: Letter from Hong Kong: Nothing to celerate (Chen Ying) Showdown on private railways Blairs plan to gut party democracy runs into trouble The adventures of Tom Sawyer A victory for socialism? (Martin Thomas)

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From Workers' Liberty magazine 41, July 1997 February 1972. The miners were on strike over their pay claim against the Heath government. The Saltley depot was a crucial source of stockpiled coke for industry, and flying pickets from Yorkshire Area NUM had been , attempting, with little success, to stop scab lorries getting in and out. The leader of the pickets, a little- known Yorkshire NUM official called Arthur Scargill, appealed to the Birmingham trade union movement for support: despite the indifference (or hostility) of the national union leaders, Scargill's call won a magnificent...

Vic Turner carried aloft as the Pentonville Five are released From Workers' Liberty magazine 41, July 1997 Part two, on the role of the left, here It is July 1972. With the union leaders safely in talks with Tory Prime Minister] Heath and knuckling under to his Industrial Relations Act (IRA), the Tories now went for the real union power on the docks: the rank and file. They were going to make an example of five dockers from east London to cauterise resistance to the long-term running down of the docks, to stop the unofficial blacking (refusal to unload) of lorries and picketing at the...

Part one of a two-part survey of the student left from the 1980s to 1997, written in 1997. Click here to download both parts as pdf ; click here to read part one . A previous article described how Labour Students won the leadership of the National Union of Students [NUS] in 1982. Then, they were a left-wing alternative to the previous leadership, around the Communist Party and its allies. After the 1983 election they moved to the right, but a left-wing challenge to them, both in the NUS and in the student Labour Clubs, was developing round Socialist Students in NOLS [SSiN]. NOLS, the National...

A funny tale agreed upon? By Sean Matgamna A, sort of, review of Jim Higgins' "More Years For the Locust" Let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the looniness of Trots — of the left in general, but of Trots in particular. Let us tell tales that are funny ha-ha and tales that are funny-peculiar. Tell how some were born mad, some became mad and some had madness foisted on them. Author’s doppelganger: No! No! This won’t do. It’s no good! Pretentious — Pseudsville! This is the age of the soundbite, the 30 second attention span and the comedy workshop. You must entertain! Make a joke of...