To mark the 70th anniversary of the General Strike of May 1926, the Weekly Worker will carry contemporary articles from the communist press each week
Government plans for saving
From the Workers' Weekly, paper of the Communist Party of Great Britain, January 22 1926
A big government scheme is announced to meet the coming crisis when the coal subsidy ends in May.
... Certain members of the government are to form an ‘inner cabinet’ and 14 other ministers will be placed in charge of districts.
These ministers will have complete powers in respect of all supplies of food, postal services, transport and distribution of coal ... This is the scheme in outline.
It will be used of course to smash any attempt by the miners to resist an attack on their wages and conditions. That attack is quite certain.
The Coal Commission has now concluded its public sittings, and has retired to concoct its ‘remedy’.
The evidence submitted to the commission has unquestionably established three things:
- That capitalism has no solution for its ever more pressing problems of bankruptcy
- That the coal owners are utterly callous to the welfare of those they exploit
- That any scheme of reformism aimed at a revival of the capitalist system in the mines is doomed to failure.
... The ‘proposals’ of the owners, as we showed last week, involve (1) wage cuts, (2) lengthening of hours, (3) dismissal of 100,000 miners, (4) district agreements and the smashing of the MFGB, (5) a 25% cut in rail rates, to be accomplished by driving the railway workers down to worse than pre-war conditions.
Quite a number of capitalists and capitalist spokesmen are uneasy about the owners’ proposals ... They are not at all sure of their powers to crush the workers next May.
Number 127
Thursday January 25 1996
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Hemsworth by-election: Support the SLP!
On Thursday, Hemsworth goes to the polls. This by-election is an important
one for the left in Britain
Letters
Leagues of struggle; Make it happen; A most dangerous concept; Public
attack; Anti-Soviet?
Genuine socialist alternative
Lee-Anne Bates spoke to John Nicholson, ex-deputy leader of Manchester
City Council, who set up the campaign to defend clause four with Arthur
Scargill
Socialist Alliance reports
- Lewisham socialist alliance
- Socialist forum in Herts
- SLP - Kent style
- Brent left opening up
- Intervening in the SLP
Socialist Workers Party - Canadian style
January 10 saw a major split in the Canadian International Socialists.
Below we reprint an edited version of a resignation letter - signed by
Sue Ferguson, David McNally, Alan Sears and Deborah Simmons - which took
the form of an ‘Open letter to members of the International Socialist’,
dated December 28 1995. Though we do not necessarily agree with all their
conclusions we feel it is important that all divisions in our movement
are debated out openly, in print. We welcome replies from IS or SWP members
Teething problems
Bob Smith - For a Permanent Party Polemic Committee
Against conservatism
Dave Craig of the Revolutionary Democratic Group (faction of SWP) challenges
Paul Cockshott's accusation of bourgeois liberalism
New possibilities
Strikes in France
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