Improving

The Bank of England downgrades its growth estimates in the face of the global economic crisis. Official figures show a rise in unemployment. Yet New Labour employment minister Andrew Smith sums up the situation this way: “The labour market is clearly improving.”

With friends like these, the working class needs its own Party, a Communist Party, capable of fighting for a society fit for human beings to live in. The relentless struggle to reforge such a Party is the business of the Weekly Worker, which relies on a £400 a month fighting fund from its supporters. Special thanks to comrades BT, KA, TD and TR for their contributions to this week’s total of £55, bringing the November fund to £240.

Are you pulling your weight?

Ian Farrell

Number 264

Thursday November 12 1998

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Extinction looms
Being neither ‘fish nor fowl’ comrade Taaffe’s revolutionary-reformism is ill-adapted to the environment. It is now facing extinction, writes Mark Fischer

• Destroying themselves
  Statement by expelled Merseyside Socialist Party comrades, October 1998

Party notes: Left in crisis
Mark Fischer thinks the revolutionary left in Britain presents less than pretty picture

Letters
CPGB ban; No agreement; Pinochet demo; Basic point; Free Zoora Shah

One step forward
Over 50 people including guests and visitors came to Cardiff for the first annual conference of the Welsh Socialist Alliances on Saturday November 7. Ian Mahoney was there

In praise of Stalin
Harpal Brar, member of the national executive of the Socialist Labour Party, spoke at the CPGB’s Communist University, on Sunday August 2 1998

Bridging the divide
Danny Hammill reports on the CPGB’s weekend school ‘Against economism’

Discontent and despair
Simon Harvey of the SLP responds to Pat Sikorski's 'Renewing our sense of purpose'

Fisc out to clip Arthur’s wings
Socialist Labour Party vice-president Pat Sikorski's secret letter 'Renewing our sense of purpose'