Proud

Supporters of the Weekly Worker can be proud of the role our paper is playing in the difficult struggle to stem the tide of disintegration of the left. Our paper is championing non-sectarian, democratic unity, combining united action with freedom of criticism - the only basis for unity, and a step towards reforging the mass Communist Party the working class needs.

Comrades DW, RA, ER and RW, have sent in £105 this week, taking December’s £400 fighting fund to a worryingly low £187. Don’t forget to put the paper on your Christmas gift list.

Ian Farrell

Ask for a bankers order form, or send cheques, payable to Weekly Worker, BCM Box 928, London WC1N 3XX

Number 269

Thursday December 17 1998

The Weekly Worker is available from bookshops across the United Kingdom or can be delivered direct to your door by completing our online subscription form.

New strategy for Ireland
The IRA refusal to hand over arms does not mean the failure of the peace process, writes Eddie Ford

Party notes: Perspectives '99
Mark Fischer looks forward to the new year

Letters
Religious sect?; Stalin only choice; Left nationalist; Brazen lie

Minimum wage: Raise our demands
John Walsh explains why the movement should demand a minimum income to £300 for a 35-hour week

Around the left: Workers’ millennium?
The SWP predicts great things around the corner. Don Preston takes a more sober look

New opportunity for advance
Sean Matgamna of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty addressed the CPGB’s Communist University ’98 on his understanding of the Soviet Union, and the possibilities for communists since its demise

Fiddling with the constitution
Dave Craig of the Revolutionary Democratic Group lambastes the United Socialists’ economism

Jesus - from Jewish apocalyptic revolutionary to imperial god
Jack Conrad describes how an ideology of the oppressed became the ideology of the oppressors

Petty bourgeois idealism
Phil Sharpe asks whether the views of Roy Bull - vice president of the SLP - are scientific

Third way to nowhere
Maurice Bernal reviews Anthony Giddens' The third way: the renewal of social democracy

Towards a critique of science
Danny Hammill reviews Steven Rose's Lifelines: biology, freedom, determinism

Cyberspace revolution
Steve Riley argues that communists should make full use of the internet, and reviews two invaluable websites

Simon Harvey of the SLP: Scargill holds fire
Fisc survives first meeting of new NEC

United front
A report of last weekend’s meeting of the Revolutionary Democratic Communist Tendency