Weekly Worker 573 Thursday April 21 2005

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Weekly Worker 575 Thursday May 5 2005

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Letters
Gobsmacked; Bizarre; Vote Corbyn; Vague; Pathetic CPGB; Degenerating; Excluded; Pragmatic IWCA; CPGB tailing; Pap and filth; English SP; Life is shit; Kiwi IBT; Concrete; Good company; SWP pole

Behind the betrayal
Former Sinn Féin member Philip Ferguson recalls and analyses the organisation’s move to the right - and points a finger at the British left

Secrets and lies
Mike Macnair looks at Lord Goldsmith's legal advice and the role the working class should play in challenging the British constitutional monarchy

A question of class
Ben Lewis has a closer look at some of the Muslim candidates standing for Respect

Back to basics
The Sunday Times exposé of the state of George Galloway’s marriage should be treated with contempt. But there are lessons for us to learn,argues Tina Becker

Rising from the grave
Peter Manson takes a look at Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party and other small left organisations at election time

Split the difference
“This is obviously going to be a great night and a great week.” No, not a crowing Tony Blair, but Michael Howard’s rather optimistic prediction of the Tories’ general election performance. As I write, however, I am pretty confident Howard will be sorely disappointed, with Labour securing a historically unprecedented third term. Eddie Ford comments.

Towards a socialist pensions policy
According to bourgeois economists, demographic changes mean that the state is no longer able to fund adequate pensions, and so workers must make their own arrangements for the future. Nick Rogers looks at the truth behind the myths

Keeping it real
Lawrence Parker confesses to being a fan of the BBC2 show The Apprentice

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May Day gifts

Last week I suggested that readers could “give added significance to the celebration of international workers’ day” by handing a donation to a Weekly Worker seller on one of the many May Day events around the country.

I am happy to report that a number of comrades did just that and in total we collected a very welcome £68 in this way. Typical was the PCS union activist who gave us £5 at the CPGB stall in Chesterfield, saying he regularly downloaded the paper and thought he should give something back. Around 25 Weekly Workers were sold. At the London march and rally we had a rather larger team to staff our stalls, hand out leaflets and sell the Weekly Worker - 70 in all.

No donations via the website, but a couple of last-minute contributions came in via the post - not least a very handy £50 from comrade JR. Thanks also to HK (£20) and CS (£10). This sudden flurry of gifts saw us just exceed our £500 target for April (we raised £513).

Talking of the website, a reader has pointed out that the number of hits recorded on our home page counter does not tally with the figure I report in this column every week. This is because it only records visits to our home page, whereas many comrades head straight to the Weekly Worker section or else enter the site via a Google search or other link.

Last week we had a total of 17,099 readers (including 1,136 who downloaded the complete paper) - although the observant amongst you may have noticed that the counter of those entering via the home page only increased by around 4,000.
Robbie Rix

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