|
History and Theory
|
New Book - 'Reformism or Revolution' - now available
Latest International NewsLatest British NewsLatest Trade Union NewsMarxist International Review
Wellred featured books
Send us reports!Send us your letters, articles or workplace and trade union reports! Please get in touch and wherever possible we will publish submitted articles on our website or in our monthly paper Socialist Appeal. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Issue 155 of 
Everyday our television screens are filled with
images of horrific bloodshed and carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hundreds die,
men, women and children, in a single day. Some estimate that one million people
have perished since the invasion of 2003. This is the reality after more than
four years of foreign occupation.
From July 29 until August 3 the International
Marxist Tendency held its World School in Barcelona. Present were 300 comrades
from 26 countries, including Russia, Pakistan, Venezuela, Brazil,
El Salvador, Mexico, Argentina and most European countries. Over half of the 40-strong British delegation
was youth, most attending for the first time.
In May 2004, we reported Scotland's worst ever industrial disaster when the
Stockline plastics factory in Glasgow exploded leaving 9 dead and 40 injured.
It was another searing indictment of breaches in Health & Safety
legislation, now a matter of course in Britain. Ex-employees told journalists
they had been sacked after raising concerns about safety. The 2 companies jointly responsible, ICL Tech and
ICL Plastics, faced only charges relating to Health & Safety, for which they have now been
fined a measly £400,000.
Just before the collapse of the Berlin Wall and later the Soviet Union,
Ted Grant delivered this speech on the crisis in the USSR. To deflect
any blame, Gorbachev and co. heaped blame on Stalin and Brezhnev, even
going so far as to rehabilitate some of the victims of the purge trials
- including those accused of "Trotskyism". But Trotsky was not
rehabilitated: he was still hated by the bureaucracy because they
feared the ideas he represented.
Hands Off Venezuela has produced a 