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By Andy Viner (ASLEF)
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Thursday, 31 January 2008 |
 Sixty years ago Railway companies up and down the
country were nationalised. They were not necessarily nationalised for
ideological reasons - the vast majority were were hindering the
development of the British economy after the Second World War. At the time the
view was that you cannot plan what you don't control and you can't
control what you don't own. That view still holds true today.
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By Eric Hollies
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Thursday, 31 January 2008 |
 Over Christmas the railways were in chaos - again. Why does
this sort of thing happen in Britain? It hasn't always been like this. The
problem started with privatisation. The Tories under John Major plotted a
privatisation so stupid that even Thatcher had thought better of it.
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By Leon Trotsky
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Wednesday, 30 January 2008 |
 Seventy-five years ago today, on January 30th 1933, Hitler was appointed
Chancellor of Germany. Two months later the Reichstag voted him
dictatorial powers. The workers' parties were banned and their leaders
thrown into concentration camps. The strongest labour movement in
Europe was destroyed without even breaking a pane of glass, as Hitler
boasted. The way was clear for genocide and world war.
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By Ted Grant, December 1944
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Wednesday, 30 January 2008 |
 "The new generation, in particular,
must understand the part Stalinism played in German events prior
to Hitler's seizure of power, if they wish to understand its
present role", wrote Ted Grant in 1944. Trotsky and the Fourth
International alone warned of the catastrophe the Nazi's would bring upon the workers of Germany, Europe and
of the Soviet Union. The Stalinists surrendered the
German masses to Hitler and even proclaimed the coming to
power of Hitler as a victory
expressing the crisis of capitalism, boastfully proclaiming 'our turn
next'.
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By Rob Sewell
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Wednesday, 30 January 2008 |
 Today marks the 75th anniversary of the coming to power of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party in Germany. Read here chapter 7 of Rob Sewell's Germany: from Revolution to Counter-Revolution, which deals with the period just before Hitler comes to power and explains the reasons for such a catastrophe, in particular the failiure to create a united front between the socialist and labour organisations.
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By Mick Brooks
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Tuesday, 29 January 2008 |
 How do you lose £3.7 billion? Down the back of the sofa? Meet Jerome Kerviel. He lost £3.7 billion of
his employer’s money, Societe Generale, a French
bank. Is it actually a good argument for
capitalism that the whole world can be screwed up because of a solitary rogue
trader? Is the system really so precarious that one crook can send world
financial markets into freefall?
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By Matt Wheatley
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Tuesday, 29 January 2008 |
 With a world recession looming, slides in the stock market
and capitalism generally entering a period of crisis you would expect the first
day of the World Economics Forum to be the site of a serious discussion and
plans for the future; not so.
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By Terry McPartlan
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Tuesday, 29 January 2008 |
 For years Socialist Appeal
and the International Marxist Tendency have been arguing that the world is an
increasingly unstable place, where war threatens on many fronts
and revolution and counter-revolution hang in the air. The bourgeois and the Labour
right wing basically argue that it’s all down to evil people and that nice
President Bush and the generals keep us all safe by attacking terrr’sts and
keeping the world safe for freedom and ‘mockracy.
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By Rob Sewell
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Monday, 28 January 2008 |
 "The London police on strike. After that,
anything can happen", said Sylvia Pankhurst in 1918. The ground is certainly shifting in Britain. There has
been a continual build up of public anger at the government's attempt to impose
a 2% limit on public sector pay. The Police are getting a paltry 1.9% rise, in effect a pay cut.
They were furious and making all kinds of threats against the Home Secretary
Jacqui Smith and Gordon Brown.
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By Ian Aylett
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Monday, 28 January 2008 |
 Even before panic hit the financial markets
the UK press was determinedly ignoring the big victory of German train drivers
last week. The train drivers won an
11% pay increase! Yet the emergence of what amounts to a five party system shows
Germany is entering a period of increased political instability.
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By Mick Brooks
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Friday, 25 January 2008 |
 At a Youth School of the Socialist Appeal late last year Mick Brooks introduced a discussion on 'What is money?'. Given the current financial turmoil many are asking what is behind the jargon given by economic commentators today. This serves as a useful introduction to the idea and concept of money.
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By Terry McPartlan
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Friday, 25 January 2008 |
 So if things weren't bad enough for Gordon Brown, it looks like the
Labour Party has been taking big donations from Tory voters. Apparently, a number of confused members of the public have discovered that their bank accounts have been used to
transfer funds to the Labour Party. This all
sounds a bit fishy. Can we expect a new episode of "Our friends in the North"?
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By Kenny McGuigan, Glasgow
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Friday, 25 January 2008 |
 The Electoral Commission has launched an investigation into an illegal
donation to Wendy Alexander MSP's campaign to take over from Jack
McConnell as Labour leader in the Scottish Parliament, following
Labour's worst electoral defeat in 50 years.
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By Steve Jones
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Thursday, 24 January 2008 |
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 Hain resigns: New Labour enmired in sleaze
New Labour's indecent closeness to big business claimed another victim
as Hain resigned today. The police are now on his tail. The victim is
not Hain. His resignation will, after all, give him more time to count
his money. The victim is the working class who have voted for Hain and his mates in order for Labour to do a job for ordinary working people,
not grovel to big business.
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The liberation of women and the socialist revolution are inseperable tasks requiring the active participation of women workers in the organised labour movement. This recording of Barbara Humphries speaking at the Socialist Appeal xmas day school explains the double expoitation of women under the capitalist system, the history of women in the labour movement, the impact of imperialist aggression on women and the nature of feminism and positive discrimination.
