The film The Iron Lady is a paean to a personality rather than a political documentary, and must be judged as such. The personal is political, however, and therefore anyone who lived through what happened in Britain in the 1980s will have some reaction to the politics of this film. Meryl Streep’s acting, as ever, is extraordinary and this is by far the most remarkable thing about this film. Most of the action effectively takes place inside Thatcher’s head, as her senile dementia filters a mish-mash of memories, regrets, resentments and pride over the course of her career. This allows...
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“You could have to work for 134 days each year just to pay your tax bill” (their emphasis) read the headline of a full page HSBC ad in the Times (16 March). “Income Tax, National Insurance, VAT, car tax . . . it all adds up. In fact, in 2009 the average Briton had to work 134 days before they had earned enough to pay their taxes”. The source was given in the small print at the bottom of the page as the Mad Marketeers of the Adam Smith Institute who each year calculate a “Tax Freedom Day” as...
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(SPGB election manifesto) These elections are taking place in the middle of the biggest economic and financial crisis since the 1930s. In a world that has the potential to produce enough food, clothes, housing and the other amenities of life for all, factories are closing down, workers are being laid off, unemployment is growing, houses are being repossessed and people are having to tighten their belts. And for once the main parties are being honest in offering more of the same, competing with each other as to which of them is going to impose the most “savage cuts”. Capitalism...
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Even 90 years after the Russian revolution there are still some who claim that the event shines as a beacon for socialism. We were able to say at the time that whatever was happening in Russia it was not a socialist revolution. In August 1918 the Socialist Standard pointed out that, while there were industrial towns in Russia, the country was largely agricultural with about 80 per cent of the population still living on the land. The answer to the question whether “this huge mass of people” (about 160 million), which indeed included some industrial and agricultural wage slaves,...
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What might have happened if, forty years ago, workers in France had taken over the factories and tried to keep production going. 1968 saw an outbreak of protest in various parts of the World. Much of it was very violent and the main thrust of this protest was in France and in America, where a longer-term campaign was being pursued. To a lesser extent, again, some of them very violent, demonstrations took place in Germany and in this country. No doubt there were some links between these various protests but it was also true that the background in each...
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Monthly Publication of the Socialist Party of Great Britain since 1904 Featured in this issue: Who controls the world: the Illuminati or the Market? Why do some people think the world is run by a shadowy group called the Illuminati? Who were they? Hot Air Since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol little substantial has been done to address the the problem of climate change. The Single issue The futility of the ever-increasing single issue campaigns is clear for all to see. Could it be because they are being reactive rather than proactive?
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The latest issue of Socialist Worker (25 August) of the Socialist Workers Party (UK) carries an article on the Stuttgart Congress of the Second International which took place a hundred years ago. According to the author, John Riddell, the Congress “took a bold stand in the struggle against capitalist war”. No, it didn’t. The big set piece debate was on militarism and anti-militarism. Some of the French delegates wanted the Congress, in the words of a motion proposed by Gustave Hervé, “to answer any declaration of war, from whatever side it may come, by military strike and insurrection” (an...
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We have been going for over a hundred years and over that period have come across all sorts of theories as to the cause of and solution to the problems facing society and wage and salary workers in particular. One set are those who say that the answer lies in some reform of the monetary system and who are known, perhaps ungenerously, as “currency cranks”. They go back a long ago way, and were even found amongst the Chartists in Britain in the 1830s and 1840s. They argue that banks are the problem: that they can create credit (money,...
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Since the end of the Second World War, when the US forced the Italian government to discharge its Communist Party cabinet members as a prerequisite for aid, to its support for the coup attempt in Venezuela in 2003, the US has been regularly subverting elections around the globe for the benefit of its own corporate elite. Ever fearful that foreign governments might, among other things, introduce labour and environmental legislation detrimental to US investments, Washington has opposed the principle of democracy on almost every continent, even helping to overthrow democratically elected governments whenever it felt its interests threatened (e.g....
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War, Plots and Civil Liberties
Was there really a plot to blow up transatlantic airliners or were the police just using a pretext to fish for information by rounding up and questioning people they suspected were up to something without knowing precisely what? Will ministers eventually say, as they did after the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes and after the raid on that house in Forest Gate when another innocent man was shot, that it’s better to err on the side of safety? Better a few innocents are shot than a terrorist act in which hundreds die? Whatever the truth, the “security alert”...
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