Europe

Winston Churchill is one of the most famous figures in British history and the official approach is that it would be unpatriotic not to admire him. The purpose of this article is to draw aside the veils of myth and legend which establishment historians and fawning admirers have spun around him and look at the real Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill. The facts reveal a different man altogether.

We reproduce willingly this article that first appeared on the éirígí website. Faced with the current financial meltdown the author poses the choice bluntly: “Every person in Ireland has a choice to make. Do they support a ‘free’ market or do they support a free people? And if they choose a free people they need to make one more choice – to become politically active and join the struggle for a free, socialist Ireland.”

In the early hours of this morning (08.10.08), the government and the financial authorities have finally agreed an ambitious plan to save the banks. They present the £50bn bail-out as decisive action to stop the rot. In fact their hands were forced, and there’s no sign that it will stem the panic on UK stock markets in any case.

Ireland has been hit hard by the credit crunch. The country has gone from one of the highest rates of growth to bust. The government is being forced to intervene with guarantees, but as could be expected they are aimed at sustaining the rich not the ordinary working people.

On Wednesday around 100 people gathered in Bolívar Hall in London to attend what was a very successful launch of the English language edition of Alan Woods' latest book, Reformism or Revolution - A Reply to Heinz Dieterich. The debate revealed that as capitalism world enters into a deep crisis, the ideas of genuine socialism are alive and well. Now is the time to spread the ideas of revolutionary socialism. (Including the audio file of Alan Woods' speech).

The extreme right has risen again in Austria leaving many shocked. In reality what we have in Austria is growing political instability with swings to the left and the right as successive governments come up against the opposition of ordinary working people. Meanwhile there is ferment in the unions and within the ranks of the Social Democracy, the SPÖ.

We are delighted to announce the launching of the Renforcer le PCF, renouer avec le marxisme website, whose aim is to promote a Marxist programme in the forthcoming congress of the Communist Party and to collect the required number of signatures. Watch also a video of Greg Oxley, member of the PCF and editor of La Riposte, speaking on the current programme of the PCF (in French).

The situation in the Netherlands has dramatically changed in the recent period. From the period of “consensus” politics we now have a very polarised situation, with an aggressive ruling class facing a growingly militant working class. In these conditions the Socialist Party has emerged as a sizeable force to the left of the Labour Party.

It had been planned as a central meeting of leading proto-fascists, right-wing populists and neo-nazis. A grand "European Anti-Islamic Congress" was scheduled to be held Saturday 20th September in the huge German city of Cologne. The organisers didn’t count on the fact that no one would transport them or go anywhere near them. Instead tens of thousands of anti-fascist demonstrators turned up to protest.

We publish the recent editorial of The Plough, which stresses the need to adopt the Marxist method and approach within the Irish republican movement, to raise the class issues at the same time as struggling for a solution to the national question, one being inextricably linked to the other.

An interesting comment, that appeared in the recent edition of The Plough, on the present state of the Irish economy, north and south of the border.

Back in 1976 the Lucas Aerospace Company in Britain was preparing to sack 20% of its 18,000-strong workforce. The Shop Stewards approached their members for technically viable means of using the existing equipment and human expertise to make socially useful products instead of weapons. The result was a 6-volume document which revealed that workers have the know-how to run industry. What was lacking was the capital. For that you need to expropriate the capitalists.

Today Trades Councils in Britain have been consciously relegated to the sidelines by the trade union bureaucracy, but in this article, written at the time of the struggle against the Heath government's ill-fated Industrial Relations Act [1971] Dudley Edwards outlined the history of the trades councils in Britain and pointed to their potentially vital role.

For ten years Gordon Brown has been mouthing the phrase "no return to boom and bust". Now we see it is meaningless, as the British economy slides into recession, possibly the worst for decades.