Interview with Tony Mulhearn

Slashing public services: do councillors have 'no choice'?

Campaigns against the Tory/Liberal government's cuts have wide support. But many councillors say that they are, in principle, opposed to cutting public services but have "no choice" but to implement cuts.

From 1983 to 1987 the Liverpool Labour council, led by supporters of Militant (the predecessor of the Socialist Party), refused to make cuts or increase local rates to compensate for Tory cuts. Instead they led a mass movement to win more money from Margaret Thatcher's Tory government.

Bob Severn recently spoke to Tony Mulhearn, who was a councillor and Liverpool District Labour Party's president at the time.

Dissident republicanism - Nothing to offer but a return to sectarian killings

Accordging to the Police Federation of Northern Ireland, dissident republican groups have been responsible for carrying out an average of two attacks a day since the beginning of the year.

These attacks range from high profile car bombings targeted against the police and army to so-called punishment shootings in Catholic working class areas. Regardless of how “successful” they are in the attacks they carry out, socialistpartyni.net (website of the Socialist Party - CWI Ireland) argues they have nothing to offer but a return to sectarian killings.

Stop the Cuts Alliance established

Protest - Belfast City Hall 1pm 29 September

At a meeting in Belfast on 16 August, socialist and trade union activists agreed to form the Stop the Cuts Alliance in order to build opposition to the cuts from Westminster and Stormont. It's first decision was to call a protest against cuts at 1pm outside Belfast City Hall on 29 September - as part of the day of action called by the European Trade Union Confederation.

70th anniversary of the assasination of Leon Trotsky

Coming mass revolts will see workers and youth look to Trotsky’s ideas

Seventy years ago the greatest living revolutionary of the time, Leon Trotsky, was murdered by Josef Stalin’s hit man Ramon Mercader. There had been a number of failed previous attempts on Trotsky’s life but this time a fatal blow from an ‘ice pick’ successfully destroyed the ‘brain’ of the working class and the symbol of implacable opposition to capitalism and totalitarian Stalinism. This event, celebrated in the Kremlin by Stalin and the bureaucratic elite he represented, also brought joy to the capitalist governments of Europe, America and the world.

East Belfast: Services under attack

With harsher spending cuts in the pipeline, the Assembly’s current batch of cutbacks are already hitting schools and other educational facilities hard in East Belfast. In July, with construction set to begin, the Education Minister Caitriona Ruane announced that Strandtown Primary School would not be getting the new school building it was promised years ago.

Now in August, Victoria Park primary School has also been told work on its much needed new purpose-built building has been postponed. The fact that these two nearby primary schools have both been denied funding compounds the longstanding neglect of primary education in East Belfast.

Pakistan - The economic impact of devastating floods

Small farmers and peasants to suffer the most

The full economic costs of the devastation caused by the floods- the worst in many years- in Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa, South Punjab, parts of Baluchistan and Sindh, will not be known for some time. But they are likely to be substantial, both for the people affected by the deluge and for Pakistan’s cash-starved government.

Unprecedented devastation caused by the floods - poor suffer the most

Appeal for workers' solidarity

South Africa - 1.3 million public servants in one-day warning strike

Longer strike may follow after negotiations on Thursday

Approximately 20,000 workers marched in Tshwane and 15,000 in Cape Town on Tuesday, 10 August, as 1.3 million public sector workers, organised in the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the smaller Independent Labour Caucus (ILC) and Federation Unions of SA (Fedusa), shut down public services like schools and hospitals almost completely. In other towns pickets were held.