AARON KIELY provides a student’s eyewitness account of police brutality at the tuition fees demonstration in Parliament Square last week. First, I have to state that I am a member of Labour Party, a candidate in the upcoming local elections, a Committee member of the NUS Black Students’ Campaign and an elected representative of...
False Economy
As campaigns against the spending cuts grow, readers may be interested in False Economy, a website for “everyone concerned about the impact of the government’s spending cuts on their community, their family or their job”. Devised by “local campaigners, those who rely on or support good public services and those who work to supply...
Party democracy: what the candidates say
One of the most important issues in the current leadership campaign is how to rebuild the membership of the Labour Party. Thousands may have joined since the Conservative-LibDem coalition came to power but the party lost many thousands over a long period of time before then. One (among many) reasons for this decline is...
The Candidates’ Manifestos
The Dronfield Blather blog has run a three-month campaign to get manifestos from the Labour leadership candidates. This week it published the responses of all five Labour leader hopefuls. ‘On 16 June we commenced a campaign to get the candidates in the Labour Leadership Election to issue what we called “Manifestos of Intent”,’ says the...
Desperate times
Could this be the last Labour government? DAVID CONNOLLY looks at the Compass group’s call for electoral reform The left wing pressure group Compass has an impressive record of campaigning on a wide range of issues, attempting, with some success, to challenge the neo-liberal agenda that shapes much of government policy. Whatever the outcome...
Stop the BNP
If you haven’t already done so you can protest about the BBC extending a hand of friendship to the BNP via the Hope not Hate website. On Thursday afternoon (22 October) Hope not Hate are going to the BBC to deliver the Question Time presenter, David Dimbleby, thousands of messages of hope from supporters....
Demos and disillusionment
PHIL DORÉ recounts his personal and painful journey from the Stop the War Coalition to Labour Friends of Iraq In March 2003, as the war began in Iraq, I found myself sitting in the middle of a road in Cardiff alongside hundreds of anti-war protestors. I was one of what the media had dubbed...
Unite against terror
The following statement was published on the internet after the bombings in London on 7 July 2005 Terrorist attacks against Londoners on 7 July killed at least 54 people. The suicide bombers who struck in Netanya, Israel, on 12 July ended five lives, including two 16 year old girls. And on 13 July, in...
Racisms, multiculturalisms and fascisms
BARRY WINTER argues for more plural ways of thinking, if we are to meet the challenges posed by racism and the far right. The title of this article, ‘Racisms, Multiculturalisms and Fascisms’, may at first, appear perverse. But it is not meant to be. The reason for adding an ‘s’ to the three terms,...