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Since the last issue ofLalkar(May/June 1999), the people of Scotland and Wales have been to the polls to elect a Scottish Parliament and a Welsh Assembly respectively; there were also government elections in some areas; finally the elections to the European Parliament were held on 10 June. In Scotland the Socialist Labour Party polled 55,000 … [Read more…]

 In September 1995 neither the sacked workers or their employers or their union officials could have believed that the struggle would still be raging 4 years later. The persistence and tenacity of these heroic strikers has won the hearts and minds of workers, men and women, black and white, young and old, across Britain and … [Read more…]

 By Susan Wareham [Dr Susan Wareham is president of the Medical Association for Prevention of War (Australia) and regional vice-president, International Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear War.] WALID spends most of his time on the streets of Baghdad. He is 14 years old and shines shoes each day to earn a meagre existence for his mother and … [Read more…]

 As the Orange faction in Irish politics does its best to sidle out of the awful prospect (from its point of view) of being forced to do business with northern Ireland’s Catholic and Republican community, of being forced to allow them to participate in matters of state, it is hard to avoid noticing their fascistic … [Read more…]

by David AyrtonThe aim of this article is to show the reader the reactionary nature of the reporting on the war, and the way in which the ‘Left’ has proved to be incapable of charting a truly independent course from what is, essentially, the propaganda machine of the British capitalist class. With very few honourable … [Read more…]

 DAVID MORGAN shows how the death sentence on PKK leader Ocalan looks set to provoke a new Kurdish uprising if it ends in execution. Macabre scenes in Turkey greeted news of the death sentence pronounced on Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan on 29 June, a verdict that came as no surprise to anyone closely following what has … [Read more…]

 i) 59th Anniversary of Martyrdom of Shaheed Udham Singh On 13 March, 1940, the great Indian patriot Udham Singh challenged the imperial hegemony of the British Raj when he assassinated Sir Michael O’Dwyer, ex-lieutenant Governor of Punjab, at a public meeting at Caxton Hall, London. After a brief two-day trial, Udham Singh was sentenced to death. … [Read more…]

 by PAT O’ROURKEGiven the ‘spin’ placed on developments in Ireland, it is small wonder that the recent negotiations to save the Good Friday Agreement continue to cause confusion. Republicans, Unionists, the Blair government and the bourgeois press have all claimed victory and defeat, progress and set back, in almost equal measure. Every shade of opinion … [Read more…]

Intensification of all the contradictions of imperialism “War is politics continued by other (i.e., forcible) means.”This famous dictum of Clausewitz, one of the most profound writers on military questions, has received further confirmation from the latest imperialist war in the Balkans. This war started as a continuation of the imperialist peace, and the imperialist peace ending … [Read more…]

Colombia – The guerrilla advancesThe Timesof 13 July 1999 reports that thousands of FARC rebels have advanced on 25 towns in Colombia, including its capital Bogota:“Using tanks made from tractors wrapped in steel sheets, and missiles made from gas canisters … Yesterday Colombia continued under rebel siege with reports of guerrillas advancing towards Bogota by … [Read more…]