A New Year - A New Epoch
Fings ain’t what they used to be
Leaving the EU has made us all reconsider what we have to do to make a better country to live in together without interference. This is a very good thing.
Here are some relevant words of a very human, socialist song by Lionel Bart:
“Consider yourself at home
Consider yourself one of the family
We’ve taken to you so strong
It’s clear we going to get along
Consider yourself well in
Consider yourself part of the furniture
There isn’t a lot to spare.
Who cares? Whatever we’ve got, we share.”
We will all rebuild Britain
Every worker, all 26 million of us and our families, can contribute to the new Britain.
In fact, that’s the whole point of real democracy, the rule of the majority. Our views don’t just matter and get patronised for a vote, they are the best, leading ideas in society.
Voting to leave the EU was never enough, it announced a new beginning, a real chance for change. We no longer have anyone we don’t elect controlling our Parliament. We have to reflect therefore on what Britain is and should be and what a nation is in a world in which environmental extinction threatens life on Earth and will cause more pandemics.
As if by sinister magic, or horror film, a tiny minority of people have managed to rule the roost, pillage, kill, plunder and steal, smashing nations and their people and get wealthier. Violence, not peace is their main instrument.
The British government, Parliament and state remain beholden to the large global corporations which wreak this havoc.
More pernicious is the idea that some people are superior to others and should have inalienable rights to private ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange. They use this power to make others work for them so they can steal the extra value all workers create and sometimes get them to fight wars for them against their competitors elsewhere.
Along with this pure capitalist view has been the danger that politicians think themselves better than us. Witness idiots in Parliament trying to overturn the people’s vote in the referendum of 2016 because the majority was deemed too stupid.
Any leader should be accountable and representative and mandated. The people are always the best politicians. We give the mandate. In the strength of the mandate for those we elect resides our democracy.
All of the assets of our country material, human and intellectual should be dedicated to our advancement and thereby to benefit humanity.
If we don’t have such high aspirations, life will get even harder.
We must run the country, not endlessly protest against those who do and who fill their pockets as long as we fail to police them. We run everything every day, so why not run the country too? We’ll need to create a new constitutional settlement to achieve this.
Rise up, feel good.
As Bob Marley sang it: Everything little thing, gonna be alright.
Covid19 Health Care and Socialism

Learning Lesson from Socialist Countries
The main lessons to be learned from the socialist countries were that they not only acted upon the science but had built and used a strong public sector. They were also able to switch manufacturing to the making of PPE to meet their own needs. Internationalism meant that they shared their information with the world and are participating in an international vaccine programme. Not vaccine nationalism USA style. New Zealand was also accused as ‘over-reacting’ to the virus. They shut down their borders and contained the virus. They had an efficient track and trace system and helped save their hospitality industry. In Britain, initially, the government had public support for Covid19 measures, including a national lockdown. Now however, support is evaporating. Despite government insistence that it is following the science, crucial mistakes were made at the outset. Under the guise of protecting the NHS, seriously ill people were released from hospitals back into care homes (84% of which are privately owned, many making a profit out of illness), which produced thousands of deaths and accelerated the spread of the virus. Too many people have died unnecessarily through government inaction, carelessness and slavish adherence to private companies and organisations. Billions have been thrown at private companies, often with Tory party connections, despite repeated failures across the board. Meanwhile, hospitals are in danger of being overwhelmed. University hospital trusts in Birmingham and Manchester have made decisions to stop many major operations and direct all efforts to Covid patients. Andy Burnham makes his voice heard in Greater Manchester; one moment he’s railing against “punishing” local restrictions, next, he backs a national “circuit-breaker” lockdown. The much-promised world-beating testing and contact tracing system promised back in May has still not materialised – and never will while it is in the hands of companies like Serco. A command and control system does still not exist.Pandemic Planning in Britain a Mess
Pandemic planning is split between the Joint Biosecurity Centre, the National Covid Response Centre and the Covid19 Taskforce, all operating from different sites. Four separate IT systems are used (Synergy, CTAS, SGSS and HP Zone), meaning data is lost and work is carried out by a mish-mash of Whitehall officials, consultants and under-resourced local authorities. Around 300 000 people a day are being tested, while government says it’s on course to hit the target of a million by Christmas. The government’s scientific advisory group, SAGE, says it’s not enough. Results are taking much too long to process; as few as 63% of close contacts are being told to self-isolate. NHS Test and Trace is having only a “marginal impact” on transmission. Testing was never given the priority it should have been with tracing outsourced to Serco. £12 billion was allocated, with no penalty causes for missed targets; where has our money gone? On tracing, local health teams with local knowledge would have done a much better job. The Johnson government has been secretive in its dealings with the private sector. A sweet manufacturer in Northern Ireland was given £108 million in contracts to produce PPE without any competitive tenders; it smacks of incompetence and corruption. Covid19 and infectious diseases kill people, as does capitalism. The mixture of the two is a catastrophic combination that will return again and again unless the link is broken. Now more than ever, we need must protect people not profit
Labour Party Turmoil
Bolivia
Coup Actors Trounced in Elections by MAS


Right wing government-a lesson in corrupt dictatorship
The vote increased for MAS compared to the annulled 2019 elections when MAS won by 47.08% to 36.51% for Mesa. Eleven months of government by the right wing coup actors showed their corruption and incompetence. One example which made the news was their claim to have bought 500 intensive therapy beds to treat Covid patients which could not be found anywhere and the purchase of ventilators from Spain unsuitable for intensive therapy for which they claim to have paid prices 3 times higher than the listed ones. Their minister Murillo, who made his name persecuting MAS activists, also acted against government officials who asked questions about financial dealings. People also remember the massacres of demonstrators by the army at Sacaba and Sencata where 21 people were killed and hundreds wounded. The government passed a law giving the army and police immunity for their actions against demonstrators. This law was repealed later by congress where MAS had a majority. Many of the young, had not experienced right wing rule, as the pre-coup MAS government had lasted 14 years.Reaction against inclusion
But the most offensive actions by the coup actors was their obvious racism and rejection of the inclusion of the people of Native American extraction (85% of the population) by attacking their flag, the Wiphala and bringing a large Bible into the government ‘to eradicate devils signs’. Those images are unforgettable to all Bolivians. The election results put Bolivia back on course to keep building the Plurinational State of Bolivia. We must join their celebrations.
Wiphala flag on the left next to Bolivian flag, Blue MAS flags at MAS celebration of the election victory.
Feed The Bairns Ye Tory Rats

Decisive Victory for Bolivian Democracy

Scottish Independence: EU Domination
The Currency Question

The Price of Aid
Humans vs Markets
Workers' Party of Britain Statement
The Fight Against Covid-19
Workers' Party of Britain Statement
Coronavirus
Workers' Party of Britain Statement

January 31st - Independence Day
Workers' Party of Britain Statement
There is nothing more politically precious than self-determination. National independence is the key to democratic and economic progress.
The banks and large corporations have created a new world order of international free trade agreements, highly mobile capital flows and supranational bodies like the IMF, WTO, and EU. To free themselves to plunder, they had to break down national democratic parliaments and over rule the sovereign laws and protections of individual countries. The EU, aided by both the Tories and then New Labour, conducted a slow motion coup d’etat against Britain. First, our material sources of independence in agriculture, engineering and energy supply were pulled apart. Then, our public services and utilities were hollowed out and put under foreign ownership. As part of the attack, the global reach of the City of London and its speculators was given free reign as our own people started to starve and rely on food banks. Those manufacturers and service providers that remained were forced to compete for public contracts under the procurement rules in an unfair, rigged single EU market. Petty divisions within Britain were stoked by the EU under the illusion that if Scotland and Wales broke away they would be rewarded with a form of ‘independence’ that made them entirely subservient to the EU.Labour Movement Abandoned Sovereignty
The Trade Union Movement and the Labour Party abandoned Britain’s sovereignty and in a complete rejection of our democratic history, they believed that the unelected in Brussels and the European Court of Justice would save us. As a result, the vast majority of the working class abandoned them. Today there are six million workers in the trade unions but twenty six million unorganised. Worse still, in 1980 trade unions had collective bargaining rights for more than 80% of workers. Today, it is less than 20%. The majority of people do not want to be part of a movement that has nothing to offer them and that has no confidence that our collective struggle and not the EU is the key to all progressive change. In the absence of trade union or Labour Party commitment to Britain, workers supported latecomers to the field of anti-EU work like UKIP and the Brexit Party and, ultimately, had to force their arch opponents, the Tory Party, to get the country out.After Brexit the Tories are Redundant
The Tories have one mandate, to get us out of the EU. After that is done they are redundant. They will be propped up by the Fixed Term Parliament Act and a Labour Party yet again trying to get its own house in order for five years to be ready for next time. Labour will turn against the rise of extra Parliamentary activity needed to assert our interests as it has always done. We cannot wait however, the fruits of national independence must benefit workers now. A new deal for workers is needed. We are the nation. We must prosper. The better we do, the more we inspire others to do so, that is real internationalism. No one can rule over us. We want neither NATO, nor a special relationship with the United States, nor vast swathes of our economy in foreign owned hands. Our fishing grounds, our agriculture, rebuilt manufacturing and high tech industrial sectors and rebooted, genuinely public, services, nationally owned utilities and transport systems must thrive in a new way. We must settle the democratic deficit in the country and create a new constitutional settlement for the people. Unelected, overseas control of our parliament and laws is over, now elected, accountable domestic control over our whole economy must begin. Download article as PDF
Britain and the World
Socialism is a recent, infant development in the whole, long history of the human species, yet its seeds and embryos have grown within each previous social formation worldwide.

