We Need a Socialist Party
In January 1972 Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, 25-year old MP for Mid Ulster elected on an ‘independent socialist’ ticket, crossed the floor of the House of Commons in the British Parliament and punched Home Secretary Reginald Maudling in the face. He, a Conservative, had just spoken to Parliament blaming the deaths of “Bloody Sunday”, when British […]
Little’s resignation: Labour Must Change Course
Andrew Little’s resignation as Leader at Labour’s caucus meeting on Tuesday morning (1 August) has shocked the political world. We can accept Little’s reason at face value. He cited opinion polls: Sunday’s One News Colmar Brunton poll, Monday’s Newshub Reid poll and Labour’s private polling. These polls showed Labour’s support down to 24 percent, below […]
For the many, not the few: Labour in Britain shows we deserve better here
Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party has delivered a stunning blow against the Tories and British Labour’s rightwing Blairites. Theresa May might not survive as Tory leader. With most of the British general election results declared the upshot is a hung parliament. The general election has dramatically shown the power of simple leftwing policies “For the Many, […]
Greg O’Connor: Labour cops in
Labour’s decision to run Greg O’Connor against Peter Dunne in Ōhāriu tells us much about the party’s strategy. And the news is not good. O’Connor is a hardened reactionary, a veteran of decades at the head of the Police Association. In this role he was the public face of the police, and used his considerable […]
The Expropriators are Expropriated
Review of ‘The Expropriators are Expropriated’ and other writings on Marxism By Tom O’Lincoln (Melbourne: Interventions Inc). Tom O’Lincoln’s The Expropriators are Expropriated is a collection of talks and essays from his political career in socialist organisations in Australia from the early 1980s. Tom’s writing is immensely readable and easy to understand. In this collection, […]
‘A mighty lesson’: how did New Zealand socialists respond to 1917?
‘There is a mighty lesson to be learned from the Russian Revolution.’ That’s how the Maoriland Worker, newspaper of the radical wing of New Zealand’s labour movement, editorialised in March 1917. The newspaper’s editors – including Harry Holland, who would go on to lead the Labour Party for the next 16 years – had only […]
Vale Rochelle Kupa
Kua hinga te tōtara i Te Waonui-a-Tāne —The totara has fallen in the forest of Tāne Rochelle Kupa (1963 – 2017), of Tuhoe and Tūwharetoa, was a class fighter, an educationalist, and a campaigner for Māori rights. After fighting an aggressive cancer for two years longer than what doctors predicted, Rochelle died on Wednesday, 22 […]
Labour-Green Budget Responsibility Rules Nonsense
The Labour Party has a death wish. In what looks like a bid to make sure it loses September’s general election, last Friday the Labour-Green alliance launched a major plank of its election platform titled Budget Responsibility Rules. What the Labour Party is saying is that if it wins the election it will hold public […]
Mass Action Can Change Society
The mass of ordinary people who can change society. The ruling class, the capitalist media, and academia all stress workers’ powerlessness, and these ideas often filter through to people who want to change the world. The emphasis can get put on heroic individuals, spectacular action designed to ‘shock’ the masses out of their alleged passivity, […]
Class War in Plain English
Bill English, like John Key before him, has long cultivated an image of himself as a dull, middle-of-the-road moderate. A bit boring, no surprises. His 2002 election campaign – around the slogan “all paddling in the same waka” – anticipated Key’s rejuvenation and liberalisation of the National ‘brand’, shedding its older Pākehā racism in favour […]
