Making sense of politics in 2016
Andrew Tait gave this presentation to the International Socialist Organisation Hui-a-tau in Auckland last month. 2016, in New Zealand, has not been marked by major struggles or economic disasters or booms. The Key crew, masters anyway of administering sleeping gas, have managed to avoid major scandals or divisions. On the contrary, one of the worst […]
After the Elections: Political Perspectives in Japan
In-depth post-election perspectives from Japanese socialist Tsutomu Teramoto. Teramoto is a member of the Japan Revolutionary Communist League. As expected, the general election of December 14, 2014 gave an absolute majority of the seats again to the ruling coalition of Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and Komei Party. LDP got 291 seats and Komei Party got […]
Lessons to learn from bitter defeat
This was a defeat, and a big one. We have to start with this unpleasant reality. National, on the current results, could govern alone if they chose; at 48% their share of the vote has actually increased compared to the last election. This is an extraordinary situation. Over one million people voted for National. The Herald calls Key […]
Condemn Anti-Semitic Attacks on John Key
We condemn the anti-Semitic defacing of National Party billboards reported over the last days. Racism serves to divide the working class, and to distract us from the real divisions in society. As socialists we are opposed to all forms of racism, regardless of who happens to be the target of racist slurs. All left-wing people […]
Rebuilding Our Unions
Dougal McNeill gave this talk as an introduction to one of the sessions at the ISO’s recent national conference / hui-a-tau, held in Auckland in December. This talk is of necessity arranged in a bitsy, fragmentary, tentative way. That’s because this is the kind of year we’ve had – there has been no single event […]
The Labour leadership battle
From the outset of last year’s leadership contest Shearer was the choice of the capitalist class to take over from Phil Goff. There was a reason for that; Shearer was distinctly the right-wing candidate who signalled his willingness to jettison left-wing policies that Labour had adopted for the General Election. Shearer was the puppet of […]
The Tragedy at Pike River: an Indictment of Capitalism
It’s just sickening to read reports of the royal commission’s findings on the Pike River disaster. 29 men lost their lives – and have left behind grieving families and friends – in what was an entirely preventable, and predictable, tragedy. The lawyer for some of the families involved calls it an “unrelenting picture of failure […]
Aotearoa: the State of the Class Struggle
During the whole of 2011 there were a mere 12 work stoppages and they involved barely 2,000 workers and only 4,850 person-days lost (to exploitation); so says the Department of Labour. Even worse, only 9 of the 12 stoppages were actual stoppages. The other 3 were what the DOL calls ‘partial strikes’, which are not […]
Beating back the bosses
It’s the middle of winter and four years into a National government but spring is in the air. When Key was re-elected we were worried. He won the election on the back of a record low vote (around 50% of people on the Maori roll didn’t vote) but he claimed an endorsement for another three […]
They’re right to strike
Labour’s spokesperson for labour issues, Darien Fenton, has called the Ports of Auckland dispute “some of the worst industrial action we’ve seen in New Zealand for a decade”. That pretty much sums up the difference between those who want to manage the capitalist system, whether Labour or National, and the interests of the working class. The worst industrial action of the […]
