Third Camp Marxism

Bosses in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) have offered a number of concessions in our ongoing dispute about Job Centre opening hours and arrangements. The union’s Group Executive Committee for the DWP meets on Monday 5 October to consider these concessions and decide the next steps. If the GEC decides the offer isn’t adequate, the dispute will continue and likely move to a formal ballot for industrial action.

It’s autumn, and we need our thick coats again. Since the Outage [the annual shutdown for major repairs] something has changed among the apprentices. We are more confident, and there’s less work to do, so we are competing, suddenly, for jobs.

In downtime, I do college work, then discover engineers have gone to a job without telling me — “Don’t worry about it, do your apprentice work” — I forget basic things, I screw up testing, I fake confidence and dread embarrassment.

October 1 was the anniversary of the founding of the “People’s Republic” of China. Regular readers of the Morning Star should turn away now. Blind Shaft (2003, director Li Yang), a film set in a coal mining region of China, depicts the appalling conditions underground and corruption among officials. In 2003 there were 6,700 fatalities (official figures) in Chinese mines.

The Black Lives Matter movement has reignited the demand for an end to Police racism and racism across society, and given many a necessary reminder of the need to listen and learn from BAME people and to offer our solidarity.

LGBT +people are now also asking once again: should uniformed police officers be invited to Pride marches?

• See here for other articles debating the US election, Trump, etc.

In the light of the Sanders campaign and a small resurgence of leftish pressure from Democrats, having a straightforward position of never voting for or to even contemplate seeking the Democratic nomination would be counterproductive.

• See here for other articles debating the US election, Trump, etc.

• See here for other articles debating the US election, Trump, etc.

Trump’s defeat in the election is, as of now, likely. It is by no means certain. A lot can happen in the coming weeks.

It is of fundamental importance to the US working class that he does not win.

• See here for other articles debating the US election, Trump, etc.

Immediately after the 9/11 attackers had levelled the World Trade Center, Donald Trump rang a radio station to inform New Yorkers that now he, Donald J Trump, owned the tallest building in the city.

In a saner political world, that public response to 9/11 would ever after have made the man who had thus exposed his inner self unelectable to any position in the USA.

• See here for other articles debating the US election, Trump, etc.

• See here for other articles debating the US election, Trump, etc.

Workers’ Liberty supports Howie Hawkins and Angela Walker in the 2020 US presidential election: socialists, standing as the candidates of the Green Party. We also carry debate about that stance and on assessment of Trump. Below is how Hawkins and Walker sum up their pitch, from a statement on the hospitalisation on Donald Trump.