Socialist Resistance

An archive of socialistresistance.org, 2002–2022

May 4: a real chance to punish Blair

Socialist Resistance no34  |  page 7

This is scanned newsprint, not web text. The original PDFs carried no text layer at all, so every word here was read off the page by OCR. Expect dropped opening letters, run-together words and wrong characters. There was no contents page to cut the paper up by, so the articles were found from the size of their headlines: a headline may carry its kicker, and where an article ran beside a boxed panel a few lines of the neighbour can appear. The scanned issue is the authority; this text is here so the words can be found at all.

Tony Blair is not looking forward to the local elections on May 4.

The war in Iraq remains centre stage as the daily headlines on the TV and in the papers show the chaos and devastation the occupation continues to reek on the Iraqi

The anti-war movement conunues lo punisn New Labour for their murderous involvement in this imperialist adventure as was shown by the impressive size of the demonstration last month, not to mention the warm welcome given to Condoleeza Rice in the North West.

Closer to home more than a million workers took strike action to defend their pensions on March 28. These trade unionists are poised to take further action later in April - and if the government doesn't concede demands - maybe on Election Day itself.

The local government union, UNISON - normally a trusted ally of Blair and his

- have withdrawn CHOLICS funding from the party over pensions

At the same time the three main parties are competing for the same political space. New Labour is determined to go further with its neo-liberal agenda that it achieved in either its first or second terms or once.

The Tories are trying to get to the left of New Labour -having failed completely to outflank it to the right - but tew believe it will happen given the nature of the Tory Party.

The Liberal Democrats have moved to the right under the Campbell leadership and have less credibility as either an anti-war party or as an alternative to the left of Labour.

All of this leaves the field wide open for Respect if it can mount an effective campaign over the next tew weeks Socialist Resistance supporters will be doing our part to try and ensure that it does so.