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The Movement for a Socialist Future unites all those who oppose the rule of the global corporations and "Third Way" governments like New Labour. We support all those fighting injustice, people struggling everywhere for cultural independence, self-determination and diversity and in defence of the environment. We campaign for a new, not-for-profit society based on co-operation not competition, with mass democratic control of the economy and the state.
e-mail msf@socialistfuture.org.uk for more information
Latest
After Live 8: from pressure to action
The tremendous global movement against poverty, brought together by the Live 8 concerts on July 2, has the potential to take history in a new direction, beyond the control of the leaders of the major economies who can only meet together behind barbed wire.
The G8 summit and political power
The G8 summit has one merit - it is focusing minds on what it is going to take to move beyond a world dominated by powerful and all-pervasive corporations and their political cheer-leaders who will assemble in Gleneagles next month. On the G8 agenda are plans to extend and broaden the reach of the global capitalist economy. So-called debt relief and "fairer trade" are integral to this strategy. Both are conditional on poorer countries opening their borders to external trade and investment. There will always be just one winner in this game - the mega corporations.
Make
the G8 leaders history
Millions of people, including some of the world's most famous musicians,
are taking part in protests at the appalling conditions in which large
numbers of their fellow human beings live. They want the leaders of the
world's richest countries meeting at the G8 summit in Edinburgh in July
to act to "make poverty history". As even Bob Geldof - the founder
of Live Aid - has acknowledged, in the end charity can't solve global
poverty - there has to be a political solution.
A
sham election
The outcome of the 2005 general election reflects a growing awareness
that neither the current political system, nor the parties which try to
sustain it, are able to offer any way forward. This deepening disenchantment
inevitably adds to the crisis of the parliamentary process and opens up
possibilities for change.
Don't
be blackmailed into voting
Some
people have told us that our policy of withholding your votes on May 5
is wrong because this might lead to the return of the Tories. The obvious
implication - which is not always made clear - is that we will have to
grit our teeth and vote New Labour because in practice this is the only
way Michael Howard's party can be kept out.
Reject
‘dependency’ politics
Our call for people to withhold their votes on May 5 and instead
join our campaign to renew and extend democracy beyond the existing parliamentary
system, is founded on the dramatic economic, social and political changes
that have taken place since the 1970s. These changes have produced a global
market economy dominated by a handful of corporations and a financial
system beyond the reach of nation-state governments.
No
votes for New Labour!
The general election announced for May 5 offers no real choice to Britain's
44 million potential voters. Millions, perhaps as many as half the electorate,
sense that fact and will decline to take part in a charade carried out
under the guise of a democratic process. And they will be right.
Parliament
seals its own fate
By backing the government's so-called anti-terror Bill, which abolishes
at a stroke democratic rights that go back many centuries, New Labour
MPs achieved two things: they not only endorsed the framework of a police
state but also signalled parliament's own demise as a meaningful body.
A
secret policeman's government
The rule of law means nothing to the New Labour government. Iraq was invaded
against norms of international law. Foreign nationals were locked up indefinitely
without trial or charge. Now that the courts have declared that illegal,
the state intends to place people under house arrest - also without trial,
evidence or charges.
Vote
for "none of the above"
Two pre-election announcements on the same day this week confirm that
both major political parties in Britain are opposite sides of the same
coin and that the best way to vote in the coming general election is for
"none of the above".
How
to remember the victims of the tsunami
The deaths of at least 150,000 people from the tsunami in the Indian ocean
portray in the most tragic way the sharp divisions in wealth, power and
technology that now exist in an unprecedented way on a global scale.
A
state of crisis
The devastating Law Lords ruling against New Labour's anti-terror "laws",
together with David Blunkett's resignation as Home Secretary, express
a profound and growing crisis within the state. The self-evident divisions
are not confined to the judiciary but include the military, police and
intelligence services.
New
Labour and the Big Lie
The
legislative programme announced by New Labour this week is another piece
of scaffolding in the police state edifice that the Blair regime has been
building since it came to office. There are eight "safety and security"
Bills in the programme and a further eight in draft form. Taken together,
measures like ID cards, a British-style FBI and trial without juries for
terror suspects, will give the state unprecedented powers of surveillance,
control, arrest and incarceration.
After
the US election
The
US presidential election is further evidence that we are in a new, brutal
period of global capitalism where the previously established framework
and politics of liberal, representative political democracy count for
less and less. Bush was able to win a second term with relative ease because
the ideologues of the Republican Party - the so-called neo-conservatives
- have grasped this salient fact. They enabled Bush to develop a populist-authoritarian
politics that had wide appeal in a country shaken and reshaped by powerful
market forces over the last 30 years.
Butler
and weapons of mass deception
The Butler report into the intelligence assessments that preceded the
invasion of Iraq has one merit - it unwittingly shows that the British
state and the New Labour regime that oversees it, pose a greater threat
to our lives than Saddam Hussein's mythical "weapons of mass destruction"
ever did.
With
'leaders' like these, who needs enemies?
New Labour has announced plans to undermine still further the basis of
state education through private-sector driven "city academies"
and specialist schools aimed at appeasing middle-class voters, without
having to worry about any real opposition from the leaders of the teacher
unions.
How
to meet the threat from the right
The
outcome of the local and European elections, with the advance of right-wing
populism in the shape of the UKIP, adds to the existing crisis of the
parliamentary system and contains real warnings about the future. New
Labour finished third in the local elections in terms of the share of
the vote, the first time a governing party has done so. In the European
elections, the Tories and New Labour could not muster 50% of the vote
between them, while New Labour plunged to it worst performance for more
than 90 years.
Barbarians
at the gate
The cutting down of a peaceful demonstration by the Israeli army, the
slaughter of a wedding party in Iraq by the American military, together
with the torture of illegally held captives in that country, are desperate
and barbaric atrocities. They amount to state terror against innocent
people, organised by governments that have lost legitimacy in the eyes
of millions of people around the world.
Torture,
values and lies
When the American and British governments declare that the systematic
torture of Iraqi detainees is contrary to "our values" and is
the work of a few rogue elements among the military, they only add another
layer to the mountain of lies and hypocrisy that have accompanied their
illegal war and occupation.
The
silence of the lambs
The silence
of the "left" of New Labour on the massacre of civilians in
Iraq by American occupation forces says it all. When it is down to former
diplomats and Tory MPs to voice opposition, you know the game is up with
those who, we are told, are proposing to "reclaim the party".
War
crimes in Iraq
The uprising against the American-led occupation of Iraq is a surprise
only to those who believe that Washington commands unlimited power and
authority based on its apparent military might. No wonder some American
politicians are talking of a Vietnam-style “quagmire”, this
time in the Middle East. Then, a small country proved that dropping endless
bombs and chemicals could not subdue a national revolt and the US had
to flee Vietnam.
The
unfinished business of the miners’ strike 1984-85
In the historic and heroic strike of 1984-85, which began 20 years ago
this week, miners and their union asked the biggest question of all, one
which concerns all wage earners, then and now: who gets to decide about
the future of jobs, communities and the direction society should take?
L’état
– c’est New Labour
Absolutism is defined
in the Encyclopaedia Britannica as “the political doctrine and
practice of unlimited, centralised authority and absolute sovereignty”.
It adds: “The essence of such a system is that the ruling power is not
subject to regularised challenge or check by any other agency, be it judicial,
legislative, religious, economic, or electoral. Louis XIV, who ruled France
during the late 17th and early 18th centuries, furnished the most familiar
assertion of absolutism when he said, ‘L'état, c'est moi’ (‘I am the state’).”
The
death of liberal democracy foretold -
There is increasing alarm in civil liberties and legal
circles about the growing authoritarianism of the New Labour government.
Barrister John Upton, writing in The Guardian (February 23),
warns that New Labour is pursuing a “significant constitutional
shift”. He says: “Without a single terrorist attack taking
place, or a single civilian in the UK being killed, a climate has been
created so that when we are told by the home secretary that our liberties
must be removed in order to ensure our freedom, we meekly accept.”
Our challenge for 2004 - Demonstrating the social and political alternatives to New Labour and the market capitalist economy that the Blair regime presides over, is the key challenge we face in 2004. Without this perspective, the increasing millions who oppose both New Labour, its love-in with the global corporations and its partnership with the brutal Bush regime are restricted in what they can hope to achieve.
New Labour’s march to a police state - It has come to something when the new Tory leader Michael Howard, a man with a deeply reactionary record as Home Secretary, is able to mount a successful attack on the New Labour government over its deepening authoritarianism. Howard was referring to proposals whereby the state will seize the children of asylum seekers denied the right to remain by the frightening Home Secretary, David Blunkett.
Stop the War Coalition leaders and political fabrication - You would think that this might be an excellent time to step up the campaign against the New Labour government and to broaden the discussion about possible alternatives. Unless you are the leadership of the Stop the War Coalition, in which case you do everything in your power to avoid these issues.
The quest for an Islamic Enlightenment - Ziauddin Sardar’s overarching project is to transform Islam and the west both from within and without. Sardar argues for a form of Islam and a balance of civilisations which could lead to an alternative future to that being offered by today’s leaders of the major states. The question is, however, does his critique provide a truly in-depth examination of the dogmas he is challenging? Review by Corinna Lotz
Paying the price for opportunism - Phil Sharpe examines what lies behind the moves by the Socialist Workers Party to form a Peace and Justice Party with representatives of the Muslim community
The blind alley of crude anti-Americanism
The theory and practice of the Socialist Workers Party
