Category: Articles

Lula and his supporters are taking to the streets to rally for democracy and against hunger in Brazil, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE

PRESIDENTIAL elections due in October in Brazil have the potential to not only transform that country, but also the whole of Latin America, and indeed the world.

As part of the build-up to those vital elections, the former president, historic leader of the Workers’ Party (PT) and candidate for the Together for Brazil coalition, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, is fronting up massive rallies and other campaign events, whose central themes are the defence of democracy and the fight against hunger.
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It seems like the P&O scandal was a line in the sand and since then the unions have been taking no steps back – but even with the huge public support for RMT’s actions, will the Tories legislate us into defeat, asks KEN LIVINGSTONE

AS we enter July, trade unionists in London and dockers from across the country held a major commemorative rally yesterday to mark the 50th anniversary of the Pentonville Five.
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In light of a well-earned Sinn Fein victory in a system set up to prevent republicans from winning, unity is on the cards — the left in Britain must now stand up for Ireland’s right to self-determination, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE

THROUGHOUT my time in politics, there have undoubtedly been some hugely significant changes. Whilst many of these have sadly been negative for the left (most notably the rise of neoliberalism and its attack on organised labour), it’s important to acknowledge and celebrate examples of real progress — and the situation in Ireland has undoubtedly been one of those in recent years.
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We need to defend our right to boycott from the Tory attacks, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE

SOME of the proudest moments in the British labour movement’s history have been acts of international solidarity.

Whether it be NHS staff in Portsmouth refusing to handle supplies from apartheid South Africa or workers at Rolls-Royce’s East Kilbride factory putting a stop to work on engines used by the Pinochet regime in Chile (as featured in Felipe Bustos Sierra’s fantastic documentary film, Nae Pasaran), those who took part not only had a sense of obligation to stand up for just causes but an understanding that all those fighting for a better world have a shared interest in sticking together and supporting each other in whatever ways we can.
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Under pressure, the US is seeking to re-engage with Venezuela, totally undermining Juan Guaido and the regime-change agenda pursued under Trump in its sudden desperation for oil, reports KEN LIVINGSTONE

DESPERATE times breed desperate measures. In a shock development, parts of the international corporate media are reporting that the US has approached the Venezuelan government with a view to buying oil to shore up its domestic market and avert an energy crisis.
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The government is not even pretending to have an answer to the dire situation most of us face. Workers can’t wait for it to tackle the deepening cost-of-living crisis – we have to take action ourselves, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE

REPORTS this week — a fortnight before the Chancellor is due to give his Spring Statement — confirmed that households in Britain are set to suffer the worst overall decline in living standards for nearly 50 years.
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Don’t let Boris Johnson off the hook over sick pay, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE

HAVING seen how he ran his campaigns for the London mayoralty, it became clear to me some time ago that Boris Johnson’s strategy to gain and maintain power was simple: create a circus headlined by himself to distract from an absence of anything offered by him that will meaningfully improve the lives of those he supposedly serves.

The bumbling persona, the willingness to flip from presenting himself as a modern metropolitan liberal to a reactionary right-wing culture warrior, the gimmicky policy announcements: all of them exist to ensure the topic of conversation is anything other than his actual record on the issues that impact millions.
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We must keep up solidarity with Bolivia, as the right-wing campaign of destabilisation has not abated, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE

AS HAS been widely covered in the Morning Star, October 2021 marked a year after Bolivia’s Movement for Socialism party (MAS) gained a decisive victory in the 2020 presidential election, ending the illegitimate regime of Jeanine Anez, but there are now sustained and serious concerns about right-wing anti-democratic destabilisation in the country.
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There is clearly a wider push from the British Establishment to rehabilitate the warmongering former PM and his political project, says KEN LIVINGSTONE

THE news of Tony Blair’s knighthood felt like a classic case of “shocking but not surprising.” It is indeed shocking that a man who led Britain into a war unleashing nearly 20 years of death and destruction across the Middle East has not only faced little in the way of consequences, but has been honoured with Establishment pageantry.
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When studies show we have one of the most expensive and inefficient railways in Europe, a new fare hike is the last straw: we need public ownership, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE

This year is set to see yet another rise in Britain’s rail fares, with an increase of 3.8 per cent being introduced in March.

At this point these hikes in prices have begun to feel as much of a new year tradition as the London fireworks display or Jools Holland’s annual hootenanny, but we should never lose sight of just what a rip-off rail privatisation has been — or just how many opportunities governments have given it to fail us time after time.
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