Labour Affairs Magazine

Covering the birth of New Labour, Russian Communism’s Revival, and much else.

Twelve PDFs, and descriptions of their contents.

Issue 46. PDF at LTUR 46 – March-April 1995.

The Clause 4 Debate: Need versus Greed. Do we reverse the Thatcherite development, or capitulate to it?
Gaitskell Debate.
Report from a Fabian meeting
Clause 4 Weekly Bulletin: Tony Blair & the “Underclass”
Book Review – The British Communist Party and the Trade Unions, 1933-1945
Labour & the Railways
Citizen’s Charter
Blair v Lilliput
Labour & Northern Ireland
Labour, Eurosceptics, Unionists (Editorial)
Newsnotes: Chechens – New World Disorder, The feel-bad factor, The Humiliation of Robin Cook, Clause 4

Issue 47: PDF at LTUR 47 – May-June 1995.

Anti-Clause 4 Campaign – editorial
Local elections – editorial
Trade Union Diary: Turkeys Voting For Christmas, The Prescott “Outburst”
French Socialist Election Manifesto
Clause 4 & the Co-op – Sean McGouran
Tony Blair’s “Mission Statement”
Notes on the News: public services ‘put out to tender’, farmed out to the lowest bidder, Criminal Values, Tartan Blues, Hypocrisy Rules over homosexual issues, but please don’t tell anyone, Aitken only following orders!, Gingridge subtly sabotaged by his fellow,Republicans
Irish Peace Process – editorial
Ourselves Alone (Sinn Fein) – Joe Keenan
WW2 & the Cold War -Brendan Clifford
Politics of Envy – G.M. Williams
From Bevan to Blair – B. Clifford
Save 1Viumia Abu-Jamal – John Clayden
How Hitler Lost the War – Pat Muldowne

Issue 48: Available as a PDF at LTUR 48 – July-August 1995.

Editorial – From Wilson to Blair
Editorial – Tory Leadership Election
Editorial – Privatised Utilities
Labour’s Proposals for the Legal System by Angela Clifford
A Bill of Rights & the Taylor/Stalker case
Margaret Hodge by Jack Lane
Labour & Europe by Michael Morrison
Socialism Has A Future by Chris Winch
McVeigh’s Way by Michael Alexander
Notes on the News: Tory Leadership After John Major, Portillo’s Prospects, Teachers Don’t Learn (a foolish strike), Gas-Pigs Rule OK (Privatisation), Not Much Blood on the Telly Tonight, Who Won World War Two (not the British Empire), Successful Terrorism – Bosnia
The Press Gang – poem
What Does Sinn Fein Want? by Joe Keenan
Northern Ireland Update – The North Down Election
Trade Union Diary: The T&GWU Leadership Election

Issue 49 : PDF at LTUR 49 – September-October 1995.

Editorial – Blair’s hidden agenda
Editorial – Yugoslavia
Trade Union Diary: The Dunnes Stores dispute in Ireland
Yugoslavia And The British Falsification Of History by B. Clifford
Private Finance Initiative by M. Morrison
Shareholders or Stockholders: Why pure capitalism is pure madness by G. M. Williams
Notes on the News: Fat cats as cool cats: perks from newly privatised industries were to be expected, the death penalty does not prevent murders, A Serb-free Croatia?, the 1995 World Trade Centre bombings a Russian / Serb operation with Muslim scapegoats?, Japan partly apologising for the way it treated the other nations of Asia during its brief colonial Empire.
Book review: The State We’re In, by Will Hutton
Book review: The Economics of the Madhouse by Chris Harman
Scottish devolution
The Communist Manifesto & the Labour Party

Issue 50 – PDF at LTUR 50 – January-February 1995.

Clause 4 (the actual words)
Editorial – Tony Blair and Clause 4
Editorial – Labour & Europe.  Has Labour reverted to Thatcherite liberalism?
Origins of Clause 4 by Pete Whiteleg
Tony Blair speaks on Clause 4
Alan Johnston on Clause 4
The Borrie Commission for Social Justice by G M Williams. 
Common Ownership by Chris Winch
Jobseekers Allowance by David Morrison
Employee Share Ownership by John Clayden
The Budget & Labour
Ireland
Open Letter to Tony Blair by Jack Lane

Issue 50B – PDF at LTUR 50 – November-December 1995.

Editorial – What Has Happened to British Socialism?
Trade Union Diary: The Ashington Miners’ Picnic, Another Fine Mess from Arthur Scargill,
Letters on New Labour
Editorial – “Democracy Now” wrecking the Campaign for Labour Representation’s efforts to have the Labour Party organise in Northern Ireland, to bridge the sectarian gap.
BT & Murdoch by Michael Craig
Film Review – “Land & Freedom” praises the non-achievers in the Spanish Civil War
What Demographic Crisis? by G.M. Williams.  False claims that it is impossible for the growing numbers of old people to be supported by the working population.
Notes on the News: BT – a sensible natural monopoly, Braveheart: Nice cinema, shame about the history, Racism in Sport, Rule of Law (1) – Knightmares, Rule of Law (2) – Gibraltar, Rule of Law (3) – 0 J Simpson, Rule of Law (4) – Evil Deeds, Good News, Former Soviet Union: Bad News is No News.  (How the Western media hid the awkward fact that Russians had got poorer since the Soviet collapse, something that is still evaded), Joke – cable titles seem to say ‘Come Dancing, On the Bed with Paula, Cagney and Lacey.
Margaret Beckett at Health by Michael Morrison
Labour Party Front Bench – listing the names
Obituary – Harry Clayden by Stan Newens
Arts review – by Rolf Flegoff (A review of Breakdown).
Obituary – Gerry Golden by Pat Murphy
Clare Short – yet another careerist who sailed with the left wing wind when it was blowing towards power.

Issue 51 – PDF at LTUR 51 – January-February 1996.

Editorial – New Labour: Small Minds, Big Egos
Editorial – Blair and the CBI.  Our Supine Leader
Editorial – new Ulster Unionist Leader.  David Trimble and Orangeism
Trade Union Diary: Bill Morris and Incomes Policy, Labour & the Social Chapter, Labour & the Minimum Wage, Slave Labour in Norfolk, Arbeit Macht Frei (proposals for a crackdown on the unemployed).
Labour’s Education Policy by Michael Morrison
Newsnotes: Internet a global Postman Pat, An endangered Newt (Gingrich), Belle Curves (US racism), Colin Powell not seeking the Republican nomination, Polish Socialism 52, God + Mammon 48 (a recovery by the Polish left, sadly short-term), Smaller Serbia
Review – Peter Hain’s “Ayes to the Left” (the contradictions of Blairism)
Parliamentary Diary: Why Vote Labour?, Tory Tax Claims, Laissez-Faire (Or I couldn’t care less), Rail privatisation.
French Strikes by Pete Whitelegg
Andrew Rothstein by Brendan Clifford
Inheritance Tax by G.M. Williams.  (Does passing on family wealth make any sense in the modern world?)
Labour’s Football Policy
Open Letter to Tony Blair by Walter Cobb.  Why are only poor powerless people being blamed for a lack of social responsibility?

Issue 52 – PDF at LTUR 52 – March 1996.

Editorial – The Stakeholder Economy and Why won’t Tony Blair just shut up?
A Visit to Tower Colliery by John Clayden
Newsnotes: Snakeholders or Stakeholders, Illegal drugs and alcohol, Criminality and the Y chromosome.
The State and the Corporate Society: a review of “Accountable to None” by Simon Jenkins.  “In 1979 the Tories set themselves a target which was to reduce the proportion of national income taken by the state in taxation to below 40 per cent. By its own measure Thatcherism failed. It is the contention of this book that the broader goal implicit in that target – that of “rolling back the frontiers of the state” was also not achieved.”
Parliamentary Diary: Harriet Harman and Schools, Labour on Human Rights and Saudi Arabia, Labour on hunting.
What’s a free society? by Gwydion M. Williams.  “The big trouble with freedom is that people will insist on using it.   It’s easy set up a free society, provided everyone understands that it is free in the sense of free to do whatever your neighbours don’t take exception to. A group of like-minded people can live pretty much as they please on that basis. But then along comes someone else with different ideas of how to live. They will insist that “free” includes their freedom to live as they please.”
Hutton, Blair & the Stakeholder Society
Open Letter to Will Hutton by Michael Morrison

Issue 54 – PDF at LTUR 54 – May 1996.

Editorial: Unity, disunity and Margaret Beckett
Gordon Brown and the stakeholders of Wall St
Notes on the News: Mad Cow Disease, US Workers Underpaid, America unfair to China and Japan, Russia impoverished by ignorant “liberals” who understood nothing except anti-Communism, Christianity in Britain, Centre-Right defeat in Italy, Net Book Agreement.
Parliamentary Diary: Jack Straw and John Major on the IRA, Rail Privatisation, Pleasing Rupert Murdoch, New Labour and Banks, Housing Benefit, Who is the real Gordon Brown?
Trade Union Diary: Health and Safety, Robertson’s Jam tomorrow, Who’s holding the stake, Democratic centralism for Labour.
The Dunblane massacre: is Evil the issue?
Blairspeak – How New Labour makes policy.
Making the Culture from Agriculture
Unemployed at the G7.  John Clayden reports on the Unemployed Movement in France.
Statement on foolish judgement by John Lloyd of the Financial Times, our former associate. 
“Khasbulatov, a Chechen, was the most thoughtful of the Russian politicians. Ile was the Speaker of the Parliament and wanted workable divisions of power between the Presidency and the Parliament, while Yeltsin wanted the Parliament to do no more than rubber-stamp Presidential decrees. And Khasbulatov wanted to modify existing structures so as to establish effective representative government as a stable framework for the development of democracy while Yeltsin’s idea of democracy was a plebiscite to establish his personal rule. Khasbulatov was a constitutional politician and Yeltsin, was a mere demagogue. So how could Lloyd not have been a Yeltsinite.
“If Yeltsin had not destroyed the Parliament it is likely that Khasbulatov would have worked out some modus vivendi with the Chechens. But Yeltsin, who has little aptitude for government, was soon at war with the Chechens. And John Lloyd was reporting it in the Financial Times by recycling Yeltsin’s propaganda as news.”
Jobseekers’ Allowance meeting.

Issue 55 – PDF at LTUR 55 – June 1996.

Editorial: “What did you do in the Beef War, Mr Blair?”
Labour candidates win two seats in Northern Ireland
Labour in Northern Ireland – Report
Joe Keenan replies to Walter Cobb’s reflections on the nature of evil.
Civil Service neutrality debate: Radice and Pirie
Parliamentary Diary: the logic of violence, Privatisation Gains and Pains, New Labour Failures.
Trade Union Diary: Marks and Spencer, A “nation of thieves”, report from Newcastle about JobSeekers’ Allowance.
Newsnotes: Mad Cows and slaughter, Westminster Failures,  Russia – expensive freedoms
“The USSR since Khrushchev had been trying to abandon socialist economics while keeping intact the structure of party dictatorship. It might have worked – China has been managing it – but in the event got stuck.
“When the collapse of the USSR suddenly put Boris Yeltsin into power, it became obvious that the pig-headed stubbornness that had made him excellent as the leader of the anti-Gorbachev forces made him a completely useless leader. When Russian society began to fall apart, he had no idea what to do about it, except for fighting people he did not like.”
[I was mistaken in thinking that China had abandoned socialism.  But  entirely right about Yeltsin.]

Issue 56 – PDF at LTUR 56 – July 1996.

Editorial: Why Europe is different
Will Hutton and the death of social democracy
Russian elections: “Liberalism is gibberish smoothed out by experience – the things that ought to work but fail to work are just not tried again. ‘Conservatism’ of the Thatcher type is merely Liberalism with the good intentions removed. Liberals in Eastern Europe really did believe in transcendental Selfishness. Too late they found that removing ‘unprofitable’ parts of the economy did not make it richer and better It just made it poorer and worse, and the economy of the USSR has shrunk by at least a third during the period of ‘reform’.”
Key Words: Stakeholding
Teachers and School Exclusions, by Eamonn O’Kane, Deputy General Secretary, NASUWT
Parliamentary Diary: Railtrack flotation, Peter Kilfoyle, Benefits revisited.
Trade Union Diary: Labour policy on unemployment is not to attack the problem but to attack the unemployed, The Post Office dispute, Minimum Wages, Labour’s Job Insecurity.
Newsnotes: More pay for MPs ?, Voting with their wombs (‘Defending’ marriage has involved dumping extra burdens onto parents), Football management hooliganism, New Labour; New Scotland; New Britain.
Eric Hobsbawm and Brigadier Fitzroy Maclean.  Brendan Clifford on two guilty men
Dr. Kim Howells and the theory of countervailing power

Issue 57 – PDF at LTUR 57 – August 1996.

Editorial: Blair’s puppetmasters
Editorial: Democracy & degeneracy: Who cares about civil society?
John Lloyd’s errors on stakeholding
Evil armed and disarmed: more on the Dunblane massacre.
Keir Hardie – not New Labour.
Labour’s contract for a new Britain
Letter from Hungary: “Hungary, in contrast [to Russia or Ukraine], had been adapting gradually to the market for years before the Russians were finally kicked out. This made it possible for those firms used to operating internationally to take over smoothly and rapidly.”
Parliamentary Diary: National minimum wage, MPs salaries, nuclear power industry, Northern Ireland: New Labour, No Rights
Trade Union Diary: Are the trade unions facing up to life under New Labour?; What will become of the Social Chapter?; Barbara Castle on New Labour;
Newsnotes: the Latin Christian position on marriage was an historic oddity; Another oddity, Prostitution in Britain is legal but cannot operate legally, USA rules the world, maybe; Atlanta hates quietly and segregates unofficially; Dalai Lama quarrelling with a Western-based monk called Geshe Kelsang.