Labour Affairs Magazine

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, 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 53 – April 1996.

• Hutton and ‘Stakeholders’,
• Interview with Will Hutton,
• The Encouragement of Evil (guns and social morality)
• Letter from Australia, How did Labour ‘afford it’ in 1945?,
• Chinese “expansionism”,
• Why democracy fails in Northern Ireland.
• Available as a PDF at LA53 – April 1996.

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.

Issue 58 – not yet scanned.

Issue 59 – not yet scanned.