Swindon tenants claim vote victory

Council housing campaigners scored a victory in Swindon today when thousands of the local authority's tenants voted overwhelmingly against plans to transfer of their homes to private providers.

In a ballot of more than 10,000 Swindon council tenants, nearly 73 per cent voted against the plans despite the city authority's best efforts to persuade them otherwise.

"The Swindon tenants' Vote No campaign was a grass-roots affair," said Paul Burnham of Defend Council Housing, which helped run the campaign.

"The council spent in excess of £600,000 on the transfer consultation, while the Vote No campaign spent less than £6,000 - but still the tenants delivered a No vote."

DECLARATION OF 19 EUROPEAN COMMUNIST YOUTH ORGANIZATIONS 20 YEARS AFTER THE COUNTERREVOLUTION

Our future is the new world, Communism

The Communist Youth Organizations that sign the following announcement call upon the youth of Europe, and of the whole world, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the dissolution of the USSR and the overthrow of socialism.

This anniversary, from the scope of the bourgeois governments and parties, from the scope of the forces of capital, is a chance to slander socialism and its contribution, to project the capitalist “eternity” and “welfare”. These are the ones that with their applied politics have taken back all the youth’s rights; they have made dozens of imperialist wars and are planning even more; they have condemned us in poverty and unemployment; they penalize communist ideology.

From our scope, the scope of the workers, of the peoples and the youth of the world, this anniversary is a chance to remember and highlight the achievements of socialism, its contribution to humanity; a chance to draw significant conclusions of the defeat in the years 1989-1991.

We address to the young people, to learn and know the truth about socialism; To tell them that our future is the new world, Socialism-Communism.

COMMUNIST CALL: "Advance in unity not retreat in disarray"

ROBERT GRIFFITHS considers the labour movement's prospects in 2012  and calls for the line to be held on pensions.

Where stands Britain's labour movement at the beginning of 2012?

In the course of last year, millions of trade unionists in the public sector have demonstrated their willingness to resist the Con-Dem government's attack on their pension schemes.

They are angry about much else besides. They see the value of their wages being cut, while the public services they struggle to deliver are being slashed to the bone.

Like millions of other workers and their families, they see the real cost of living rising faster than the bogus picture painted by the official figures.

Housing and disability benefits are being chopped and a million young people are among the three million – and rising – who are out of work. Yet we are not even one-quarter of the way through the austerity cuts demanded by the finance monopolists in the City of London. Up to 700,000 more jobs are to be scrapped in the public sector, putting hundreds of thousands of workers out of work in the private sector which depends on public sector wages and contracts.

Bledhen Nowyth Da!

Taken from the Morning Star

This Happy New Year in Cornish - or Kernewek - heralds a revival of the campaign to make Cornwall a separate nation.

In what could be a major Celtic resurgence Welsh nationalists gave their backing yesterday to calls from the south-west peninsular for autonomy.

Cornish nationalist party Mebyon Kernow is demanding an elected assembly and ultimately devolved powers from Westminster similar to those enjoyed by Scotland.

Its campaign comes a decade after 50,000 people - 10 per cent of the population of Cornwall - signed a petition supporting its aims.

And in a show of pan-Celtic unity Plaid Cymru has given the initiative its backing.

Carmarthen East and Dinefwr MP Jonathan Edwards has launched an early day motion calling "for the formation of a democratically elected Cornish Assembly to take decisions for the benefit of the people of Cornwall."

So far it has been signed by 10 MPs from his party, Labour and the Liberal Democrats, including Cornish Lib Dem MPs Andrew George (St Ives), Stephen Gilbert (St Austell and Newquay) and Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall).

Dick Cole, Mebyon Kernow leader, said: "We are campaigning for devolution within the UK and for powers similar to those of the Scottish Parliament."

The nationalists argue that Cornwall has never politically officially been a county of England but is a separate country which after the Romans left Britain 1600 years ago, was independently ruled.

Cornwall's language has been undergoing a revival with dual-language road signs and, in January 2010, the opening of a creche teaching young children the language.

The Cornish language is closely related to Welsh and Breton and a little more distantly to Irish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic.

The Communist Party also recognises the special position of Cornwall in relation to the rest of England. Our party's programme, Britain's Road to Socialism, notes that:

“The distinctive cultural and social characteristics of Cornwall should be expressed through a directly elected Cornish Assembly, with powers that match local aspirations” and that:

“The national movements in Scotland, Wales and Cornwall also contain substantial progressive and left-wing elements that oppose reactionary policies of monopoly capital and the British state”.