RCT Socialist Party launches a blog

Earlier today Rhonndda Cynon Taf Socialist Party Launched a blog called Socialism in RCT. Below I reproduce the statement relased by RCT Socialist Party regarding the blog.

Why we have launched this blog

As the economic crisis continues for millions of ordinary people around the country and internationally, the rich get richer and ordinary working class people are made to pay the price shown by the obscene profits and bonuses paid to bankers and other corporations.

The media, government and all the major political parties are constantly telling us about Tina - There is no alternative.We are told that this was all unavoidable, that it was the international markets and governments who had no control over this. We are told that this could not have been predicted, but these are all the lies which are constantly fed to us..

None of this was inevitable, Karl Marx pointed out over 150 years ago the inherent contradictions of capitalism, the constant and unavoidable cycle of boom and bust. It was not just the capitalist markets which caused this either. The deregulation of the banking sector around the world by governments, in the case of Britain by the Thatcher government, and maintained by New Labour over their 13 years in office made it possible for the 'elastic' to be stretched further to create an ever growing credit bubble. As with an elastic band the more it is stretched the harder it will snap and this has all been made worse by the de-industrialisation of Britain, the loss of manufacturing jobs and the replacement by service sector jobs has meant the British economy is extremely dependant on the finance sector which has plunged us further into crisis.

When they tell us there is no alternative this is just a big con trick. Whilst £billions have been given to the banks in a bailout, huge bonuses have been paid out, huge profits have been made and ordinary people like us have been forced to pay the price with job cuts, wage cuts and freezes, cuts in pensions, higher tuition fees and cuts in pretty much all public services and benefits. On top of this council tax is set to rise as is the cost of living.

With high levels of unemployment there are nearly 1 million unemployed young people who are also having the door to higher education closed in their face.

We should not have to and we will not accept this. The banks should be fully nationalised and run democratically in a way where the profits can go into funding the NHS, education and other public services and not the other way around as the government is currently doing. We could scrap the war in Afghanistan, the replacement of the trident nuclear weapons systems and end the financial scam of Private Finance Initiatives (PFI) which allows private companies to make huge amounts of money out of providing public services at a lower standard.

The government could also start collecting the £120 billion tax per year which is avoided or evaded by the rich every year but instead the government is proposing to cut staffing numbers in HM revenues & customs making it almost impossible to close the tax gap. These are public sector workers who actually bring in revenue which shows that this is definitely an ideological attack on the public sector are the services working class people rely on.

Many people both in Britain and around the world are beginning to wake up to this reality and have begun to fightback in various ways, be it the recent student demonstrations and university occupations in Britain, the mass demonstrations and revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East or the mass movements developing in Wisconsin in the United States just to give a few examples. There are of course already some fantastic websites already covering these events which we fully support such as the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI - International organisation of which the Socialist Party is affiliated) website and of course both the Socialist Party and the Socialist Party Wales websites.

We are also facing attacks on our communities. The Labour led Rhondda Cynon Taf council recently sent out section 188 notices to its 10,000 strong workforce, which threatened them with the sack if they did not sign new contracts which would ensure that the workers loose on average between £2,000-4,000 per year! On top of this the council has proposed a rise in council tax by nearly 3%!

The Labour council say they have no choice because their budget has been cut, but they do have a choice. The council should refuse to implement the cuts and instead set a needs budget (a budget which meets the real needs of people in the area) and follow the heroic example set by the Liverpool council in the 1980s. They could do this by using the council reserves for now, whilst building a mass campaign amongst trade unionists, community campaigners, students and young people to support the council and demand the necessary funding from central government. This is exactly what they did in Liverpool and they won! If every Labour council in the country did this then it would bring this ConDem government crashing down.

There is a real choice for the council, they can either implement the tory cuts or the can stand by working class people and refuse to make us pay for the crisis. If they did this then RCT Socialist Party would give our full support to the council. Unfortunately we think that this is unlikely to happen so we should stand anti-cuts candidates at next years council elections.

Since its inception Socialist Party members have participated in and helped to build RCT Against the Cuts and bring along to it a strategy to defeat the cuts and we will continue to do so. There is a real need for a political alternative to workers and youth, who will people in RCT vote for when the Welsh Assembly elections come around this May? The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are attacking us from Westminster and the Labour Party is attacking us from the council chambers. Plaid Cymru are attempting to present themselves as an alternative but where they are in power they are making huge cuts themselves, such as in Cardiff council.

We need a real alternative and that is why RCT Socialist Party will be standing in the forthcoming Welsh Assembly elections in the South Wales Central regional list as part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), which is committed to opposing all cuts.

It is for all these reasons that we have made the decision to launch this blog. In order to comment and analyse events and to offer a strategy and tactics for the way forward for workers and youth in RCT. Look out for regular updates here. It doesn't stop there, we have also launched a facebook page RCT Socialists and you can follow us on twitter @RCTSocialists

Don't stop there join the Socialist Party and help us fight for our future.

Making the Top Ten!

Despite a recent lapse in my blogging when it came to the Total Politics Blog Awards for the Top 50 Welsh blogs I managed to scrap into the top ten.
In the run up to the announcement I was pretty confident that I would make it into the top 50, not because I thought my blog was that great but because quite frankly you would be hard pressed to find 50 active blogs in Wales. However making it into the top ten was a definite surprise, beating the likes of Leanne Wood and Bethan Jenkins easily with 2,200 voters in the poll, quite a significant result in the blogging world.
It really shows the grasp for ideas, as one of the only blogs in Wales which not only comments on events but actively promotes a viable alternative to many issues it shows the grasp by the welsh blogosphere for the need for an alternative.
It hasn’t all been good on the blog awards front though. I made it to number 82 in the top 100 worst political blogs, not an accolade I was particularly looking for, however judging by the obscure blogs I voted for which polled high I can only assume that the voting in the poll was quite low. I can only speculate why anyone voted for me, I will will assume its because of the recent low frequency of the posts appearing so I will try and rectify that now so I do not appear in next years poll.

Total Politics Blog Awards - Vote Me!

It is the time of year for the Total Politics Blog Awards. My blog is just under a year old, so when last years awards were released this blog was not eligable (being as it did not exist)

This year I want to get into the charts particulary the category of Welsh blogs, though I would not object to appearing in the left of centre category.

Last years results showed Plaid Cymru affiliated blogs dominate the top and generally the establishment and their supporters dominating all the top places. It would be good to see the foundations shake with a radically left blog shooting up the charts. So vote for Everyones Favourite Comrade.

Voting is all explained here, just click on the link below.

Radical Wales Launch

Radical Wales will be launched later today. (Monday July 5th) The obvious question that many reader will be asking is What is Radical Wales? Well the answer is simply, Radical Wales is a new blog which has been set up involving the radical left in Wales, anarchists, communists, environmentalists, left republicans and socialists outside of any of the main political parties, in this case in reference to Labour and Plaid Cymru who do have activists who would otherwise fit the definition.

The idea behind Radical Wales which has been building for a few months before the launch is that it can act as a forum for the ideas across the left spectrum in Wales. The blog has existed for sometime but simply acted as a blog aggregator initiated by Tom Fowler. It has now developed into much more. The site now houses a blog aggregator, twitter feed, directory of left organisations and campaigns in Wales, a calendar displaying events of the radical left and most importantly now the blog which as of today will start to publish individual material.

This is what it says on the Radical Wales site

About
Loss of heart and burnout ends many people's contact with radicalism in Wales, as elsewhere. Many of those who don't completely turn their back on politics end up compromising and accepting mainstream 'realities'. This is partly because our respective movements suffer from visibility and image problems: the limited coverage given to protests and campaigns by the mainstream media fails to address the core reasons for discontent, and much of what's left of the radical media suffers from an inward looking culture that only preaches to the choir.

Radical Wales exists as a platform for considered radical political commentary and discussion in Wales. We hope to attract a wide range of submissions from across the spectrum of anarchists, communists, greens, left-republicans and socialists.

Inspired by the long line of rebels and revolutionaries who have stood outside and against the political process of the ruling class in Wales, we'll publish original articles that continue that tradition. Are you interested in writing an article or becoming a regular contributor? Then read our guide to submitting an article and get in touch to discuss your ideas further.

By including contributors from different radical traditions there will doubtless be countless political and tactical disagreements. Many (probably most) of these will never be resolved, but through honest and frank discussion we hope areas of common ground can be found. We're keen to encourage debate, but ask all that everyone makes themselves aware of the comments policy.

As well as a being a platform for original articles, this site aims to be a hub for radical politics and an activist resource. With that in mind we ask for your help updating the calendar, keeping the directory up-to-date, and joining us in sharing ideas and events using social media. Please get in touch about anything we've overlooked or you feel is missing.

We hope you enjoy reading the site, but we can achieve more collectively than we can individually so please do get involved, leave comments, write articles, send in updates and publicise what you like on the internet and beyond.

This gives you a flavour of what to expect from Radical Wales in the future. There is currently an editorial group, but they aim to limit their editorial role to an absolute minimum. The editorial group currently includes me (regular readers of my blog should know my political background. Tom Fowler, who initially created the site to collect together all radical blogs in Wales,. He described himself as a libertarian socialist and has been active within South Wales Anarchists and No Borders as well as various of campaigns since the late 1990s. Adam Johannes, a Marxist currently unaligned with any political party but still active in various campaigns most notably Cardiff Stop the War Coalition. Finally there is Andy Williams, who I must confess to knowing very little about other than he is an academic and an anarchist. This editorial group is not a complete or definitive list it’s just the one we have started with. Other current contributors include anarchists, Marxists and greens.

So keep an eye on developments here, watch out for the articles to come forth in the next few weeks and the launch article later today and get involved. If you are interested in getting involved then what better way to do get in touch with me on my cool new e-mail address glyn@radicalwales.org!


Radicalwales.org