Unite against cuts! Come along to the Brighton Stop the Cuts Coalition launch meeting!

Brighton Stop the Cuts Coalition launch meeting
7.45pm Thursday September 9
Friends Meeting House, Ship Street, Brighton

Speakers:
Caroline Lucas Brighton Pavilion MP
Chris Baugh Deputy General Secretary PCS union
Alex Knutsen Brighton and Hove Unison secretary
Andy Kilmister economics lecturer
Umit Ozturk Meditereanean Resources Network

...plus plenty of time for everyone in the audience to ask questions, discuss and debate how we can organise and take action to put a stop to these unjustified cuts to jobs and communities.

In Britain today our public services are under threat as never before as the government begins to push through the biggest cuts in the public sector ever seen. This will affect millions of people and nothing is safe. In fact health, education, welfare and above all the worst off in our society will be hardest hit.

In Brighton it is workers who support some of our most vulnerable children and frontline health care staff who are first in the firing line. We are told these cuts have to be made and we are ‘all in it together’, but this is not true. The government is using the financial crisis, caused by banks and speculators, to push through its political programme, breaking up the welfare state and privatising the public sector.

The Brighton Stop the Cuts Coalition is supported by Trade Unions, campaign groups, political parties, voluntary and community groups. Come along to our public meeting to hear the argument against the cuts - and how you can become part of the campaign to stop them.

Join the Facebook event group for the Brighton Stop the Cuts Coalition launch meeting here.

For more information contact Phil Clarke on 07709 696561 or email brightontradescouncil@gmail.com

Oppose the divisive ENA

Help to build a real political alternative for ALL working class people against racism and cuts!

The ENA is a fringe group on the far-right which expresses a combination of anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-Trade Union, and anti-Left-wing views. Their website refers to mosques of 'terror and doom' and call to 'force out these bastards coz we aint got the room' before telling readers to pick up arms and fight. The website attacks leading trade unionists for their support of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) at the general election, describing them as being 'anti-English'.

Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition
The Socialist Party were leading supporters of TUSC at the general election. Together with TUSC we stood on a platform of no to the cuts of the mainstream parties and for working-class rights to public services and decent jobs. TUSC made it clear that ordinary people shouldn't pay the cost of the economic crisis caused by the bankers and bosses. In fact, by sowing division and racial tension, groups like ENA harm ordinary working-class people. They muddy the waters and scapegoat minorities instead of focussing on the real sources of our worries; the recession brought on by the greed of the banks, big businesses and ALL mainstream politicians.

Cuts Cuts Cuts!
Along with the housing crisis and rising unemployment, public services are under threat, along with pensions, pay and working conditions. These cuts are being presented as necessary to 'solve' the economic crisis. This crisis however was caused by bankers and big businesses, and the governments that encouraged their profligacy - not by ordinary people. In this situation the far right seeks to scapegoat sections of our society in order to deflect from the underlying crisis. But the cause of our problems is not immigrants, Islam or trade union resistance to the cuts.

Unity Against Racism and the Recession
Uniting against the ENA and their divisive views is important, but building a real political alternative for all working people would help to extinguish the conditions in which racist ideas can exist.

The failure of the main three capitalist parties to defend ordinary people, including the utter betrayal of the Labour Party which has now jumped into bed with the bankers and big business, is becoming clearer as cuts to working class jobs and communities mount up.

The creation of a new workers' party would unite ALL people and would be a massive step towards preventing cuts to jobs and public services and ending this system which helps groups like the ENA grow. Unity is our strength when it comes to defending our jobs and communities from attack and we will not let racist politics divide us.

Check out the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition group and the Campaign for a New Workers' Party campaign for more information.

Come along to our Socialist Party Meeting: What is fascism and how do we defeat it Q&A, 8.15pm Thursday 2 September at the Phoenix Commnity Centre, Brighton.

The legacy of Leon Trotsky

Ideas for today's struggles

Leon Trotsky, a revolutionary leader of the Russian revolution, was murdered on 20 August 1940 by an agent of Stalin. His role in the 1917 revolution, the greatest single event in human history, alone makes his writings worthy of study.

The ideas and methods of the Socialist Party and the socialist international to which it is affiliated, the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI), are based on Trotsky's, alongside those of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Vladimir Lenin.

70 years after his death Peter Taaffe, Socialist Party general secretary, assesses the contribution of Trotsky's ideas to the struggle for socialism in the 21st century.

Leon Trotsky, the greatest living revolutionary of the time, was murdered by Josef Stalin's hit man Ramón Mercader in 1940. Previous attempts on Trotsky's life had failed. But this time a fatal blow from an ice-pick successfully destroyed the 'brain' of the working class and the symbol of implacable opposition to capitalism and to totalitarian Stalinism. Click here to read on...

Public meeting! LGBT struggle - pride, prejudice, fightback and hypocrisy

Come along to our meeting featuring a discussion on the history of the struggle for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender rights introduced by Socialist Party LGBT national organiser Greg Randall. Click here for details on Facebook...

8pm, Thursday 12 August at the Phoenix Community Centre, Brighton

Pride started 40 years ago as a political demonstration for gay rights. London Pride 2010 on 3 July was a carnival, with politics only at the fringes. The gay establishment claim that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people have "arrived" after legal reforms, such as civil partnerships and equalisation of the age of consent, left nothing to fight for.

Welcome as law reforms are, they do not give LGBT people liberation. Laws against racial and sexual discrimination have been around for 40 years but racism and sexism have not disappeared.

Both anecdotal evidence and police figures show an upward trend in homophobic attacks, bullying in schools is still rife and in many communities being gay is still something that it's safer to keep quiet. Click here to read on...