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Labour’s brightest and best?

– Don Franks

As Labour sinks deeper in the polls, political commentators speculate about the party’s future in opposition. Are there any bright spots shining among the ruins? One very promising ‘new talent’, who, according to columnist Matthew Hooton “should go straight to Labour’s front bench”, is Wellington Central candidate Grant Robertson. You can form some opinion about Grant Robertson by taking a look at his blog. Much of this journal is devoted to descriptions of Grant’s busy social life watching rugby and patronising the cafés of the capital.

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Workers Party message on the death of Ka Bel

The death of the Filipino workers’ leader Crispin “Ka Bel” Beltran is a sad occasion for the many New Zealanders he inspired. Ka Bel visited New Zealand on several occasions and maintained links with activists here.In his teens Ka Bel joined the guerrilla movement against the Japanese occupation. After the war he became a militant unionist and helped establish the KMU union federation in 1980.

He was arrested and imprisoned in 1982 during the Marcos dictatorship but managed to escape in 1984. In 1987, after the dictatorship was ousted, Ka Bel became leader of the KMU and remained in that position until 2003.

In 2001 he was elected to Congress and served three terms representing the most exploited Filipinos. He made good use of the parliamentary platform, filing 130 bills and resolutions – a record number for the House of Representatives.

He was also chairman of the International League of Peoples Struggles – which was comprised of over 200 anti-imperialist organisations.

Ka Bel was arrested in February 2006 and illegally detained for 18 months by the Arroyo regime. His release followed an international campaign to free him, including high profile protests in New Zealand last year during Arroyo’s visit to this country.

The Workers Party of New Zealand extends condolences to Ka Bel’s comrades and family on the loss of this tenacious leader. We are comforted knowing that his fighting spirit lives on in the mass movement in the Philippines today.

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Lies and truth about food prices

– John Edmundson

Nobody trying to pay their bills recently could have failed to notice the way basic foods have increased in price. In New Zealand, we’ve suffered massive increases in the price of staple items like bread, milk and other dairy products. Turn on the news and it is immediately obvious that this is a global problem. Food riots and protests from countries as far removed as Haiti and Egypt make it clear that the world is faced with a major food crisis.

Globally, food prices have risen by a staggering eighty three percent in the last three years. Grain costs in particular have skyrocketed. Rice has doubled in price in the past twelve months. Corn has risen in price by seventy percent while wheat and soybeans have similarly hit record prices. These costs have then flowed on to other foods as well. With a large proportion of the world’s cattle being grain fed, dairy and meat prices have also been affected. Globally, the cost of cooking oil has gone up. In New Zealand, with inflation pushing at the Reserve Bank’s upper limit, our rulers’ response has been to tell New Zealand workers not to push for “inflationary” wage increases. In other words, New Zealand workers and the poor should bear the burden of rising food prices.

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WP Seminar and Documentary Screening: 1968 – The Year of Revolutions

Saturday May 24, Christchurch WEA (59 Gloucester St)

Beginning 1pm with a session on
* The Tet Offensive  – this session will also look at protests within the
US in 1968

Followed by sessions on:
* The May-June worker-student strikes and occupations in France
* The rebellion in Yugoslavia and the ‘Prague Spring’ in Czechoslovakia
* The Mexico Olympics and events in Latin America

There’ll be food around 5.30pm, followed by a documentary on the
cultural side of 1968 at 6pm.

Organised by the Workers Party; all welcome.

No charge, but any donations would be gratefully received.

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Free Mumia Abu Jamal!

Wellington musician and Workers Party member Don Franks has just recorded a song in support of the campaign to free political prisoner (and former Black Panther Party member) Mumia Abu Jamal, currently on death row in the United States.

You can download the MP3 file here

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WP argues the case for revolutionary regroupment

The decision by the ostensibly revolutionary marxist group Socialist Worker to dissolve itself into the avowedly non-socialist Residents Action Movement – which is now being launched as a nationwide political party – has provoked opposition among some of Socialist Worker’s leading union activists, who have recently resigned their membership of SW and are now in the process of establishing a new group Socialist Aotearoa.

We in the Workers Party believe that this break with Socialist Worker’s popular front tactics by the Socialist Aotearoa comrades is a positive development that we hope will strengthen the prospects for building a united party of revolutionary socialists in New Zealand, something which the Workers Party has consistently argued is a much more viable strategy than building fake coalitions with phantom reformists.

To this end we have written an Open Letter to the Socialist Aotearoa comrades which we are also making available here in the interests of promoting genuine and constructive debate on the vital issue of revolutionary regroupment.

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Abolish GST

The Workers Party for many years has said GST has to go. Below is an article originally published in The Spark in July 2005, in which Philip Ferguson explains why the rich favour this tax and why we oppose it:

In recent months the National Party has been pushing for income tax cuts. Although they present this in a populist way, as if it would benefit workers, they vigorously oppose measures such as raising the minimum wage, serious across-the-board wage rises like those sought by Auckland bus drivers and the abolition of GST.

During the upcoming election campaign, one of the minimum platform points of the Anti-Capitalist Alliance [now called the Workers Party] will be demanding the abolition of GST, something that would be done by any government with even a token desire to make life a little easier for workers, especially the poorest workers.

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