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Workers Party candidate calls for abolition of GST at Mayday protest

The following speech was given by Workers Party candidate for Wellington Central Don Franks at a protest organised by the Newtown Residents’ Coalition against the rising cost of living on May 2:

Folks, we’re here tonight to commemorate Mayday, International Workers Day.

This day has been marked internationally since May 1st 1886, when there were strikes and protests in Chicago in pursuit of an 8 hour working day.

The US state attacked the strikers and broke up their demonstrations. Subsequently the authorities made many arrests and 4 anarchist union organisers were hanged.

Today, here we are in Wellington many years on, continuing to mark Mayday.

This Mayday finds increasing numbers of working people feeling the pinch. Transport food and fuel prices go up, while our jobs disappear. We don’t need to go on and on about how bad things are getting, we know all that already. We can feel how bad things are getting for low paid workers.

What we want to know is what we can do about it.

Continue reading “Workers Party candidate calls for abolition of GST at Mayday protest”

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Marxism 2008 Programme

FRIDAY evening 30 May

7pm Bullets and ballots: Babu Maharjan from Nepal gives a first-hand account of the mass movement for change.

8pm Vote socialist 2008: The Workers Party launches its election campaign with a view to being on ballot papers in every home.

SATURDAY 31 May

10am Revolution and Resistance: panel discussion
Dennis Maga (from the radical trade union the KMU) on the mass movement in the Philippines; John Minto (social justice activist) on the betrayal of the liberation movement in South Africa; Don Carson (a long-time campaigner for Palestine) on the relentless struggle for liberation; Mike Treen (unionist and social justice activist) on Cuba surviving encirclement; and John Edmundson (Workers Party) on Afghanistan’s long-running resistance.

11.45am New government, old problems? Anthony Main from the Socialist Party of Australia talks about the current situation

12.30pm Lunch

1.15 -3pm: 1968: The Year that Rocked the World – Mike Kay (Workers Party) on the tumultuous events of forty years ago.

John Moore (Workers Party) speaks with former Polynesian Panther Party member Tigi Ness about radicalism in Polynesian Ponsonby.

Short break

3pm- 4pm Building a Fighting Force -Matt McCarten (Unite Union) and Don Franks (Workers Party) on how to fight redundancies and build mass resistance

Short break

4-15pm – 5pm What is socialism? – Jared Phillips (Workers Party) gives an historical view.

Parallel session: Dialectics of nature vs nurture – Daphna Whitmore (Workers Party) looks at the dichotomy debate.

SUNDAY 1 June

12.30pm Sex and Socialism – Bryce Edwards ((Politics lecturer) brings two of the most interesting words in the English language together in a libertarian-socialist talk where discussion will range from pornography to prostitution, lesbianism to childcare, ‘raunch culture’ to abortion.

1.15pm Debate: That open borders bring freedom – Tim Bowron (Workers Party) argues the affirmative; Brian Van Dam (social justice activist) argues the negative.

2.30pm break

2.45pm The vital role of a revolutionary paper Don Franks (Workers Party, editor of The Spark)

3.30pm Who needs a revolutionary party? Philip Ferguson (Workers Party) argues essential need for a revolutionary organisation.

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France 1968 – on the brink of revolution

– Mike Kay

On May 1st 1968, Paris erupted. There had been a few big strikes in the years leading up to it, but by and large the upsurge took all by surprise.

It was the tenth anniversary of the day General De Gaulle had seized presidential power in France by an unresisted military coup. The parliament, feeling helpless to deal with the escalating war in Algeria, had voted over its powers to De Gaulle. The Fifth Republic that he established included wide-ranging presidential powers, reducing parliament to little more than a rubber stamp. During the Algerian war, protests were suppressed with lethal force.

The 1968 protests started with the students at Nanterre on the outskirts of the city. They had begun a campaign to visit each others’ rooms in halls of residence after 11pm, in defiance of their administration’s curfew.

Their campaign drew in students from all over France, who added their own grievances and demands. The immediate issues were the dereliction and overcrowding of universities, which were bursting at the seams due to the trebling of the number of students in less than a decade, and the government’s plans to impose exams in order to reduce the numbers of first-year students.

Violent state repression only served to spread the movement. The daily demonstrations and occupations soon inspired workers to strike in industries from car production to banking. The workers’ demands were at first minimal – for wage concessions and greater social security. However, as a mass strike wave developed and continued throughout May, many long-germinating working-class aspirations came to the fore and began to lead to much more revolutionary demands.

Continue reading “France 1968 – on the brink of revolution”

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Workers Party supports peace activists, calls for Waihopai Spy Base to be scrapped

Press Release

“Claims by Prime Minister Helen Clark that yesterday’s action by peace activists at the Waihopai Spy Base near Blenheim was nothing more than ‘a senseless act of vandalism’ show how totally out of touch the Labour government is with reality,” according to Workers Party national organiser Daphna Whitmore.

“Instead of complaining about the damage caused by the peace activists, Helen Clark and the Labour Party should be more concerned about the suffering being inflicted on the people of Afghanistan and other parts of the world as a result of the so-called ‘War on Terror’. Spy bases such as the one maintained at Waihopai play an integral part of that war.”

“Currently millions of dollars are spent each year on maintaining an intelligence network one of whose central aims is to aid in the repression of political activists and movements which threatened the interests of Western imperialism,” Ms Whitmore said.

“The Workers Party, which intends to contest the party vote for the first time in the upcoming 2008 general election, calls for the immediate withdrawal of New Zealand from all Western military alliances and the dismantling of repressive agencies such as the GCSB and SIS. As such we fully support the actions carried out yesterday by the three members of Anzac Ploughshares at Waihopai and call on all workers and progressive people to do likewise,” she added.

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Internationalist response to FTA needed

– John Edmundson

The New Zealand-China Free Trade Agreement (FTA) signed on April 7 is the first free trade agreement China has made with any developed Western country. It is an historic deal for the Chinese government in its push to be fully accepted into the capitalist club.

The deal is historic for New Zealand too, for the simple reason that China’s economy is by far the largest that New Zealand has ever signed such an agreement with. With a growing middle class already numbering over 100 million, China offers a huge market for New Zealand businesses, particularly for luxury goods and services.

Reaction to the FTA has been mixed. Opponents of the agreement have ranged from the Green Party on the left, to New Zealand First on the xenophobic right. The CTU, eager to cosy up to Labour in the lead-up to an election that Labour is uncertain of winning, has come out in support of the agreement.

The critics of the FTA have claimed that the agreement in some way condones the poor human rights record of the Chinese government. This objection has become more strident with the recent Chinese crackdown on Tibetan protests.

The New Zealand government and the FTA’s supporters have countered with the point that New Zealand trades with all sorts of countries with all sorts of human rights records. In fact, government-led boycotts of countries over “human rights abuses” have a dubious record, with the independence of small, weak countries often being threatened by countries in the imperialist world on spurious grounds.

Continue reading “Internationalist response to FTA needed”

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A letter to our readers

Dear Spark readers and Workers Party supporters,

In the last two years the Workers Party has participated in and supported many campaigns, most notably:

* Against racist detention of Iranian migrants at Mt. Eden prison (taking arrests and legal costs)

* Stop The Killings (in the Philippines) campaign

* Hotel workers unionisation campaign

* Restaurant workers unionisation campaign

* Progressive Distribution Centre workers lockout

* Civil Rights Defence campaign after government raids on Tuhoe and activists

* Box city protests – living allowance for students (Wellington)

* Successful Save the Film School campaign at Victoria (Wellington)

* Campaign against the intervention in Aborigine communities Northern Territory

* Middle-East solidarity campaigns

* Numerous workers strikes and pickets (taking an arrest in Auckland)


We have also:

* Raised working class issues through interventions in local government elections

* Been the only left organisation to produce a monthly socialist publication

* Contributed to the monthly Workers Charter

* Held numerous education forums on topics of importance to the movements of workers and oppressed

* Put our website into an upgrade and initiated a blog

* Maintained healthy links with workers organisations and parties in other countries

* Recruited a number of new party activists

Almost all of these activities have relied totally on WP members donating their own time and hard-earned money.


Now we need your financial support as 2008 is the first time the Workers Party will be standing on the party list in a national general election. Please make a donation in one of the following ways:

* Send cash wrapped in envelope to PO BOX 10-282, Dominion Road, Auckland

* Send a cheque made out to ‘Workers Party’ to POBOX 10-282, Dominion Road, Auckland.

* Transfer money from one of your accounts to 38-9002-0817250-01

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Workers Party submission to the Electoral Commission on the distribution of broadcasting monies

Main points

1.

The previous allocations of broadcasting monies was designed when there were two parties who were keen to make sure that other new parties could not compete effectively with them. A cartel has previously operated in dividing up the broadcast allocation amongst the parliamentary parties. This has previously given only a few crumbs to the parties outside Parliament. The Workers Party welcomes the change in the configuration of the Electoral Commission when determining broadcast funding.

2.

There is a very strong argument to be made that all parties contesting the list vote should receive exactly the same allocation of funding. Any other allocation is contrary to natural justice and notions of democracy and ‘level playing fields’. This is how other countries divide broadcasting funds.

3.

The Workers Party is a new party with over 550 members. We are about to register with the Electoral Commission and intend to contest the party vote and a number of electorate seats throughout the country.

Continue reading “Workers Party submission to the Electoral Commission on the distribution of broadcasting monies”

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Zimbabwe elections – a vote for change

– Alastair Reith

Leader of the Zimbabwean opposition Movement for Democratic Change, Morgan Tsvangirai

On 29 March 2008, the people of Zimbabwe went to the polls to vote in the parliamentary and presidential elections, and on the future of their impoverished country.

There was world-wide interest in the elections and a great deal of media coverage. These elections were seen as crucial in determining whether President Robert Mugabe and his ruling ZANU-PF party would maintain their 28-year hold on power, or whether the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) would take their place.

The elections were marred by violent clashes between the supporters of various parties and factions, and were carried out in an atmosphere of extreme tension.

Official results began to trickle in on March 31. By April 2 all the results for the lower House of Assembly had been declared, with the majority faction of the MDC, led by Morgan Tsvangirai, winning 99 seats, Mugabe’s ZANU-PF winning 97, the minority MDC faction led by Arthur Mutambara winning 10 seats, and one independent.

This was the first time since the end of white minority rule that Mugabe’s party had not held a majority, and it showed the level of dissatisfaction with him that exists in Zimbabwe.

Continue reading “Zimbabwe elections – a vote for change”

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Who got the new minimum wage rise?

– Jared Phillips

The Council of Trade Unions and various individual unions have put out statements regarding the April 1 2008 minimum wage rise to $12 and the abolition of youth rates for most young workers.

CTU secretary Carol Beaumont said:

Twelve dollars an hour is a commitment that this Labour-led government made with the Greens and New Zealand First, and it has now fully delivered on it. And with the abolition of youth rates from April 1 also, 16- and 17-year-olds will see their minimum wage rise from $9 to $12 after 200 hours or 3 months, whichever is sooner.

Unite union led the campaign for these changes. It was demanding $12 in 2005. This demand was also coupled with the sentiment ‘2008 is far too late’.

However, the recent increase to $12 is attributable to the large SupersizeMyPay campaign led by Unite, which picked up on wage discontent amongst low-paid workers and young workers.

The abolition of youth rates was even more clearly driven by Unite plus groups of young workers, adult workers, revolutionaries, leftists, and social democrats to the left of Labour. Unite hit the youth employers, Unite and students organised by radical youth hit the public, and then, with the NDU, Unite hit and manipulated the government. That is the history of the struggle against youth rates, which have yet to be finally eradicated.

This mass organising movement was the real force behind the most dramatic pack of successive minimum wage increases in decades. Unite is now successfully organising to get workers off minimum wage, and has just signed up more than 1000 new members in KFC, Pizza Hut and Starbucks stores.

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Marxism 2008

Featured session topics:

Elections and the Revolutionary Movement in Nepal

Resisting Imperialism – speakers on the Philippines, Afghanistan, Cuba and Palestine

1968: The Year of Revolution

The Rise and Fall of the Polynesian Panther Party

Building a Fighting Union Movement

Debate: Should Socialists Support Open Borders?

Plus the official launch of the Workers Party’s 2008 election campaign

For more info email wpnz(at)clear.net.nz or phone Daphna (029) 494-9865