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Byron Clark’s speech at St Albans Community Center

Good evening everyone and thank you for the opportunity to speak to you all tonight.
My name is Byron Clark and I am the Workers Party candidate for Christchurch Central. This is my second time standing in this electorate. Three years ago I stood up and gave speeches as a young, long haired radical. Today, I’m obviously older and my hair is a little shorter, but I stand here as radical as ever.

I want to define that word as it is often misused. The word radical comes from the Latin word radix, meaning “root” and a political radical, like myself, is someone who advocates getting at the root of societies problems, and the root of the problem is capitalism, a system where those who must sell their labour to live are exploited for the benefit of a few elites. While its hardly common to hear people even talk about capitalism during elections in New Zealand, the recent turmoil in the finance sector of the world economy has meant there is a little more space for radical ideas. Indeed even The Times of London recently carried the rhetorical headline; “Karl Marx, did he get it all right?”

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Workers Party Not Hand Shakers

Workers Party media release

Workers Party Christchurch Central candidate Byron Clark is surprised at some of the reactions he’s got since refusing to shake hands with Labour candidate Brendon Burns at a recent candidates forum.

“There is an idea among some candidates it seems, that the election campaign is just a job interview style process with the electorate where we all wish each other well and hope we get picked, but I’m fundamentally opposed to the system Labour and National support, and I think principles are more important than what some see as ‘good manners'”

Clark noted the recent OECD report which shows inequality has increased drastically in the past twenty years.

“For most of that 20 years Labour has been in power, they have presided over the biggest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in this country’s history. I have no respect for a party that can do that.”

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Health workers on strike

Workers at Counties Manakau District Health Board Sterile Supply Unit are taking strike action from 22 to 24 October 2008. Their collective agreement expired on 1 July 2007, and they are still waiting for a decent offer from the employer. The staff have rejected the Health Board’s offer on the basis of: the term of the agreement, their refusal to pay back pay and the failure to include a fifth week of annual leave.

The workers, who are members of the Northern Amalgamated Workers Union held a high spirited picket outside the DHB’s headquarters on the first day of action. The constant toots of support from South Auckland drivers was near-deafening, so hopefully the bosses over the road have got the message.

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Don Franks’ address to election meeting at St Anne’s Northland-Wilton Anglican Parish 21/10 /08

Good evening and thanks for inviting the Workers Party to speak at this parish.

The parish I originate from myself is St Albans in Eastbourne. That was quite a long time ago and for the last 40 years I’ve been resident and working in Wellington.

Every election we hear some politicians claiming to uphold and defend Christian values.

The party I belong to, the Workers Party, makes no such claim, and we see religion as a private affair. However, as a former Sunday school pupil from St Alban’s parish, I’m sometimes drawn to wonder how the carpenter of Nazareth might have related to Workers Party policies.

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Book review: The Other Hand by Chris Cleave (Sceptre)

“Most days I wish I was a British pound coin instead of an African girl,” opines the protagonist of The Other Hand. The pound coin has many advantages, not least of which is its effortless mobility:

“A girl like me gets stopped at immigration, but a pound can leap the turnstiles, and dodge the tackles of those big men with their uniform caps, and jump straight into a waiting airport taxi. Where to, sir? Western civilisation, my good man, and make it snappy.”

Little Bee is a Nigerian girl fleeing men armed with machetes and men armed with official powers. Sarah is a suburban career woman juggling a young son who refuses to take off his Batman suit with an extramarital affair with a Home Office functionary, Lawrence. Their lives are thrown together in an unlikely way, forcing them to confront themselves and the society they live in.

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Workers should be running the country

[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1427625006007341758&hl=en]
Sanitarios Maracay, a Venezuelan factory under workers control, holds an assembly. Topics covered include the previous boss’s acts of sabotage, logistics of workers control, and socialism of the 21st century.

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Wellington bus drivers fight back

– Spark Editors

Over the last couple of decades, workers have taken significant hits to their pay and conditions. The last nine years of Labour-led government has seen no significant improvement for the great majority of working people. That’s why some groups of workers, like the bus drivers, have started fighting back.

On 25 September 2008, the bus company Go Wellington locked out all its bus drivers, mechanics and controllers for 24 hours, in response to limited industrial action in support of the drivers’ pay claim. This is the first time that Wellington city bus drivers have been locked out. As this issue of The Spark goes to press, negotiations are continuing.

The Workers Party fully supports the Wellington bus drivers. Workers Party member Nick Kelly was recently elected president of the Wellington Tramways Union, the union of Wellington bus drivers.

Public support for the workers affected in this dispute has been strong. For example, a street collection for the drivers by Brass Razoo Solidarity Band and Workers Party members the day after the lockout raised $260 in less than an hour.

By contrast, there has been little public sympathy for the management of NZ Bus who locked out the drivers, and have constantly lied in the media about the drivers’ pay claims and what drivers currently earn.

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