Bangor Socialist Party Xmas Quiz

Try your luck, quiz is slightly modified from Wednesday night, and is out of 36 (Tiebreakers not couting towards this). A few questions need two answers as indicated. Answers are in the comments section.

Sport

1) Who won this years Formula One drivers world championship?
2) In which sport did the English team come runners up in the world cup final in Finland this year?
3) Welsh rugby league team the Celtic Crusaders are set to move from Bridgend to which Welsh Town?
4) In cricket, who won the Ashes this year, England or Australia?
5) Which country won this years six nations competition in Rugby Union?

Phobias

6) Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia is the fear of what?
7) Telephonaphobia is the fear of what?
8) What is Wiccaphobia the fear of?
9) What is Leukophobia?
10) Glossophobia is the fear of what?

International

11) In which country did the 25 year civil war end this year?
12) Who became this first black president of the United States of American this year?
13) Who became the first Irish Socialist Party MEP this year?
14) Which countries banking system collapsed in January this year?
15) President Zelaya of which country was overthrown by a coup this year?
16) Which country was forced to vote for a second time on accepting the EU’s Lisbon Treaty this year?

Culture
17) Who wrote Frankenstein?
18) Which controversial popstar died this year at the age of 51?
19) Which are the two best selling books of all time according to wikipedia? (2 points)
20) What is the name of the TV show that drew record freview ratings on Dave this April?

History
21) Which student uprising in China happened 20 years ago this year?
22) Which revolution 220 years ago did Chairman Mao famously say that it was too soon to tell the consequences of?
23) The second world war broke out 70 years ago with the invasion of which country?
24) Which group of workers took a year long strike action 25 years ago?
25) Which organisation had its founding conference 90 years ago in Moscow?
26) Which hated figure came to power 30 years ago?
27) Which currently existing international organisation was founded in a pub in London 35 years ago?

British Politics
28) Which Trade Union was on strike today in South Wales? (NB On Wednesday 16 December)
29) At which company were members of UNITE set to strike over Xmas?
30) The GMB and UNITE won a huge victory for workers in a strike led by a Socialist Party member, where was it?
31) Following successful mobilisations of community activists and anti-fascists, which far-right group has been humiliated in Wales 3 times this year?
32) Which group of people caught with their snouts in the trough by an investigation by the Daily Telegraph?
33) Which trade unions organised a protest against cuts to staff pensions at Bangor University? (2 points)
34) What was the name of the electoral coalition headed by the RMT trade union in the European Elections this year?

Tie breakers
35) How many millions of pounds is Gwynedd Council planning in cuts?
36) How many people are currently unemployed in the UK?

Socialists Support Welsh Language

Article from Socialist Party Wales website www.socialistpartywales.org.uk

Osian Jones has been freed from a month's jail for protesting against the anti-Welsh policies of some store chains. Iain Dalton presents the view of Socialists in North Wales

In November this year, the Welsh Assembly approved a bid for powers over the Welsh language, seeking the passage of legislative competency order (LCO) through parliament. The step is argued as being the first move in a bid to legislate for the extension of language equality measures to cover the private sector.

The 1993 Welsh Language act stated that; 'in the course of public business and the administration of justice, so far as is reasonably practicable, the Welsh and English languages are to be treated on the basis of equality' - in essence giving equal status to English and Welsh languages, but only throughout the public sector. This leaves many large companies with no compulsion to provide Welsh medium services to first language Welsh speakers.

According to the 2001 census, in Wales around 20% of the population speaks Welsh, although this is heavily concentrated in certain areas, such as Gwynedd and Anglesey where around 80% of the population speaks Welsh. This is an increase of 2% from the previous census, but the 2004 Welsh Language Use Survey showed a further 1.2% increase on that figure to 21.7%. This marks the reversal of a century long decline in the Welsh language.

Socialists stand for the equality of English and Welsh languages within Wales and demand that all major companies provide services that give the option of using Welsh. Already some companies provide bilingual signage, but this should be extended to cover packaging as well as customer service. Whilst many staff in companies in Wales may not at the moment speak Welsh, learning to speak the basic Welsh needed in relation to their job should be seen as part of their training for that job and paid for with company money in company time.

However, even if the Assembly was granted such powers and passed legislation along these lines, such measures would not bring about real equality, just as equal pay legislation hasn't stopped there being major differences between the pay of men and women. The faults of current legislation and the lip-service paid by some public authorities can be seen by the poor quality of many translations. These are often made fun of in the press (for example, the sign where apologies for a translator's being out of the office has been put on roadsides as the official Welsh translation). 'Golwg' the Welsh medium weekly magazine runs a section 'Sgymraeg' highlighting more egregious errors. Under capitalism, equal rights always come second to the need to skimp and do things as cheaply as possible. In the Public Sector, this means 'belt tightening' and impending cuts in budgets. In the private sector, anything which weakens the great god profit must be axed.

It is entirely possible that with the prospect of such legislation there may be an attempt to set Welsh speakers against non-Welsh speakers as companies, who wish to avoid the cost of a fully bilingual service, seek to threaten non-Welsh speakers with the prospect of being unable to get a job. That's one of the reasons why socialists call for these companies to be taken into public ownership so that it's not left to fat cats who only see the bottom line to provide our services, but ordinary workers, both Welsh-speaking and non-Welsh speaking to be able to work out how to provide services bilingually and accessible to all.

Socialists do not necessarily support the use of direct action against companies who refuse to support the Welsh language, but we understand the anger of young Welsh-speaking people and see the use of the prison system against them as wholly wrong.

A Stand Of Solidarity - A Stand Against Cuts

From the Socialist Party Wales website

On Friday 27th November the Joint Trades Unions (UNITE & UNISON) for support staff at Bangor University called a protest demonstration against the proposal by Senior Management to cut the pensions of Support Staff (BUPAS) whilst increasing the University’s contributions to their own pension scheme. This proposed cut would reduce the pensions of Support Staff by an estimated 40%, taking it to less than a state pension.

Sean Dalton, Bangor Socialist Party

James H Clarke, Branch Secretary of the Unite Bangor University Branch, said “Management’s disgraceful behaviour is both unfair and inequitable. This is a case of the powerful attacking the less powerful and constitutes a dereliction of duty by Senior Management in respect of their obligation to look after the welfare and well-being of those whom they are responsible.”

Over 300 staff and students attended the protest showing a strong united front against the cuts to the pension. It was announced that further negotiations were to take place and that Senior Management had already backed down on one attack to the pension; however, Unite and Unison said they were committed to pushing for retention of the final salary pension scheme. They also stated that this was only the first step and that more protests and possibly industrial action may be necessary to force management back.

Bangor Socialist Party held stalls in the run up to the protest to help build support for the protest. Our bilingual placards on the protest carried the slogans, “VC gets pay rise. Staff get pension cuts,” and, “No Fees, No Cuts, No Closures. Fully Fund University Education!” We sold 21 papers in the run-up to the protest and on the day itself and are trying to strengthen the links of Socialist Students with the campus trade unions.

More photos (nb. i couldn't fit the whole protest in, on the last photo the protest actually curls round to the left)

Racists not welcome in Wrexham - or in Wales!

From Socialist Party Wales website (www.socialistpartywales.org.uk)

On Saturday, November 21st, the racist English Defence League, masquerading as the Welsh Defence League, held a demonstration in Wrexham town centre. The ‘official Welsh Defence League’ demonstration comprised 30 football hooligans from Bolton and a mere half a dozen local racists.

More than 150 Wrexham socialists, shoppers, and working people opposed the racist demonstrators, who amounted to no more than forty in total, and who must be all too aware now that they are not welcome in Wrexham.

Report by Dylan Roberts

The people of Wrexham were already hostile to the EDL, but tensions increased after the racist demonstrators unfurled a large English flag, sang God Save The Queen, and chanted racist slogans suck as “kill the Muslims”.

“This is our town and you are not welcome here!"

One woman, laden with shopping bags, summed up the feelings of the whole town when she stood her ground as the EDL tried to rush the much larger, and by this stage extremely hostile, audience of working people and shouted; “This is our town and you are not welcome here”! There was an extremely high Police presence around the pub, and four members of the EDL were arrested for public order offences.

Meanwhile, Wrexham Communities Against Racism held a communities celebration in Queens Square, in the centre of town. This aimed to bring together all sections of our community in celebration of the social cohesion evident in our peaceful working-class town. More than 300 people throughout the day attended the celebration, despite the torrential rain.Those at the celebration enjoyed music from local musicians, a drumming workshop, a martial arts exhibition, poetry, a children’s carousel, and speeches from a wide range of politicians, community leaders, and activists, amongst other acts and speakers. The event was entirely peaceful and great fun, with people dancing in the rain, and even a conga line around the square! The contrast between the communities’ celebration and the much smaller racist demonstration up the road could not have been more apparent.

Amongst the speakers on the day were Dave Reid, regional secretary of Socialist Party Wales, who talked of the need to create a new political voice for working people that would cut across the divisive racism of the EDL and the far right, and Rae Lewis-Ayling, of Bangor Socialist Party and Youth Fight for Jobs, who spoke on behalf of Youth Fight for Jobs on the disproportionate burden placed on young people by the crisis of capitalism, and encouraged an extremely appreciative, if wet, audience to head down to London for the forthcoming YFJ march. I had the pleasure of closing the event, but by this stage, drenched with rain and, frankly, elated, I could manage little more than expressing my pride and admiration of the communities of Wrexham, both at the communities’ celebration and opposite the EDL demo, who had braved awful conditions in huge numbers to make it clear that they would not allow the EDL to spread their message of division and hate here. Our Socialist Party stall, given pride of place at the celebration, was busy throughout the day, as workers and young people spoke about the inequality evident in our society that feeds racism, and the need to build a new workers’ party to overcome racism and inequality.The communities’ celebration was a tremendous success, and has galvanised the local communities to the extent that there is now huge popular support to host an annual event! By contrast, the English Defence League were heavily outnumbered and opposed at their demonstration, not by anti-racist campaigners but by ordinary working people, and were shown up as the violent racists that they are.

The message from Saturday was clear: The English/Welsh Defence League is not welcome in Wrexham or in Wales.

I am proud that Socialist Party Wales played such a leading role in organising opposition to the E/WDL in Wrexham, just as we did in Newport and Swansea, and I am particularly proud that the working people of Wrexham needed little encouragement, despite Police and press scaremongering, to come out in huge numbers and make their views on the E/WDL and racism clear: Not in our town!

Socialism 2009

This weekend just gone saw the annual Socialism event hosted by the Socialist Party in London - I guess its a bit cliched to say it was the biggest one ever, but it was! But this was reflected in the fact that 7 of us managed to get down from North Wales, almost doubled from the year before, which considering the cost of travelling for us is exceptional.

Anyways, I kicked off with a visit to the book stall and suprised myself by only spending £32, including buying a xmas present for someone too. I got books on Kenya, an account of the 1918 in Russia, the Red Clydesiders, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and a book about the Warsaw Uprsings during WW2. But then i ruined that by spending £60 on Trotsky's military writings. I also have borrowed a collection of books off a comrade on the Paris Commune after he kindly responded to my appeal. So my bag came away appreciably heavier than i set off with.

The first session I attended was on 'Is Cameron a new Thatcher' which had both Alec Thraves from Swansea and Tony Mulhearn from Liverpool speaking at it. The session was quite interesting, outlining the economic and poilitical situation that Cameron would inherit and drive him into a confrontation with the unions like Thatcher, out pointing out the obvious differences between the background to Thatcher coming to power 30 years ago and today. Most of the questions were directed at Tony Mulhearn about the Liverpool City Council dispute, but my notes of these were pretty poor as I had been up for quite while by this point.

After this came a quick meeting of those of us there from North Wales (such is the geographic spread of the branch that it takes being in London to organise a proper get together some times), in particularly discussing about the Community Festical Against Racism we are helping to organise through Wrexham Communities Against Racism in opposition to the divisive policies of the E/WDL.

Next came the Saturday evening rally. Every single speaker was really good, starting off with Brian Caton (POA General Secretary), then Matt Wrack (FBU General Secretary) and a very loud speech by Keith Gibson from Lindsey Oil Refinery. Next up was Bob Crow who was adamant of the need for an electoral coalition in the general election and also raised the idea of fully nationalising the banks and linking them up through the post office. According to comrades who had been at the earlier RMT conference, Bob Crow went a bit further with this speech than earlier in the day.

The rally then moved onto the last few speakers, Tracy Edwards from Youth Fight for Jobs (and also PCS Young Members Organiser), Peter Taaffe as ever, Senan from Tamil Solidarity and finally Joe Higgins, Irish SP MEP. The collection wasn't as large as last year, being at roughly £25,000, but then it is a recession!

To round off saturday night, I first had a drink with my old comrades from Huddersfield in a pub before heading off to the gig/social. To be honest I didn't pay loads of attentions to the bands, apart from Chairman Wow (did i get that right?) which seemed to be composed of Brighton comrades playing Clash covers (they probably played other stuff too, but that was what i remember recognising) but they were pretty good.

And then it was finally time to head off to the hostel, except i was in the difficult to find overflow hostel and to make matter worse someone decided to get up around 6am ish and take a ridiculously loud alarm clock with them to wake everyone else up with the process - suffice to say i was not impressed.

The first session I attended was Peter Taaffe speaking on 'In Defence of Leon Trotsky'. The background to this session was a review of Robert Service's recently published biography that Peter had written where he issued a challenge to Service to debate the ideas of Trotsky, which Service declined, and even pulled out of debate elsewhere when he realised Peter was speaking there. Peter outlined the contributions Trotsky made to Marxist ideas and the movement, and the discussion followed this course, as well as discussing why there is such a voluminous body of works attacking marxist ideas and in particular anything associated with the 1917 Russian Revolution.

The final session I went to was a discussion on 'Where now for the German Left Party?" introduced by Stephan Kimmerle. The discussion from this mostly focussed on the experiences of building new working class parties and the difficulties that had been faced in doing so. Unfortunately i had to dash off early from this session.

The final event of the weekend was the closing rally. In some ways this was a better rally than the previous nights, as the majority of the speakers were relating their experiences of disputes which when you spent the entire weekend really tired helped keep you more alert. The speakers there were Rob Williams (reinstated Linamar convener), Dave Nellist, Sean Figg, Hannah Sell, John Denton (CWU London Regional Secretary) and a British Airways union rep.

Of the contributions, I listened with the most interest to John Denton's appraisal of the deal that the CWU has struck with Royal Mail, by the sounds of it he sounded skeptical at first, but he sincerely believed the deal to be a big step forward, and commented that is Royal Mail renege on it the ballots are all still active and postal workers will be out once more. In my opinion it is possible that the CWU could have got a good deal, as one comrade pointed out to me, it would be unusual for it to be passed unanimously by the postal executive if it wasn't. But we will have to wait until the full details are announced (but in my opinion, surely a the details of a good deal should be announced immediately). The BA rep's speech was quite interesting too, particularly pointing out that BA had head-hunted some of the very people who'd drawn up to attack the CWU in Royal Mail.

Overall, I had a great, but very tiring weekend. Hopefully I shouldn't have to set off to future Socialisms at such a ridiculously early events as i did this one. For those of you that couldn't be there videos were recorded of some of the sessions and they will hopefully be online soon.

Reports from Previous Socialism events at Leftwing Criminologist

Socialism 2008

Socialism 2007

Socialist Party Organisers School

Having got back late yesterday from the Socialist Party's Organisers School near Buxton in the Peak District, it seems like a good time to gather my thoughts on the weekend.

After having a bit of a nightmare travelling there from Bangor, it was a good experience to spend the weekend with over 100 party activists from across the country. The attendees for the most part were members who have joined over the last year and have begun to help organise the work of their local branches. People like me who have been knocking around for a few years now were definitely in a minority and for the most part were confined to the younger party full-timers and a few of our leading members in certain areas of work. The vast majority of the people there I hadn't met before and I found it really good to meet so many people. To give a good illustration of this, of the delegation from Yorkshire, of which I used to be a member in when I first joined the party, I knew less than half of them, and most of them I'd met in the last year - and this in a region that I have always tried to keep quite effective contact with!



The weekend itself was a mix of commissions and plenary sessions. The two plenary sessions began and ended the weekend, with Peter Taaffe discussing perspectives and Hannah Sell discussing build the Socialist Party. I'm not going to comment much on these apart from note how I seem to get mentioned in everyone of Hannah's leadoffs on party building, obviously I've found favour somewhere!



The commissions were the focus of the weekend, giving more of an opportunity for newer activists to contribute (that said most of the Welsh delegation spoke in the first plenary session). The first day had political commissions on six different topics (which were repeated in the evening) - I went to the role of the State and to Sri Lanka and the national question - both of which were really good interactive sessions. The session on the State took a question and answer style, whereas the Sri Lanka session, featured video footage of the situation there in the camps and a discussion around the current political situation in Sri Lanka, as well as discussing the history of the national question there, which is intimately bound with the history of Trotskyism in the country, all of which deserves one (if not more) posts all to itself to do the subject justice.



On the second day we had two different sessions - one on recruitment to the party and the second set of sessions looking at different aspects of party work. I went along to the session on the role of a marxist in the workplace. The session had a wide range of participants, from those like Rob Williams where the party has a big influence in that particular workplace and has led the struggle to defend jobs and improve conditions at that factory, as well as recently defending Rob from victimisation, to workplaces where we have just one member and there is no trade union at all. It was really good being able to discuss, share and learn from each others experiences.



A few last things, in my opinion the weekend was an excellent experience with just two flaws. The first was the lateness of the reading lists for the political commissions, which no doubt meant that some members where less prepared than they could have been for the discussions and meant those discussions necessarily had to cover a little more ground than they needed (due to mny extensive reading I had already read the materials for the sessions I attended, but if I hadn't I wouldn't have had the time to do so if otherwise). And the second was the lack of preparation at the hostel for the weekend, which meant they didn't have enough staff on and the bar ran out of beer!





I for one thoroughly enjoyed the weekend, and really enjoyed discussing with our new activists from around the country, so much so that I was last up both nights we were at the hostel. And despite how useless I am a football, I even scored a goal in the saturday lunchtime game - a great result all round!