I see the WSWS as being the educator and organiser of the working class for world socialist revolution. I think it is a very good web site; the best there is. What struck me when I first saw it was that it was a world socialist website. I have always based myself on an internationalist outlook.
I particularly like the economics articles by Barry Grey and Nick Beams because I have a lot of difficulty understanding the financial aspect of imperialism and capitalism. Also I find it very uplifting to read about socialist activity in other parts of the world like Sri Lanka and Australia. I have never come across such a detailed analysis of where capitalism has taken us in the last few decades and where we are heading.
The first time I got involved in anything political was when I was working as a nurse in Montrose. I started up a union there. Afterwards I moved to London, where I joined the Labour Party, but following its wholesale capitulation to the bourgeoisie during the 1980s miners’ strike, I left and joined the Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP). I took part in a few activities such the “Release the Jailed Miners” march but drifted away during the crisis that erupted in 1985.
After a while, back in Dundee, I came across a seller of the Workers Press (newspaper of Cliff Slaughter’s WRP). I became involved in the Dundee Committee for a United Ireland and the Timex strike, which consisted of supporting the nationalists in Sinn Fein and trying to find “lefts” in the Labour Party.
I also supported the WRP’s Workers Aid for Bosnia, but I had my reservations. It ended up siding with Croatia’s Tudjman. I felt there should be unity of Yugoslav workers to overthrow the regimes of Tudjman and Milosevic but there was no turn to the working class. It was the WSWS that opened up my eyes to what I hadn’t seen … about Bosnia, the bombing of Serbia, and the Kosovo Liberation Army, which Slaughter’s WRP supported.
It is the same with the entire website. It keeps us up to date with the world situation, the breakdown in Europe, the situation in America—the biggest capitalist country in the world, offsetting its demise by military means. It is very important what happens there, and in Africa—the scramble for Africa—and the conflict between China and Japan.