By Dave Stockton PEDRO SANCHEZ, leader of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), is now in the Moncloa Palace as prime minister of Spain. Every progressive person in the Spanish state will be glad to see the back of the Popular Party’s autocratic leader Mariano Rajoy. The critical moment came when the Basque Nationalist Party […]

By KD Tait This year marks 70 years since the foundation of Israel and the Nakba, in which more than 700,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes. Over the last month, refugees and their descendants in Gaza have been holding peaceful protests in support of the right to return. These demonstrations have faced savage repression […]

Red Flag Statement ISRAEL HAS celebrated the opening of Donald Trump’s Embassy in Jerusalem with a bloodbath, by massacring at least 60 Palestinian demonstrators, including eight children, and wounding more than 2,270. This brings the total number killed by the IDF since the protests began to over one hundred. Thousands have been injured, with Al […]

By Marcus Halaby “Why would Bashar al-Assad have gassed his own people when he was already winning the war?” This question is frequently asked by many in the West of a generally anti-war disposition, who see in it a repetition of the arguments made around Saddam Hussein’s alleged (and disproven) possession of weapons of mass […]

By Peter Main THE NEWS that the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, has returned from his talks with Kim Jong-un with three US citizens released from prison in North Korea appears, at first sight, to validate the “tough guy” approach to diplomacy of his boss, Donald Trump. This interpretation had already been strengthened by […]

By Dave Stockton FIVE HUNDRED people, a large number of them of black Caribbean heritage, held a noisy rally outside Downing Street on Saturday 5 May, before taking the road and marching off to the Home Office, a mile away. “Windrush people here to stay, let’s deport Theresa May!” they chanted. The continuing anger on the […]

By KD Tait OVER THE past four weeks, at least 37 Palestinians have been killed, and more than 4,000 wounded, by Israeli troops firing indiscriminately into demonstrations organised as part of the Great Return March. As usual, the US and British representatives on the United Nations Security Council have blocked any condemnation of the Israeli […]

By Jeremy Dewar, Lambeth Unison delegate (pc) and Marcus Otono, Workers Power USA. THREE THOUSAND trade unionists assembled in Chicago for Labor Notes’ biennial conference on 8-11 April. Many there claimed it was the biggest Labor Notes conference ever. But numbers alone cannot convey the energy, the diversity, the militancy on display. Workers’ struggles At […]

By Martin Suchanek ANNIVERSARIES NEVER serve as a mere recollection of a person’s historical work. When they are about an epoch-making theorist like Karl Marx, who together with his friend and companion in struggle Frederick Engels, founded “scientific socialism”, there are only two possibilities for the ruling class or the left wing of the bourgeoisie, […]

BY KD Tait THE DECISION by Labour’s right wing to reheat the smear campaign accusing Jeremy Corbyn of failing to tackle antisemitism within the party is a deliberate attempt to sabotage Labour’s local election campaign, discredit the leadership, and silence critics of Israel’s brutal oppression of the Palestinians. Though they have differing priorities and motives, […]

By Marc Lassalle PARIS – After a month of militant but inconclusive strikes and occupations by railway workers and students, activists are organising to relaunch the mobilisation against the government attacks, with a national day of action in the first week of May. At the beginning of April workers on the state rail network, the […]

By Bernie McAdam THIS YEAR marks the twentieth anniversary of the signing of the Good Friday Agreement (GFA). The ‘peace process’ that this initiated between the British state and Sinn Fein/ Irish Republican Army (IRA), with ceasefire followed by decommissioning of IRA arms and recognition of the police, was crowned with a power sharing government […]

By Markus Lehner “Trade wars are good” – Donald Trump Though Donald Trump’s tweets often seem mere clowning, the decrees he signed imposing import duties on steel and aluminium, and subsequent threats of further punitive duties on Chinese imports, do have to be taken seriously. The US president has used a loophole that allows him […]

By Dave Stockton THIS YEAR’S celebrations of the anniversary of the foundation of the State of Israel were bigger than ever. They were held on 18 April, corresponding to a date in the Hebrew calendar that in the Gregorian calendar corresponds to 15 May. And this latter date is when Palestinians commemorate the 1948 Nakba […]

ON SATURDAY 21 April, a number of democratic and socialist activists were arrested by the Punjabi Police in Lahore, amongst them Ali Wazir, Bilawal Mandokhel, Muzammil and Ismat Shahjahan, all of them leaders of the Pashtun Protection Movement (Pashtun Tahafuz Movement, PTM), and the Awami Workers’ Party Chairman, Fanoos Gujjar. These arrests are designed to […]

By KD Tait THE US, French, and British attack on the Syrian regime’s chemical warfare facilities, ostensibly in retaliation for the recent chemical attack in Douma, was little more than a cynical attempt by the Nato powers to avoid being made to look totally impotent by the Syrian dictator – whilst carefully avoiding a direct […]

By  Marcus Halaby  The overwhelming priority of the Labour movement today is to prevent Britain from taking any further military action in Syria, or from joining any new Trump-led escalations of conflict with Russia or Iran. And we can do that without pretending that Syria’s dictator Bashar al-Assad is anything other than a fascistic monster […]

By Liga Socialista, Brazil THESE ARE tense days in Brazil. The political instability, which began with the parliamentary coup, heightened in the days leading up to the Federal Supreme Court hearing of Lula’s request for Habeas Corpus last Wednesday, April 4. On the eve of the trial, the Army General, Villas-Boas, issued a social network […]

By Shahzad Arshad, Revolutionary Socialist Movement, Pakistan A NEW mass movement is developing in Pakistan. On April 8, tens of thousands of supporters of the “Pashtun Protection Movement” gathered in Peshawar, the centre of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, KPK. Some estimates put the total attendance at more than 100,000. The meeting was the latest highpoint of […]

THE OVERWHELMING priority of the Labour Movement today is to prevent Britain taking military action in Syria, or joining a Trump – led escalation of conflict with Russia. We can do that without pretending that Assad is anything other than a fascistic monster at war with his own people. We can do that without pretending […]

ROBIN WALES, the long-standing, perhaps long-reigning would be more accurate, directly elected Mayor of Newham, has finally been deselected as the Labour Party’s candidate in the forthcoming mayoral election. In an Open Selection ballot of the membership, held after Wales was not adopted as the candidate in a second Trigger Ballot, he was roundly defeated, […]

ON 4 MARCH 2018, a former Russian spy turned double agent for MI5, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Yulia, were poisoned using Novichok, a hitherto obscure nerve agent. The British government has named Russia and its newly re-elected President, Vladimir Putin, as the culprit. The main evidence is the claimed development of Novichok by Russia, […]

By KD Tait THERE WERE a lot of Labour people on Saturday’s demo for the 15 Gazans murdered in cold blood by Israel – but there was not one Labour MP among them. Why? The protest was so supportable, called by Palestine solidarity campaigns to protest the murder of 31 civilians by Israeli occupation forces […]

Obituary for Norman Goodwin, engineering worker.

By Jeremy Dewar, Unison rep, pc Another year, another pay cut. Or so it seems. As we go to press, Britain’s biggest local government union, Unison, is about to close its second consultative ballot (we didn’t give the right answer first time) on the employers’ 2018-19 pay offer. The offer is atrocious: a real pay […]

Israeli armed forces, firing indiscriminately on unarmed Palestinian demonstrators, men, women and children, have killed at least 16 and injured well over one hundred. As is usual in such cases, the US and British representatives on the UN Security Council have blocked any condemnation of Israel, or even any call on it to stop the […]

THE SUDDEN coordinated onslaught against Jeremy Corbyn over the weekend of 24-25 March was a transparent attempt by an alliance of rightwing forces to damage Labour’s strong lead in the run up to the May council elections, and to destabilise Corbyn’s ever-more consolidated leadership of the Labour Party. Things have not been going well for […]

Liga Socialista, Brazil  ON THE evening of March 14, Marielle Franco (38), a city councillor from the Maré favela in Rio de Janeiro, was shot dead in her car in the street. Her driver died with her in a hail of bullets. Her secretary survived but was seriously injured. Marielle was a member of the […]

THE State of Emergency declared by the government of Ranil Wickremasinghe on March 6, initially for 7 days, was finally lifted on March 18. The attacks by Buddhist gangs on Muslim communities, which were the ostensible justification for the Emergency, left two dead and 450 Muslim-owned homes and businesses burnt out. Most of the violence […]

Statement of the Liga Socialista to the Brazil Social Forum SINCE the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff of the Workers’ Party (PT) we are essentially in a coup situation. Today it is also clear that it is not only a constitutional overthrow by Congress. There is a consistent front extending from the powerful entrepreneurial association […]