Islamic State has claimed responsibility for Wednesday's terrorist attack in which five people were killed and dozens injured in Westminster. Two civilians, Aysha Frade and Kurt Cochran, were killed on Westminster Bridge and police officer Keith Palmer was stabbed to death near Parliament, before the attacker, Khalid Masood, was shot by police. Leslie Rhodes, a […]

“Since 1965 I have never lived through a presidential election like this. There are no more axes, no more rules”, says Socialist Party, PS, first secretary, Jean-Christophe Cambadélis. “Nothing is stable anymore. It is a great chamboule-tout (coconut shy),” adds PS MP Jean-Marie Le Guen. Indeed, nothing has been going according to expectations for the […]

Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness, ex deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland and ex IRA leader, has died. He played a hugely influential role in the long armed struggle against the Unionist and British state and in negotiating the subsequent 1998 Good Friday Agreement that ended the war.  For the former the British media and politicians […]

In a blatant attack on trade unionism, a court in India has sentenced 13 workers, including all 12 members of the Executive Committee of the Maruti-Suzuki Workers’ Union, to life imprisonment. The ferocity of the company management’s legal onslaught can be seen from the prosecution’s demand for the death penalty, even though the evidence presented […]

NEARLY ONE-THIRD of all Southern Rail’s trains were late or failed to run last year. And 2017 could be even worse, with up to 46 per cent of trains cancelled or delayed in January. Furious season ticket holders and other passengers are claiming compensation, running into thousands of pounds. How can a private company absorb […]

THE GRASSROOTS Momentum conference in London should be a chance to rally Labour members and supporters around a fighting strategy to push for democracy and socialist policy in the movement. The conference is the first chance Momentum’s members have ever had to meet up nationally. It is also the first national meeting of grassroots activists […]

The long running dispute at Southern Rail has taken a further dramatic turn after drivers in the Aslef union voted down a deal recommended by their General Secretary Mick Whelan and the TUC by 54 per cent to 46 per cent. A successful and defiant strike by RMT drivers and conductors on the same day […]

By Joy Macready The 1917 Bolshevik government advanced a revolutionary programme for women’s rights, struggling to break with the backwardness and prejudice of Russia. The Bolsheviks argued that for women to be liberated, they would have to be relieved of their semi-slave status within the family. This would only happen if the state, now based […]

By Martin Suchanek  This article was originally published in Neue Internationale – Frauen Zeitung, the German language magazine of the League for the Fifth International The war against Islamic State, the renewal of state bans on Islamic women’s dress in the West and the spread of Islamist terrorism has renewed the focus on Islam as […]

Konkordiya Samoilova was born in 1876 in Irkutsk, Siberia. Her father was an Orthodox priest. Samoilova graduated with a gold medal from the gymnasium and moved in 1896 to Saint Petersburg. There she studied, like Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s wife Nadezhda Krupskaya before her, at the Bestuzhev Higher Women’s Institute. These bodies were the only higher […]

By Joy Macready Women’s oppression long predates capitalism. Indeed it goes back to the origins of class society. But each succeeding mode of production and exploitation altered the family unit of women’s oppression and exploitation. Capitalism Industrial capitalism revolutionised the nature of production, taking it out of the family home. Although the household stopped being […]

From Clara Zetkin to the New York garment strike of 1908

IN A time of increasing political instability and tension that has given us Donald Trump and Brexit, it’s reassuring to see one old tradition reasserting itself against a global lurch to the right. Returning to the radical social roots that inspired its foundation in the early decades of the 20th century, International Women’s Day has […]

Normally, American Jewish leaders would expect to feel quite positive about a new US President apparently more friendly to Israel than his immediate predecessor. But Donald Trump’s actions since his inauguration seem to have thrown many of them into a panic. This is not entirely attributable to his antisemitic provocations, like his statement on Holocaust […]

The resignation of Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness as Deputy First Minister has triggered a new election and brought the ‘Northern Ireland’ power sharing executive at Stormont crashing down. The terms of the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) ensure that the Executive cannot function if either of the two main parties refuse to take part. The ‘Cash […]

By Katie Pelikanou On February 28 representatives from the European Union, European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund arrived in Athens to discuss terms for a fourth bailout package for the Greek government. These negotiations had initially stalled, with the IMF dubious about Greece’s ability to achieve a ‘sustainable’ fiscal surplus, givent that the […]

As epected and intended, the Copeland and Stoke by-elections were severe setbacks for Labour and for Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. Whatever the particular reasons for the defeat in the two seats, the campaign and the result shows that an army of activists is no use if you haven’t got a clear altnernative. That Labour, not the […]

The lack of imagination at the top of the Labour Party was on display for all to see last week. Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday 12 February, Deputy Party Leader Tom Watson announced that Labour was considering a regional immigration policy: “I think you can actually say London requires more liberal […]

By Chris Taylor UNISON RECENTLY announced that striking Glasgow City Council IT workers have accepted an offer from the council and returned to work. Having secured guarantees that they will continue to be council-linked employees and suffer no redundancies or relocation, the strike has been called off. This brings to an end a dispute which […]

JEREMY CORBYN has imposed a three-line whip on Labour MPs to vote for Theresa May’s Bill to start the Brexit process. We believe this is a seriously wrong position. Leaving the European Union will be as disastrous for the working class, here, in Europe and around the world, as it was when Labour opposed it […]

THERESA MAY’S visit to Washington has turned into a major embarrassment. Her “partnership” with Donald Trump which meant she refused to condemn his ‘Muslim Ban’ has sparked a wave of enormous demonstrations across the UK. May’s pathetic boasts about the “special relationship” between British and US imperialism are a stale ritual for UK prime ministers. […]

ON 10 JANUARY Jon Lansman and a majority of the Steering Committee launched a coup. This subcommittee of the NC at an email “meeting” voted to overrule the December 5 decision of the sovereign National Committee to convene a conference of delegates from the local branches. For good measure it abolished the NC itself by […]

By Chris Taylor In the 18 months since Jeremy Corbyn first secured a place on the leadership ballot, hundreds of thousands have joined Labour. By population, Scottish Labour should have seen a gain in the tens of thousands. In fact, fewer than 5,000 have joined the party. Unlike in the rest of Britain, there has […]

2016 was a year of momentous events. In Syria, the European Union, South America, the USA, these were not positive ones for the struggles of the working class and progressive forces fighting for democratic rights. Rather the opposite. In Syria, the year ended with the fall of Aleppo to Assad’s brutal regime and and the […]

By Marcus Halaby THE SIEGE of Aleppo has entered its final hours. A cold-blooded and methodical massacre awaits the defenders and civilians who could not or would not escape. With the fall of Aleppo, a similar fate is being prepared for the remaining areas of the country not yet subjugated by the regime’s militias. Moscow and Damascus are […]

PAUL NUTTALL’S threat to “replace the Labour Party and make Ukip the voice of patriotic Britain” seems to have thrown some Labour MPs into a panic. Dan Jarvis MP, for example, thinks that, “the Ukip fox is in the Labour henhouse and we have got to make a decision about what we want to do […]

Trying to reclaim Brexit for the left is a distraction from opposing the Tory plans THERESA MAY and her three Brexiteers, David Davies, Boris Johnson and Liam Fox, are preparing for a devastating withdrawal from the European Union. Her “red, white and blue” Brexit will deny the UK full access to the single market, leading […]

By Marc Lassalle, originally published in our international magazine fifthinternational.org Italian voters have rejected premier Matteo Renzi’s proposed amendments to the constitution with an impressive 59 percent in the referendum sponsored by his government. Last night, a small spontaneous demo by the Cobas teachers’ union formed outside the PM’s official residence, Palazzo Chigi, cheering the […]

By Rebecca A, Yorkshire and Humber delegate (personal capacity) Last weekend’s meeting of the National Committee, the first since April, agreed a series of proposals that provide a framework for growing and strengthening the organisation through a process of democratic debate and campaigning. The run up to the meeting had seen a certain amount of […]

By KD Tait The decision to conduct a series of elections to Momentum’s National Committee through an online One Member One Vote (OMOV) process has proved controversial. The elections came as a surprise to most members. It seems that the Steering Committee agreed to conduct them, although there are no minutes. Members were also concerned […]