By Jeremy Dewar The biggest and most militant teachers’ union, NUT, has voted for a strike ballot against the threat to turn all 15,000 state-maintained schools into academies. The threat is lodged at the heart of the Tory government’s Educational Excellence Everywhere White Paper. Two other teaching unions, NASUWT and ATL, have also voted to […]
By Dara O Cogaidhin Junior doctors across England launched a fresh wave of strike action on 6-7 April in their long-running dispute with Tory Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt. This 48-hour strike was the fourth walkout since industrial action began. The first strike, called by the British Medical Association (BMA) in January, came as Hunt threatened […]
Instead of accommodating the right, we should organise the left It makes a change to have a Labour leadership that attacks the Tories rather than concedes to them. Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell have succeeded in knocking the Tories off their perch several times recently. Their counterattack against the Budget resulted in George Osborne’s humiliating […]
Take to the streets, Unite the strikes, Vote Labour David Cameron and George Osborne are facing a perfect storm. And much of it comes from their colleagues in the Tory Party and the right wing press. Firstly, the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign is in deep trouble, with the anti-European right, both Tory and UKIP, […]
The Ministry of Justice (MOJ) has announced the closure of 86 courts and tribunals across England and Wales. These closures threaten people’s access to justice in towns and rural areas, and the jobs of thousands of workers. The civil service trade union PCS is opposing the closures, alongside MPs, solicitors’ firms, magistrates and the Citizens […]
By Alisha Arshad IN PAKISTAN, women are largely confined to working in the huge “informal” sector, which employs about three quarters of the total workforce of an estimated 65 million in the cities, towns and countryside. Workers in this sector, male or female, are not covered by the country’s labour regulations. They have no entitlement to […]
By Joy Macready WOMEN continue to face fierce austerity attacks on welfare, jobs, trade union rights, education, healthcare and childcare. Shouldering the double burden of unpaid domestic and waged labour, it is left to women to pick up the pieces when the social fabric is destroyed through cuts. They make up the majority of workers […]
The revolutionary legacy of Clara Zetkin By Joy Macready CAPITALISM from its earliest years gave birth to the modern women’s question. Women, particularly the women of the poorest classes, played a major role in its model revolution – in France in 1789. But the Rights of Man and Citizen it proclaimed turned out to be […]
World powers reject calls for coordinated response, settle for status quo By KD Tait GROWING tensions between the world’s imperialist rivals are obstructing efforts to secure a coordinated response to the emerging economic crisis. Crunch talks at the G20 summit in Shanghai assembled finance ministers and central bankers from the world’s leading economies to discuss […]
Ceasefire will bring neither a just nor a lasting end to the civil war By Marcus Halaby RUSSIA’S bombing campaign in support of Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship has created a new wave of refugees, with 35,000 stranded on the border with Turkey. Its purpose was to encircle Syria’s largest city Aleppo, before a US-Russian brokered “ceasefire” […]
Can Bernie Sanders do more than pave the way for Clinton? By Andy Yorke THE 2016 US Presidential election was expected to be boring, from predictable start to status quo finish. It was supposed to be Jeb Bush against Hillary Clinton: both insiders from Republican and Democrat political dynasties, both with strong ties to big […]
The first installment in our serialisation of a socialist history of the Labour Party. Read the second instalment: Labour recruits for carnage in WW1 By Dave Stockton Keir Hardie speaking at a Women’s Suffrage demonstration in Trafalgar Square Foundation of the Labour Party, Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street, London, February 1906 IN FEBRUARY 1900, the Labour Representation […]
The Irish general election result has delivered a huge blow to the outgoing Fine Gael-Labour coalition government. Although Fine Gael will still be marginally the largest party, despite losing around a third of their seats, the plunge in the Labour vote from 19 to just below 7 per cent rules out a repeat coalition. […]
THE nationalist left outside the SNP are campaigning for another independence referendum as soon as possible, but the SNP has said it will not call another one unless it is 100 per cent sure of winning. However, Nicola Sturgeon has indicated that if Britain votes to leave the European Union in the June referendum and […]
By Sandy McBurney ALL commentators are agreed that the governing party, the Scottish National Party (SNP), is going to win the 2016 Scottish parliamentary elections. They are on 50 per cent plus in the opinion polls. Their membership stands at 115,000, which is the equivalent of over a million members on a British scale. This […]
DAVID CAMERON returned from the European Summit in Brussels in February with a deal he claimed would ensure Britain’s continued membership of the European Union. He speedily announced a date for the referendum on 23 June. The wording of the referendum is: “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union?” It contains […]
It’s time Labour showed leadership and solidarity We have the chance to save our NHS and inflict a serious defeat on the Tories THE NHS is in crisis. Everyone knows that. The Coalition and Tory claims to have ring-fenced health spending was and is a cruel deception. In fact funding has been frozen in real […]
March will see an intensification of the political storms which have been brewing since January. With the Tories fighting like rats in a sack over Europe, it’s time for Labour to challenge the racist agenda of the immigration debate, expose the Tory lies and champion the value of working class unity across borders. The May […]
No to racism & xenophobia Defend workers’ rights Vote to ‘Remain in the EU’ ‘National independence’ is a retreat from class unity and internationalism THEY’RE OFF. The EU referendum and May elections have triggered a storm of propaganda that will fill the tabloids and news bulletins with an unparalleled torrent of racist lies and distortions, as the […]
The concept of cooperatives as an alternative to both private and state ownership has resurfaced courtesy of a recent speech by Labour’s shadow chancellor John McDonnell. This article sets out the Marxist critique of the prospects of cooperatives to exist within and act as a focus to overcome a capitalist market economy. In the 19th […]
Taoiseach Enda Kenny has called a General Election for February 26. This will be the shortest election campaign in the history of the state, just three weeks. In response to this indecent haste a Sinn Fein TD’s comment summed it up well as ‘a pathetic end to a pathetic Dail’. Indeed it was a pathetic […]
By Dave Stockton John McDonnell’s speech at the Cooperative Ways Forward Conference in Manchester on 21 January opened his campaign for what he calls “the new economics” – involving a clear break from the austerity-lite policies pursued by Labour under Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband. This was John’s opening gambit in a welcome – and […]
By KD Tait SINCE Jeremy Corbyn’s landslide election as leader of the Labour Party, the grassroots network Momentum has formed 90 local groups to coordinate the activities of Labour Party members and supporters who want to champion the policies Jeremy was elected on and spearhead resistance to the Tories. Local groups have rallied a cross-section […]
Saturday saw more than one thousand council tenants and activists march against the Housing Bill and the demolition of the Aylesbury estate in Southwark. We took our protest to Downing Street, as the Bill is debated in the House of Lords. Gathering outside the Imperial War Museum in Kennington, the rally heard speeches from local […]
THE referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union, EU, is now likely to take place no later than the Autumn. David Cameron was forced to promise a referendum in his election manifesto under pressure from UKIP. Now he wants to get it out of the way as quickly as possible because he knows a […]
When Spain adopted its post-Franco constitution there was a fierce battle over the character of the state. The Right insisted on its unitary character with all its inhabitants simply “Spaniards”. The Left wanted a “plurinational state” with a federal character. The Right basically won and the 1978 constitution referred to “the common and indivisible homeland […]
With new elections likely, workers’ mobilisations could shift the balance of forces THE Spanish general election of December 20 created a political impasse. Although the Partido Popular, PP, the governing party under Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, won the most seats, this was a hollow victory indeed. With just 28 percent of the vote and 123 […]
By Jeremy Dewar South Africa, one of the world’s major emerging markets, is about to tip into recession. Its currency has slipped to a historic low against the dollar. The country’s stock exchange, at 320 per cent of South Africa’s annual GDP possibly the world’s most over-valued, is set for an almighty crash. Indeed, the […]
We need to challenge the social causes of sexist and racist attitudes inflamed by the refugee crisis ON New Year’s Eve, in Cologne, hundreds of women were intimidated and threatened. At least two rapes were reported. There are now over a hundred reported assaults, often including sexual harassment and robbery at the hands of so-called […]
By Marcus Halaby For all David Cameron’s boasting that he has 70,000 “moderate” Syrian oppositionists ready to act as boots on the ground in the fight against ISIS, there is precious little sign of them being brought into action. It now seems that they will only be usable after a “political process” has engineered a […]