The vicious beating and gang-rape of a 23-year-old student in New Delhi, who died in hospital two weeks later, sparked outrage across India and the world, writes Joy Mcready The brutality and premeditation of the attack – six men conspired to snatch a woman in order to rape and kill her – spawned mass protests […]

Marcus Halaby analyses the great – and as yet uncompleted – Arab revolutions of 2011, debunking a number of myths and proving the relevance of Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution today.

  By Bernie McAdam, Sandwell NUT   The National Union of Teachers (NUT) is gearing up for a national strike on Wednesday 13 March, possibly coinciding with a European TUC Day of Action against austerity. This is a direct response to Tory Education Secretary Michael Gove’s vicious attack on teachers’ pay. His plans will involve […]

The following is a shortened version of an online statement (see) The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is presently undergoing its most serious crisis since the 1970s. This is entirely the direct result of the disloyal actions of its own leadership, the 12-person Central Committee (CC), before, during and after the annual conference held on 5 […]

The task of the day is to organise citizens’ defence committees to defend the Short Strand and Catholic communities, says Bernie McAdam. These could then become the basis of a political alternative to the government’s cuts programme and the continuing repression

This is the transcript of an interview conducted by Workers Power with Jerry Hicks. Credit where credit’s due, McCluskey’s speech, his Ralph Miliband lecture, was good – though he lifted most of it out of a speech I made back in 2009 – and he said I was exaggerating then – so he’s three years […]

By Rebecca On 16 January the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) NEC decided to ballot a quarter of a million civil and public servants for strike action over sustained government attacks. Increased pension contributions and four years of pay freezes and caps mean that civil servants will have seen their income cut by 16 per […]

  2012 was a year to forget for the Tories. It was, in the main, a year to forget for student activists as well, writes K D Tait. The first year of £9,000 fees saw a 10 per cent drop in student numbers. September saw the government try to deport thousands of overseas students from London […]

  The start of 2013 will mean even more cutting back for a lot of families as George Osborne announces further cuts to benefits and working tax credits. Sally Turner reports

By Sally Turner The Tories are planning to pass new laws to stop Travellers setting up sites to live on. This follows the violent eviction of Dale Farm, where an entire community was forced off their land by a militarised police operation. Britain’s Traveller community has been the victim of decades of racist attacks by Labour […]

Finally, Desmond de Silva’s report into the murder of Pat Finucane, the Belfast solicitor, has been released. The Report found that there were ‘shocking levels of state collusion’ in the murder. It told of the ‘wilful and abject failure by successive governments’ to run agents lawfully. It confirmed that Pat Finucane had been murdered by […]

Len McCluskey has called a snap election for the top job in Unite, even though he has over two years left to run in the post. This is outrageous and undemocratic, says Jeremy Dewar

The Socialist Workers Party, the largest revolutionary socialist organisation in Britain, and one of the largest in the world, is presently convulsed by the most serious crisis in its history. This crisis is entirely the result of the scandalously disloyal actions of its own leadership, the 12-person Central Committee, before, during and after the annual […]

Excerpt from The Degenerated Revolution: The Rise and Fall of the Stalinist States, D. Hughes and P. Main Eds., Prinkipo, 2012 (Revised 2nd edition), 584pp, £10 This article was originally written in 1983. This article from 1991 provides an analysis of the introduction of capitalist market reforms following the dissolution of the USSR, this article from 1997 looks […]

A temporary ceasefire has brought some relief to the besieged and oppressed 1.7 million people crammed into the 140 square miles of the Gaza Strip, where one in five children suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and 58 per cent of young people aged between 20 and 24 are unemployed. David Stockton writes

Two TV programmes: one shown and one not, have plunged the BBC into crisis, with resignations of the director general, accusations of libel, poor editorial standards and staff morale plummeting even further. By Keith Spencer

An evening rally and demo called for solidarity with the 14 November European general strikes – but union leaders expose the gulf between the British movement and that of the mainland, says Jeremy Dewar

On November 21 the National Union of Students (NUS) will march in London under the slogan ‘Educate, Employ, Empower’. The protest is supported by the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts (NCAFC), Education Activists Network (EAN) and the UCU. Activists across the country are organising for the biggest possible turnout, but participation seems uneven and […]

Read the PDF version of our bulletin From Rebecca Allen and Jeremy Drinkall, candidates for the new steering committee to be elected on 17 November, on behalf of Workers Power Dear Brothers, Sisters and Comrades, We welcome the Unite the Resistance conference on 17 November as a chance to bring together the different struggles and […]

Gove’s reactionary policy for schools means… Education for exploitation, argues James Copley

In Workers Power 367 we saw how the Communist Part of Great Britain (CPGB) initiated the powerful rank and file Minority Movement, but became ever more uncritical supporters of the union leaders when the British TUC formed the Anglo-Russian committee with the Russian trade unions. Dave Stockton looks at what this meant for the 1926 […]

Imperialism in the dock by Marcus Halaby

By Shahzad Arshad On 11 November, the Awami Workers’ Party was founded in Lahore. Initially, this party will organise some 15,000 working class activists, youth and students. This is still far from a mass party in a country of 172 million, but this includes many of the most politically advanced working class fighters, who can […]

By Jeremy Dewar On 25 October, Ford stunned workers at its Southampton transit van and Dagenham stamping plants, announcing 1,400 job cuts and the closure of both sites next year. Unions say job losses could be as high as 2,000. Closure would threaten a further 10,000 jobs in the supply chain. The US car giant […]

By Joy Macready Women council workers in Birmingham, including cooks, cleaners, caterers and care staff, have struck another blow against inequality. On 24 October a Supreme Court ruling upheld 174 city council workers’ rights to compensation over missed bonuses from 2004 to 2010. Male workers on the same grade received extra money that the women […]

It’s no longer a question of if we need a general strike, but how can we get one. As 2012 ends and a new year begins the economic, political and social crisis of capitalism continues and even deepens. Two and a half million people are spending their mid-winter break with little cheer: jobless, broke and […]

By Stu Bates On 15 April 1989, 96 Liverpool supporters attending the FA cup semi-final at Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough stadium never returned home. Now, 20 years on, a new independent report has exposed a massive police cover-up. The police and Sheffield Wednesday bosses were to blame for the disaster, not the fans. The stadium failed […]

By Joy Macready, at the Firenze 10+10 conference In November 2002 the first European Social Forum in Florence issued the call for worldwide anti-war demonstrations on February 15, 2003. To mark its tenth anniversary, 1,500 activists gathered there for an event titled Firenze 10+10. The title was meant to indicate the meeting would draw of […]

By Andy Yorke A debate has opened up in the labour movement since the vote at the Brighton TUC to consider the ‘practicalities of a general strike’. The debate has inevitably exposed differences on the left. Not everyone on the left supports a general strike, much less campaigns for it. The Alliance for Workers Liberty […]

As the Coalition government gears up for the second half of its term in office, it is clear that the British economy is far from the path of recovery. Despite some terrible betrayals over the past year, the labour movement is debating its next move and the possibility of a general strike. On the following […]