Joy Macready reports on the growing backlash against a women’s right to choose In September, a woman was jailed for terminating her pregnancy in its final stage. Sarah Catt took a drug that she purchased on the Internet to cause an abortion in 2009, and now faces eight years in prison for it. To give […]
Protesters picketed the BFK (Bam-Ferrovial-Kiers) Leeds Arena construction site this morning, demanding the reinstatement of workers sacked for trade union activities. The company, subcontracted by Crossrail, has been fiercely resisting the efforts of union Unite to win collective bargaining rights for those working on the project. A health and safety rep was suspended last month […]
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By K Tait Hundreds of masked, black-clad police advancing, firing rubber bullets into the backs of fleeing protesters. In a side street, young people confronting vans of riot police behind a blazing barricade. These were the streets of Madrid as Spain’s government announced a further £8billion of cuts to education, health and welfare spending in […]
By Rebecca Anderson
Leeds Workers Power report
After TUC motion agrees to ‘consider’ general strike, step up the pressure for real action By a sizeable majority, TUC delegates have voted for a motion moved by the Prison Officers Association (POA) which says: “Congress accepts that the trade union movement must continue leading from the front against this uncaring government with […]
As we go to press news is breaking of 400 dead bodies, mainly civilians, being found in Darayya. It could turn out to be the most deadly massacre yet in Syria’s bloody confrontation. Marcus Halaby writes
While the world’s media has been concentrating on the trial of Gu Kailai for the murder of her “business” partner Neil Heywood, a crackdown of a different sort has been underway in the southern province of Guangdong. Peter Main writes
South African state prosecutors tried to charge 270 miners with the murder of 34 of their fellow workers. To do this it used a piece of Apartheid law called “common purpose”, which was designed to prosecute enemies of the white supremacist state, who were often ANC members. Keith Spencer writes
The American Zionist scholar Daniel Pipes recently wrote an article in The Washington Times, with the title “Stay out of Syria: Intervention is a trap”. Arguing that “Bashar al-Assad’s wretched presence” in power may “do more good than harm”, he added that Assad’s “non-ideological and relatively secular” regime is at least staving off “anarchy, Islamist […]
In an extract from Workers Power’s forthcoming programme, Beyond The Crisis – Beyond Capitalism, Richard Brenner sets out our key measures against the capitalist crisis through putting the working class in control of society
WHEN IT IS 38 degrees in the sun, not much stirs in the centre of Athens. But on 24 August 10,000 mainly young, male migrant workers from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan took to the streets after months of escalating attacks by racists and fascists.
IF YOU ARE a new student reading this there’s a good chance you’ve started a course that will see you graduate with around £50,000 worth of debt. Two years after hundreds of thousands took to the streets against the tripling of tuition fees, the student movement is on life-support; its campus anti-cuts groups diminished, its national […]
YOUNG PEOPLE in Tory Britain are caught between a rock and a hard place. Youth unemployment stands at over 20 per cent – over one million people. For young black men, the rate is a scandalous 50 per cent, revealing that racism is still experienced by the younger generation. KD Tait writes
JUST WEEKS after London was touted as a multicultural paradise during the Olympics, international students at London Metropolitan University have been told to find a new university place or face deportation. KD Tait writes Around 2,600 non-EU students have had their education thrown into jeopardy by the decision of the UK Border Agency (UKBA) to strip […]
“Every time – we beat ‘em then walk away. Let’s get some blacklisted guys and shop stewards in and hit ‘em!” said Kevin, an electrician, or “spark”, from the floor of the Unite Construction Rank and File conference. Suddenly everyone was alert; hands shot up to speak on this key issue: how to make the […]
Union leaders are planning neither to change their strategy nor to lead an effective fight to stop the Tory-Lib Dem cuts at this month’s Trades Union Congress. Rebecca Anderson writes
Julian Assange has been granted political asylum by Ecuador, in a move which has divided opinion amongst those who support the work of the Wikileaks website. Is the move a justified act of self-defence or is it simply a ruse to evade answering the rape charges levelled against him by two Swedish women? Dave Stockton […]
Three members of the Russian radical feminist band Pussy Riot have been sentenced to two years in prison after being found guilty of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred”. The verdict is grossly out of proportion to the collective’s “crime” of singing a rowdy anti-Putin song in a Moscow cathedral two weeks before his re-election as […]
The family, friends and supporters of Sean Rigg, a black musician from Brixton, have finally heard some of the facts surrounding his death at the hands of police officers in August 2008. Jeremy Dewar writes