The action of workers and young people in the US has been an inspiration. A series of mass protests, occupations and strikes have shaken the states of Wisconisn, Ohio and Indiana. Battling a huge programme of spending cuts and attacks on the unions, their struggle shows what can be achieved even in historically right wing […]

UNTRIED AND unconvicted, 24-year-old US army private Bradley Manning has been imprisoned for almost 300 days, held in cruel, inhuman and degrading conditions under a ‘prevention of injury’ order at the Quantico marine base. He is kept in his cell 23 hours a day, force fed a daily diet of antidepressant pills, forbidden to exercise in […]

Barack Obama campaigned on a ticket of ‘hope and change’ but, in office, has radically short-changed his young, Black and working class supporters. It was their huge mobilisation for his election campaign in 2008 that put America’s first black president into office and also swept the Democrats to victory in both houses of Congress. Two […]

From credit crunch to global crisis The fightback begins WHAT STARTED as a credit crunch became a worldwide recession. The banks demanded public money to keep their system afloat – now the governments of the world face huge deficits in their budgets and demand the poor pay the cost of this crisis. Mervyn King, head […]

IN THE MONTHS after the Con-Dem coalition was formed, 30,000 people – fearful for their future – signed up to join the Labour Party. Brown’s departure meant a party leadership contest and many old and new party members hoped someone would emerge who would rally resistance to the impending savage cuts to jobs and services. They were […]

The Trade Union Congress called the 26 March demo under the slogans: jobs, growth and justice. Countering the Con-Dems’ rhetoric that that there is no alternative to cuts, the TUC bases its economic strategy on three demands: • Crackdown on tax avoidance and loopholes • Raise Robin Hood tax on banks and finance • Policies […]

As we go to press, the Universities and Colleges Union is in the middle of a week of strikes. This will culminate on 24 March, when 120,000 further and higher education teachers will strike together across the UK.

There is a serious debate going on within the movement about how to beat the cuts, write Jeremy Drinkall and Richard Brenner. Different strategies are being proposed but there is one thing that the TUC and Tories certainly agree on – nobody is talking about a general strike (or are they?)

NEARLY 80 per cent of the Con Dem Coalition cabinet are millionaires, yet their attacks are hitting ordinary people hardest

The Tories are pushing through some of the most dramatic cuts and reforms in living memory, John Bowman explains where they want to take Britain

Over the next four years the Tories and the Liberal Democrats want to destroy the welfare state as we know it, writes editor Simon Hardy

Mandate? No WAY. Cameron and Clegg do not have the voters’ backing for their vicious cuts package – the deepest in British history. Their Coalition only has a majority in Parliament because of Lib Dem support, and the Lib Dems only won votes because they promised to oppose the cuts. What’s more, no one voted […]

Post Office workers have voted a thumping 93% in favour of striking over the lack of a pay rise. The high vote and good turnout (66%) by the 4,000 Communication Workers Union (CWU) members in Crown Post Offices shows the widespread anger with two years of a pay freeze. With growing inflation this is in […]

University lecturers are preparing to strike against a massive attack on their pensions. Across the public sector, the Con-Dem government are tearing up existing pension agreements (see article on Hutton Report). But so far it’s only the lecturers who have balloted for action. Over 60% voted to strike, with just over 50% also voting to […]

The Bill in question is Andrew Lansley’s Health and Social Care Bill, which will open up 80% of the NHS budget to private GP consortia and give contracts to “any willing provider” of health services. On top of this, 50,000 jobs, including many frontline posts, will disappear this year – 635 of them at St […]

HSBC’s Karen Ward, a senior economist at the bank, said that rapidly rising food prices were occurring at a time of “very, very low wage growth”. In fact, living standards have fallen in the UK by more than 10 per cent, according to the Bank of England’s chief Mervyn King, as inflation outstrips wages. They […]

“There’s got to be a deal here between the taxpayer and the scheme member and that deal is going to unravel if the people in the public sector say they will not contemplate change,” he said. His report has two main recommendations. First, he wants to raise the retirement age to 66 by 2020. Hutton […]

Industrial overiew from Jeremy Drinkall

“We are not the same old Conservative Party. We have changed. We are a party for the mainstream majority.” This is how David Cameron lied his way into Downing Street, writes Jeremy Drinkall

The revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya have sparked off a wave of protests throughout the Middle East, raising demands for democratic change and for improvements in living standards.

The UK’s Prime Minister David Cameron attacked multiculturalism in a speech in Munich recently, David Stockton looks at the racism behind the row over multiculturalism