Coronavirus is demonstrating the essential basis upon which our society exists: the working class and the necessity of labour. Workers and their unions must take the lead and control this lockdown.

A motion passed by Lambeth Unison's branch committee

University and College Union (UCU) Higher Education members have voted for industrial action in two ballots over pensions and over pay, casualisation, equality and workloads. In the ballots 53 per cent of members voted, winning 79 per cent and 74 per cent majorities respectively for action. The 43 universities that met the 50 per cent […]

Recent victories show what is possible. Now activists should link up with other unions and build for joint strike action across the sector.

After years of inaction, Unison members finally have the chance to send a message to the Tories that workers are prepared to fight the destruction of our education system

Housing charity Shelter has released a report highlighting the dire state of Britain’s housing crisis, which shows Labour’s policy continues to fall short of what is needed

A RECENT survey found a third of young women in mixed secondary schools have experienced sexual harassment. A majority complained about the use of misogynistic language and 24 per cent reported unwanted sexual contact. Whilst these results can hardly be surprising given the rife sexism in our society, they should serve as a wake-up call […]

By a London teacher The recent decision by an East London primary school to ban pupils from wearing the hijab shows how Islamophobia subjects Muslim women to a double dose of racism and sexism. Although protests forced the school to reverse the ban, this is not an isolated attempt to single out Muslims for discrimination […]

THE HOUSING crisis is reaching new heights after Persimmon Homes bosses share £600 million in bonuses. Young people are struggling to find the money to get on the housing ladder while the chairman of this company gets a yearly bonus of £100 million. While this is going on there are 1000’s of people sleeping on […]

MEMBERS OF the University College Union (UCU) have smashed through the government’s strike ballot threshold to declare their support for industrial action over devastating cuts to their pension scheme. Eighty-eight per cent voted to strike after the government announced cuts that would cost the average lecturer £200,000 in retirement. Strikes After the result, announced on […]

AS FIGURES showed rough sleeping in England increased for the seventh consecutive year, Jeremy Corbyn promised a Labour government would immediately buy 8,000 homes to tackle the crisis. Official government data shows that on any given night in autumn last year, 4,751 people were recorded sleeping on the streets, a figure that has more than doubled since […]

JEREMY CORBYN has said that there is no convincing solution to the housing crisis that “does not start with a new, very large, very active council house building project”. The Tories’ Housing and Planning Bill claims to be a way to help people without homes to find them, and for those living in sub-standard housing […]

SOME SOUTHWARK Labour councillors have been halted – if only temporarily – in their quest to turn Elephant & Castle’s dilapidated but community-oriented shopping centre into a mecca for the middle classes. A property developer Delancey bought the site and has applied to re-build it with no adequate plans to relocate existing small traders and […]

JEREMY DEWAR responds to Angela Rayner’s recent comments about white working class boys’ underachievement in school

Wakefield City Academies Trust has announced that it is pulling out of 21 schools, throwing the academic lives of thousands of children across Yorkshire into limbo.

THE UNDERFUNDING of childcare programmes, the privatisation of secondary education

CONSTRUCTION WORKERS at the Crossrail site in Tottenham Court Road took two days of unofficial strike action on 30 November and 1 December to defend Unite steward Terry Wilson. Employers Laing O’Rourke insisted Terry be transferred to another job while refusing to recognise him as a union negotiator. A further protest on 2 December was […]

TEACHING ASSISTANTS employed by Durham County Council have voted overwhelmingly for strike action against the imposition of new contracts that would see some workers lose up to 23 per cent – or £6,000 a year. The Labour led Council in Durham voted in May to dismiss all of the 2,700 teaching assistants employed by the […]

By Jeremy Dewar The boycotts of the ridiculous and cruel tests of children as young as five by parents earlier this year, and the public outcry at the threat by Education Secretary Nicky Morgan to force all schools to become academies prove that families would support action Teachers have delivered an overwhelming mandate to strike […]

By an NUT member Education Secretary Nicky Morgan has made a U-turn in her forced academisation programme. This is good as far as it goes but she insists that the Tories’ intention remains to eventually convert all schools into academies. Moreover she is determined to move academies away from national terms and conditions, abolish national […]

“What’s the difference between a subordinating conjunctive and a preposition?” Tory education ministers don’t know so why should 11 year olds? By Bernie McAdam The latest leak of a primary school test online is trying the patience of the Department of Education and causing huge embarrassment. The DoE has linked this to a campaign of sabotage […]

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 […]

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 […]

Jeremy Corbyn has said that there is no convincing solution to the housing crisis that “does not start with a new, very large, very active council house building project”. On this issue, as on so many others, there is now clear red water between Corbyn’s Labour party and the Tories The Tories’ new Housing and […]

Ian Townson, a Lambeth housing activist, traces the contours of a housing crisis made worse by Tory policy AT THE last election, all the mainstream parties issued their usual shopping list of measures to deal with the chronic housing crisis. The one thing they all lacked was a strategic plan for it. Having relied for 30 […]

By Arbeiterinnenstandpunkt 6 May, 2015 The mood among employees of the Austrian health service has finally turned. After the introduction of the new Medical Working Hours Act, doctors took to the barricades and mounted a militant opposition to the loss of wages and more cuts. Now, other professional groups, above all the nurses, are showing […]

By KD Tait 27 April 2015 Saturday 25 April saw the first demonstration by Reclaim:Brixton, a movement formed to defend the interests of residents against government policies which privilege property speculators and undermines the social fabric of our community. 2000 people from a cross section of Brixton assembled in Windrush Square under the banner ‘Reclaim […]

By Darren O’Coghaidhin, 29 January 2015 Hospital A&E units are suffering their worst crisis since the founding of the NHS in 1948. Nurses warn that patient safety is being is increasingly being compromised by growing pressures across the system. Quarterly performance figures from NHS England for the last quarter of 2014 showed that, for the […]

By Bernie McAdam On 13 January over 20,000 London striking bus drivers in Unite paralysed services. Pickets were held outside every bus garage in the capital. Boris Johnson’s claim that a third of the service was running is rubbish. Only one in 10 routes were active, if you can call one bus every 20 minutes […]

By KD Tait 2014 was the year the student movement moved decisively from the defensive to the offensive. Tax the rich to fund education for all was the demand that mobilised 10,000 students to march on parliament for the first time since 2010. The demonstration succeeded in spite of the sabotage attempted by the national […]