To commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street, we are republishing this article from fifthinternational.org Sir Oswald Mosley, MP, split from Labour to form the New Party in March 1931, together with a group of left MPs. By October 1932 Mosley had transformed the party into the British Union of Fascists. Paul […]

By Chris Clough Dublin, Easter weekend 2016, saw tens of thousands of people line the streets. Flags, banners and photos of martyrs were displayed on every street corner, shop and building. Socialists and Republicans marched through the city while the government held a military parade, complete with a fly over. Graffiti and stickers called for […]

By Rebecca Anderson The year 1890 saw the first ever May Day demonstration, called by the First Congress of the Second International, with more than 300,000 workers filling London’s Hyde Park. Karl Marx’s daughter Eleanor, herself a prominent figure in the New Unionism movement which was then at its peak, addressed the crowds: “I am […]

The second instalment in our serialisation of a socialist history of the Labour Party. Read the first instalment: Labour’s early years: 1900-1914 By Dave Stockton The years of the First World War of 1914-18 were critical ones for the British labour movement. Its political party, its trade unions and the role they play in British life […]

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 […]

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 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 […]

How revolutionaries use elections as a weapon against capital.

In 1917 the working class took power in Russia with remarkably little resistance from the bosses. But shortly afterwards the capitalists regrouped and gathered support from the imperialist powers to wage a bloody war on the young communist regime that became known as the Russian Civil War. Ninety years ago in 1919 was a key […]

In 1913 Dublin workers waged a heroic battle against their employers, the church and the police. Despite being defeated, argues Bernie McAdam, the lockout lives on as the most inspirational act of working class resistance in Irish history.

On the 125th anniversary of the matchwomen’s strike in the East End of London, Joy Macready examines the strike’s origins and how it sparked the “New Unionism” movement “Born in slums, driven to work while still children, undersized because under-fed, oppressed because helpless, flung aside as soon as worked out, who cares if they die […]

  Almost 80 years ago, the city of Minneapolis was a battlefield in the class war between workers and bosses. Three strikes in 1934 shook the city and American society to their foundations. The feature of these strikes by the Teamster Union Local 574 was that they were led by Trotskyists. Minneapolis boasted the strongest […]

  By Dave Stockton ANY EXPRESSION of sorrow for the death of Margaret Thatcher or praise for her qualities or achievements from any representative of the workers’ movement are a sure sign of past or future betrayals. Doubtless her self-admitted disciple, Tony Blair, will fawn over her memory. After all he shamelessly flattered her in […]

In celebration of International Women’s Day and as part of an ongoing debate about the principles of women’s organisation and the revolutionary movement, Joy Macready looks at the history of early Soviet Russia and its lessons for today The Marxist position on women’s liberation owes a great debt to a remarkable group of women in […]

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 […]

Jeremy Dewar recounts how the anti-union laws shackled the unions and calls for defiance

The 1926 General Strike is rich in lessons for today. Dave Stockton looks at how the ruling class prepared for it while the unions leaders did not. In the mid-1920s the Miners Federation of Great Britain (MFGB) had almost a million members, and was the militant core of the working class movement. Coal was still […]

Forty years ago, four London dockers were arrested and held in north London’s Pentonville Prison. The next morning a fifth was arrested outside while protesting at their arrest. Yet within five days the Pentonville Five were freed by a wave of unofficial action and the threat of a general strike. Dave Stockton looks at the […]

In part two of this commemorative article, Dave Stockton looks at how the miners built the first rank and file trade union movement in the UK.   In Part one of this article, we looked at the work of Tom Mann in bringing many of the ideas of transatlantic and continental revolutionary trade unionism (syndicalism) to […]

In this timely commemorative article, Dave Stockton looks at the lessons from the great working class struggles before World War One. Part two will follow next month.   We have just marked the 100th anniversary of the miners’ strike of February-April 1912. This was the first national strike by a section of workers who in […]

The building workers' strike holds lessons on the dangers of Broad Leftism for union activists today

The Socialist Party organised Jarrow March ended in London in early November, inspired by the 1936 Jarrow crusade, Joy Macready and Dave Stockton look at the historical lessons and what can be learnt today

Rix Bragg reflects on the legacy of 9/11 ten years on. For those who lived through the events of September the 11th 2001, the great majority will find them hard to forget. As two hijacked commercial airliners were flown into the Twin Towers, one into the Pentagon, and another brought down by passengers over Shanksville, […]

Dave Stockton looks back at the aborted coup in the USSR and the counter-coup by Boris Yeltsin

By Simon Hardy The year 2011 is a year of revolution. Uprisings sweep across the Middle East as rebellion against kings and dictators move from one country to another. And in Europe the crisis is spreading upheaval from Greece to Spain and beyond. This article looks at another “mad year” and ask what lessons the […]

AT A TIME when we are facing a major offensive on workers’ gains and the union movement, the 85th anniversary of the 1926 general strike is a good opportunity to review its lessons for us today. Dave Stockton explains why

UK Prime Minister David Cameron flew into Cairo after Hosni Mubarak was forced out, saying he wanted to be the first Western politician there since the revolution. He was flanked by British arms dealers on their way to the huge Idex weapons fair in Abu Dhabi. This was the latest episode in Britain’s bloody history […]

Our series on the lives and struggles of great revolutionary women continues with Marija Cubalevska’s look at the life of Russian underground militant Ludmila Stal Ludmila Stal was born in 1872 in Yekaterinoslaw in the Russian Empire, which today is Dnipropetrovsk in Ukraine. Although her family were well-off, she was a rebel from her early […]

“Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought!” Here we look at the life of Helen Keller as part of our series on revolutionary women in history Many people have heard of Helen Keller, the blind and deaf woman who learned to talk when her friends wrote sign language on her hands. Films […]

This site begins a new series on revolutionary women to highlight their often forgotten role in the communist movement. Katja Teran starts the first in the series on Yevgenia Bosch Yevgenia Bogdanovna Bosch was born on 11 August 1879 (23 August after the calendar was modernised) in Ochakiv in the Ukraine. Victor Serge, the communist writer, […]