By Marcus Halaby It is an often-repeated truism that giving in to bullies only encourages them. Workers at the Grangemouth plant near Falkirk in Scotland are learning this the hard way. After a shameful climb-down by Unite the Union general secretary Len McCluskey, hailed as having been necessary to “save jobs”, employers INEOS are now […]

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 […]

RANK AND FILE candidate Jerry Hicks has now secured 84 validated branch nominations – with several days still to go to the deadline for nominations. Barring a veritable bureaucratic coup d’état Jerry will run against Len McCluskey for general secretary of Unite. Jeremy Dewar looks at the reasoning behind the Socialist Party’s backing for the […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 28 MARCH strike by London schools and colleges showed just how impressive a nation-wide strike could have been. Around 1,500 schools were shut down or severely disrupted, while almost all colleges and most ‘new’ universities faced chaos or closure. Ten thousand marched in central London, bringing traffic to a halt and cheers from passers-by. […]

On the fortieth anniversary of the Battle of Saltley Gate Norman Goodwin, then a shop steward at GKN Salisbury Transmissions plant in Witton, recounts his memories of the day when Birmingham engineering workers struck in solidarity with the miners against the Tory government. ON 10 FEBRUARY 1972 I started out for work. But I would do […]

By Mark Booth AFTER A TURBULENT week of union executive meetings, 300 militants packed into Friends Meeting House for an emergency conference to fight the pensions sell out. It soon became clear to everyone at Unite the Resistance’s gathering that the PCS and NUT leaders would not be calling more strikes in the next few […]

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

Increasing numbers of young people are being forced to work for free as school leavers, college leavers and university graduates enter a flat jobs market, writes Rachel Brooks.

The miners are now locked in a life or death struggle with the Tory government and Thatcher’s henchman at the NCB.

THE COMING struggle in the mines is likely to be a long and bitter one. It will involve not only the miners but their wives and families in tremendous sacrifices. Already miners’ families will have discovered that one of Thatcher’s measures in 1980 has deprived them of between £12 and £14 a week in social […]

An action programme for health, produced by Workers Power's health worker fraction Red Pulse.

As unemployment approaches 1.5 million, we need a programme to force trade union leaders to fight -- or act without them.

The Labour government's Incomes Policy is designed to lower workers' living standards, and protect the bosses' profits