THE referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union, EU, is now likely to take place no later than the Autumn. David Cameron was forced to promise a referendum in his election manifesto under pressure from UKIP. Now he wants to get it out of the way as quickly as possible because he knows a […]

When Spain adopted its post-Franco constitution there was a fierce battle over the character of the state. The Right insisted on its unitary character with all its inhabitants simply “Spaniards”. The Left wanted a “plurinational state” with a federal character. The Right basically won and the 1978 constitution referred to “the common and indivisible homeland […]

With new elections likely, workers’ mobilisations could shift the balance of forces THE Spanish general election of December 20 created a political impasse. Although the Partido Popular, PP, the governing party under Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, won the most seats, this was a hollow victory indeed. With just 28 percent of the vote and 123 […]

By Jeremy Dewar South Africa, one of the world’s major emerging markets, is about to tip into recession. Its currency has slipped to a historic low against the dollar. The country’s stock exchange, at 320 per cent of South Africa’s annual GDP possibly the world’s most over-valued, is set for an almighty crash. Indeed, the […]

We need to challenge the social causes of sexist and racist attitudes inflamed by the refugee crisis ON New Year’s Eve, in Cologne, hundreds of women were intimidated and threatened. At least two rapes were reported. There are now over a hundred reported assaults, often including sexual harassment and robbery at the hands of so-called […]

By Marcus Halaby For all David Cameron’s boasting that he has 70,000 “moderate” Syrian oppositionists ready to act as boots on the ground in the fight against ISIS, there is precious little sign of them being brought into action. It now seems that they will only be usable after a “political process” has engineered a […]

LIKE Putin’s strategy in Syria, Britain’s and the USA’s also involves double-crossing old allies and co-opting new ones. The case that Cameron made for war included a reference to 70,000 “moderate opposition” fighters, whose existence many have been far too quick to dismiss, given the likely far larger size of the Syrian armed opposition. Cameron […]

BY crushing the Syrian revolutionaries and leaving only Assad and ISIS standing, Putin hopes to force the West to accept that Assad’s regime (with or without Assad at the top of it) is their least worst option. Putin’s claim to stand for the “unity of the Syrian state” actually means restoring the rule of the […]

By Marcus Halaby A COMMON view in the anti-war movement is that the current war in Syria is effectively a repeat of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, with Syria’s as-yet undefeated revolution against the Assad dictatorship simply the product of a US-led attempt at “regime change”. But in some ways it more closely resembles the […]

A 21 year old woman from County Down faces life in prison if she is convicted by a court for the ‘crime’ of attempting to bring about an abortion. This is the first prosecution in more than 40 years under the 19th Century Offences Against the Person Act. The 1967 Abortion Act, which makes abortion […]

THE BRITISH government rolled out the “reddest of red carpets” for China’s President Xi Jinping’s four day state visit. There was no limit on the pomp and pageantry laid on to impress their visitor – and no doubt pictures of his reception by the Queen and his speech to members of both Houses of Parliament […]

“ELECTIONS change nothing,” said Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister. He was responding to the election of Syriza in January. Syriza owed their victory to their pledge to put a stop to austerity which had inflicted five years of grinding poverty on Greece. Six months later Schäuble was triumphant; Syriza’s leader Alexis Tsipras capitulated in the […]

IN PORTUGAL’S recent elections, the people voted to chuck out a European Union backed pro-austerity government. The governing coalition between the liberal Portuguese Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the conservative People’s Party (CDS-PP) won only 102 seats out of 230. By contrast, the anti-austerity left did well. The Socialist Party (PS) won 32.3 per cent […]

IT DOESN’T take long for memories to fade. The picture of drowned three-year-old Alan Kurdi washed up on a beach near Bodrum, Turkey went viral across both social and mainstream media back in September. The image humanised the tragic fate of hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing war in Syria. Its immediate effect was to […]

IN THE last month Israeli occupation forces have murdered 60 Palestinians, 15 of them under the age of 18. One, Dania Irshaid, a 17-year-old student returning from school, was shot holding her hands in the air. Israeli sources later claimed that she had been “carrying a knife”. Nine Israelis have been killed in the same […]

On 11 October a demonstration against state terror ended in the bloodiest massacre in Turkeys’ recent history. About 10,000 people travelled from across the country to gather in front of the main railway station in Ankara. Two major union federations, the Turkish Medical Association and the Engineers’ and Architects’ Association, had mobilised for the march, […]

ONE of the most important factors in Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership campaign was his opposition to the war in Iraq, and to any future wars in the Middle East. The lies and spin that took us to war in Iraq under Tony Blair still weigh heavily on the minds of millions. Ed Miliband’s refusal to give […]

By Dave Stockton 14 September 2015 When Syriza’s Alexis Tsipras resigned as Prime Minister, on August 20, he triggered a new general election, which will take place on 20 September. This enabled him as Leader to choose the entire electoral list of his party. He made it clear that he would not include the 32 […]

3 September 2015 The drowned body of three year old Aylan Kurdi washed up on a beach near Bodrum, Turkey on Wednesday 2nd. The photograph has concentrated the minds of millions on the catastrophe unfolding on Europe’s Mediterranean shore. Aylan drowned along with his five year old brother Galip, his mother Rehan and nine other […]

By Jeremy Dewar 12 August 2015 There are more refugees in the world today than ever before. This year’s Global Trends Report, published by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), puts the figure at 59.5 million people at the end of 2014, a record 11 million up on the 2013 figure and over […]

By KD Tait Monday 13 July After a 17 hour final session in Brussels, Germany’s “Iron Chancellor”, Angela Merkel, and her finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble finally accepted the complete capitulation of Alexis Tsipras. Their terms reduce Greece to a virtual colony of the imperialist powers that dominate the Eurozone, supreme amongst them Germany. If this […]

By KD Tait 11 July 2015 Alexis Tsipras and the leadership of Syriza have betrayed the mandate given to them twice by the Greek people. Scarcely a week after 61 per cent of voters said Oxi!-No! they have presented a nearly identical proposal to the parliament in Athens, which has voted by 250 votes to 32 to […]

Monday 6 July, 2015 By KD Tait   No to blackmail. No to humiliation. No to austerity. The determination of the Greek workers and youth to end austerity has been expressed in a defiant rejection of the Troika’s ultimatum. Today, Syriza has an overwhelming second mandate to carry out its promise to break with austerity, […]

29 June, 2015 All eyes are on Greece as its citizens prepare to vote in a referendum on the Troika austerity ‘offer’ that will dramatically shape the course of the wider European resistance to austerity. The consequences of rejection – No – should not be underestimated and cannot be entirely predicted. Nevertheless it is right […]

In the aftermath of Labour’s defeat, speakers from the Brick Lane Debates group at the 14 May Radical Left Assembly referred to the Spanish Indignados and Podemos as models to imitate. There was even an attempt to brand the  1,000 people in the hall as the “14M Movement”. Similarly, in Left Unity, we find a […]

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 Dave Stockton and KD Tait ONCE AGAIN, the seas surrounding Fortress Europe run red with the blood of migrants. The mass drowning of 900 migrants in the Mediterranean is the result of the European leaders’ criminal policy of discouraging immigration by letting desperate people die.Only 28 people were rescued from a boat that capsized […]

By Bernie McAdam 20 April 2015 The Socialist Party in Ireland is deeply worried. Senior trade union officials like Irish Congress of Trade Unions President John Douglas and Jack O’Connor, leader of the south’s biggest union SIPTU, are courting Sinn Fein. They have responded by producing the article ‘Trade Unions and Sinn Fein: Dangerous Times’ […]

By KD Tait Spanish anti-austerity party Podemos (We Can) won 14.8 per cent and took 15 seats in elections to Andalusia’s regional parliament, doubling last year’s vote in the European elections. The meteoric rise of the fledgling party which is leading opinion polls ahead of general elections this Autumn has provoked intense debate across the […]

By Christian Gebhardt 4 April 2015 This is super election-year in Spain. In May, there are local elections across the country and in the coming months there are elections for several regional governments. Andalusia, whose regional parliament was elected on 22 March, stands at the beginning of this long series of elections and political battles […]