THE League for the Fifth International categorically condemns the seven-hour-long illegal detention of the Balochistan president of the Women’s Democratic Front, WDF, Jalila Haider. We express solidarity with WDF comrades in the wake of this harassment and intimidation by the Pakistani state. Haider was boarding her flight to the UK early on Monday morning, January […]

UNISON members were informed by email on 8 January that “UNISON backs Keir Starmer to be next Labour leader”. This decision was made by the Labour Link committee who decide on the union’s relationship to the Labour Party. The decision taken by that committee (with 14 votes for Starmer, five votes for Rebecca Long Bailey […]

AS JOHNSON’S Tory government consolidates its base with firm promises to leave the E.U. by next month, it is also setting out a social programme which will significantly roll back basic political freedoms. The Queen’s speech, delivered last month, affirms the government’s commitment to a series of authoritarian policies that featured in its election manifesto, […]

Boris Johnson’s Tory government published legislation in December announcing their intention to scrap the Vulnerable Children’s Resettlement Scheme (VCRS). This would enshrine in law the Tories’ hostility to child refugees

LABOUR’S SHATTERING DEFEAT at the hands of Boris Johnson is a bitter day for millions of class conscious workers and most young people. Their hopes of reversing the ravages of austerity, of seriously addressing climate change, of breaking the shackles on the unions, have been cruelly dashed. Armed with a huge Commons majority, with a […]

Jewish people face casual discrimination on a day-to-day basis within capitalist society. This continues a long-standing historical trend; we were forced to become money-lenders in Europe during the Middle Ages, leading to harmful stereotypes which persist to this day, such as that the Jews are a duplicitous people who are only interested in money and […]

Concerns that Labour could abandon its support for self-determination and human rights for Kashmir have been confirmed with the launch of its general election manifesto.

As the general election race heads into final straight, the campaign to paint Labour as an antisemitic party has recommenced. Writing in The Times, the Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis added his voice to the attack, arguing that Corbyn had sanctioned antisemitism in the party. In characteristically vague language, Rabbi Mirvis stated that Labour’s alleged antisemitism could not be fixed with new staff or processes, and that it was a “human problem”, and a “failure of culture”. He said Corbyn associated with antisemites, and considered “those who endorse the murder of Jews” as friends.

Lebanon, like Iraq, Sudan, and Algeria, is experiencing its own version of the Arab Spring with mass demonstrations, occupations and street blockades

The Turkish-Russian agreement on the establishment of a buffer zone along the Turkish-Syrian border, which was negotiated in Sochi on 22 October, has fundamentally changed the balance of power in Syria

The latest figures are startling. The capitalist world economy is heading for a crisis. It has already broken out in the manufacturing sector

What is the working class in Britain? That is a pretty big topic to cover, fraught with all kinds of debate and controversies. Of course the Marxist left talks about the working class all the time because we see it as an agent of revolutionary change, a class with the potential to reshape the world along democratic and collective lines, away from capitalist exploitation and market based competition

The Brexit campaign has been directly responsible for a huge spike in national chauvinism and racist violence. To deny or minimise this, as some on the left do, is to completely ignore the impact of reactionary arguments like “needing to take control of our borders”, “stopping free movement from the EU” and “restoring national sovereignty” that have dominated the Brexit agenda. There is no progressive dynamic here but a reactionary harking back to Britain’s imperial past and accepting the myth that migrants are to blame for economic woes.

Chile joins a growing list of countries currently experiencing a mass revolt for a better world, free of corruption, poverty and austerity. These presently include Ecuador, Lebanon, Hong Kong, Sudan, Iraq, and Chile

At midnight on 21 October, abortions and same-sex marriage were legalised in Northern Ireland. The new law was passed in Westminster rather than Stormont as the devolved administration hasn’t sat since January 2017 amid political deadlock. The legislation, proposed as an amendment by Labour MP Stella Creasey and passed by 332 votes to 99, was the culmination of a campaign by backbench MPs and women and LGBT rights organisations to bring civil rights in NI in line with Britain.

What began as a protest against alleged electoral irregularities in the Bolivian presidential election, fomented by the business and landowning elites, with semi-fascist street gangs as enforcers, has ended in a police and military coup d’etat, forcing the resignation of Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first elected indigenous president. He resigned after receiving an ultimatum from the head of the […]

Labour’s election campaign has got off to a strong start with reports of hundreds turning out for canvassing in constituencies up and down the country. Momentum is signing up teams to hit the streets in marginal seats, to organise mass phone banking and rallies in support of a programme of progressive reforms. The headline message is that […]

The Liberal Democrats cannot win this election, and cannot win in the vast majority of seats in which they claim to have a chance. Their strategy isn’t about winning or stopping Brexit but about grabbing as much power as they can and disrupting Labour’s chances of forming a government.

In September, delegates to Labour Party conference adopted what was been widely hailed as the most radical environmental policy of any major political party in the world. But when it comes to the Clause V committee hashing out the party’s election manifesto behind closed doors, there is no guarantee that the conference motion’s most radical […]

Thurrock Labour's parliamentary candidate has disgracefully remained silent.

After three years of wrangling over Brexit, parliament has voted for a snap general election on 12 December. The battle lines for the election are clear. On one side are Boris Johnson’s Tories, backed by Donald Trump, who aim to finish what Thatcher started. A Tory government will unleash a Brexit fuelled blitzkrieg against workers’ […]

A socialist analysis of the roots of the current CWU dispute Royal Mail’s attack on its workforce and the CWU postal union flows directly from its privatisation five years ago, and not just the changing postal market as postal bosses and politicians claim.  While letter traffic is certainly in decline,[1] increasingly replaced by the internet, […]

Iraq is once again the scene of massive protests. In the capital and in southern cities thousands-strong demonstrations have been dispersed with tear gas, and police snipers using live ammunition. A huge rally in Sadr City in Baghdad – a district with 3.5 million people, was savagely broken up. UN officials in the city have […]

Millions of Americans hoping to evict Donald Trump from the White House have turned to the Democratic Party’s contest to determine their next presidential candidate for the 2020 election. While Trump has been blocked from enacting many of his pledges, he has done tremendous damage from the Oval Office: detention prisons locking up immigrant children […]

After 18 months of on-off protests against president Jovenal Moise, tens of thousands of Haitians have stepped up the movement calling on him to step down, with weekly protests, barricades and clashes with government forces that have left dozens killed and wounded hundreds more

On 1 January 1804, Jean-Jaques Dessalines declared the independence and sovereignty of Haiti as the second republic in the Americas and the first country to abolish slavery.

Turkish forces are pounding cities and towns in northern Syria/Rojava, including the region’s biggest city, Qamishli, as well as Kobane, still in ruins after the war to oust ISIS. Air raids and heavy artillery strikes have forced thousands of civilians to flee into arid open country where there is neither shelter nor food and water. […]

Ecuador has been plunged into turmoil by mass protests of indigenous people, trade unions, and students against a neoliberal IMF austerity progamme which has triggered cuts to fuel subsidies and hikes in the cost of basic consumer goods. On Monday President Lenín Moreno moved his government 150 miles from Quito to Guayaquil, to escape the […]

At Labour Party conference in Brighton, the internationalist Left scored a significant victory on conference floor with the passage of a motion on immigration which, in principle, commits Labour to maintaining and extending freedom of movement; a radical break from Labour’s previous enthusiasm for immigration controls. The motion also mandates Labour to reject any points-based […]

Car workers in the US are entering their fourth week of all-out strike action as we go to press. The largest auto strike since 2007 is solid so far. In fact the strikers have elicited solidarity action from Mexican GM workers, and have now been joined by others in South Korea. On 16 September, 48,000 […]