The absence of Labour leaders and members speaks volumes about the real priorities of the Labour left

By A CWU Rep ROYAL MAIL bosses using the courts to get our strike declared “unlawful” and force us into “mediation” is a dishonest delaying tactic designed to break the momentum of our massive 89 per cent vote for strike action. Their cheek is unbelievable. They blanked the union through 18 months of talks, forcing […]

ON 18 OCTOBER, Labour unanimously won a symbolic opposition day vote calling for a pause in the introduction of Universal Credit. The motion was non-binding but the result is a fresh sign of the government’s vulnerability, with Tory mps ordered to abstain from the vote. Earlier that day, facing growing disquiet from her own backbenchers, […]

LABOUR’S BRIGHTON conference was a confirmation that, thanks to a general election in which Labour saw a net gain of 31 seats and the Tories lost their overall majority, Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the party is now unchallenged. This should not have been surprising in a party where electoral success comes first, second, and third […]

ON OCTOBER 25th the Labour Party Irish Society (LPIS) held its AGM under tight security at Portcullis House in Westminster reports. Past the airport style searches at the entrance, leading to hour long queues outside the door, was a team of Progress apparatchiks attempting to prevent entry to anybody who wasn’t a Blairite MP or […]

Labour’s subservience to imperialism is the price it pays for ruling the capitalists' system

Labour should follow up this victory by committing to reverse all welfare cuts and freezes

Audiences will wish a little more love had gone into James Graham's laboured production

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.

Learning the hard way

It's not undemocratic to oppose Brexit

THE 19th CONGRESS of the Chinese Communist Party will open in Beijing on October 18, and is scheduled to last for a week. The business of Congress, which is held every five years, is to review the work of the Party since it last met, to chart its political strategy for the next five years […]

“I want to say a word about Royal Mail taking legal action against the will of their own staff, rather than negotiating with them and their union… look at what has happened since privatisation. The company has made £195 million in profits through the sale of assets and closed one in 10 delivery offices, running […]

THE RIGHT WING Madrid government of Mariano Rajoy has responded to the Catalan separatists’ declaration of independence by beginning the process of invoking Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution, which would suspend Catalan autonomy and dissolve its parliament. This involves asking the Catalan President Carles Puigdemont to confirm whether he has declared Catalonia’s independence or […]

The noted socialist and Anti-Zionist writer has been purged by the Labour Party

IN AUGUST 2017, delegates of REVOLUTION Germany were invited to the youth camp of the “Independent Youth Union” in Palestine. Below, we publish the statement the comrades addressed to the meeting in English and Arabic. Be it at the gates of Al Haram al Sharif, in the squares of the Arab spring or on the […]

VIENNA – THE NATIONAL Council elections on 15 October mark a turning point for the Austrian capitalist class on the one hand and the working class on the other. If the current election polls are not completely wrong, the "new" Austrian People’s Party, ÖVP, under Sebastian Kurz will emerge as the biggest party. In fact, […]

We did it. After a determined mass campaign for a yes vote we’ve got a strong result – an 89 per cent yes vote on a 73 per cent turnout, of two thirds of staff voting yes, a very high vote by any standard. Every CWU member, activist, and rep should be chuffed that our […]

The Spanish government’s use of force to disrupt the Catalan independence referendum left nearly 900 people injured at the hands of the police and precipitated the country’s most serious constitutional crisis since the restoration of democracy in 1978. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, of the governing Partido Popular (PP) had the insolence to claim that, “the […]

FOR THE sixth time in six years, Fatah and Hamas appear to be in talks to unite their respective administrations in the Israeli-besieged Gaza Strip and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, with the two factions planning to hold elections for the Palestinian Authority (PA) as a whole for the first time in over a decade. The […]

PARIS – A MAJOR attack against workers’ rights has been expected since President Emmanuel Macron’s election on May 7. The “reform” of the Labour Code, which embodies trade union and workplace negotiating rights, was a major theme of its campaign. He billed it as “freeing” labour but most people realised it was “freeing” the employers […]

“IN TERMS of the concept of coordinated public service workers action, yes, I think that’s very likely and very much on the cards,” said Len McCluskey, head of Unite Britain’s largest union, at this year’s TUC Congress. When pressed by BBC’s Andrew Marr on whether he would support strikes where the ballot failed to reach […]

THE HAPLESS Theresa May has delivered yet another dud speech on Britain’s stalled negotiations with the European Union. In what Guardian commentator John Grace describes as a “dingy annexe of Santa Maria Novella in Florence”, there was no glittering Renaissance For the Tory leader. Her speech, delivered in the bizarre setting of the city on […]

THE ACUTE political crisis in Spain began with the decision by the Catalan parliament on September 6 to hold a binding independence referendum on October 1. On September 7, the government of prime minister Mariano Rajoy appealed to the Constitutional Court in Madrid to suspend the referendum decision. This the court immediately did. Carles Puigdemont, […]

EVEN BEFORE Germany’s general election on September 24, the outcome already looks certain; the conservative party, Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, CDU, and its Bavarian sister party, CSU, will again be the strongest party in parliament. Compared to 2013, there may be a loss of perhaps 5 percent but that was a landslide victory in which […]

Elections for delegates to Young Labour’s policy conference close at 12pm on 13 September. These elections are a chance to take a step forward in making Young Labour a democratic, campaigning organisation, that reflects the enthusiasm and support for left wing ideas among the tens of thousands of new young members. For decades Young Labour […]

By A CWU Postal Rep ON 5 SEPTEMBER, the Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) leadership announced a strike ballot, after months of talks with Royal Mail bosses that had gone nowhere. Negotiations were supposed to address an increasing number of attacks: The closing of the final salary pension scheme in favour of a scheme that would […]

By Jeremy Dewar TORY CHANCELLOR Philip Hammond is a modern man. He believes that driving a train is so easy that “even a woman could do it”. He also believes that 5 million public sector workers are “overpaid”. And he certainly believes that the 1 per cent public sector pay cap should be retained. He’s […]

By Peter Main LABOUR’S CALL for a post-Brexit “transition period”, during which the UK would remain in the Single Market, has been presented as a clear-headed alternative to the government’s “constructive ambiguity”. Shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer described it as “a credible solution to one of the most important issues facing Britain’s exit from the […]

By Jeremy Dewar AN 82 PAGE dossier, outlining the Tories’ proposed immigration legislation once the UK has left the European Union, has been leaked to The Guardian newspaper. It was marked “extremely sensitive”, and it certainly is. The document is imbued with the language of “British jobs for British workers”, the slogan that then Labour […]