The vote was close on Tuesday 30 April as a €23 billion bailout deal scraped through the Cypriot House of Representatives in Nicosia with a two vote majority. The deal, stitched together by the “Troika” of the European Union, European Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund bureaucrats, provides €10bn in EU and IMF funds […]

By Joy Macready More than three days after an eight-story building housing five textile factories collapsed in the Savar industrial zone, just outside of Dhaka, Bangladesh, rescue teams were still pulling live workers from the rubble. Tragically, more than 330 workers have been killed and another 1,000 seriously injured. An unknown number are still missing, […]

JERRY HICKS HAS delivered a sensational blow to Len McCluskey, scoring a massive 36 per cent of the vote in the election for the General Secretary of Unite, Britain’s biggest union, writes Jeremy Dewar Although Jerry didn’t win, the 50 per cent increase in the avowedly rank and file candidate’s poll will have sent shivers […]

Post Office workers have taken strike action twice, on Easter Saturday and again on 19 April.  They’re angry at plans to close or franchise 76 big high street or “crown” post offices – over twenty per cent.  And that’s just the start of what the Coalition calls the “transformation” of Post Office Ltd (POL), aka […]

Over 1000 people marched through the streets of Leeds on 20 April in protest against the Bedroom Tax. With chants of “axe axe the Bedroom Tax!” and “they say cut back, we say fight back!” We drew crowds of hundreds to watch the demonstration. The speeches at Victoria Gardens were an emotive and inspiring mix […]

A dispute which has been running in a desultory stop-go fashion for years has come to a head in one large hospital trust with the issuing of a consultation plan culminating in a ninety day notice of change of contract for any group of staff required to work on-call from home. The background to this […]

The League for the Fifth International recently held its Ninth Congress in Colombo, Sri Lanka. At its conclusion, the Congress issued the following declaration. Historic periods of crisis of the whole capitalist system, such as we have seen since 2007/2008, put all political and social forces to the test. The first five years of this […]

By Marcus Halaby Causes that you are on record as supporting sometimes have a habit of following you around. And so it proved to be with the Syrian revolution in Tunisia. I didn’t, I might add, go to the World Social Forum in Tunis with the sole intention of attending events on Syria; probably like […]

  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 […]

  The Western media is pumping out one simple message about the crisis on the Korean peninsular. Kim Jong-un, a hysterical dictator, is bent on defying the “international community” (a.k.a the United Nations Security Council) and is threatening his neighbours and the USA – apparently for no rational reason.   This is a pack of […]

This is the text of the leaflet distributed by members of the League for a Fifth International to the World Social Forum in Tunis, March 2013. 

  Here we set out what we think grassroots militants and socialists in Unite should be uniting around to fight for a union which is democratic from below, willing to oppose all austerity measures, and capable of taking on the Con-Dem coalition. An action programme for Unite Democracy Decisions made at branch meetings and sectoral/national […]

The Tory government’s new Budget, due on 20 March, will be the focus of a TUC evening rally against austerity, supported by Shelter and the Child Poverty Action Group. Called A Future for Families it will be addressed by TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady and Labour Party deputy leader Harriet Harman.   It will highlight […]

David Cameron once dismissed the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) as “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists”. But in the Eastleigh by-election, the Tories realised they had to get down into the gutter to outbid the “fruitcakes” in Europhobia and racism, fielding Eurosceptic Tory Maria Hutchings. It was all in vain. Sheer xenophobia is UKIP’s whole […]

In early February, Tunisia was shaken by the brutal assassination of Chokri Belaïd, general secretary of the Party of United Patriotic Democrats, which identifies its politics as Marxist-Pan-Arabist, and heads a popular front alliance. Chokri Belaïd, a lawyer from a working class background who still lived in a working class area, had defended workers in […]

By Joy Macready “Can’t move, won’t move!” Drawing on the historic chant against the Poll Tax, this is the rallying call for a new movement against the latest vicious attack by the Coalition against the poorest and most vulnerable. The bedroom tax, which comes into effect in April, will see families, single mothers and disabled […]

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 […]

DAVID CAMERON could yet meet his poll tax moment. His latest outrage, the bedroom tax, is igniting massive discontent. The Welfare Reform Act includes an attempt to snatch back housing benefit from anyone deemed to be living with a spare bedroom, including disabled people and low-income families. In areas like the North West tenants cannot […]

The Italian general election did not give a majority to any party or coalition – but it did produce a clear winner: the Five Stars Movement (M5S) of Beppe Grillo. With 25.5 per cent of the vote in the lower house and 23.8 per cent in the upper it is the biggest single party in […]

Dave Stockton Stock markets fell and EU leaders reacted in horror as the result came in from Italy’s general election on 24-25 February. Their hoped-for winners, “responsible” parties that would continue to push austerity, had failed to win a working majority in parliament. Eurocrats had hoped the austerity programme of cuts and neoliberal “reforms” designed […]

The New Anticapitalist Party (founded in 2009) at first seemed a beacon of hope to the left, not just in France but also across Europe. Marc Lasalle looks at why the dream has faded. Olivier Besancenot was in 2002 and again in 2007 the charismatic young presidential candidate of the Ligue communiste revolutionnaire (LCR), when […]

  By Carla Turner Approaching a year since the Health and Social Care bill passed through Parliament, Carla Turner looks at the damage already done, what’s still to come and whether recent protests against local cuts can form the basis for a national campaign to save our NHS In 1948, the Labour government nationalised health […]

In an election that could rock the labour movement, rank and file candidate Jerry Hicks writes for Workers Power   There’s an election in Unite, Britain’s largest union with 1.5 million members. Nothing unusual in that. But it’s been called three years early and on the shortest possible timetable. The official reason for the change […]

  Richard Wilkinson, coauthor of the book The Spirit Level gave a half hour slide presentation about the corrosive effects of inequality on society at the Leeds Anti-Cuts Convention in February 2013.  The “spirit level” refers to the carpenter’s tool to measure incline, and the slide show indeed measured in exhaustive detail the correlation between […]

On 16 February Leeds had its second Anti-Cuts Convention, a successful event that serves as a modest demonstration of the need and possibility for uniting the anti-cuts movement. The meeting decided on action and campaigns, involved trade unions, political groups and campaigns ranging from Keep Our NHS Public to Hands Off Our Homes. The struggle […]

Jerry Hicks has got 136 nominations for his candidature in the Unite General Secretary election – an unprecedented number for a rank and file candidate. So there will be an election and 1.5 Unite members will have a choice. The success of the nominations campaign shows there is strong backing in Unite for a challenge […]

Ninety activists packed into the 16 February Second Leeds Anti-Cuts Convention, called by Leeds Against the Cuts. The gathering was a step forward for the movement, laying out some good campaign priorities and voting in support of a united, national anti-cuts convention and to call on the TUC to say “yes” to a general strike.  […]

The BBC was hit by strike action yesterday as NUJ members across the country staged a 24-hour walkout in their campaign against compulsory redundancies. Radio and TV schedules were disrupted as many presenters, including Lauren Laverne and John Humphrys refused to cross picket lines. The day of action was kicked off by mass walkouts of […]

The Socialist Party of Ireland has announced its withdrawal from the United Left Alliance (ULA). The Workers and Unemployed Action Group (WUAG) departed last year and only the People before Profit Alliance/Socialist Workers Party, along with non aligned activists, remain in the depleted ranks of the ULA. The General Election 2011 had seen the recently […]