Unemployment at 7.5% and rising.

The year in revolutionary review

Over the past year or two the failure of the union leaders – left as well as right – to call the escalating and united action they have promised at the TUC and union conferences, and the catastrophic retreat without a fight at Grangemouth, underline the importance of not relying on, or waiting for these […]

By Jeremy Dewar / 02 September 2013 David Cameron broke off his fourth summer holiday in an attempt to stampede parliament into supporting military action against Syria. But Ed Miliband, whom the Tories had taunted with being “weak”, turned on him and soon it was the Bullingdon boy who looked weak. So will Ed Miliband’s […]

The crisis in the Socialist Workers Party has implications for the entire left. Allegations of rape against a leading member were shamefully mishandled. Expulsions and a clampdown on dissent provoked a substantial and ongoing exodus from the party. The International Socialist Network is grouping together many who have left the SWP. It held its first […]

Read issue 369 here THE COALITION government is determined to start 2013 as it means to go on: by making workers, benefit claimants, pensioners and young people pay for the ongoing economic crisis. Austerity is now set to last till 2018 at least. A decade of pain. Not for themselves of course. This government has […]

The Trades Union Congress has agreed to consider the practicality of a general strike in response to the government’s austerity programme. Their first step should be to ask their 6 million members what they think. Are they willing to take action in defence of jobs, wages, pensions, health and education? The entire left should be […]

  The TUC has called a national demonstration against austerity in the autumn under the banner “A Future that Works”. This demo comes more than 18 months after the TUC’s “March for the Alternative”. By any standards, one isolated demo every year and a half is a pathetic response to the worst capitalist crisis since […]

THE MASS strike on N30 has the potential to change the political situation in Britain. It shows that if you want mass numbers then the unions are essential to filling the streets of every city and town with people who want to fight the government’s cuts. The real sense of unity and collective strength in the face […]

November is a crucial month in the fightback against the cuts. Demonstrations and protests by students and electricians will hit the headlines; there will be a large conference, Unite the Resistance, with hundreds of rank and file trade unionists; and everything will be building up for mass strikes on 30 November. And let’s not forget […]

THIS SUMMER has been a truly momentous one. The riots that swept the country caused huge soul searching by liberal England and a reactionary backlash by the hang ’em and flog ’em brigade. Either way the youth of today responded with their own shock and awe against consumerism and the police in the kind of rioting we […]

There have been two events in the last few months which have shown that we have the power to beat the government. The first was when the students occupied the Tory HQ at Millbank, writes Simon Hardy in this month’s editorial

The Alternative Vote (AV) system isn’t proportional, but it’s still an improvement on the rotten First Past the Post (FPTP) system, that’s why socialists should be campaigning for a critical ‘yes’ vote The referendum on the AV system tells us a lot about the Clegg-Cameron Coalition. In return for the Liberal Democrats dropping their commitment […]

Along with thousands of activists, all our readers will be striving to make the 26 March demonstration as big as possible. 500,000 jobs to go in the public sector. Another 500,000 to follow in the private sector. 34 per cent cuts in council spending leading to libraries, youth services, care for the elderly all being […]

Over the next four years the Tories and the Liberal Democrats want to destroy the welfare state as we know it, writes editor Simon Hardy