By KD Tait SINCE Jeremy Corbyn’s landslide election as leader of the Labour Party, the grassroots network Momentum has formed 90 local groups to coordinate the activities of Labour Party members and supporters who want to champion the policies Jeremy was elected on and spearhead resistance to the Tories. Local groups have rallied a cross-section […]

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 […]