By Andy Yorke In this year’s US presidential race, a month is a long time. March saw the tensions in American politics stretched close to breaking point. The billionaire demagogue Donald Trump widened his lead, forced out the Republican establishment’s favourite, Marco Rubio, whipped up support with his racist, jingoistic campaign to “Make America Great […]

By Jeremy Dewar Labour should demand the permanent nationalisation of Tata’s UK operation. Steelworkers have paid for these works many times over with their labour, so no compensation is necessary. John McDonnell is right: Labour’s previous nationalisation model is flawed. Instead of a capitalist management dictating to and exploiting the workforce, we propose workers’ control […]

By Jeremy Dewar At a board meeting in Mumbai, India, Tata executives voted through a plan to sell off all its UK plants or, failing that, to shut them down. Some 15,000 workers and their families face the prospect of devastating job losses, with another 25,000 workers in the supply chain at severe risk. The […]

By Jeremy Dewar The biggest and most militant teachers’ union, NUT, has voted for a strike ballot against the threat to turn all 15,000 state-maintained schools into academies. The threat is lodged at the heart of the Tory government’s Educational Excellence Everywhere White Paper. Two other teaching unions, NASUWT and ATL, have also voted to […]

By Jeremy Dewar TORY CHANCELLOR George Osborne has told the BBC that, “storm clouds are clearly gathering in the world economy and that has a consequence for lots of countries including Britain”. At the same time, the Office of National Statistics revealed that the UK economy is 1 per cent smaller than previously calculated: a […]

By Alisha Arshad IN PAKISTAN, women are largely confined to working in the huge “informal” sector, which employs about three quarters of the total workforce of an estimated 65 million in the cities, towns and countryside. Workers in this sector, male or female, are not covered by the country’s labour regulations. They have no entitlement to […]

By Joy Macready WOMEN continue to face fierce austerity attacks on welfare, jobs, trade union rights, education, healthcare and childcare. Shouldering the double burden of unpaid domestic and waged labour, it is left to women to pick up the pieces when the social fabric is destroyed through cuts. They make up the majority of workers […]

The revolutionary legacy of Clara Zetkin By Joy Macready CAPITALISM from its earliest years gave birth to the modern women’s question. Women, particularly the women of the poorest classes, played a major role in its model revolution – in France in 1789. But the Rights of Man and Citizen it proclaimed turned out to be […]

World powers reject calls for coordinated response, settle for status quo By KD Tait GROWING tensions between the world’s imperialist rivals are obstructing efforts to secure a coordinated response to the emerging economic crisis. Crunch talks at the G20 summit in Shanghai assembled finance ministers and central bankers from the world’s leading economies to discuss […]

Ceasefire will bring neither a just nor a lasting end to the civil war By Marcus Halaby RUSSIA’S bombing campaign in support of Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship has created a new wave of refugees, with 35,000 stranded on the border with Turkey. Its purpose was to encircle Syria’s largest city Aleppo, before a US-Russian brokered “ceasefire” […]

Can Bernie Sanders do more than pave the way for Clinton? By Andy Yorke THE 2016 US Presidential election was expected to be boring, from predictable start to status quo finish. It was supposed to be Jeb Bush against Hillary Clinton: both insiders from Republican and Democrat political dynasties, both with strong ties to big […]

The first installment in our serialisation of a socialist history of the Labour Party. Read the second instalment: Labour recruits for carnage in WW1 By Dave Stockton Keir Hardie speaking at a Women’s Suffrage demonstration in Trafalgar Square Foundation of the Labour Party, Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street, London, February 1906 IN FEBRUARY 1900, the Labour Representation […]

  The Irish general election result has delivered a huge blow to the outgoing Fine Gael-Labour coalition government. Although Fine Gael will still be marginally the largest party, despite losing around a third of their seats, the plunge in the Labour vote from 19 to just below 7 per cent rules out a repeat coalition. […]

THE nationalist left outside the SNP are campaigning for another independence referendum as soon as possible, but the SNP has said it will not call another one unless it is 100 per cent sure of winning. However, Nicola Sturgeon has indicated that if Britain votes to leave the European Union in the June referendum and […]

By Sandy McBurney ALL commentators are agreed that the governing party, the Scottish National Party (SNP), is going to win the 2016 Scottish parliamentary elections. They are on 50 per cent plus in the opinion polls. Their membership stands at 115,000, which is the equivalent of over a million members on a British scale. This […]

DAVID CAMERON returned from the European Summit in Brussels in February with a deal he claimed would ensure Britain’s continued membership of the European Union. He speedily announced a date for the referendum on 23 June. The wording of the referendum is: “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union?” It contains […]

It’s time Labour showed leadership and solidarity We have the chance to save our NHS and inflict a serious defeat on the Tories THE NHS is in crisis. Everyone knows that. The Coalition and Tory claims to have ring-fenced health spending was and is a cruel deception. In fact funding has been frozen in real […]

March will see an intensification of the political storms which have been brewing since January. With the Tories fighting like rats in a sack over Europe, it’s time for Labour to challenge the racist agenda of the immigration debate, expose the Tory lies and champion the value of working class unity across borders. The May […]

No to racism & xenophobia Defend workers’ rights Vote to ‘Remain in the EU’ ‘National independence’ is a retreat from class unity and internationalism THEY’RE OFF. The EU referendum and May elections have triggered a storm of propaganda that will fill the tabloids and news bulletins with an unparalleled torrent of racist lies and distortions, as the […]