EMBATTLED VENEZUELAN President Nicolás Maduro is facing a months long attempt by opposition forces to overthrow his United Socialist Party (psuv) government. The opposition’s goal is to install a regime composed of representatives of the old Venezuelan oligarchs and landowners. They have the declared support of Donald Trump and the series of right wing governments […]

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 […]

IN JUST two weeks, some 270,000 Rohingya have fled into Bangladesh from Myanmar. The mass exodus began on 25 August, when the Myanmar army began an offensive against the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (arsa). The arsa announced a “unilateral ceasefire” on 9 September, in effect a recognition that they cannot offer any resistance to the […]

By Jeremy Dewar BBC’S PANORAMA team have produced a powerful, courageous and shocking piece of investigative journalism that has blown the lid on Britain’s immigration detention centres. Its programme Undercover: Britain’s Immigration Secrets follows a trainee detention officer, who is so concerned with what he is being asked to do that he secretly records his […]

By Bernie McAdam AFTER SEVEN weeks of strike action and an apparent agreement with council chiefs, it seemed sense had prevailed; Birmingham’s Grade Three bin workers would not be sacked and a suspended union rep would be reinstated. Instead the Labour run council has completely gone back on its word and issued redundancy notices to […]

By a PCS Rep ON 6 SEPTEMBER, the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) announced a major campaign to scrap the 1% pay cap, which has hit all civil servants and other public sector workers, including nurses, firefighters and council workers. In the Civil Service, the cap has been combined with increases in pension and […]

THE DEMOCRATIC socialists of America (DSA) grouping has witnessed astonishing growth over the past year, going from around 5,500 members to 26,000. It now claims 2,000 members in New York City alone. The DSA’s growth began with the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2015, thanks in part to Sanders’ self-designation as a “democratic socialist” and his […]

By Dave Stockton NORTH KOREA’S Hydrogen bomb test has underlined once again not only the capacity of Kim Jong-un’s regime to achieve its nuclear ambitions, but also the failure of all attempts to stop that with threats. As futile as US President Donald Trump’s bluster has been, however, it ramps up the danger that either […]

THIS MONTH’S McDonald’s strike lifted the lid and shone a bright light on the dark practices of the world’s largest restaurant chain. If that were all the strikers achieved, they would deserve the gratitude of hundreds of thousands of fast food workers. But they achieved much more. And that’s why they’re an inspiration. Forty workers […]

LAST SATURDAY 2 September a group of us travelled to Keighley to counter-protest the English Defence League’s (EDL) national demonstration. Over 300 police had been bussed in including officers from Wales, Durham and Northumbria to protect just 60 EDL members. The march had originally planned to go to Bradford as well as Keighley, but days […]

FOR 800,000 DREAMERS the morning of 5 September saw their American Dream turn into a nightmare. Donald Trump’s Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, announced the end of Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) programme. Introduced in 2012, this allowed undocumented migrants under the age of 16 to obtain residence and work permits lasting two […]

THE UK is at a crossroads in its relationship to the rest of the world, and so is our party. Immigrants and free movement are being scapegoated by a political and economic elite that is subjecting ordinary people to cuts and austerity. During the greatest refugee crisis in recent years, the Tories have responded with […]

By KD Tait LABOUR have been consistently ahead of the Tories in the polls since the summer. This Autumn is a chance for the whole labour movement to take the offensive against a Tory government that has no plan except fighting amongst themselves over Brexit. But although Theresa May is a lame duck prime minister, […]

By Dave Stockton ON 15 AUGUST 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru addressed India’s Constituent Assembly in words that have become famous: “Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, […]