Pakistan’s finance minister, Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, has an international reputation as a privatiser, writes Shehzad Arshad of the RSL. He has headed World Bank and International Monetary Fund teams charged with forcing the sell-off of telecoms, electricity supply, transport, aviation, banking and manufacturing in some 18 countries, including Argentina.

Sudan’s Southern region is set to hold a referendum on 9 January, widely expected to result in a majority for independence from the predominantly Arab and Muslim North. The vote comes after a bitter war lasting for decades, in which the North attempted to hold on to the South. It comes down to control of […]

The USA, its intelligence services and right-wing media such as Fox and Sky are waging a brutal world wide campaign against Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange – they are determined to destroy this site and crush the people behind it because it dares to reveal their crimes and refuses to bow the knee to […]

World leaders failed the planet yet again in Cancún, Mexico when the Conference of the Parties on Climate Change (COP16) could not reach a legally binding agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol – which runs out in 2012. Less than half as many delegates and observers attended, compared to the 45,000 at the previous COP15 […]

In the summer of 1994, when I was visiting my Iraqi cousins in Baghdad, I told them the story of the accidental death by hanging of Stephen Milligan MP in an auto-erotic incident involving self-strangulation and drugs. Their immediate response was to ask in disbelief: “Why did they kill him like that?” From then on, […]

Eleven months after the earthquake that devastated Haiti in January 2010, the country is now suffering from an outbreak of cholera. This deadly water-borne disease, which thrives in the unsanitary conditions in which many earthquake survivors still live, has killed around 2,000 people and more than 96,000 are infected. Haiti, which has not seen a […]

The pure horror of the Sri Lankan government’s genocidal war against the Tamils in May 2009 has been released in new photo and video evidence, which contradicts the Sri Lankan government’s lies. The photo and video footage show piles of dead bodies, many of them naked, with their hands bound behind their backs, and shot […]

The Government’s Green Paper on legal aid proposes a set of changes that will destroy this vital public service. The paper proposes that advice and representation will no longer be available to all under civil legal aid. This includes most family and many housing cases, immigration, clinical negligence and education law. There are three main […]

The European debt crisis is expanding, pitching country against country, with the major economies attempting to push recession onto the working class of economically weaker nations. With the system itself in crisis, governments aim to shift their debt burden by attacking jobs, pay and services at home, and dumping the worst of the crisis onto […]

Unions are gearing up to defend public sector pensions in what could be a key battle with the Con-Dems in 2011. The government has condemned the “gold plated” final salary pensions of public sector workers. Several unions are already planning to strike in defence of pensions. Mark Serwotka leader of the Civil servants union PCS […]

Teachers need on-the-job training, not proper education, according to the latest government white paper, The Importance of Teaching. Put forward by Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education, the document outlines plans to ditch the one-year postgraduate course for new teachers – mostly university based education and training – and to carry out training at […]

The sheer breadth and depth of the cuts has angered hundreds of thousands. Activists across the country have responded with local anti-cuts alliances, organising demos, lobbies and sit-ins, targeting universities, councils and tax-dodgers. The student rebellion catapulted this resistance onto the national stage. The successful Coalition of Resistance (CoR) conference on 27 November could not […]

Well! In Unite’s leadership election, left-wing candidate Len McCluskey won with over 100,000 votes. Over 50,000 members voted for second-placed Jerry Hicks, who campaigned on a rank and file ticket. As readers will know, I supported Hicks. Just days after his election, McCluskey told the Coalition of Resistance (CoR) conference that we need “people power” […]

On 9 December thousands of students defied the law, passed by the last Labour government, to march into Parliament Square. The police responded by “kettling” protesters for hours in the freezing cold without food, water, toilets, even denying the injured medical attention. This is a denial of our civil rights to assemble and march, and […]

The youth movement REVOLUTION has played a leading role in the student protests by organising young people across the country to fight the Tory-Lib Dem cuts. Members have helped to organise university occupations at University Collage London (UCL), London South Bank University (LSBU), and Leeds University. We have also taken part in sixth-form sit-ins at […]

Now that parliament has voted to increase tuition fees and abolish the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA), the student movement needs to force universities and councils to refuse to implement the policies.

Youth and students in Britain have run an astonishing campaign against cuts to education funding, tuition fee increases and the withdrawal of central government funding for the Education Maintenance Allowance. The month of high-intensity protest saw public opinion sway in favour of the student demonstrators, a political crisis in the Liberal Democrats, and most importantly, […]

We staged a 24-hour “teach-in” on Wednesday 8 December in a form of protest against this coalition Government, which has now voted for the raising of tuition fees up to £9,000. The main reason for the occupation was to raise awareness through media coverage about this rise in tuition fees, and we feel we were […]

The day after the mass student walkout on 24 November, the Daily Mail ran the headline, “The Rage of the Girl Rioters”, supposedly exposing a new generation of mindless female thugs. Although the Mail described the images as “disturbing”, I think it was an inspiration to see so many young women protesting. Ninety years on […]

2010 may well always be remembered for its last few weeks when hundreds of thousands of young people came onto the streets in the first great battle against the Con-Dem government. It’s easy to forget that just a year ago, we were only anticipating a Tory government – now the fight has begun against this […]

Over 1000 Oxford students marched through Oxford protesting spending cuts and the Browne review. A student body noted for its conservatism battled the police in an attempt to occupy the university. Today we saw the birth of a new student movement. Organised An initial organising meeting of 200 students discussed the Browne review and its […]

Keith Spencer makes a case-study analysis of a ‘Great Power’ that was at the centre of the global financial whirlwind: Britain The British Conservative Party is openly saying that the cuts programme its government will carry out will touch everyone’s way of life for a generation, while blaming the poor condition of the public finances […]

Two years ago this month, the credit crisis erupted and the world banking system was moments from collapse. Governments carried out huge bank bailouts, pumped money into the economy and invested in order to stimulate the economy. There was even talk of reforming capitalism and ending the power of the speculators. The world economy was […]

The ConDem Cuts are part of an international offensive against working people. But how we can turn the tables on the bosses? Around what tactics and slogans should we unite and what action do we need to take? In this resolution Workers Power outline how we think the resistance should organise to defeat the new […]

We continue our series on revolutionary women with a look at the great German socialist Clara Zetkin pioneer of the struggle for women’s liberation, writes Natalie Sedley Clara Zetkin, born in 1857, was a key figure in the world’s first mass socialist party, the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), where she fought for the cause […]

The resignation from the Socialist Workers Party of 42 members of the Left Platform, including leading figures such as Lindsey German and John Rees, delivers an important opportunity for SWP and Left Platform members alike to reconsider critical elements of their political tradition.

The UK economy has officially come out of recession. Unemployment has fallen for the first time in two years. Consumers spent more than expected in the Christmas sales, the housing market appears buoyant and manufacturing companies are reporting levels of optimism not seen for more than two years. But the recovery will be a long, […]

2010 WAS A year of youth rebellion as the students from schools and colleges across the country took furious action against the Tories’ hike in fees and cuts in grants. Let no one speak of the apathetic, playstation generation again. The cry of ‘Tory scum’ went up in every town and city across Britain. Voiced […]

The British SWP is in crisis with a faction fight, expulsions and a major dispute on tactics for the period ahead. Richard Brenner surveys the dispute and examines the linked issues of party democracy, the united front, industrial policy and the fight for a new workers’ party. Britain’s largest socialist group – the Socialist Workers […]

Recent months have seen an increase in the number of homophobic attacks across the country. Alex Kelby and Jim Parker argue for a militant campaign of resistance Over the summer, a number of gay men were attacked coming out of London bars. In one incident, a 21-year old was left paralysed after being repeatedly stabbed […]