This resolution outlines our position on the nature of the prison system

Buying sex from a woman who is the victim of trafficking will be made illegal under new legislation. The law will also apply to men who knowingly pay for sex with a woman who has a pimp. Either offence could lead to a rape charge. In addition, new laws will also result in “kerb crawlers” […]

The biggest left group in Britain, the Socialist Workers Party, suffered a serious setback when its Respect project split in November. Simon Hardy explains the political roots of its crisis

The specific role of women workers in the February revolution occurred because of the very acute way the war had affected them. The mobilisation of soldiers and production for the war effort led to enormous deprivation in the cities and villages of Russia. As early as April 1915 there were riots by women demanding bread, […]

“In Rosa Luxemburg the socialist idea was a dominating and powerful passion of both heart and brain, a truly creative passion which burned ceaselessly. The great task and the over-powering ambition of this astonishing woman was to prepare the way for social revolution, to clear the path of history for socialism. To experience the revolution, […]

Betty Heathfield, who died aged 78, will be chiefly remembered for the work she did to organise the miners’ wives movement during the Great Miners’ Strike of 1984-85. As chair of Women Against Pit Closures (WAPC), she helped pull together a mass movement of women, essential to raising money and food for the besieged mining […]

Betty Friedan, who died last month, was a key figure in the modern women’s movement. Her book, The Feminine Mystique, published in the United States in 1963, galvanised women into action and shook up the picture of the ideal family that dominated US life in the post-war boom of the 1950s and 1960s. Friedan came […]

Andrea Dworkin died last month. Dworkin was seen by most as an intransigent, man-hating radical feminist. She wrote extensively about male violence, drawing upon her own experiences.Dworkin had a very traumatic life. She suffered anti-Semitism and sexual abuse from a very young age. Then, after decades as a feminist writer and lecturer she was drugged […]

“Respect for women… can triumph in the Middle East and beyond!” President George Bush at the UN, September 2002 Since the US/UK invasion on Iraq something has practically vanished from its streets. That something is the sight of Iraqi women. Not surprisingly, the empty speeches promising liberation for the women of Iraq after the fall […]

George W Bush is set on war. He will not let anything get in his way. Not Iraq’s agreement to let weapons inspectors back. Not the United Nations meddlesome attempt to let diplomacy work to disarm Saddam Hussein. He will try to bully France, bribe Russia and berate China to get the UN Security Council […]

  The period of the 1880’s and 1890’s in Germany was a period of rapid industrialisation carried through under the guidance of the repressive German state. It saw the birth and growth of German Social Democracy as the mass workers party. It drew women, and children, into industry on a large scale. It was in […]

Jeremy Dewar on the dilemma facing the Socialist Workers Party The massive vote for Labour was a vote for real change. Revolutionaries know that Blair’s government is committed to less radical change than any Labour government this century. His programme is to provide the best possible conditions for capitalism to continue making profits at our […]

Racism – what it is and how to fight it! Published in 1995 by Workers Power, it examines the history of racial oppression and the use of racism as a weapon to divide the working class. Sorry this pamphlet is no longer in print Available to read online here Available to download here

“Free at last, free at last!” proclaims the front page of Panther under the headline “A declaration of independence”. The freedom and independence being celebrated are from Panther’s connections with Militant Labour. The split in Panther UK came, we are told, after “a year long protracted debate on the crucial issue of whether the group […]

Dave Hughes concludes the series by looking at Lenin and Luxemburg’s fights for the revolutionary programme within the Second International In the last article we examined the struggle waged by Lenin and the Bolsheviks within the shattered framework of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party between 1903 and 1912. We showed that this was a struggle against opportunism […]

This article is devoted to the debate on the political and organisational heritage of Trotskyism and Leninism to which the Workers’ Socialist League, the International Marxist Group and the International-Communist League contributed in the 1970s What is being debated? The IMG have centred the debate around their own current ’unity offensive’. In the series of […]