By KD Tait Students at Sussex university will walk out tomorrow* in support of five students suspended for taking part in recent protests against privatisation. The students have been unilaterally suspended from their courses and banned from going onto campus. A petition calling for their reinstatement has gathered over 8,000 signatures in less than week. […]
By KD Tait University bosses have launched a crackdown against a wave of student occupations. The suppression of the right to protest signals the start of the final offensive in the struggle to complete the marketization of Higher Education. Injunctions have been used to ban all protests at several universities. Where students rejected the rulings […]
By Jeremy Dewar Thanks to the actions of former CIA employee and intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, it is now widely known that Britain and the US are actively monitoring and listening to millions of our private emails, phone and Skype conversations every day. George Orwell, author of 1984, couldn’t have dreamt of the scale […]
Press release from Caribbean Labour Solidarity 2nd December 2013 7pm On Monday 2nd December a small but lively group picketed the Embassy of the Dominican Republic in London to protest at the decision of the high court of the Dominican Republic to strip citizenship from over 200,000 of its citizens of Haitian decent. The ruling […]
By KD Tait On 30 November, a new political organisation was founded; one which will champion a radical alternative to austerity, unemployment and war. Organisers announced that more than 1200 people had registered as founder members. Six months in the making, Left Unity’s founding conference saw 500 people agree a common political platform, constitution and aims. […]
The present time might seem a difficult one for the revolutionary left in Britain to seek to unite its fragmented forces, writes Dave Stockton. The Socialist Workers Party (SWP), by far the largest far left group, is in disarray, if not in meltdown. The Socialist Party (SP) continues to think of itself alone as being […]
Tell CWU leaders, no dodgy deals or further delay by a CWU postal rep Only weeks after the Royal Mail privatisation, news is already leaking out about falling service standards, increased management bullying and doubled profits – all predicted by anti-privatisation campaigners and the postal union, CWU. The reality of privatisation couldn’t be clearer. It […]
In this article Joy Macready examines the relatively unknown history of the Bolshevik’s ground-breaking policies for the liberation of women, which were subsequently reversed in the 1930s under Stalin. The 1917 Bolshevik government advanced a revolutionary programme for women’s rights, struggling to break with the backwardness and prejudice of Russia. The Bolsheviks argued […]
By a CWU postal rep The privatisation of Royal Mail last month was not the victory for “popular capitalism” the Coalition government has crowed about. On the contrary, it was a defeat for the users and deliverers of a popular public service. But even by their own terms, it only succeeded because the government […]
By Rebecca Anderson The Tories’ controversial new Immigration Bill passed through its second reading by 303 votes to 18 on 22 October, despite speculation that Labour might oppose it. The Bill’s main proposals are to: • Make temporary residents like students pay for NHS treatment. • Reduce the number of grounds for appeal against […]
By Bernie McAdam Teachers from both main unions have overwhelmingly supported a series of regional strikes against Education Secretary Michael Gove’s attacks on pay, pensions and workload. This action was meant to be a forerunner to a national strike before Christmas. But now the NUT leadership has decided to call off further action for […]
In the first part of a two part article, Marcus Halaby examines the regional and international context of the Arab Revolutions, the role played by the crisis of leadership, and the need for working class political independence in the form of a revolutionary workers’ party, making the case for the strategy of permanent revolution. […]
By Marc Lassalle This autumn, “Socialist” President François Hollande and Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault have been facing an upturn in the class struggle. Until recently, they have been successful – thanks to the trade unions, and the student union UNEF, in defusing, or at least applying the brakes to, any workers’ and social struggles. This […]
Postal workers in Seacroft delivery office in Leeds staged a canteen sit-in this Saturday after a driver was wrongly suspended for an accident. They were joined by the workers from the York Road delivery office sited in the same building in a show of solidarity.Royal Mail managers at first refused to reverse their decision but […]
KD Tait welcomes the decisions of the recent ISN conference and the encouraging work of the RevSocs, before outlining our perspectives for unity ISN conference takes step forward In October, the International Socialist Network (ISN) a recent split from the SWP, held its first ‘Politics and Policy’ Conference. The conference was democratic and […]
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By James Copley As we go to press, the death toll from the super typhoon Haiyan is rapidly mounting in the Philippines as it smashed through the Pacific nation. Deaths are reported to have topped 10,000, yet the true count is still far from complete. The typhoon has wrought destruction across the islands. […]
By Marcus Halaby A new rank and file grouping in Britain’s largest and most important trade union, Unite, will be founded by a conference to be held in February or March next year. This was decided by a constructive meeting of Unite members in the SWP and the Grassroots Left, with observers from Workers […]
The methodology of ‘intersectionality’ is currently gaining increased support on the left in the UK. Joy Macready argues why it shouldn’t be used as the basis for a socialist approach to liberation ‘Intersectionality’, or the study of how multiple systems of oppression or discrimination interact, is gaining prominence amongst the left in the UK. For […]
Editorial – Workers Power No.375 / November 2013 By Jeremy Dewar In any period of time – be it the term of a government or a trade union general secretary’s career – a moment comes when, amidst the welter of events, a home truth emerges. At the end of October, Unite leader Len McCluskey […]
By Peter Main There will be no limits on the extravagance of the ceremonies that will greet the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) when they arrive in Sri Lanka. As they are whisked from the airport to their hotels along the newly completed Expressway, built and operated by Chinese capital, they will see […]
Fuelled by racist myths, a new wave of anti-Roma racism is sweeping Europe. KD Tait argues for solidarity In October, Irish police kidnapped two young Roma children from separate Roma families. The parents and children were forced to undergo DNA tests, which proved… they were indeed related. This followed the case of Maria, a Roma […]
Postal workers urgently need to take control of their dispute and strike to win, says a CWU rep Postal workers in the CWU union are stuck in limbo awaiting the outcome of negotiations with Royal Mail bosses. Ten days ago CWU leaders cancelled the first day of strike action scheduled for 4 November in favour […]
By KD Tait In October, thousands of French school and college students blockaded schools and took to the streets to protest the deportation of 15-year-old student Léonarda Dibrani. Dibrani, a young Roma woman, was dragged off her school bus and deported to Kosovo on 9 October. One week later, Armenian student Khatchik Kachatryan […]
By Marcus Halaby It’s difficult sometimes not to feel sorry for the rank and file members of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty (AWL), possibly one of the few groups on the British left to have much to show for its involvement in the student revolt of late 2010. Just as it seems to be getting […]
By a CWU rep Just as postal workers around the country were gearing up for their first day of strike action this coming Monday, 4 November, leaders in the CWU postal union cancelled the action, supposedly to continue talks. A 30 October joint statement with Royal Mail bosses stated that they had made progress and […]
The row over a royal charter to regulate the press that erupted earlier this year was not about press freedom but about the desire of the billionaire newspaper owners to keep control of their moneymaking machines. Freedom of the press and of speech can only be guaranteed by the mass of people being involved […]
The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty has published an outright racist article on its website. Despite the objections of some AWL members who oppose this anti-Muslim racism, they have refused to take it down. The article, which is by one of its founders, Sean Matgamna, is still on their website – and they have even put […]
Russia on the eve of 1917 was a country dominated by the Tsar and a feudal aristocracy. In 1914, the Russian empire, allied with France which was its main source of the huge loans keeping its creaking system afloat, entered the First World War against Germany and Austria-Hungary. France had high hopes that the Tsar’s […]
By Christian Gebhardt After Argentina’s “revolutionary days” in December 2001 – the driving from power in quick succession of two presidents, the blockades by unemployed workers, and the occupation of over 200 companies by their workers – the mass movement was eventually contained by the ruling class – with a little help from […]