From Parti Communiste to France Insoumise: the rebirth of the French left
In the run-up to the French legislative elections Olivier Tonneau discusses the rise of France Insoumise. Jean-Luc Mélenchon may have fallen 600,000 votes short of making it to the second round of the French presidential election but he has certainly asserted his dominance over the French left. Many feathers were ruffled in the process: Mélenchon […]
Review: Mariana Mazzucato, ‘The Entrepreneurial State’
Harry J Bentham gives his take on Mariana Mazzucato’s The Entrepreneurial State (2013), a book which has influenced Labour’s proposed economic policies in the lead up to the 2017 General Election.
#GE2017: How radical are Labour’s economic policies?
The limitations of the manifesto are those we would expect to find facing any reformist government operating in the capitalist system today.
The General Strike of 2017 and the Brazilian political crisis
By Mariana Tamari and Miguel Borba de Sá, militants of the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL) and post-graduate students in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.1 The General Strike that stopped Brazil on Friday April 28 was the first of its kind for 20 years. According to the Workers Central Trade Union (CUT) 40 million people from […]
Reflections on the Manchester bombing vigil
Colin Wilson reflects on the vigil in Manchester after the bombing of the Ariana Grande concert on 22 May.
‘There are no foreigners here except the bosses’: Precarious workers strike back
Leo Zeilig, author of An Ounce of Practice (Hoperoad, 2017), describes recent precarious workers’ strikes at the University of London. By eight in the morning on Tuesday last week it had already been raining for a few hours. I had turned up early for the strike and stopped on my way to the picket-line in […]
#GE2017: Can Labour deliver security at work?
Unite activist and former General Secretary candidate Ian Allinson examines Labour’s third pledge of ‘Security At Work’.
Interview: The Fight for Fair Pay in Universities
‘Fractionals’ are hourly paid part-time teaching staff in universities who are paid a ‘fraction’ of a full-time salary. An increasing proportion of academics are on these precarious contracts. On 8 May, SOAS Fractionals for Fair Play (FFFP) announced via their Facebook page that, after threatening a mass marking boycott in late March, management had accepted all of […]
#GE2017: Why does Labour make concessions to the right when it comes to immigration?
Jonas Liston reflects on Angela Rayner’s recent appearance on Question Time. How can she be awful on immigration whilst savaging the Tories on everything else?
Fighting for justice in the Rif!
For almost 9 months ordinary Moroccans have been fighting for justice following the death in October of Mouhcine Fikri crushed in a garbage truck, in the Rif town of al-Hoceima. We publish here a rs21 statement in solidarity with the movement Last night, rs21 members again admired the courage and the power of the Moroccan working class […]
revolutionary reflections | The KPD and the United Front during the Weimar Republic
This article by Marcel Bois was originally published in a collection of essays in German by Marx21 on the German Communist Party (KPD). It sets out the history of the United Front in Germany from the years 1920 to 1926. The United Front was a tactic developed by the Communist International in the early 1920s and this […]
#GE2017: One Tory MP in Scotland is too many
Pete Cannell discusses the questions that face socialists in Scotland in the up-coming general election.
#GE2017: How can Corbyn win?
Pat Stack untangles a tumultuous time for Labour, arguing there is only one way for Corbyn to win.
Labour manifesto: Corbyn has picked the right fights
Lisa Leak argues that the pledges in Jeremy Corbyn’s leaked Labour manifesto could play an important role in helping socialists rebuild our movement.
#GE2017: Tories are ahead, but they’re not invulnerable
For all the attempts to make this election seem like a foregone conclusion, it is clear that Theresa May has called it out of both weakness and strength.
We burned the cop cars one by one: a review of ‘When We Rise’ by Cleve Jones
Colin Wilson reviews an inspiring memoir of decades of LGBT activism
After the May 4 elections: time to shift the terrain
The May 4 local election results contain a lesson for activists in the run-up to the June General Election.
revolutionary reflections | How Trump took the Midwest: Conversations with a worker from Michigan.
During the first few months of 2017, Sebastian Cooke conducted a series of interviews about the US election with David Koch, a labour activist and retired worker from central Michigan. David was involved in the election from start to finish and his experience provides a fascinating insight into the vote and its aftermath. This is a write up of those interviews, […]
Review: An Ounce of Practice
Heike Becker reviews An Ounce of Practice by Leo Zeilig, discussing the themes of love, resilience and pragmatism across a varied theatres of activism.
Unite after the General Secretary election
Unite member Kate Bradley reflects on her experiences campaigning for grassroots socialist Ian Allinson in this year’s Unite General Secretary election.
The dilemma facing France: neoliberalism or neofascism?
With just over a week until the second round of the French presidential election, antiracist activist Selim Nadi reflects on how France reached this crossroads, and what the French left needs to do next to resist the rise of neofascism. Graffiti reads: ‘neither nation nor bosses, neither Le Pen nor Macron’. Photo credit: cpolitic. François […]
Defend Malia Bouattia
Lisa Leak argues that socialists should back Malia Bouattia in her bid for re-election as President of the National Union of Students. This week’s conference of the National Union of Students will be a quiet litmus test for British radical politics. The main focus will be the NUS presidential election, which will pit the incumbent […]
The Political Power of Music: in conversation with Dave Randall
Colin Revolting speaks to musician and activist Dave Randall about his experience of ‘mixing pop and politics’ and the journey which led him to write Sound System – The Political Power of Music. Interview transcribed by William Cleary. What was the journey that led you to write Sound System? I felt, when I was a young musician, that […]
NUT conference: “This country must have a Government that will invest in education”
Tom Ramplin and Andy Stone report on the NUT conference that took place in Cardiff over the Easter weekend With the government slashing £3 billion a year from school budgets by 2020, the continuation of a seven year pay freeze and burnt out teachers leaving the profession in droves, the National Union of Teachers conference held […]
Cardiff Corbyn rally shows how to develop confidence during the election campaign
Seb Cooke reports from Corbyn’s rally in Cardiff yesterday.
revolutionary reflections | The Upturn/Downturn Debate: An Introduction
Ian Allinson summarises a debate on the development of capitalism since 1968, and how this has impacted the working class and its struggles, in an attempt to address the question of what revolutionaries should do. This summary was written early in 2015 and is published here for the first time. While pre-dating the failure of […]
On the Picket Line at East Dulwich Picturehouse
At 1pm on Saturday 15 April, staff at East Dulwich Picturehouse walked out of work, demanding the London Living Wage, union recognition, and adequate pay for sickness and parental leave.
Anti-gay atrocities in Chechnya: let asylum seekers into Britain!
Media reports from Chechnya bring Nazi persecution to mind and are leading to protests against the Russian government. Yet our own government regularly turns away LGBT asylum seekers – attacking that injustice is the best thing we can do to help Chechen gay men, writes Colin Wilson. Protest at the Russian embassy (photo: Steve Eason) […]
Grangemouth: chronicle of a defeat foretold
The union machine has once more been reduced to crying foul and continues to pursue a fatally discredited partnership model of industrial peace and ‘responsible’ trade unionism.