Safe passage now – the border is the crisis
As around a hundred migrants have crossed the Channel in recent weeks, the Government and the Border Force are trying to prevent a new route into the UK at all costs.
Happy NEU year?
The newly formed National Education Union is currently balloting for action. What are the prospects for the new union and the left within it?
A homosexual Christmas in 1905 Berlin
Colin Wilson presents an account of a “uranian” Christmas, written by a leading campaigner over a hundred years ago.
Immigration White Paper: We treat #PatientsNotPassports
The government published its delayed Immigration White Paper yesterday. Here a doctor tells us about the damage current immigration policies is already causing patients.
Fighting for socialism today
Author and socialist, David McNally, reflects on the tasks of socialist organising in dangerous times.
Confronting China’s War on Terror
Socialists should offer solidarity to the China’s repressed minorities without pinning hopes on Washington as an ally of the Uyghur cause.
Understanding the Arab right #HM2018
Lisa L reports from a session at Historical Materialism conference that included perspectives on Lebanon, Morocco, Egypt and the Syrian civil war.
Yellow vests: Macron’s fuel tax was no solution to climate chaos
Why Macron’s ‘eco-tax’ on fuel was never a fair or effective way to tackle climate change
Climate change and the agrarian crisis in India
On the eve of the COP24, farmers and agricultural workers are demanding action on India’s “giant agrarian crisis”.
A Kestral for a Knave: fifty years on
Barry Hines’s book A Kestrel for a Knave, which became the film Kes, was published fifty years ago this year, but it remains as relevant as ever.
Artistic ‘freedom’: a snapshot from working in the arts
A recent demonstration of precarious workers made Liz Forster see her own experience as a zero-hour worker differently.
Revolutionary organising in non-revolutionary periods #HM2018
Two sessions at Historical Materialism conference 2018 addressed questions of strategy for the left, each taking very different approaches.
Working-class strategy #HM2018
In the superb final session at the 2018 Historical Materialism Conference, Katy Fox-Hodess and Amanda Armstrong discussed how the left should relate to workers with different sorts of potential power and strengthen connections with struggles against oppression and imperialism: the structural power of workers such as dockers does not exist in isolation from the wider […]
Pétain, Franco and chemical warfare in the Rif
While Macron has been trying to rehabilitate Pétain as a WWI hero, the latter’s role in a war against Africa’s first anti-colonial state is less well known.
Obituary: Jean Dorothy Parkin, 1921-2018
Brian Parkin looks back at the life of his mother, Jean Dorothy Parkin, who passed away on 14th November.
Resistance not resilience: ruling class and radical approaches to mental health
While employers want healthy workers, they are not prepared to look at the deeper causes of mental distress.
The Old Lie
The First World War ended 100 years ago today, on 11 November 1918. Four years ago, Matthew Cookson looked at how poetry of the period reflected growing resistance to ruling class justifications for war. Now he returns to the theme to explore how struggles over how it is remembered have continued to this day. One […]
Six socialist takeaways from the US midterm elections 2018
Alan Maass looks at some of the main themes of the 2018 US midterms and what they tell us. This article first appeared on socialistworker.org No. 1: This is what polarization (not democracy) looks like Coulda been, shoulda been. The 2018 midterm elections should have been a ringing repudiation of Donald Trump and the Republican […]
Bolsonaro elected president of Brazil: how did we get to this point?
Following the recent election of Jair Bolsonaro as president of Brazil, Marcelo Badaró Mattos asks how we got here.
Weathering the storm
Reflections on the election of the far-right Jair Bolsonaro as president of Brazil by Lisa Leak, who spent Election Day with anti-fascists and feminists outside the Brazilian Embassy.
The Left and a People’s Vote
While the march was mainly organised and led by the neoliberal ‘centre’, there were also socialists on the march. Unite activist Ian Allinson discusses how the left should respond.
Trump’s transphobic attack is deeper than definitions
The Trump administration is escalating its attacks on transgender people — and the left has a duty to not only resist, but put forward a positive vision, writes Fainan Lakha. Shock and sickness produced a heaviness in my body that kept me pinned me under the covers all Sunday. Moments after waking up that morning, I […]
Neither Westminster nor Stormont
This week, buoyed by the #NowForNI campaign, Labour MPs have made multiple attempts to extend reproductive rights to the North of Ireland. On Tuesday 23 October, Diana Johnson’s largely symbolic ten-minute rule bill to scrap the 1861 Offences Against the Persons Act (the law used to criminalise abortion) passed its first reading by 208 to […]
‘Legitimate Concerns’: the Language of Division
How does the language of “legitimate concerns” play into racist narratives? Hanna Gal argues against making any concessions to the discourse of the right.
The Looming Massacre in Idlib
The regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad is threatening to carry out a massive assault on the province of Idlib, including a potential chemical weapons attack, in a bid to crush one of the last strongholds of opposition. Such an assault would have a potentially devastating impact on civilians, many of them refugees from the […]
US prison strike: the slaves rebel
The heroic strike action of prisoners in the United States highlights the potential for revolt among America’s modern-day slave population
After the Heß demo – why do the Berlin police protect (some) Nazi marches?
Police in Berlin recently enabled a neo-Nazi demonstration to march through the multicultural Friedrichshain district
The people versus the parliament in Argentina
The Argentine Senate’s vote against legal abortion is a bitter setback – but Argentine women will not be silenced
Always anti-fascist, always anti-sexist
Kate Bradley considers the misogyny at the heart of fascism, and asks how we can better challenge it.
Greece and the politics of natural disasters
The government has persistently allowed private interests in construction, industry and tourism to be prioritised over serious ecological and safety concerns.