50 years from May ‘68, students in France are mobilising again
France is again in the midst of a wave of intense social action, with universities disrupted for months and mass arrests in Mayday protests.
Music as a force for change: an interview with Redskins’ Martin Hewes
An interview with Martin Hewes of the Redskins, to some the true inheritors of the Clash’s crown as the radical rockers
University picket lines – a place of learning
Footage from Goldsmiths college picket line where staff and students talk about their experience of striking so far.
Video: what is rank-and-file trade unionism?
Ian Allinson looks at rank-and-file worker organisation – the alternative to a reliance on bureaucrats to cut deals with management.
Read the new bulletin on the UCU strike!
Introducing USS Strike Bulletin, a collaborative online project exploring the bigger questions around neoliberalism in Higher Education.
Update: what’s new in the UCU strike?
We look at the latest developments in the wave of strikes that has taken employers by surprise across the higher education system.
UCU strike: dispatches from the picket line
Striking academic workers and their student supporters report on the ongoing nationwide action in defence of pensions.
A critical week lies ahead in the West Virginia teachers’ strike
The West Virginia teachers’ strike marks the return of the mass strike to the US in 2018.
revolutionary reflections | The Roberts-Arundel strike
A never-before-seen pamphlet dating from 1968 tells the fascinating true story of the Stockport Roberts-Arundel textile strike.
“We have to fight this”: interview with a striking lecturer
The strike action beginning next Thursday will be one of the largest ever in UK Higher Education.
On the picket line at Picturehouse
Workers at cinema chain Picturehouse went on strike this weekend as part of their campaign for the London Living Wage.
How capital is reshaping the battleground of class war
Kim Moody’s new book seeks to rethink our understanding of capitalism today, and how workers can respond.
Against the academy: parents and teachers protest primary school conversion
OpenEye Film met the Avenue primary school parents fighting the conversion of the school into an academy.
Report: work-in by engineers looks to save jobs at BiFab
Pete Cannell and Willie Black report on the battle in defence of workers’ jobs at Scottish engineering firm BiFab.
Video: Charlton Park Academy picket line 17th October 2017
Tony Aldis and Colin Revolting speak to GMB members at Charlton Park Academy on strike defending equal sick pay for all staff.
Video: Charlton Park School strike public meeting
Watch a short extract of a public meeting to explain the strike action and to organise support for these workers under attack.
#McStrike: Lively pickets and London rally mark first UK McDonald’s strike
Mitch Mitchell reports from the Cambridge picket lines and London rally of McDonald’s workers taking strike action for the first time.
NEU radicals?
Andrew Stone, Joint Secretary of the Wandsworth branch of the newly formed National Education Union, writes in a personal capacity on prospects for trade unionists in education after the merger of the National Union of Teachers and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers. Numeracy: On 1st September the UK’s fourth biggest trade union was born […]
‘You strike a woman, you strike a rock’
Luke Hodgkin reviews Aliki Saragas’s new film Strike a Rock, which follows the fight for justice of the women widowed by the 2012 Marikana Massacre in South Africa. On 16 August 2012, 34 striking miners were shot dead by the South African security forces, in what has become known as the ‘Marikana massacre’. There has been no […]
McDonald’s workers set to strike for first time in UK history
Employees at McDonald’s are taking a stand against bullying, poverty pay and zero-hours contracts writes Lisa Leak Workers at two McDonald’s outlets in Cambridge and Crayford have voted overwhelmingly in favour of taking industrial action for the first time in the history of McDonald’s in the UK. The workers are members of the Bakers’, Food […]
Video: Jane McAlevey on unions, strikes and strategies for workplace organising
Jane McAlevey interviewed by Ian Allinson at a Manchester rs21 meeting in April 2017, discussing her new book No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age, strategies for workplace organising today, the difference between ‘organising’ and ‘mobilising’, and how to build successful strikes, amongst many other things. We republish this video courtesy of RealMedia. […]
Agency cleaners score landmark victory over SOAS management
Outsourced cleaners at SOAS have scored a milestone win – and shown that precarious workers can fight and win
Manchester housing workers to reballot after three months of strikes
On the last day of three months’ of strike action, culminating in a four-week continuous strike, Unite activist Ian Allinson interviewed Unite UCATT steward Bill Nugent about the dispute at Mears / Manchester Working Limited and comments on the dispute It’s not often that workers take this level of action. After striking three days’ a […]
Barts cleaners strike against SERCO for a fair pay rise
Rachel Eborall, a Mental Health worker at Mile End Hospital, and ex SERCO employee, writes in solidarity with the striking cleaning workers at Barts NHS trust. In April 2017 SERCO, one of the largest multinationals, took over the cleaning contract of Barts NHS trust. Barts NHS trust is made up of St Bartholomew’s Hospital, The […]
Bank of England strike – “People have had enough of this public sector pay cap!”
Steve Eason reports as striking Bank of England workers were joined by staff from BA and Bart’s hospital on their third day of action. This week bank maintenance, parlours, and security workers who are members of Unite the Union, have been striking at The Bank of England in central London over a below inflation pay […]
Video: Redskins – A flame that can’t be dimmed
This ten minute film pays tribute to the revolutionary rock and soul band Redskins.
Manchester housing maintenance workers strike
Report from the ongoing Manchester strike for pay parity and against housing maintenance on the cheap
‘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 […]
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.
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 […]