The war against youth
A forward-looking, optimistic, collectively minded society will nurture and encourage its youth, ensuring they know how important they are now and for the future.
Features
Features
A young person’s place is in their union
Young people are not enthused by traditional politics – but that doesn’t mean they are apathetic. Harnessing and directing interest where young workers have economic power is not easy.
Progress in tube fight
The long-running dispute over the introduction of a 24-hour rail service on London’s underground took a positive turn when RMT, TSSA and Unite called off two further 24-hour strikes scheduled for the last week of August.
Tested to destruction?
Why are governments (Tory, Labour) so obsessed with school testing? The latest wheeze is to test the youngest children within a few weeks of starting full-time school, when most are still just four years old.
No work, no rest
Workers leaving school or university now have to pay individually to fund a non-guaranteed pension due in forty years’ time. That would seem an odd idea to previous generations of British workers.
No care, no shame
In their election manifesto, the Conservatives said that by April 2016 they would cap charges on residential social care and limit the liability of any individual needing long-term care, along with a rise in the level of personal assets above which people would be ineligible for state help.
What’s in the bill?
New restrictions on the right to strike, including a 50 per cent voting threshold for union ballot turnouts, plus in some “essential public services” 40 per cent of those entitled to vote must vote for industrial action.
They want us to disarm and surrender
The Trade Union Bill announced in the Queen’s Speech has resurrected every wish-list governments ever had of smashing the working class. It embodies every anti-worker measure they’ve previously tried to implement and every shred of vindictive class hatred they have had in their ranks reaching back to day one of modern capitalism.
Take part, take heart
How heartening to be in a united and determined group of workers who successfully resist a move against them or gain an improvement. What could be better?
Who needs the EU? Not the motor industry…
The British motor industry is bucking the trend of decline – even though there are no longer any major British-owned motor manufacturers. It is an industry that thrives outside of the EU and demonstrably would thrive even more without the EU’s destructive restrictions.
Why Britain needs an industrial policy
Britain can’t properly provide for its people without a complex web of manufacture and technology. For all the talk of services, it needs industry.
Yes to Britain, no to the EU
This Party is for the union of England, Scotland and Wales in Britain. We are against separatism, because for a part of the British working class to leave Britain is not independence but secession, splitting. We are for Britain’s unity. We are also for Ireland’s unity.
The facts about what leaving the EU would mean
The EU is an organisation that was formed, and is run, by the employing class for itself. We are for the interests of the working class in Britain.
'Motorsport valley': a centre of manufacturing excellence
In “Motorsport Valley”, the business cluster near the Silverstone circuit in Northamptonshire, around 4,300 companies employ around 41,000 people and have a combined turnover of around £9 billion a year.
Unity needed – to stop the EU pulling us apart
The parliamentary parties are for saving capitalism and enhancing its profits. And the EU is the instrument designed for this…
Something for nothing
With Scottish universities among the highest users of zero-hours contracts, it is fitting that the University and College Union (UCU) should hold its annual congress this May in Glasgow.
And the next generation?
The number of young people choosing to study science is actually rising, despite the fees. From 2007/8 to 2013/14: Physics up 16 per cent, Engineering and Technology up 15 per cent, Biological Sciences up 30 per cent.
Science for the people: Away with superstitions
If all Britain had in the way of scientific research were just what is contained in London, we would be a global scientific power.
The DevoManc debacle
There’s been very little support for splitting up England whenever it has been put to the vote. Two years ago the people of Manchester voted not to have an elected mayor. They could not see why they needed yet another politician.
Three steps towards unwanted devolution
1. Plan announced to give Greater Manchester greater control of its finances and an elected mayor
2. Devolution agreement between Chancellor of the Exchequer and leaders of the GMCA
3. Memorandum of Understanding between NHS England and Greater Manchester
Barts: start talking
THE LARGEST NHS trust in Britain is blundering towards the precipice of bankruptcy – flawed from the inception of the Barts PFI deal, delivered under the last Labour government.
The battle for the arts: people versus profit
Should the arts be expected to create capital, and capital expected to fund the arts? Or are the arts an essential human function that ultimately cannot be controlled by capital?
Arts education for all, too
No matter how hard it tries to push a private/public partnership agenda, the Warwick report cannot escape the key role of state education in developing the creativity and curiosity of students.
TTIP's drive to war
Opposition to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is growing. And no wonder: it would have dangerous economic, legal, and political consequences.
Why Britain needs an independent energy policy
Want a country without enough energy to prevent blackouts? Fancy a return to the 18th century? Just stick with the muddle of complacent governments and environmental extremists...
In supermarket wars, we are the first casualty
The drive to increase supermarket profits has led to low pay, waves of redundancies, zero hours contracts and intolerable squeezes on agriculture.
The strange death of language centres
The Home Office originally funded language centres to help schools cope with large numbers of families with little or no English. And then came a pernicious reversal in policies…
Rotherham: more than a local problem?
The publication of the Jay report into the sexual exploitation of children in Rotherham has lifted the lid on what happens when professionals stay silent rather than stick their heads above the parapets of political correctness…
The 5 are back again!
The Miami Five are now all free and back home in Cuba with their families, we look at the background to this great victory…
Accounting for money in the Soviet Union
During Socialist transition some workers were in more mechanised workplaces than others, some less rationally organised or working with less up to date equipment etc. So the same product(s) produced from different locations could not at this time be directly exchanged with other products solely on the basis of the number of hours worked.