Society and the working class
Human life is utterly dependent on social organisation and activity. Yet addicts of the free market declare that there is no such thing as society.
News/Views
Boom produces bust
The surge in capitalist markets from 1997 to 2007 was only achieved by deliberate, reckless stimulation of credit growth, enacted through a combination of abnormally low interest rates (relative to inflation) and exceedingly lax regulation of both credit and housing markets.
Collective organisation
How did previous working class gains materialise? Improvements and reforms came out of past struggle and campaigns by organised workers.
1926: The General Strike
At a time when some are calling for a General Strike we need to get clearer about what happened last time there was one in Britain…
1941: The battle for Moscow
Seventy years ago the world held its breath as Nazi troops came up to the gates of the Soviet Union’s capital city... It was not only the greatest battle in the Second World War but also the largest battle ever fought between two armies.
The myth of the market
Over the past 32 years, Britain’s political leaders have lectured us with their mantra of disaster, “Let the markets decide!” Though the personnel in Downing Street have changed, the message has remained obsessively constant.
Unemployment – war on workers
We only have one shot at life. Consigning workers to periods of prolonged idleness is a criminal waste of talent and an indictment of this flawed society that treats us as just flotsam and jetsam.
Britain’s war against Libya
Britain’s brutally aggressive adventure in Libya is to be utterly condemned. Claiming falsely to protect civilians, British military jets are raining munitions from the sky on to Tripoli and other Libyan cities…
The NHS: fighting inside, fighting to win
For those working in the NHS, our best chance of entering the field in our best shape is the battle for pay...
Social democracy
Social democracy, including its British counterparts such as the Social Democratic Federation and successors including the Labour Party, saw workers as passive, an electorate, a force to be harnessed,
Labour aristocracy
Anxious to work out why the oldest working class, the British, had avoided moving to revolution, external commentators at the height of empire concocted a false argument in an effort to explain away this behaviour. In some circles it is still lazily dispensed a century or so later.
The profit-lined way to motorway madness
The devastation of the rail network that began in the 1960s was a conscious decision to move away from a state-owned industry to private profit – led by a transport minister whose family ran a road-building company…