Growing poverty and inequality in Europe prove that the market alone cannot deliver. It’s time to change the narrative, says JUDITH KIRTON-DARLING, Confederal Secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC). Here, she sets out the terms of a new European social contract. Austerity and poverty in Europe are blighting our continent. Both are having...
Meet the New Boss
The UK government has created a new profit source for security giant G4S and its partners: managing housing for asylum seekers. JOHN GRAYSON reports on a reckless experiment whose result is human misery. On the evening of Tuesday 30 October a new asylum seeker sent from London, 250 miles north to a property in Thornaby,...
An appeal from the Marikana Support Campaign
On the 16 August, South African Police fired live ammunition at striking miners at Lonmin’s Marikana mine, killing 34 and injuring 78. Many were shot at close range while trying to surrender. The Marikana miners were demanding a tripling of their salary to R12,500 (£950 or €1100) per month. In the following days, 270 of...
‘Plebs’ on the march
The self-declared ‘plebs’ were out in force on Saturday at the TUC’s march against austerity in London, while thousands more were on the streets of Glasgow and Belfast to voice their anger at the coalition government. ‘Plebs Unite’ read one placard. ‘Proud Loud Educated Broke’ said another. ‘I’d rather be a pleb than a toff’...
A Future that Works
The TUC is calling for people from across the country to join its national demonstration against the coalition government’s cuts and austerity programme in London on Saturday 20 October. The march, called ‘A Future that Works’, will follow the same route as last year’s March for the Alternative which attracted a quarter of a million...
Clarion House celebrates its centenary
Cyclists, ramblers, singers and activists gathered in the foothills around Pendle, Lancashire, to celebrate the centenary of Clarion House on 11th and 12th August. The rural tea room is the last surviving monument to a once thriving part of the Labour movement, the hundreds of Clarion societies that provided community to working people and promoted...
The crisis, Europe and the left
Successes for left parties in France and Greece are welcome signs of resistance to the right’s austerity measures. But the legacies of the economic crisis mean there are no easy choices for Europe’s social democrats, argues WILL BROWN. Electoral advances for the left in Europe are long overdue coming after a succession of defeats and...
Crisis, Markets and Protest
Today capitalism is news. Talk about capitalist crisis is widespread in ways that have not been heard for decades. Yet, it is the forces of the right that continue to dominate politically, even though the system they most strongly espouse is facing severe upheavals. Often discredited, social democratic parties are struggling to get a...
Socialism with a Northern Accent
“There is much in the British socialist tradition that has been forgotten or ignored, and which runs counter to state centralism, in particular a stress on grass-roots solutions, co-operation and an emphasis on local culture. Applied imaginatively, these traditions open up the possibility of creating a popular democratic culture which reflects different but complementary...
Stop Kony, stop thinking?
In the past week, the ‘Stop Kony’ campaign, aimed at the arrest of African ‘warlord’ Joseph Kony, leader of the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army, has become an unlikely internet phenomenon. There is an undoubted justice to the campaign to the extent that, as the LRA leader, Kony is responsible for crimes against humanity stretching...
Hannah Mitchell Foundation launched
More than 120 people attended the launch of the Hannah Mitchell Foundation at Bradford City Hall on Friday 9 March. It was “a cracking start” according to the organisation's president Linda Riordan MP. “The meeting showed a sense of purpose and feeling on the issues facing the north,” she said. “It shows that there is...
‘A triumph for activism’
The Working Class Movement Library, which houses some of the ILP archives, has won the national Museums at Night contest to stage an international artist event in May. The Salford-based library beat Quay Arts on the Isle of Wight and the Guernsey Museum in a public vote described as 'a triumph of activism' by its...