How attentive to the news have readers of the Socialist been in 2017? Here’s the test as drawn up by the paper’s editors in this year’s quiz. The answers are at the end.

Season’s greetings and a happy New Year.

Santa Karl Marx

Santa Karl Marx   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

Questions

1) In November, who resigned after 37 years in the job?

2) Whose renewal heat incentive sparked an election?

3) Which group of workers won after 85 days of strike action?

4) Which group of workers won after nearly two years of industrial action?

5) Which Labour council obtained legal injunctions against peaceful environmental protesters?

6) Who had to pay back

£32.4 million in unpaid wages to 37,000 workers?

7) Why did an estimated five million people, mostly women, demonstrate around the world on 21 January?

8) Why did up to 250,000 people march through central London on 4 March?

9) What achieved its lowest level since the Napoleonic Wars?

10) Who was cleared of “false imprisonment” charges?

11) Which trade unionist’s re-election was a setback for Labour’s right?

12) What percentage vote did French left presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon secure in the first round election?

13) According to the Sunday Times Rich List, what is the collective wealth of the 1,000 richest people in Britain. A – £476 billion, B – 593 billion, or C – £658 billion?

14) Which group of US sportswomen won a favourable contract after threatening strike action?

Theresa May's Tories are holed below the waterline - let's scupper them, photo FCO/CC (Theresa May), public domain (ship), James Ivens (composite)

Theresa May’s Tories are holed below the waterline – let’s scupper them, photo FCO/CC (Theresa May), public domain (ship), James Ivens (composite)   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

15) Where did an estimated 40 million workers strike on 28 April?

16) Who said: “Karl Marx has a lot to teach today’s politicians”?

17) Whose gamble to be “strong and stable” spectacularly backfired?

18) Which group of low paid workers voted by 99% for strike action in June?

19) Who withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement in June?

20) Who was booed; and who was cheered at the Grenfell Tower fire disaster site?

21) Who was fined $2.8 billion for cheating tests?

22) How many seats did Jeremy Corbyn’s-led Labour win on 8 June?

23) Whose 12 weeks of strike action forced a Blairite-led council to dump its job and pay cuts diktat?

24) Who called who “rocket man”?

25) Who said: “You can’t understand the capitalist system without reading Marx’s Das Kapital”?

26) Who was murdered by a neo-Nazi in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August?

27) Which MP did Labour’s Vicky Foxcroft report to the police?

28) Who in the UK paid 50% less tax this year compared to last year?

29) Who made history by walking out in August?

30) What historic walkout took place at the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street?

31) Whose failure to roster workers’ holidays caused thousands of cancellations?

32) Who was “terminated and removed” by Trump in May?

33) Name the far-right party that won nearly six million votes in Germany’s general election.

34) Who invoked article 155?

35) What did former Tory PM John Major call “operationally messy, socially unfair and unforgiving”?

36) What is the average pay of bosses in the UK’s biggest 100 companies?

37) Who was handed a P45 redundancy notice during a faltering speech?

38) What did the Tory government say it will ban in 2040?

39) Following the Paradise Papers, how much in profits had multinational companies shifted offshore in the last year alone?

40) Which event shook the world 100 years ago?


Answers

Robert Mugabe photo Jeremy Lock/CC, photo Jeremy Lock/CC

Robert Mugabe photo Jeremy Lock/CC, photo Jeremy Lock/CC   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

1) Zimbabwe’s dictator, president Robert Mugabe – after an effective military coup.

2) The £1 billion ‘cash for ash’ scandal, initiated by the DUP’s leader Arlene Foster, led to a collapse of the Northern Ireland executive and assembly elections in March.

3) BA mixed fleet cabin crew.

4) Glasgow school janitors.

5) Sheffield council whose costly PFI contract is destroying urban trees.

6) Retail giant Argos (owned by Sainsbury’s) after paying less than the minimum wage.

7) To protest Donald Trump’s inauguration – particularly his sexism, racism and policies of inequality.

8) To stop the latest Tory cuts and privatisation of the NHS.

9) Pay growth in the current decade according to the Resolution Foundation.

10) Six Jobstown anti-water charges protesters in the Irish Republic – including Socialist Party elected reps Paul Murphy, Mick Murphy and Kieran Mahon.

11) Unite general secretary Len McCluskey.

12) 19.58% – compared to Le Pen’s 21.3%.

13) C – up 14% since 2016.

14) US women’s ice hockey team.

15) Brazil – against the anti-worker policies of the illegitimate government of president Michael Temer.

16) The capitalist journal the Economist.

17) Theresa May after losing the government’s majority in the 8 June general election.

18) Barts NHS workers employed by multinational Serco.

19) The pro fossil-fuels US president, Donald Trump

Glasgow 'jannies' have won their strike campaign for jobs and pay

Glasgow ‘jannies’ have won their strike campaign for jobs and pay   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

20) Theresa May was jeered and told to resign, whereas firefighters received rapturous applause.

21) Car giant VW after it rigged 11 million of its diesel cars’ exhaust emissions.

22) 262 MPs (up 30) – 40% of the popular vote.

23) Victorious Birmingham bin workers.

24) Trump’s insult of North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong-un, in an escalation of the peninsula’s nuclear crisis.

25) Labour shadow chancellor, John McDonnell.

26) Heather Heyer. Trump initially blamed “hatred on many sides” instead of racist white nationalists.

27) The fictitious left-wing ‘Ana Key MP’, created for a student art project website by Socialist Party member Ellen Kenyon Peers. The neighbouring constituent MP Foxcroft took umbrage over Ana Key’s socialist policies.

28) Amazon. Despite the company’s turnover rising by 54%.

29) Unionised low paid McDonald’s workers in Crayford and Cambridge.

30) Low paid Bank of England workers took successful three-day strike action – the first BoE strike for 40 years.

31) Europe’s largest airline, Ryanair – run by anti-union boss, Michael O’Leary.

32) FBI director James Comey who was investigating the US president’s campaign ties to Russian officials.

33) The racist and xenophobic AfD (Alternative for Germany).

34) Mario Rajoy, Spain’s right-wing PP prime minister, who imposed direct rule over Catalonia.

35) The Tories’ Universal Credit benefits system.

36) £5.3 million or 386 times the minimum wage.

37) The hapless Theresa May was handed the form at the Tory conference by a comedian, cheekily claiming that Boris Johnson had told him to do it!

38) New diesel and petrol engine cars and vans (not trucks). This belated headline policy comes after it was revealed that air pollution has led to 40,000 ‘excess deaths’ in the UK.

39) An estimated €600 billion.

40) The Bolshevik-led October 1917 socialist revolution.