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What we think
No ‘blank cheque’ for Labour leadership candidates
The nomination stage of the Labour leadership contest is in full swing, but without the enthusiasm within and beyond the party’s rank and file that marked the surge behind Jeremy Corbyn when he stood for leader.
News
End health and wealth divide – fight for our NHS
Take a ride on the 83 bus across Sheffield and it takes ten years off your life! That’s how long life expectancy falls travelling just ten miles from the wealthier parts of the city to the poorest.
Unite union nominates Long-Bailey and Burgon
The Unite union executive council overwhelmingly agreed to nominate Rebecca Long-Bailey and Richard Burgon as Labour Party leader and deputy leader respectively at its special meeting on Friday 24 January.
Coronavirus: capitalism limits response to viral outbreaks
For the third time in 20 years a new virus has spread from animals to humans. It began on 29 December in Wuhan, a Chinese city of eleven million, probably crossing to humans at a live animal market.
HS2 debacle: nationalise rail and construction!
Tory cabinet minister Stephen Barclay has a “gut feeling” that the ‘HS2’ high-speed rail link between London and the north of England will go ahead.
Johnson’s Huawei internet deal underlines world trade tensions
As expected, Boris Johnson has approved Chinese tech giant Huawei gaining licences to build 5G web network infrastructure in Britain.
It’s one world for the super-rich and another one for us.
Workplace news
University and College Union: Pensions, pay and conditions dispute reach a crucial stage
As we go to press, a crucial meeting of the University and College Union (UCU) higher education committee is set to take place to decide the future strategy in the ongoing disputes over pensions, pay and conditions.
PCS union elections: Nominate candidates fighting austerity and for union democracy
When I stood to be general secretary nearly 10,000 PCS union members voted for my campaign, to rebuild a fighting democratic union.
Interview with a forestry worker
The environment is near the top of everyone’s agenda currently, as it should be, due to the scale of the crisis that we face now and in the future
Going into their ninth week of action over pay, Westex carpet strikers had a boost when the local BBC news programme Look North filmed and interviewed the pickets.
Brexit and the economy
Brexit and British capitalism – why Johnson’s juggernaut is set to jackknife
Boris Johnson, elated by his election victory and refreshed from his Caribbean holiday, now faces, in the words of a newspaper journalist, a long-postponed “rendezvous with reality”.
Stop the cuts
Fight the closure of Royal Glamorgan A&E
Save Hampden Nursery in Camden
We need socialists in London’s City Hall
Unite regional committee votes to support anti-cuts Enfield councillor
Cuts to women’s services cost lives
In 2018, 173 people were killed in domestic violence-related homicides – an increase of 32 deaths on 2017 and an average of more than three murders a week.
Campaigns
Socialist sellers: Opposing the Tories & fighting cuts
There seemed to be a new mood among the people who stopped at our stalls in Southampton over the past week
London protest against Modi’s racist law
Tamil Solidarity called a London demonstration, involving various organisations, to protest the racist, anti-Muslim Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) imposed by the Modi government in India.
International news
Libya: Civil war and chaos follow interventions by world and regional powers
It is almost nine years since the Nato-led military intervention in Libya, and the country is still a mess, split between conflicting forces, backed by western capitalist powers, Russia, and regional powers Turkey and Saudi Arabia. An ongoing series of ‘peace’ summits hosted by various world powers have failed to resolve an increasingly violent civil war. In the second of our series on the Middle East, Tom Baldwin explains how imperialism brought about this chaos and why the current conflict can only be resolved by an independent revolutionary movement of workers and the poor.
Trump’s trashing of the environment – Dump the capitalist profit system!
At the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, US president Donald Trump attacked those calling for meaningful action to halt catastrophic, capitalist-induced climate change as “prophets of doom”.
Abbey Trotsky of the Democratic Socialist Movement (CWI, Nigeria) faces four cases against him in separate courts, writes The Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) is the socialist international organisation to which the Socialist Party in England and Wales is affiliated. CWI members here in Britain, those in other countries are involved in workers’ struggles and developing socialist ideas in order to fundamentally change society.
Readers’ opinion
TV review: The Trial of Christine Keeler
Benjamin Disraeli, two-time Tory prime minister in the nineteenth century, once said: “A Conservative government is an organised hypocrisy”. The Christine Keeler story on BBC1 would seem to bear out that analysis.
Letter’s to the Socialist’s editors