In this week's issue:

The Socialist 28 May 2008, issue 535

Build A New Workers' Party

The fight for a new workers party is urgent - teachers strike on 24 April 2008, photo Paul Mattsson

Labour, Tories, LibDems ...they're all the same! "Et tu, Crewe?" Gordon Brown might have muttered to himself as the knife of another electoral drubbing sank into his back, writes Greg Maughan, Campaign for a New Workers' Party.

Crewe and Nantwich 'no-win' by-election: Why New Labour lost

I told my union: "We need a new workers' party"

Westminster parties are remote from life

MPs' expensive expenses

Socialist Party campaigns

Tax the rich not the poor!

Over four million low-paid workers felt some relief when Gordon Brown was forced into his tax u-turn, writes Judy Beishon.

Exeter bomb explosion: Workers' unity needed against terrorism, war and deprivation

Johnson's Prince of Darkness

Them & Us

Greenwich - save our centres

Socialist Party women

Women welcome abortion rights victory: Now fight to extend rights

1,000 people joined a lively Abortion Rights Campaign protest opposite Parliament , photo Leah Jones and Anna Engelhardt

THE VARIOUS attempts to restrict rights to abortion, via amendments to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology bill, ended in defeat on 20 May as MPs voted to keep the status quo, writes Eleanor Donne.

Youth and crime

Home secretary: "Tough on crime"...but not the causes

Home secretary Jacqui Smith has urged police forces to harass 'badly behaved' young people, writes Matt Dobson, Socialist Students national organiser.

'Youth justice': repressive measures do not work

Socialist Party feature

'Counter-terrorism' legislation threatens our democratic rights

Postal workers trampled on the anti-trade union laws

Feature: The government's proposal to extend the period the police can hold suspects without charge to 42 days, will be presented to parliament in the next few weeks. ANNA LUCAS explains that, far from being a step in the right direction, these new laws, and other 'anti-crime' measures over recent years, amount to a major and unjustified attack on our democratic rights.

International socialist analysis

South Africa: Attacks on refugees and migrants reveal capitalism's barbaric underbelly

THE WAVE of xenophobic pogroms which have swept through the squatter camps adjoining black townships around Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town, has so far claimed more than 50 lives and has left over 80,000 homeless. Weizmann Hamilton, of the Democratic Socialist Movement (CWI, South Africa) reports on the current crisis and the issues underlying it.

Socialist Party review

The Wire - Reviewed by Michael Wrack

When The Wire first started it could easily have been mistaken for just another 'cop show', and a particularly slow, dialogue-driven one at that...

Socialist Party workplace news

PCS conference: More battles ahead on pay and jobs

PCS workers on strike, photo Paul Mattsson

This year's conference of the civil service union PCS was a resounding success, writes Bill Mullins, Socialist Party industrial organiser.

Usdaw general secretary election: Members want democratic debate

Industrial news in brief