In this week's issue:

The Socialist 18 August 2010, issue Action now to defeat cuts!

Coventry Against the Cuts protest

Action now to defeat cuts!

Billionaire tax exile to slash services: A cabinet of millionaires appoints a billionaire to advise them on making cuts to our jobs and services, or as they refer to them - 'efficiencies'. No surprise there!, writes Alistair Tice, Yorkshire Socialist Party.

Pakistan: Workers' solidarity urgently needed

TWENTY MILLION people affected, over 1,600 dead and thousands face starvation, but the Pakistan government's lacklustre response and incompetence has made the disaster worse...

Floods in Pakistan bring devastation - poor suffer most

Youth must fight for a future!

Youth Fight for Jobs, photo Sarah Mayo

Bang, bang, bang. Listen out for the sounds of doors shutting in the faces of young people this month. 260,000 students have fulfilled their part of the contract. They have studied, stressed and sweated...

Student demo should be start of the fightback

No to advice service cuts

Decent pay for interns

Uni bosses say cuts will cause closures

Forecasts of fragile economic growth

The fragility of Britain's economic growth has been confirmed by various reports and comments from bankers and economists over the last week...

Cameron sticks the boot into our council housing

THE CON-DEM government is determined to use the excuse of a financial crisis to justify its aim to finish what Thatcher started - and Blair and Brown, in effect, continued - the comprehensive dismantling of the welfare state, writes Louise Cuffaro.

Private-profit company granted 'snoopers' charter'

Private Finance Initiative: A licence to print money

Coventry Against the Cuts challenge councillors' 'legal obligation'

Coventry Against the Cuts

"When the real impact of these cuts is felt in services for children, young people and some of the most vulnerable communities in Coventry, there will be outrage that all the other councillors were united in passing these cuts."...

Northern Ireland: Belfast Stop the Cuts Alliance established

Bromley care workers fight privatisation and job cuts

Defend Our Community Services launched in Bracknell

Cuts devastate mental health services

The legacy of Leon Trotsky

Leon Trotsky

Leon Trotsky, a revolutionary leader of the Russian revolution, was murdered on 20 August 1940 by an agent of Stalin. His role in the 1917 revolution, the greatest single event in human history, alone makes his writings worthy of study.
The ideas and methods of the Socialist Party and the socialist international to which it is affiliated, the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI), are based on Trotsky's, alongside those of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Vladimir Lenin.
70 years after his death Peter Taaffe, Socialist Party general secretary, assesses the contribution of Trotsky's ideas to the struggle for socialism in the 21st century.

Kirklees Unison strike ballot launched

Kirklees Unison has launched a formal industrial action ballot, to begin strike action in September to challenge the council's headlong rush into some of the most swingeing cuts in living memory, Huddersfield Socialist Party members write.

CWU members accept BT pay deal

Debate how to fight back at Socialism 2010

Tube staff vote for action against cuts

Jobs under threat at Ministry of Justice

Airport workers win improved offer from BAA

Workplace news in brief

Socialist Party summer camp - book now!

Book now for the Socialist Party summer camp for political discussion and fun in pleasant Essex countryside. Discussions include...

Russia's raging wildfires - a crisis of government policies

DOZENS HAVE died in fires, thousands have drowned, hundreds have been arrested in the last month as the environmental crisis and the struggle against its causes find their epicentre in Moscow, writes Rob Jones, Moscow.

Bradford must organise against the EDL

The racist English Defence League (EDL) plans to march through Bradford on Saturday 28 August. In a deeply provocative move the EDL has specifically targeted Bradford because of its large Asian and Muslim...

Birmingham: Community says 'No' to racist spy cameras