In this week's issue:

The Socialist 9 February 2011, issue Big Society? Big Con!

Big society? ... big con!

Demonstration in Southampton by Unite and Unison against Tory attacks on terms and conditions and cuts in public services, photo by David Smith

Behind all the talk of "localising power", "enabling" and so on, the Tory vision of the 'Big Society' has been exposed in all its gory glory, writes Dave Reid.

Fight the cuts - whoever makes them

Ditch the library cuts

Hands off our forests!

Campaigners reject maternity unit cuts

Billy Bragg helps raise Exeter Anti-Cuts funds

Institute of Directors, bosses' organisation, bares its teeth at unions

Solidarity with the Egyptian masses

Uprising in Egypt - Socialist Party public meetings

EDL racists terrorise Luton

Fast news

National education shutdown needed

UCU members on strike at London Met university in 2009 , photo Paul Mattsson

Despite the government railroading its attacks on young people through parliament, the 29 January demonstrations showed that there is still willingness to fight back...

PCS young members' network conference

Yorkshire: organising the student movement

Demonstrating against cuts in Grimsby

Volunteering 'plaster' for unemployment

Egypt: Is revolution derailed?

Revolution invokes Lenin

"Lenin said of revolutions that they demonstrate two things. The first is that the people cannot go on being ruled in the old way. The second is that the rulers cannot go on ruling in the old way" - The Guardian. Peter Taaffe, Socialist Party general secretary, on the Egyptian revolution.

Economic crisis in Greece: Immigrants made scapegoats

Solidarity messages needed for US prison reform activist

Southampton campaigners march in defence of jobs and services

Hugo Pierre speaks to the Southampton protest, Photo Southampton SP

Trade unionists, community campaigners, students and socialists marched into the centre of Southampton on 5 February to protest at government, council and business attacks on jobs, pay and services in the city, writes Southampton Socialist Party.

Jobs massacre at Pfizer

On 1 February it was announced that 2,400 workers at Pfizer's research and development facility in Sandwich, Kent, will be made redundant after the company's decision to close the site completely...

Striking against health job cuts

Scottish Unison members oppose leadership's sell-out

Leicester Unison members rally against all cuts

March against the job losses in Greenwich

Unite anti-cuts conference

Woody Sez

Woody Guthrie

Review: Devised/directed by David M Lutken and Nick Corley, writes Reviewed by Manny Thain.

Life on the autistic spectrum

Autism, from the Society for Neuroscience brain briefings May 2006, copyright Society for Neuroscience

Readers' comments: AUTISM IS a neurological condition that was first identified in the 1940s. It statistically affects about one in 100 people in the UK alone (although I believe there are more autistics who haven't been diagnosed), writes Lucy Stokes.