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Socialist Party news and analysis
NHS crisis: we’re fighting back!
Health workers up and down the country are bracing themselves for a winter crisis. The situation has reached a tipping point in recent years. Is it any wonder that around the country a mood of anger and rebellion is rapidly developing?
End the Tories’ war on the working poor
For working people in the UK today poverty is becoming a normality, just as it was in Bagehot’s time. 55% of poor people now live in working households – for the first time on record.
Amazon workers living in tents
In the latest shocking revelations about online retail giant Amazon, accused of “intolerable working conditions,” workers were apparently found sleeping in tents near its Glasgow depot.
Pfizer drug extortion – nationalise big pharma!
Drugs company Pfizer has been fined a record £84.2 million for excessive and unfair pricing of an anti-epilepsy drug. The choice is simple: cheap, high-quality, nationalised drug manufacturing – or a system that continues to allow corporate raiding of the NHS.
Trust in politicians reaches all-time low
According to this year’s ‘veracity’ survey from polling agency Ipsos Mori, faith in British politicians to tell the truth is lower than ever before.
No to home seizures for care bills
Councils may start seizing the homes of elderly people after death to pay care bills. Ministers are also considering letting local authorities charge more council tax to cover them. Councils should instead fight for more funding, and for care to be nationalised.
It’s one wold for the super-rich and another for the rest of us. What might the super-rich pick up as stocking fillers this Christmas? Meanwhile, child homelessness and in-work poverty continue to rise.
What we think
Establishment EU crisis deepens – fight for a socialist Brexit
It doesn’t take a political genius to spot that the Tories are at war with each other. Corbyn’s Labour has to go on the attack and push for a working class alternative in the move towards Brexit.
A socialist programme for education
Teacher trade unionists have been engaged in a bitter struggle to defend education. As socialists, though, we don’t simply see our role as a defensive one, but to offer a way out of the chaos: a socialist education programme.
Education for all – not exam factories
It is without doubt that our children are the most tested in the world.
International socialist news and analysis
CWI: opportunities for substantial growth
CWI international executive committee report: Important developments for the Committee for a Workers’ International, the world socialist organisation which the Socialist Party is part of, mean it is heading towards a hugely important qualitative advance for the genuine forces of Trotskyism internationally.
Workplace news and analysis
Glasgow Labour leaders deluged with protests
The attempted scabbing operation by Glasgow Labour council in an effort to undermine Unison’s strike action against privatisation of ICT services has been pushed back.
Victory for UPS parcel workers
Nationalise Tata Steel to save jobs and pensions
Bin workers strike against draconian management
Derby TAs to strike against pay cut
Derby teaching assistants are to take a further six days of strike action in their dispute with the Labour-led city council. The TAs have already taken several days of strike action over massive cuts to pay.
Southern: back the strike, nationalise the railways!
Members of train drivers’ unions Aslef and RMT are taking three days of strike action on Southern Rail on 13, 14 and 16 December in the long-running dispute over the removal of guards.
Socialist Party reports and campaigns
Birmingham Labour: Corbyn supporters need not apply
The Birmingham board of the Labour Party is reported to have voted to exclude all members who joined on or after July 2015 from selecting Labour candidates for the 2018 local elections.
The Socialist Party and fighting women’s oppression
Following the Leicester Reclaim the Night march, the local Socialist Party invited the University of Leicester Feminist Society to speak at a meeting on rape and sexual violence. The society declined and said some “FemSoc committee and members… felt that the [Socialist Party] were trying to take over women’s issues with socialism.”
Doncaster: cuts give rise to ‘tent city’
Homelessness in the UK has reached epidemic proportions. Homelessness in Doncaster is no worse than other towns but a few enterprising folk have set up a tent city to protect the town’s homeless.
Scrooge Tory council confronted over treatment of homeless
While Medway council celebrates Dickens, poverty and homelessness go unnoticed – with an estimated 200 people sleeping roug,h and many more ‘sofa surfing’.
Comment and review
It’s the bumper Socialist 2016 quiz!
Here’s the editors’ test of our readers’ knowledge. All the questions are themed from articles which appeared in the Socialist this year. You don’t have to resort to using a search engine – the answers are below!
The political tremors of 2016 stretched into music with multiple deaths of well-loved figures. But there was a wonderful array of new music in 2016.
Letters to the Socialist’s editors. Scrooge bosses; local lotteries; liberal confusion.