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Socialist Party news and analysis
Mitie cleaning workers striking for decent pay on 21 January 2014, photo Neil Cafferky
Capitalism is a system in crisis
What exactly is the point of Labour?
Ed Miliband and his shadow cabinet are going hell for leather with speeches and newspaper columns. They want to show how fit they are for election in 2015
Oppose all cuts and privatisation: The National Health Service is still being privatised bit by bit but the process is speeding up rapidly
Bedroom tax loophole: Can legal tactics be effective?
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has confirmed that tenants who have been continuously entitled to housing benefit since at least 1 January 1996, and who have occupied the same home since that date, are exempt from the bedroom tax
Fracking – profiting from environmental destruction
“We’re going all out for shale” – said David Cameron at the same time as he announced bribes to councils and local planning authorities in order to spread fracking operations across the country
Cost of living: 85 super-rich people in the world, in total, own as much wealth ($110 trillion) as half the world’s population of 3.5 billion people
International socialist news and analysis
Egypt referendum: no enthusiasm for new constitution
To no one’s surprise, 98% of Egyptian voters said yes to the new constitution in the recent referendum
“Ireland is a success story” rhetoric is based on spin
The entire ‘success story’ rhetoric of the Irish government, the European Commission and their hangers-on when promoting Ireland’s bailout exit is based on empty spin, hyperbole and untruths
Education
Stop the student debt spiral – day of action 6 February
Part of a week of action opposing student loan privatisation: The Student Loan Company (SLC) is up for sale.
Youth Fight for Jobs campaign in Croydon
Socialist Party members held a successful Youth Fight for Jobs campaign stall in Croydon, South London on Saturday 18 January
An open letter to Tristram Hunt
You have made it clear that you will revive the idea floated during the last Labour government of regular “relicensing” of teachers
Socialist Party workplace news
Transport workers have power to defeat cuts
Almost 1,000 jobs to go, all ticket offices to be closed, workers to lose as much as £10,000, new grades on lower wages. This is what faces Londoners if the Underground workers lose the battle that looms over the city
Teachers need a date for national action
Teachers are facing yet more attacks on our conditions, when our existing intolerable workload is already driving many teachers out of the profession
Teachers strike against threatened redundancies
NUT strikes against management “observations”
More action needed to defend Probation Service
I recently attended a Unison seminar regarding the government’s proposals around the probation service
Publicity alone can’t save sacked union branch official
Polly Toynbee, well-known Guardian journalist and prominent Labour Party member, recently wrote a column highlighting the case of Charlotte Monro, chair of Whipps Cross Hospital Unison branch
Bus drivers’ strike: About 60 drivers, members of Unite, at First Hampshire and Dorset were on strike for 24 hours on 20 January in a dispute which has seen their pay fall dramatically behind their regional counterparts
Socialist Party reports and campaigns
Lincoln marches against racism and fascism
On 18 January, around 150 people marched under the banner of Lincoln Against Racism and Fascism (LARF)
Protest against Atos ‘assessments’ on 19 February
Protests are planned to take place outside Atos assessment centres across the country
Salford workers and environmentalists challenge council
Readers’ comments and reviews
Benefits Street: A caricature of poverty
TV review: Channel 4’s recent controversial “documentary” series, Benefits Street claimed to depict life for residents of poverty stricken James Turner Street in Winson Green, Birmingham
Leeds’ forgotten dispute: The 1913-14 Corporation Strike
Robert Burns, insurrectionary poet
Every year the narrow-minded, conservative Robert Burns establishment ritually recite the same few poems and repeat ancient propaganda myths about him