How can the Con-Dem coalition be most effectively punished?

Editorial of the Socialist: In two weeks’ time voters will have their first opportunity to demonstrate their views on the Con-Dem government at the ballot box. After a year of economic stagnation, growing poverty, and vicious cut, no one is in any doubt what the result will be.
Tory central office has been quoted as saying: “we expect to take a hammering” and has repeatedly emphasised that they expect Labour to gain over 1,000 seats.

Kick big business out of health care

United action to defend NHS: Last week nurses, delegates to the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) conference, rejected Tory health secretary Andrew Lansley’s backdoor privatisation health bill by a massive 99% to 1%.

Fight cuts – vote socialist

The twin terminator toffs, Cameron and Clegg, are determined to slash public services, privatise whatever they can and wipe out even more jobs, writes Lenny Shail, Socialist Alternative candidate, Coventry.

Fighting anti-cuts programme needed in Scottish elections

Coventry: support for socialists increases

Enthusiasm for ten TUSC candidates across Kent

Vote Against Cuts alliance launched in Leicester

“Lambeth council know the cost of everything and the value of nothing”

NUS conference fails to act

Build movement against cuts and fees: With education under unprecedented attack and youth unemployment pushing one million, this year’s National Union of Students (NUS) conference should have been a council of war, preparing the next steps for the education movement, writes Claire Laker-Mansfield, National organiser Socialist Students.

Sarkozy instigates ban on veil to boost his political ratings

What attitude should socialists adopt in defending women’s rights?: On 11 April 2011 the French government brought into force a ban on wearing full-face veils in any public place in France. The right wing UMP government framed this law on the pretext of ‘security’.

Libya: Is humanitarian aid providing mission creep for western powers?

There is little doubt that a bloody war of attrition is being waged against the population of the Libyan city of Misurata by the Gaddafi regime, writes Robert Bechert.

War – what is it good for? Arms sales!

Arms manufacturers are excited by the Libyan conflict as it will lead to increased sales and profits.

Construction workers lobby BP

Locked-out BP Saltend workers took their fight straight to the company’s fat cats at BP’s AGM in London Docklands’ Excel Centre on 14 April…

“Staggering scale” of London Ambulance service cuts

Workplace news in brief

NUT teachers’ conference

Vote for strike action!: There was a magnificent show of force by the trade unions on the 26 March anti-cuts demonstration. Now the National Union of Teachers (NUT) conference has a historic opportunity to make the next step in…

Leeds Fed Housing strike

Enthusiastic support for PCS call centres strike

Anniversary: Black Friday 15 April 1921

A warning for the workers’ movement: Following the magnificent 26 March TUC demonstration workers and anti-cuts campaigners want to know how to build the movement to defeat the cuts…

The Alternative Vote referendum – 5 May

News in brief

World Bank unease: On the eve of the recent Group of 20 (G20) meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors in Washington – set against a backcloth of a fragile world economy – the World Bank said rocketing food prices have created “a toxic brew of real pain contributing to social unrest.”…

Lid blown off Met’s kettle

Newcastle: Socialists won’t be intimidated by racists

Back in March, a group of English Defence League (EDL) thugs surrounded and intimidated Socialist Party members in Newcastle who were selling the Socialist and gathering signatures against the Con-Dems’ ‘austerity’ package, writes A Newcastle Socialist Party member.

Gay protest and discrimination

Angry protest at death of Smiley Culture

At least 2,000 people assembled on Wandsworth Road in Lambeth on 16 April to demonstrate against the death of reggae artist Smiley Culture.