Click image for PDF
Socialist Party news and analysis
National demo and health workers’ strike needed! The National Health Service is “now at breaking point.” The trade unions must coordinate widespread industrial action. A national demonstration would have mass support. If followed by a 24-hour general strike, the Tories could be brought down.
Teachers working 60 hours need strikes, not studies
Teachers work an average of 48 hours a week, and some work more than 60, says a new study. Teachers know they work long hours. What teachers don’t want is another report telling us that. We want action to reduce workload.
Councils and unions must combat the cuts: Over the past six years, the number of care homes has fallen by 1,500 to 16,600. Home care providers are not renewing council contracts. The number of elderly people receiving social care from their local council declined by a staggering 26% between 2010 and 2015.
Health campaigns demonstrate together in ‘one fight’
NHS cancer and dementia drugs ‘unaffordable’
Nationalise the drugs companies! The unrestrained profiteering of drugs companies means the NHS could start rejecting groundbreaking treatments for cancer and dementia as “unaffordable”.
It’s one world for the super-rich, and another one for the rest of us. Water and chocolate bosses make big money while dodging tax, hiking prices and cutting jobs.
What we think
No backtracks, no compromises: we must fight for real democracy in the Labour Party
Editorial of the Socialist, issue 921: Appeasement and compromise will see Corbyn paralysed and hemmed in on the most important issues, leading to the inevitable undermining of his support. Mandatory reselection is not about ‘bullying’ or intimidation as those seeking to smear Corbyn and his supporters attempt to claim. It is basic democracy.
TUSC discusses new tasks after Corbyn victory
The first meeting of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) national steering committee since Jeremy Corbyn’s decisive re-election victory agreed to make a new appeal to Labour councillors to join the resistance to the Tories’ austerity agenda, writes Clive Heemskerk, Socialist Party executive committee and TUSC national election agent.
Workplace news and analysis
Sheffield bin striker slams privatised refuse bosses
It was a proud day to be a bin man in Sheffield on 17 October as a hundred or more of my GMB union colleagues and I protested about the greedy corporate giant Veolia’s refusal to agree our request for a 2% pay rise. They say they can’t meet our demand while paying thousands to ship in scab labour and accommodate them in hotels.
Newsquest strike: Bosses realise ‘contraints’ of scab labour
National Union of Journalists members at local daily papers published by Newsquest in the south of England have taken five days of industrial action against the company, beginning on 13 October. The source of the dispute is cuts to staffing, which have already prompted seven reporters to resign.
London Underground cleaners protest pay cut
Support the ‘Kinsley 3’ cleaners in pay fight
International socialist news and analysis
Syria: horror deepens in Aleppo
No solution on basis of imperialism and capitalism: Having promoted a bloody sectarian war in their efforts to dislodge the Russian and Iranian-backed Syrian regime of President Assad, the Western powers are hypercritically bemoaning the plight of Syrian civilians caught in the deadly crossfire.
Socialist history
Aberfan: a disaster that should never have happened
Aberfan 50th anniversary: It’s a name as resonant with tragedy for working class people in South Wales as Hillsborough is for Liverpool. For many the horror is all the greater because 116 of the 144 who died were young children.
Suez 1956: the decline of British imperialism and rise of the colonial revolution
Black History Month
The radical life of Paul Robeson
Fighting racism and capitalism with solidarity, socialism and song: An actor who starred on Broadway, a talented college American football player, a brilliant singer – and a socialist and civil rights campaigner at a time when Malcom X and Martin Luther King were just children.
Socialist Party reports and campaigns
Butterfields housing victory: “We showed that if you stick together and fight you can win”
I have never experienced a day like it in my life. The news that Dolphin Living Trust has agreed to buy all Butterfields flats, allowing the tenants to stay, came from an unlikely source. We had worked on an absolutely fantastic and ferocious campaign for nine long months. Now we have won far more than we could have imagined.
Get organised to win the battle both inside and outside Labour: Socialist ideas are increasingly being searched for and on 12-13 November in central London these ideas will be discussed and debated at Socialism 2016 – an inspirational weekend, with packed sessions on a wide range of issues.
Can you donate to the Socialism 2016 appeal?
We have set an ambitious target to raise £30,000 at the Socialism 2016 rally so we have the finance we need to help build the developing movement against austerity – for example to defend Jeremy Corbyn in the fight to reclaim the Labour Party.
Cheshire and Merseyside: Huge NHS cuts and privatisation planned
Huge cuts to hospitals and healthcare across Cheshire and Merseyside are in the pipeline, proposed in the very secretive ‘Sustainability and Transformation Plan’.
Devon: Campaigning against community hospitals closures
‘Once you lose them – you will never get them back’, this was the stark warning in a letter published in a local Devon paper. The letter refers to the current consultation period taking place on the closures of community hospitals with the loss of hundreds of beds.
Bristol: Millions of pounds of “horrifically unpalatable” cuts
Bristol is facing massive attacks on its jobs and services, under a rapidly capitulating newly elected Labour mayor, Marvin Rees. The mayor, when challenged on television that he was elected on an anti-austerity platform, surprised the interviewer by saying “no”.
Socialist readers’ comments and reviews
Moving, funny and inspiring tribute to working class heroism
Theatre – Dare Devil Rides to Jarama: “Adelante!” A moving, funny and inspiring account of the life of Clem ‘Dare Devil’ Beckett. A great feat considering the cast is just two people, but it portrays with realism dirt track races, mass protests and war.
Film review: Deepwater Horizon
Do you have something to say? Letters to the Socialist’s editors. Stop racist ‘Prevent’ sureveillance; praise for John Pilger; posh dress price hypocrisy.
