For some time now, the consensus in the mainstream media in Britain and elsewhere has been that Ukraine has effectively lost the war with Russia. Slowly and methodically, Russian troops have taken village after village…Read more…

At first glance, Serbia seems like a great place for trade unions. Under the country’s labour law, a union need only sign up 15% of the workforce in order to compell employers to bargain collectively….Read more…

American astronauts did not set foot on the Moon in July 1969. In 2001, the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City were brought down by a controlled explosion, and not…Read more…

Last week Donald Trump made an extraordinary announcement on his Truth Social platform. Trump was announced that Sean O’Brien, president of the 1.3 million member Teamsters union, had agreed to address the Republic National Convention…Read more…

It is exactly ninety years since the French Socialist and Communist parties began to create the Popular Front, which dominated French politics in the mid-1930s. The danger then was the threat of the far Right…Read more…

The results of the European elections were, in some sense, more of the same. The dominant blocs in the incoming Parliament will remain the European People’s Party (moderate Right) and the Progressive Alliance of Socialists…Read more…

When Russia launched its unprovoked and illegal invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago, most trade unionists — like most people — looked on with horror. Unions around the world were swift to condemn…Read more…

With only weeks to go before a general election, and with a Labour victory expected, I am reminded of events of a century ago. In 1924, the minority Labour government headed by Ramsay MacDonald was…Read more…

Palestinians and their supporters around the world refer to 15 May as “Nakba Day” — a day marking the anniversary of the creation of the State of Israel. This year, the UK-based Palestine Solidarity Campaign…Read more…

A year ago, the increasingly rightist, pro-Russian Georgian government proposed legislation that shocked the country. Under the new law, individuals or organisations that received money from foreign donors would have to declare themselves as “foreign…Read more…

Rough sleepers have returned to Finsbury Park and their various belongings lay pressed against the walls of a railway bridge. Just above where they sleep, the walls are plastered with posters asking “Are you a…Read more…

A little more than 85 years ago, on 28 March 1939, the Spanish civil war ended. The fascist forces under the command of General Franco entered the capital, Madrid, and it was all over. Spain…Read more…

While there have been countless books and articles about V.I. Lenin, whose death in 1924 has been marked in this newspaper and elsewhere, there are some Russian revolutionaries of that time who have long been…Read more…

Something strange is happening in American and British politics this year. According to a report in this week’s Sunday Times, the Labour Party under the leadership of Keir Starmer seems on course not just to…Read more…

The 3,700 female workers in the Mahalla textile factories were furious. The Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, had earlier in the month raised the minimum wage to 6,000 Egyptian pounds — the equivalent of just…Read more…

For sixty years, the Anti-Defamation League has been profiling Americans to try to monitor antisemitic beliefs. For the first half century of doing that, they found a fairly steady and ongoing decline in anti-Jewish sentiment….Read more…

Dorothy Arzner is someone I had never heard of before, and maybe you haven’t either. Arzner was the only director of films in Hollywood under the studio system of the 1930s and 1940s and she…Read more…

When I studied at university, I had access to reprinted editions of many American left publications. Among them was Labor Action, the weekly newspaper of Max Shachtman’s Workers Party. I have never forgotten the headline…Read more…