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…
90 years later, a new Popular Front is born
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…
EU elections: The vaccine no longer works
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…
The ILO and Russia: Global unions must choose sides
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…
The Zinoviev Letter after 100 years
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…
Nakba Day
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…
Georgia at a crossroads
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…
Third Period, First Republic: The use and mis-use of symbols
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…
From Madrid to Kyiv
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…
Boris Savinkov: Forgotten revolutionary
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…
Ecuador’s Military Assault On Mexican Embassy : Statement By Mexico Solidarity Forum UK
The Mexico Solidarity Forum in the UK has condemned the assault on the Mexican Embassy in Quito after heavily armed special military and police officers (The Security Bloc) forcibly broke through the premises of the embassy of Mexico in Quito, … Continue reading Read more…
Gaza and the Left, Here and There
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…
Textile workers strike in Egypt
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…
Antisemitism and Israel
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…
Subversive women, subversive films – rediscovering Dorothy Arzner
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…
“Putin has murdered Navalny”
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…
“Someday this war’s gonna end”
One of the great speeches in Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” is made by Robert Duvall, playing a somewhat insane U.S. Army colonel in Vietnam. After delivering his oft-quoted “I love the smell of napalm…Read more…
Stalin and the angels
Keke would have been so proud. When her son Joseph was growing up in the small, dusty town of Gori, she dreamed that one day he would be a priest. He did eventually study at…Read more…
What “Rustin” leaves out
Colman Domingo has just been nominated to win an Oscar for best actor. I hope he wins — and not just because he did an excellent job playing American civil rights leader Bayard Rustin in…Read more…
1924: When Socialists, trade unionists and progressives came together
The Bernie Sanders campaigns in 2016 and 2020 were a high-water mark for Socialist politics in the U.S. Sanders, who campaigned as a Democrat, won over thirteen million votes, 43% of the total, in his…Read more…