Two news stories from the USA this week grabbed my attention. The first was the astonishing victory of a woman named India Walton in a Democratic Party primary in the city of Buffalo. With no…Read more…
Barbarossa and the Left after 80 years
This week marks the eightieth anniversary of the Nazi German invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. It was one of the most successful military operations of modern times. German forces…Read more…
The statue wars
Some people – and by that I mean some Tories – have whipped themselves up into a frenzy over the issue of statues. The pages of newspapers like the Daily Mail and Daily Express are…Read more…
Qatar: The strange case of Malcolm Bidali
Last summer, the international trade union movement was celebrating the news from Qatar. The country which is slated to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup had come under enormous pressure to respect the…Read more…
The dark secret of the German occupation of the Channel Islands
The Sunday Times (30 May) featured a front page story with this headline: “Exposed: Horrors of Channel Islands concentration camps”. The article reported that official documents describing the German…Read more…
Israel/Palestine: The crisis of leadership is only part of the problem
Over 80 years ago, Trotsky wrote that “the world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterised by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat.” I always thought that this was a…Read more…
The roaring twenties
Increasingly, big business leaders and bankers are talking about the possibility of an economic boom in the next few months. Earlier projections of economic stagnation and talk of the worst economic…Read more…
This year on May Day, let’s not forget the class war prisoners
The noted international trade union leader Dan Gallin used to say that what the labour movement needed is a “May 2nd Movement”. In other words, after all the wonderful speeches made on May Day, we…Read more…
Kyrgyzstan: One step forward, two steps back
The workers of Kyrgyzstan have had very little experience of trade unionism. Under tsarist rule, unions were generally not tolerated. The Bolshevik revolution allowed unions to exist — on paper. But…Read more…
WAPPING – ‘THE WORKERS STORY’
At last the film is now available online and on DVD! Chris Reeves of Platform Films has produced a marvellous film which has taken several years to complete as Chris is heavily engaged in making and…Read more…
A time like no other, a union like no other
It has been a year like no other. From the moment the coronavirus hit our shores, this union was on the front foot. Unite was always going to have to go into hand-to-hand battle against this…Read more…
KCK statement on the arrest of MP Leyla Güven
The arrest of Leyla Güvenexposes the reality of the Turkish State Tens of MPs and mayors, hundreds of leading HDP members and thousands of democratic politicians find themselves imprisoned in Turkey….Read more…
Why I rejoined the Labour Party
I have just re-joined the Labour Party. Some people will say that one should never leave the Labour Party. Whatever it did, whatever bothered you and made it difficult to remain a member, you…Read more…
Belarus: The issue is working class solidarity – not “imperialism”
A few days ago, following up on a suggestion I made to LabourStart’s mailing list that people try out the secure messaging app Telegram, I received an interesting question. I had mentioned that…Read more…
Why American unions are backing Biden
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is “lamentable”, “utterly useless”, a “creep” and a “shit”. Those are not the words of Donald Trump, but they are all used in an article in this newspaper…Read more…
The labour movement and the tragedy of Nagorno-Karabakh
The recent outbreak of fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian enclave inside Azerbaijan, seems like something out of another era. Turkey and Russia each support their own side. A century ago, the…Read more…
Why socialists should not support Howie Hawkins
The golden age of the Socialist Party in the U.S. lasted about a decade. By 1912 the party’s vote peaked when Eugene Debs won 6%. It was downhill from there. After more than four decades…Read more…
U.S. unions warn Trump: Don’t even think about it
A few days ago, the president of the AFL-CIO (the US’s national trade union centre) issued a powerful statement. The federation “categorically rejects all threats to the peaceful transition of power”…Read more…
Verdict at Lizaveta’s trial
“They claimed I was arrested by a special police squad aka OMON in the centre of Grodno in a crowd of protesters. But the reality is I was arrested in front of my house by OMON – and it looked like a…Read more…
Ukraine: Miners’ protest goes underground
Hundreds of mine workers have spent weeks underground in a desperate attempt to win concessions from their employers in Ukraine. The protests began on 3 September at the Oktyabrskaya mine, where 29…Read more…