Archive for September 2021

1 September 2021

Starmer's New Blairism consolidates

Within days of telling the Financial Times how "very proud" he was of the New Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown from 1997 to 2010, the Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer made it clear that his left-wing predecessor Jeremy Corbyn would remain suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party

1 September 2021

Click here for a report. Speakers included: Sharon Graham - newly-elected Unite gen sec; Sarah Woolley - BFAWU gen sec; Carmel Gates - Nipsa gen sec (designate); Joe Simpson - POA deputy gen sec; Joe Kirby - RMT NEC & offshore worker

NSSN rally, September 2021

Click here for a report. Speakers included: Sharon Graham - newly-elected Unite gen sec; Sarah Woolley - BFAWU gen sec; Carmel Gates - Nipsa gen sec (designate); Joe Simpson - POA deputy gen sec; Joe Kirby - RMT NEC & offshore worker

1 September 2021

Click here for a report. Speakers included: Sharon Graham - newly-elected Unite gen sec; Sarah Woolley - BFAWU gen sec; Carmel Gates - Nipsa gen sec (designate); Joe Simpson - POA deputy gen sec; Joe Kirby - RMT NEC & offshore worker

NSSN rally, September 2021

Click here for a report. Speakers included: Sharon Graham - newly-elected Unite gen sec; Sarah Woolley - BFAWU gen sec; Carmel Gates - Nipsa gen sec (designate); Joe Simpson - POA deputy gen sec; Joe Kirby - RMT NEC & offshore worker

8 September 2021

NHS and social care - make the rich pay, not the workers

Social care is in crisis and needs fixing. There's no doubt about that. Over 40,000 died from Covid in care homes during the pandemic in an overwhelmingly privatised system that puts profit before safety.

8 September 2021

Workers shouldn't pay for health and social care plans

As The Socialist goes to press, the Tories are in open warfare over Boris Johnson's plans on funding social care and the NHS in England.

8 September 2021

End service cuts and care charges

Fight for free, public, adult social care: Tory-controlled West Sussex County Council (WSCC) is proposing to cut Adult Services by 50% from £10 million to £5 million per year

8 September 2021

Families demand rights for care home residents

While government guidance now allows us to go to pubs and music festivals, go on holidays, and meet up with friends, care home residents are being kept under lockdown

8 September 2021

Fighting NEU leadership needed to tackle school funding crisis

Vote Martin Powell-Davies for DGS: The Tories have presided over damaging cuts to school funding that have disproportionately affected the most deprived schools, a recent report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies has concluded.

8 September 2021

Schools funding crisis fails vulnerable children

Schools face a special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) funding crisis, a £1 billion shortfall in funding

8 September 2021

University bosses push through pension cuts proposal

University bosses have pushed through their proposal to impose severe pension cuts to those in the 'USS' pension

8 September 2021

DWP: Demand safe working and more jobs

Resistance must be built to Tory attacks on the unemployed. In their drive to ramp up their harsh welfare system, they are prepared to put everyone's safety at risk. They plan to drag every claimant back

8 September 2021

Equity protest to save arts centre forces talks from Newham Council

Equity's protest to save theatre jobs at Stratford Circus arts centre was a big success. Around 50 joined a determined and positive rally on Saturday 28 August in Newham's historic Theatre Square.

8 September 2021

DHL workers to strike against wage theft

Unite members working for DHL at Jaguar Land Rover are balloting for strike action following the company's failure to pay workers the wages owed to them

8 September 2021

The street I live on

A man was stabbed in the back as he walked along Barton Street, the street I live on in Gloucester, recently

8 September 2021

Socialist change, not climate change

Save the planet - make capitalism extinct: Dave Nellist - Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition chair and Socialist Party national committee member - wrote the following letter to the Observer in reply to the Green Party Baroness Natalie Bennett's call for capitalist reforms to halt catastrophic climate change.

8 September 2021

Vigil: A nuclear sub murder mystery

TV Review: 'We are here to start a nuclear war. Don't waste our time with one bloody death', is the attitude of the officers on HMS Vigil towards the hapless detective DCI Silva in the opening episodes of this

8 September 2021

Why I joined the Socialist Party

Mainstream politics can feel like an anchor to the chest. I once walked the streets, and delivered leaflets for the promise of a socialist government in 2019.

8 September 2021

Building Youth Fight for Jobs in the South West

Young people face attacks on all fronts - sky-high rents, astronomical tuition fees, and the threat of mass job losses when furlough ends in September

8 September 2021

Whipps Cross hospital workers reject the 3%

80 plus Whipps Cross hospital workers, Unite members and Socialist Party members came out in protest against the humiliating 3% offered pay rise for all NHS workers on 25 August

8 September 2021

Libya - ten years after Gaddafi's overthrow

While the US, British and other western governments lick their wounds following their ignoble retreat from Afghanistan, after 20 failed years of 'nation building', another 'failed state', Libya, marks ten years since the West helped overthrow the Gadaffi dictatorship

8 September 2021

US Supreme Court refuses to challenge Texas abortion ban

Build a socialist fightback!: The US Supreme Court, in a five-four vote, allowed Texas's new anti-abortion law to take effect on 31 August

8 September 2021

Keep fascists out of Portland: Build a mass movement to fight the right

The danger of violent far-right hate groups has not disappeared along with Donald Trump. In Portland, Maine, members of the Proud Boys - a white supremacist hate group - have been meeting in Mathew's

8 September 2021

A pivotal moment for the trade union movement

This year's TUC Congress will provide the first public platform for newly elected Unite general secretary Sharon Graham.

8 September 2021

9/11 and the 'War on Terror' twenty years on

The 2001 al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on US soil prompted George W Bush and Tony Blair to invade and occupy Afghanistan

8 September 2021

Socialist Party national council - members enthused by excellent in-person meeting

Socialist Party members had to wait 552 days from the last opportunity they had to meet up in person

8 September 2021

Organising to defend our future: 9 October day of action

Young workers are less likely to have full-time, stable jobs, to own homes, and to have any savings to fall back on in a crisis.

8 September 2021

Bexley bin workers win big gains after six-week strike

Bexley bin workers in Unite have won improvements to pay and conditions

8 September 2021

Union action needed to make schools Covid safe

Staff, school students, and their families understandably want the new academic year to be a return to 'normality'

8 September 2021

Obituary: Roger Henshaw, comrade and class fighter

Wonderful tributes are pouring in following the sad death of my great friend and comrade, Roger Henshaw.

15 September 2021

Social care plans: A sticking plaster instead of surgery

Social care has been in crisis for decades. Successive governments have deliberately diverted resources from care provision into the pockets of big business through privatisation. Despite the hype, Boris

15 September 2021

Unite young and old to defend the pensions triple lock

The UK State Pension is £179.60 a week, among the lowest in Europe. It leaves over 2 million pensioners in poverty.

15 September 2021

Take the wealth off the super-rich to fund: NHS and social care, pay and benefit rises

You couldn't make it up. As workers in health, local government and education are balloting on insulting pay offers from the government, Johnson and the Tories announce yet another pay cut: a 1.25% increase

15 September 2021

Campaigning for socialism at Oxford Brookes Uni

Socialist Party members held a stall at the Oxford Brookes freshers fair on Monday, raising the need for a new, fighting Socialist Students society on campus.

15 September 2021

Youth Fight for Jobs launches campaign in Brighton

11 September marked the beginning of Brighton's role in the national Youth Fight for Jobs campaign. Ten members of the Socialist Party took part following our successful first in-person meeting the previous

15 September 2021

Putting socialism on the map in Chichester

A new Socialist Party group has started in Chichester, which is, as anyone who knows the city would understand, a challenge to say the least

15 September 2021

Reclaiming Pride as protest in Nottingham

3,000 overwhelmingly young people from all over the East Midlands marched round Nottingham for Pride on Saturday 11 September.

15 September 2021

Solidarity to the striking workers at Charité and Vivantes hospitals in Berlin

Socialist Party trade unionists in the NHS have sent the following message of support to striking health workers in Germany.

15 September 2021

Fighting fund target reached: Help us continue to raise our banner and programme

At our recent Socialist Party national council (see socialistparty.org.uk) members were set the challenge of raising £5,000 to help reach our quarterly target of £25,000.

15 September 2021

On the frontline, and still fighting for the NHS

I've been working in medical imaging for eight years now. Even before we were struck by a global pandemic, we were struggling to keep up with the number of patients needing imaging, and waiting lists

15 September 2021

TV review - Grenfell: The Untold Story

Recently, my partner and I watched 'Grenfell: The Untold Story'. We watched footage of tenants, ahead of the 2017 tragedy, battle with 'the suits' over their living conditions: lifts out of order for

15 September 2021

Goodlord dispute: Labour's leadership weasled out of backing strike action

In April this year, Scott Hunter, a member of the Socialist Party and a striker at Goodlord, in east London, wrote to his local Labour MP, Emily Thornberry, asking for support for the workers fighting against 'fire and rehire'

15 September 2021

Save jobs and services - nationalise rail

Socialist Party members and supporters of the National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) joined the RMT transport union's protest outside Waterloo station, London, against cuts to South West Rail services

15 September 2021

Weetabix - workers have had enough

Engineering workers, members of the Unite union, will walk out for 48 hours from 21 September at two sites - Kettering and Corby, both in Northamptonshire.

15 September 2021

Scrap tuition fees - end university marketisation

The Covid-19 pandemic has laid bare the marketised tuition-fee model under which UK universities are operated.

15 September 2021

Nuclear Folly: A New History of the Cuban Missile Crisis

The Cuban missile crisis in 1962 is far from underrepresented in books and media. But 'Nuclear Folly' uses fresh material provided by newly declassified files from the KGB archive, shedding light on

15 September 2021

Oaks Park school: Redbridge Labour council backs strike-breaking bullies

Illegal strike-breaking, a dossier of testimonials about management bullying, and victimisation of a union rep who fought for Covid safety

15 September 2021

Climate change, capitalism, and the struggle for socialism

Recent extreme weather events have claimed lives and destroyed homes, infrastructure, and even whole towns.

15 September 2021

Deaths of despair: Health crisis - capitalism in the dock

Health services on every continent and in practically every country have struggled to stem the rising numbers of Covid victims

15 September 2021

What's behind the worker shortages, and what can be done about it?

'Job openings' are at 1.66 million, according to the Recruitment and Employment Confederation

15 September 2021

Hands off the uplift

The government doesn't seem to want to budge on removing the £1,000 a year uplift

15 September 2021

We won't pay for capitalism's failings

Join Youth Fight for Jobs protests on 9 October

15 September 2021

Returning to campus: Students need to fight

As we progress through the month of September, students and young people across the country will be preparing themselves to return to their respective studies.

15 September 2021

Carmarthenshire Unison: 'Recognise our union!'

Union members in Plaid Cymru-run Carmarthenshire Council, Wales, are demanding a Trade Union Recognition Agreement (TURA) at Cwm Environmental, which is wholly owned by the council.

15 September 2021

We need a new political party for workers and youth

Boris Johnson's lies about 'leveling up' working-class communities are being destroyed as the austerity is stepped up. Higher national insurance, Universal Credit cuts and a freeze on the income tax allowance will take £1,040 a year away from the average supermarket worker.