Alarm signals as foreign state enterprises line up to take over Britain’s transport
[WORKERS, FEB 2012]
Fed up with poor service and soaring fares, increasing numbers in Britain are calling for the railways to be re-nationalised. And astonishingly, that’s what is happening. Except not in the way any worker in Britain would want...
...[more]
Guerrilla struggle: the way forward for the fight on pensions
[WORKERS, FEB 2012]
If the resistance to the government’s plans for public sector pensions is to thrive, it must be based on what each section of workers wants and their ability to wage a protracted war based on their own needs and strengths. It is not, and never was, about one solution for everyone...
...[more]
The deadly cost of “free movement”
[WORKERS, FEB 2012]
Obsessed by its Single Market, the European Union has been forcing us to accept onto Britain’s health registers doctors and nurses who can’t speak English...
...[more]
1914: The road to catastrophe
[WORKERS, FEB 2012]
The First World War was not a surprise. The events and forces that led to it had been festering for decades...
...[more]
Pensions: a nation in struggle
[WORKERS, JAN 2012]
The unprecedented national stoppage of 30 November was the best possible riposte to the Coalition’s economic statement of 29 November. Two million workers striking, marching, providing emergency cover or showing solidarity with striking colleagues was a great uplift to the people of Britain.
...[more]
The fight for work in Britain’s cultural industries
[WORKERS, JAN 2012]
The festive season and the holidays have again brought home to many of us just how much the arts can enhance our lives – let’s keep it that way!
...[more]
Running out of power
[WORKERS, JAN 2012]
Along with protecting our territorial integrity, securing energy supplies must be the top priority of any government. But it hasn’t been for nearly 30 years, with disastrous results...
...[more]
Two graveyards of imperialist ambition
[WORKERS, JAN 2012]
To start off the New Year, two books on different aspects of war, separated by more than fifty years...
...[more]
Pensions: they don’t just want our money – they want our organisation destroyed
[WORKERS, DEC 2011]
To claim that this attack on public sector pensions is being launched just to pay for the banking crisis is a very superficial argument and borders on sloganeering. The greater goal is the destruction of the public sector...
...[more]
Who needs elections any more? Just let Brussels choose your government
[WORKERS, DEC 2011]
Capitalists never like to waste a crisis, and the eurozone debacle is seen as an opportunity to move even closer to a federal Europe. Step by step, the europhiles are trying to draw us into their net...
...[more]
Britain: What next for workers?
[WORKERS, DEC 2011]
Where do workers stand against the backdrop of the first 20 months of this coalition government?
...[more]
Exposing the lies created by Kruschev
[WORKERS, DEC 2011]
In an infamous secret speech to the congress of the Soviet communist party in 1956, Nikita Kruschev trashed Stalin’s reputation – in order to boost his own. A new book from an American academic exposes the lies...
...[more]
How we could fix the economy
[WORKERS, DEC 2011]
We’re not broke. We’re not at the mercy of foreign investors. And the working class could rebuild Britain – but first it has to force its way into the driving seat...
...[more]
Construction: 'sparks' to start a prairie fire as contractors seek to axe agreement?
[WORKERS, NOV 2011]
Seven big construction companies have decided to play it tough. They plan to tear up nationally agreed conditions and pay, and have said they will sack their workforces and re-employ on new terms on 7 December. But workers in the industry are rising to the challenge...
...[more]
Undermined: our aerospace industry
[WORKERS, NOV 2011]
The recent announcement of around 3,000 job losses at BAE Systems throws into even deeper doubt the much-promised revival of the manufacturing sector in Britain and the policies espoused by successive governments.
...[more]
The European Union and the great biofuels disaster
[WORKERS, NOV 2011]
Why have food prices been soaring? According to the World Bank, three-quarters of the 140 per cent rise in global food prices between 2002 and 2008 was due to biofuels: the replacement of food crops with plants grown for fuel...
...[more]
Protection for investors, not for the people
[WORKERS, NOV 2011]
European governments – including Britain – have paved the way for the European Union to negotiate trade deals that could see governments being sued by corporations...
...[more]
1926: The General Strike, and why it should not be mindlessly imitated
[WORKERS, NOV 2011]
At a time when some are calling for a General Strike we need to get clearer about what happened last time there was one in Britain...
...[more]
Health and safety: put on your hard hat – and get ready for harder times
[WORKERS, OCT 2011]
Blown-up stories of “health and safety gone mad” are providing a useful cover to a government intent on rolling back decades of progress. Nothing, certainly not workers’ lives, can be allowed to get in the way of a good profit...
...[more]
NATO – the hidden history of capitalism’s military wing
[WORKERS, OCT 2011]
As NATO makes a grab for Libya’s oil and reconstruction contracts in an unholy alliance with Islamists and spies, it’s worth looking at where it has come from to be what it is today...
...[more]
Capitalism: killing us all with its greed and stupidity
[WORKERS, OCT 2011]
The world is becoming increasingly dangerous, with our rulers resorting to wars to protect themselves. They say they are fighting dictators, but all they are interested in is propping up the dictatorship of capital...
...[more]
1941: The battle for Moscow
[WORKERS, OCT 2011]
Seventy years ago the world held its breath as Nazi troops came up to the gates of the Soviet Union’s capital city...
...[more]
Bombardier – the death of British train manufacturing?
[WORKERS, SEPT 2011]
The government's decision to go to Germany for the carriages for the new Thameslink trains manufacture puts our own industry in jeopardy...
...[more]
TUC 2011: Dump all diversions!
[WORKERS, SEPT 2011]
As delegates prepare for the Trades Union Congress in London this month, they need to recognise that workplace power is the only solution...
...[more]
Debt, the only thing capitalism gives us
[WORKERS, SEPT 2011]
In the name of balancing the public purse we are witnessing the dismantling of the welfare state. What we need is the rebuilding of our industry...
...[more]
The City: purveyor of tax havens to the world
[WORKERS, SEPT 2011]
A new book shows how tax havens undermine the rules, systems and institutions that promote the public good...
...[more]
Pensions attack: institutionalised looting
[WORKERS, JULY 2011]
The writing is on the wall. The government wants us to pay more, get less, and work longer – and preferably die before we retire...
...[more]
Demand an end to Britain’s warmongering
[WORKERS, JULY 2011]
As capitalism in dire straits makes its grab for North Africa, we say end the destruction abroad and at home...
...[more]
Caring for profit
[WORKERS, JULY 2011]
There's nothing new about privatisation and asset-stripping. But capitalism has broken new ground with the threat to tens of thousands of nursing home residents...
...[more]
Destruction of social care
[WORKERS, JULY 2011]
In a move paralleling the attack on the NHS, an assault has been launched on social care...
...[more]
1952 to 1956: The Mau Mau rebellion
[WORKERS, JULY 2011]
Boxes containing thousands of incriminating documents from the Kenyan colonial service show the barbarity with which the British Empire sought – vainly – to cling on to power in East Africa...
...[more]
Don’t break up Britain – rebuild it!
[WORKERS, JUNE 2011]
SNP talk about independence masks the true aim: to sell out Scotland to the European Union
...[more]
Why Libya is under attack
[WORKERS, JUNE 2011]
Libya is outside US–British influence, and does not obey their orders...
...[more]
The NHS: fighting inside, fighting to win
[WORKERS, JUNE 2011]
For those working in the NHS, our best chance of entering the field in our best shape is the battle for pay...
...[more]
When only capitalism counts...
[WORKERS, JUNE 2011]
The world’s four biggest accountancy firms have each been fined millions of dollars in the US. In the EU, they do what they want...
...[more]
The rise and rise of the corporate state: the bankers’ dream of eternal rule
[WORKERS, JUNE 2011]
Benito Mussolini said, “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” It’s that – rather than numbers of blackshirted thugs on the streets – that defined fascism then, and does so now...
...[more]
The Highland Clearances
[WORKERS, JUNE 2011]
The destruction of the old Highland society took with it not only a class opposing the rise of the bourgeoisie – the feudal Scottish clan leaders – but also trampled on the rights and well-being of tenant farmers trying to eke out a living...
...[more]
EU directive undermines nursing
[WORKERS, MAY 2011]
Nurses from the European Union are being allowed to register in Britain without meeting the same high requirements that apply to British nurses...
...[more]
Thirty years of attacks on social housing – no wonder there’s a crisis
[WORKERS, MAY 2011]
The odds against moving into affordable housing have never been so highly stacked, particularly for the young. But that’s ignored by those who see housing as a source of profit not as a basic human need...
...[more]
Cuba – the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ means democracy for the workers
[WORKERS, MAY 2011]
Two decades after the crisis that followed the collapse of Cuba’s main trading partner, the Soviet Union, the working class is still in control on the Caribbean island...
...[more]
The profit-lined road to motorway madness
[WORKERS, MAY 2011]
The devastation of the rail network that began in the 1960s was not an accident. It was a conscious decision to move away from a state-owned industry to private profit. And led by a transport minister whose family ran a road-construction company...
...[more]
Planned by Labour, adopted by the Coalition: the next pensions scam
[WORKERS, APR 2011]
With our retirements under attack from employers and governments, we have to make the demand for the complete transformation to a system of state pensions in conjunction with a thoroughgoing restructure of Britain – for an industrial revolution…
...[more]
No to the Alternative Vote!
[WORKERS, APR 2011]
They wouldn’t let us vote on the Lisbon Treaty. They won’t let us vote on EU membership. Now they want to change the electoral system to keep themselves in power…
...[more]
The calculated ruin of the NHS
[WORKERS, APR 2011]
When they talk of a health market they mean health chaos. That, and a nice little earner for someone. We should begin by understanding what is being proposed…
...[more]
1956: Britain, France and the Suez Canal crisis
[WORKERS, APR 2011]
As Britain and France attack Libya with no-fly zones and military interference, it is instructive to remember the disastrous consequences of an earlier attempt by these two countries to intervene in another Middle Eastern country...Egypt
...[more]
Blow to Britain as Pfizer closes Kent labs
[WORKERS, MAR 2011]
Last month the largest pharmaceutical company in the world decided its profits needed a boost – by closing one of Britain’s premier research institutes…
...[more]
Tax doesn’t have to be taxing – if you are the ruling class
[WORKERS, MAR 2011]
Benjamin Franklin is often quoted on tax: “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” That isn’t true for the capitalist class.
...[more]
Mode 4: How to bring skilled workers into Britain despite an immigration ‘cap’
[WORKERS, MAR 2011]
Secrecy and spin are the means for pushing forward a trade policy that is formulated to benefit City of London financiers. That’s no surprise, given that the policy involves undermining workers with cheap graduate labour from outside the EU.
...[more]
The facts behind the BA dispute
[WORKERS, MAR 2011]
Another ballot shows overwhelming support from cabin crew at BA for a strike. A member tells Workers why…
...[more]
1871: The 72 days of the Paris Commune
[WORKERS, MAR 2011]
The first jolt to the ruling classes’ arrogant belief that only they are fit to govern came in 1871 with the uprising of the Paris Commune…
...[more]
Vultures and vandals: the EU and the NHS
[WORKERS, FEB 2011]
The combination of EU competition law and one small paragraph in the government’s health bill will open up the NHS to private competition…
...[more]
The pensions scam: the excuses get more and more bizarre
[WORKERS, FEB 2011]
There is no pensions crisis in Britain – other than the consequences of the last 30-year or more attack on workers and our industries made by successive governments…
...[more]
What Britain needs to survive: a new, second industrial revolution
[WORKERS, FEB 2011]
The chaos being wrought by this government – the latest in a line of destructive governments – has its roots in centuries of bitter hatred against the working class. Survival will require workers to develop their own strategy for Britain…
...[more]
1863: The First International
[WORKERS, FEB 2011]
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the International Workingmen's Association (IWA) – sometimes called The First International – united a variety of different political groups and trade union organisations
...[more]
West Burton: engineering construction workers dig in as employers seek changes
[WORKERS, JAN 2011]
As the looming crisis about Britain’s ability to produce enough power develops, the workers building the power stations are in a crucial position to exert working class control. The employers, of course, have other ideas…
...[more]
Higher education – a minority government trying to exert its power and failing
[WORKERS, JAN 2011]
The trebling of student fees took place without any of the normal trappings of parliamentary oversight: no Green Paper, no White Paper, no committee scrutiny. All it took was a tiny amendment to legislation introduced by Labour…
...[more]
Ireland’s boom and bust
[WORKERS, JAN 2011]
With the EU in control, things can only get worse. Ireland’s great need is to revisit the principles of 1916: unfettered control of the country’s destiny in the hands of its people…
...[more]
Songs of struggle: Paul Robeson remembered
[WORKERS, JAN 2011]
A new CD and a new play touring Britain in January and February recall the life of one of the finest basses of all time – the communist and fighter Paul Robeson…
...[more]
Higher education: the revolt begins…
[WORKERS, DEC 2010]
The assault on our universities brought tens of thousands out on the streets of London in November. And resistance is set to intensify – which it needs to.
...[more]
Needed – a national plan to rebuild Britain!
[WORKERS, DEC 2010]
Manufacturing is still the lifeblood of Britain. It not only contributes more to GDP than financial services, it is the key to our renewal…
...[more]
Who owns our schools?
[WORKERS, DEC 2010]
Started under Labour, continued under this government, the academies programme is handing over the education of our children to dubious organisations…
...[more]
The 1810s: The Luddites act against destitution
[WORKERS, DEC 2010]
Much maligned, almost a byword for backwardness, the Luddites were in fact fighting for their livelihoods and self-respect at a time when trade unions were virtually illegal…
...[more]
For a 21st-century industrial revolution!
[WORKERS, NOV 2010]
While Britain cowers at the prospect of over a million consciously created job losses, the direct result of the diktat of the government’s public sector funding cuts, workers should consider the true state of Britain’s economy, how fragile and crippled Britain really is under the rule of finance capital...
...[more]
Making the workers pay
[WORKERS, NOV 2010]
Faced with the calamitous results of their own capitalist policies, capitalist governments have only one strategy – as shown in the spending review...
...[more]
The transport battleground: on the rails and in the air
[WORKERS, NOV 2010]
British transport workers are showing a determination and persistence not unlike the French on pensions, but applied across a wide range of issues affecting their services...
...[more]
Welcome to the university marketplace
[WORKERS, NOV 2010]
The Browne report into the funding of higher education was commissioned by Labour. No wonder the good of society doesn’t seem to figure in it...
...[more]
1950: The outbreak of the Korean War
[WORKERS, NOV 2010]
It is sixty years since the outbreak of the Korean War – a conflict which saw the United States and its allies – including Britain – committing troops to the aim of holding back the spread of communism...
...[more]
The real cause of the 'pensions crisis': ageing capitalism, not an ageing population
[WORKERS, OCT 2010]
The rise in cost of public and private sector final salary pension schemes between 1990 and 2010 has very little to do with people living for a few years longer
...[more]
When ambulance workers drove a coach and horses through government pay policy
[WORKERS, OCT 2010]
A long and bitter struggle in the winter of 1989-1990 laid the foundations for the current transformation of ambulance workers into paramedics
...[more]
Science hit as capitalism flounders
[WORKERS, OCT 2010]
The scientific establishment is united against plans to cut back research spending. It would do well to understand the politics behind the cuts
...[more]
Locking countries into capitalist dependency: the EU’s Free Trade Agreements
[WORKERS, OCT 2010]
'Development' policies developed by the IMF and other financial institutions are just another weapon to attack the peoples of the world. But there are alternatives for countries that choose to exercise their sovereignty
...[more]
Tales from the front line: financial reporters on the crisis
[WORKERS, OCT 2010]
Two books, one from either side of the Atlantic, tell the sorry tale of what happens when governments are in thrall to finance capital
...[more]
TUC: Back to the workplace
[WORKERS, SEPT 2010]
Grand policies and posturing will not save the labour movement from the current onslaught. Only one strategy will work: workplace organisation
...[more]
Coalition set to destroy public healthcare
[WORKERS, SEPT 2010]
They said they would defend the NHS. They lied. But then, that’s what parliamentary democracy is all about
...[more]
Under attack – but schools frustrate Coalition academy plans
[WORKERS, SEPT 2010]
Education Secretary Michael Gove thought he would have more than a thousand schools straining to become independent of local control. After all, it was merely an acceleration of Labour policy. But the teaching profession has taught him a lesson
...[more]
Unions in illegality: the Combination Acts of 1799 and 1800
[WORKERS, SEPT 2010]
Capitalists and workers are engaged in a constant battle to exert influence and control over pay and conditions as the two classes contend in the sphere of work and industry. This is as true now as it was at the birth of our class several centuries ago
...[more]
Just one policy: make us pay…
[WORKERS, JULY 2010]
Despite the news that the budgetary shortfall is less than expected, the government is accelerating its attack on Britain…
...[more]
…but there’s money to buy finance firms
[WORKERS, JULY 2010]
On 7 May the Prime Minister delivered a speech in Milton Keynes, declaring the national debt to be £1.4 trillion with interest payments of £70 billion a year.
...[more]
Call this democracy?
[WORKERS, JULY 2010]
The state of British politics is almost a joke. But it’s gone beyond satire. There’s something rotten in Britain. It’s the whiff of fascism, and it’s coming from the state…
...[more]
The same old refrain: attack the working class
[WORKERS, JULY 2010]
The main capitalist political parties all agree that there must be massive cuts in public spending.Their common demand in 2010 echoes unmistakably what happened in the public spending debt crises of 1921 and 1931…
...[more]
Cuito Cuanavale – the story behind the battle that became Africa’s Stalingrad
[WORKERS, JULY 2010]
The epic story of the battle of Cuito Cuanavale in southern Angola in 1987/89 is little known in Britain. But the events leading up to it show how small yet decisive actions by workers can bring about massive changes in the world…
...[more]
Unite against the anti-strike laws!
[WORKERS, JUNE 2010]
Recent court decisions, backed up by silence from the parliamentary parties, has all but made the right to strike an illegal act…
...[more]
Free trade deal set to hit British workers
[WORKERS, JUNE 2010]
The ConDem coalition has promised a referendum on significant changes to the way the EU operates. It can start with one on the proposal for a trade deal with India…
...[more]
Mobility of labour: why the conspiracy of silence?
[WORKERS, JUNE 2010]
With the anti-trade union laws as the backdrop, capitalism has deployed its favoured method of attack to devastating effect: unemployment, intensified by the exporting of jobs and the importing of labour…
...[more]
How Argentina escaped the clutches of the IMF
[WORKERS, JUNE 2010]
When Argentina ran into a debt crisis like Greece, its first response was to borrow money from the IMF and others, promising “austerity” packages of cuts. Then it took a different direction…
...[more]
The price of failing to take responsibility
[WORKERS, MAY 2010]
What is going wrong in this country? There’s food for thought in the Francis Report into the litany of neglect at Mid Staffordshire Foundation Trust…
...[more]
Of course the free market isn’t efficient. Why would it be?
[WORKERS, MAY 2010]
Workers reviews two books this month that explode two American myths: first that Wall Street knows what it's doing; and secondly, the so-called power of positive thinking...
...[more]
An extract from our history
[WORKERS, MAY 2010]
The CPBML is shortly to publish an account of its history. Here, we present a preview of the ideas that motivated its founding…
...[more]
Gilt-edged insecurity: workers and quantitative easing
[WORKERS, APRIL 2010]
A defensive “no to the cuts” campaign that lacks a strategy capable of taking us on to the offensive will not do the job. We need to understand the government’s borrowing scam and the politics behind it…
...[more]
A manifesto for libraries
[WORKERS, APRIL 2010]
Librarians are up against a philistine government whose tactic seems to be death by a thousand reviews. But the professionals are resisting…
...[more]
The struggle against the ‘Great Powers’
[WORKERS, APRIL 2010]
The General Assembly of the United Nations has now become an organising area against imperialism…
...[more]
They say defence, they mean war
[WORKERS, MARCH 2010]
In the government’s Green Paper, “Adaptability & Partnership: Issues for the Strategic Defence Review”, the Defence Secretary admits in his Foreword that “There is no external direct threat to the territorial integrity of the United Kingdom.” Yet, in the same paragraph, he insists, “Our ability to project force to counter threats will remain crucial to our national security.”
...[more]
The spirit of Lindsey lives on…
[WORKERS, MARCH 2010]
February has proved to be a lively month in the engineering construction industry, demonstrating that neither the issues nor the workers will simply go away, despite attempts by “friends” and enemies.
...[more]
Energy supply: mind the gap
[WORKERS, MARCH 2010]
Whichever way you look at it, within seven years Britain will face a shortfall between the power it needs and its ability to supply it…
...[more]
The day the Army was sent to the streets of Glasgow
[WORKERS, MARCH 2010]
It began with the reasonable demand for a 40-hour week, led to a demonstration by 35,000 workers at Glasgow’s City Chambers – and howitzers around the city centre…
...[more]
Engineering construction: underpayment at Staythorpe sparks renewed calls for action
[WORKERS, FEBRUARY 2010]
Construction workers are, once again, at the forefront of challenging our thinking and taking the fight to the opposition, both in and outside our own class. Opposition comes in many guises and in today’s climate its most debilitating manifestation is the idea that there is no alternative to accepting whatever capitalism throws at us.
...[more]
Haiti puts the spotlight on the politics of aid
[WORKERS, FEBRUARY 2010]
The TUC has its own Aid for Haiti appeal. But where will the money go? The history of its involvement in South America does not bode well for the future…
...[more]
The German takeover of Europe’s – and Britain’s – rail services
[WORKERS, FEBRUARY 2010]
Taking full advantage of the liberalisation of Europe’s international passenger services, Deutsche Bahn is moving into Britain. Armed with massive opportunities to exploit workers across Europe, it’s looking for profits, at the expense of workers…
...[more]
Vocational education under attack
[WORKERS, FEBRUARY 2010]
Programmes frozen, budgets cut, young people excluded. Now responsibility for vocational training is to be handed to local government, with little evidence that it is prepared…
...[more]
The cartel from hell: IG Farben and Hitler’s Nazis
[WORKERS, FEBRUARY 2010]
Hitler needed a chemicals company to provide the raw material for his war. Enter IG Farben, the largest chemicals cartel in the world…
...[more]
The Earth’s climate changes. It always has done. But there’s no future without power…
[WORKERS, JANUARY 2010]
Using the excuse of global warming, the European Union is trying to shut down many of Britain’s coal-fired power stations, and stop new ones being built. But the evidence is not as hard as it seems. Could it be that politicians have their own agenda, more related to power than to the environment?
...[more]
The wages of credit
[WORKERS, JANUARY 2010]
Instead of fighting for pay and industry, we’ve been queuing up for loans…
...[more]
Stalingrad: the battle that saved the world
[WORKERS, JANUARY 2010]
At the end of January 1943, the German armies that had tried to smash the Soviet Union’s third-largest industrial centre surrendered in ignominy…
...[more]
Rail: the failure of privatisation
[WORKERS, JANUARY 2010]
As European railways are broken up under EU diktat and parcelled out to greedy privateers, in Britain there are faint signs that the reverse is beginning to happen…
...[more]
Who will be running our schools? The academies – another lethal legacy of Labour
[WORKERS, JANUARY 2010]
The Labour government may be finished, but it has not given up on its drive to strip Britain’s schools of all semblance of democratic control. Any price is worth paying, it reckons, to create its new academies. Even handing the control of the new state-funded schools over to religious fundamentalists…
...[more]