In his December Autumn Statement the Chancellor, George Osborne, continued the government’s war on Britain’s poorest families by announcing that benefits will be up rated at just 1% a year until 2015. The TUC has calculated that when adjusted for inflation this proposal will mean a 5% cut in benefit levels.

Since his election to the position of general secretary of Unite – Britain’s largest union, with 1.5 million members – two years ago, Len McCluskey has moved to the left in response to the pressures from below. This was shown at a meeting on Tuesday 15^th January at the London School of Economics, where McCluskey delivered a militant speech on the crisis and the need for a response from the labour movement.

The campaign group 38 Degrees has compiled a list of well known companies operating within the UK that are currently not paying their “fair share”. Companies such as Amazon, eBay, Boots, Cadbury, Ikea, Vodafone and Starbucks are all guilty of abusing the UK tax system.

The New Year will be ringing in not joy but woe for working class people. It is the year that the cuts really begin to bite. It is the year that many people lose their jobs. It is the year that, in the words of Nick Clegg, “painful” Universal Benefits are introduced. It is the year that many lose their housing benefit and become homeless. It is the year the capitalist crisis deepens in Europe, with Spain, Italy and France following in the footsteps of  Greece. Britain, however, is not far behind.

Far from heralding a new promise for the British economy, the 1% growth figure announced a month ago has already been buried by a pile of bad news. Few economists are looking towards 2013 with any real hope. Socialist Appeal editor Rob Sewell explains why.

The Tories’ latest attack on welfare benefits threatens to place even more of the burden of the bankers’ crisis onto the shoulders of the unemployed, the disabled, children and pensioners.

In the run up to Christmas we are seeing the usual desperate appeals from charities to raise money but the recession has meant that even their income is now falling. At the same time, the Tory-led Coalition’s programme of cuts, combined with job-losses and pay freezes are forcing more and more people to rely on hand-outs from charities.

The BBC, the traditional mouthpiece of the British Establishment, is presently engulfed in a major scandal involving the Savile paedophile cover-up. This comes on top of the MPs’ expenses scandal, the News of the World phone hacking scandals and many others that have undermined the legitimacy of once highly respected institutions.

It’s finally been confirmed. After months of dithering and posturing from David Cameron last month saw the British and Scottish governments agree that there would be a referendum on Scottish independence in 2014.

Splits and divisions are haunting the Coalition. Such a situation could not have come at a worse time for Cameron and Osborne, as they sharpen their knives for further cuts.

On Saturday, October 20^th, the streets of London were once again filled with red flags and colourful trade union banners as 130,000 workers from all over the country marched against the austerity policies of the LibDem-Tory coalition government.

On October 20th  we will witness another massive display of opposition to the Coalition government. Hundreds of thousands of angry workers will take to the streets in an attempt to push back the Tory austerity programme.

As we begin the new academic year thousands of students up down the country will be leaving home for the first time to begin their Higher Education (HE) studies. Unfortunately for these students what should be an exciting and liberating occasion is overshadowed by the colossal debt they will be forced to take on as they become the first to pay the new £9,000 a year tuition fees.

In the aftermath of the revelations presented by the Hillsborough Independent Panel (read report here) we publish here the thoughts of a Liverpool supporter Mike Jones who speaks for many in the city of Liverpool about the reaction to what the report findings have now officially confirmed.

After a long fight lasting 23 years, the families and friends of the 96 football supporters killed at the Hillsborough stadium in Sheffield on the afternoon of Saturday April 15 1989 have finally had official confirmation of what really happened that day. For 23 years they have had to fight alone against a torrent of lies, mistruths and a cover-up involving the police and others. Now a report published by the independent commission established by the last Labour government has made available the real damming evidence of the blunders on the day and all the lies that followed.