Britain

Rob Sewell, editor of Socialist Appeal and author of Chartist Revolution, recently appeared on A People’s History podcast talking about the Chartist movement, alongside John McDonnell, Emma Griffin and Katrina Navickas. The Chartist movement represented the first time the organised working class fixed its eyes on the seizure of power. The Chartists unashamedly fought for radical, socialist changes. Today, the Marxist movement stands on the shoulders of the great Chartist fighters – a revolutionary tradition to which we owe a tremendous debt.

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The horrifying rape and murder of 33-year-old Sarah Everard in March by a serving police officer caused a wave of rage and disgust across Britain. The killer’s trial and its aftermath have now unearthed a whole mountain of sexism and misogyny, affecting the police at every level. This was not a case of a single bad apple, as the Metropolitan police commissioner claimed: the entire institution is as rotten as the capitalist system it defends.

A data leak containing millions of documents amounting to 2.94 terabytes of information has partially lifted the curtain on the offshore deals and assets of more than 100 billionaires, world leaders and public officials. This leak has exposed the tremendous parasitism of the ruling class, totalling anywhere from US$5.6 trillion to US$32 trillion in offshore wealth.

This year’s Labour conference has ended in a victory for the right wing. The left must learn the lessons from the rise and fall of the Corbyn movement. The only way forward is to build the forces of Marxism. Join us in this vital task.

With petrol pumps across Britain running dry, and gridlock on the roads, the Tories are lurching from one crisis to another. The anarchy of the market is causing chaos to workers’ lives. All the ingredients are being prepared for a social explosion.

The Labour right wing in Britain has won a series of important votes at this year's party conference over the weekend and this week, provoking anger and outrage amongst left delegates on account of their bureaucratic antics. Amidst this mess, however, the ideas of Marxism have gained a strong echo.

After a year’s hiatus, Labour’s annual conference begins this weekend. The event is set to be a showdown between Starmer, on one side, and grassroots members and left unions, on the other. The left must boldly take the fight to the right.

The Labour right wing have carried out a brazen attack on press freedoms, explicitly denying the Marxist journalists of Socialist Appeal entrance to the party’s upcoming Labour conference on political grounds. We urge readers to rally against this injustice.

Across the UK economy, prices are rising and businesses are facing shortages. It is clear that the anarchy of the capitalist market cannot provide society with life’s necessities. The case for socialist planning has never been so clear.

Battles are breaking out across the labour movement, with Starmer purging socialists from the party, and the Unison bureaucracy sabotaging the union’s left-wing NEC. The left must make a stand and clear out these agents of the establishment.

The President of Britain's biggest trade union, Paul Holmes, is fighting back against a vicious witch-hunt by the union's right wing. Unfortunately, the employers and union bureaucracy have been supported by the sectarian antics of the Socialist Party. We say: solidarity with Paul!

With the British Labour Party's national conference just over a week away, Starmer and the right wing are going into overdrive with their purge, threatening left delegates with expulsion. The stage is set for one of the tensest and most-explosive Labour conferences in decades.

It is undeniable that the pandemic has hammered the final nail into the coffin of the previous epoch. But jubilant claims that austerity is a thing of the past have proved premature, as the ruling class begins to wind up its COVID spending spree and resume attacks on workers. The question is, what is the character of this new period, and what will it entail for the working class?

With a tsunami of austerity and attacks looming, the TUC [Trades Union Congress] is meeting this weekend to discuss the way forward for workers in Britain. The trade unions need a fighting programme, and a militant, unified resistance to the Tories and bosses.