A new official report from Credit Suisse paints a grim picture of the growing divide in the UK between the rich and the poor. Britain now tops a shameful league of G7 economies on income inequality. Despite years of austerity – with more to come say the Tories – the super-rich in the UK have done very well for themselves.
The probation system has undergone a radical transformation in recent months, which has seen the most brutal and systematic dismantling of yet another public service by the Tory-Lib Dem Coalition. Steve Brown looks at the disasterous effects of privatisation of the probation service.
90,000 demonstrated in London last Saturday, and thousands more in Glasgow and Belfast, at the plight of Britain’s low paid. This followed a week of strike action involving hundreds of thousands of workers. Rob Sewell explains how, in this period of permanent capitalist crisis, the labour movement must fight back with a bold socialist programme.
After a period of silence, the Blairite careerist rump inside the Labour Party has started stirring things up again. Rumours have even been circulating of a plot to remove Ed Miliband as leader and replace him with the Blairite Alan Johnson. Steve Jones looks at the latest machinations of the Blairites.
Saturday 18th October will see hundreds of thousands of trade unionists, students and youth, pensioners and unemployed, all marching through London and Glasgow as part of the TUC-called day of protest against austerity, cuts in services and for and end to the pushing back of workers pay. Join Socialist Appeal supporters and members of the Marxist Student Federation on the demo to argue that Britain needs a revolution!
We publish here further reports from the strike of NHS workers that took place earlier this week. The first is an interview by the UCLU Marxists of an NHS worker at the picket of University College Hospital; the second is a report from a Unison steward in Worcester. Both provide a good picture of the reasons for Monday’s strike and the anger felt amongst workers in the NHS.
Friday 10th October marked a gain for UKIP, as newly defected ex-Tory MP Douglas Carswell retained his seat at the Clacton by-election, giving UKIP their first-ever elected MP. At the same time, Labour were given a scare, as they almost lost their previously safe-seat of Heywood and Middleton. These results demonstrate the growing hatred towards the Coalition and the Establishment that they represent.
As the Tory-led Coalition continue to boast about the so-called “recovery”, a group of young mothers in London, under the name of Focus E15, is struggling with the local council to have something as basic as a house to raise their children. Beatrice Papapietro of the Southampton Marxists looks at the inspiring struggle of the Focus E15 mothers.
Over the past few weeks, membership to the Scottish National Party has skyrocketed on the back of the momentum from the pro-independence campaign. Recent events, in which the SNP-led government has overseen the re-privatisation of the Scottish rail network, have exposed the divide between the SNP leadership, which is wedded to capitalism, and the radicalised rank-and-file, who are looking for a genuine alternative to austerity.
We publish here an open letter from Darrall Cozens, President of the Coventry TUC and lifelong member of the Labour Party, who responds to the Labour leader, Ed Miliband’s, justification for supporting the recent vote in Parliament backing military action in Iraq.
Following their vote for war against the Islamic State in Parliament, the Tories then headed off to their party conference last week to re-declare another war: a class war against the working class. Steve Jones looks at the latest promises of austerity that Cameron and co. have offered to workers and youth.
It is very clear that today’s rent is completely unaffordable. Britain in 2014 has a prospering culture of landlords striving to become new little Rachmans, letting tiny uninhabitable rooms for extortionate prices. Jo Pickard of the Oxford Marxists examines some of the latest shocking stories emerging from the UK’s farcical housing and rental market.