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Hackney was for years a solid multi-ethnic working class stronghold in London. Now that is changing, with the borough witnessing a growing influx of rich people buying up what was previously cheap, council-owned property. It is going on across London with the Labour Party – who are often in charge of local councils – either doing nothing about it or actively joining in.
The Conservatives have announced their intention to introduce legislation which would further limit the right to strike amongst large sections of the public sector, should they win the upcoming election. Such proposals constitute yet another attack on the right of workers to organise and defend themselves against the austerity that capitalism demands.
Last week, 200 youth participated from across Brazil in revolutionary summer camp organised by the Brazilian Marxists of Esquerda Marxista. Ben Gliniecki, organiser for the Marxist Student Federation, and delegate from Britain to the Brazilian camp, reports on the enthusiastic and revolutionary mood of the young Marxists in Brazil.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. After years of crisis and further months of prevaricating, quantitative easing will soon be implemented across the Eurozone. However, the contradictions that have prevented such a programme of QE in Europe up until now have not gone away, and the fault lines along which the Eurozone will crack are already apparent and clear.
At a General Assembly of the University College London student union (UCLU) late last year, almost 600 students attended to discuss a move by certain societies to merge sabbatical officers’ positions for the sake of making more funds available elsewhere. Nina Christou of the UCLU Marxists looks at the issues involved in this important debate.
This Sunday, on January 25th, Greece will vote in a general election. Syriza is likely to be the party voted to power. This poses a dilemma for the European capitalists and is seen as a serious threat to the plans of the rulers of Europe to solve the economic crisis by an all-out attack on the living standards of the working class.
The rich are getting even richer and the poor are getting even poorer. This is the conclusion of a new report on inequality produced by Oxfam, which confirms that the richest 1% of the world’s population, based on current trends, will soon own over half the world’s wealth – that is, more than the other 99% of us have put together.
In April 1961, Yuri Gagarin, the Russian cosmonaught, became the first person in space. Flight, and later space travel, were once viewed as an indication of humanity’s progress and ability to overcome even the most enormous of obstacles. But the recent explosions of two private space ventures demonstrate the barrier that capitalism has become in our exploration of the stars.
The vicious cycle of state and individual terror continues unabated. Now France has been pulled violently into the maelstrom. The Marxists have long explained that imperialism and Islamic fundamentalism are two aspects of the same reactionary phenomenon—the decay and decline of capitalism—which threatens to take the whole of humanity down with it.
Recently released figures demonstrate that the number of children being admitted to hospital in England for self-harm is at a five-year high. Similar statistics for suicides demonstrate the same trend. Lee Singh Gill looks at these figures, which provide a graphic picture of the increasing feeling of hopelessness, despair, and alienation felt by youth under capitalism today.
Over the weekend several million people took part in demonstrations in Paris and many provincial cities of France to show solidarity with the victims of the Charlie Hebdo attack. The magnitude of the protests is an indication of the profound malaise which for years has been developing below the surface of French society.
The scandal enveloping Prince Andrew and his paedophile friend, Jeffrey Epstein, has shone an unwelcome spotlight on the festering corners of Britain’s rotten Establishment. Ben Curry of the Leeds Marxists examines the latest episode in the neverending tale of Establishment sleeze and depravity.