Europe

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.

On 9 July 2021, 422 workers at the Campi Bisenzio GKN plant near Florence received a text message. It came from the British multinational’s management, communicating that the workers were immediately and collectively dismissed. However, the plant is not in crisis. There is a market for the production of drive shafts and other components for the automotive sector that the plant is capable of producing. So why the sackings?

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.

The federal elections in Russia have passed. As we predicted, they were completely rigged by the regime. While it would appear that Communist Party received a majority of the real votes, literally overnight the authorities produced the result they needed. This brazen act of completely rewriting the election results will only provoke growing anger in society.

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.

The 30-year anniversary since the fall of the USSR and the restoration of capitalism in Ukraine was marked by celebrations in Kiev on 24 August. Front-and-centre during the festivities were former presidents Yushenko, Kuchma and Poroshenko, who all presided over the transition to the market economy. But behind the jubilation lies three decades of mounting poverty, inequality and repression. This is the real story of capitalism in Ukraine.

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!

The current elections in Russia have been marked by the dirtiest campaign in decades. Having previously declared liberal opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s supporters extremists, the Putin regime has now turned the full force of its propaganda and police apparatus against the Communist Party.

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?

On 13 September, Norway held its parliamentary elections. These elections came at a very significant period in Norwegian politics: They are the first elections since the outbreak of the pandemic in March last year. The pandemic revealed the contradictions hidden under the surface.

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.