We condemn without reservation the outrageous decision of the UK High Court to deny Venezuela access to 31 tonnes of gold deposited at the Bank of England. This decision can only be described as daylight robbery and an act of piracy.

This year has been an extraordinary one in Irish politics. The dominant political parties – Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael – were dealt a terrible blow in February’s election, so much so that the parties which could once command 80 percent in the polls have been reduced to a combined first-preference vote of 43 percent. The prevailing mood of the election was a demand for change and an end to their duopoly on power. Among the many parties calling for “change” in the election were the Green Party. However, in a craven move, the leadership of the Greens

For the past few days, the Caribbean island of Curaçao has been shaking. There have been reports of riots, looting and fights with the police. The Dutch state is now helping the island government to “maintain order” by deploying the Dutch marine corps. What is happening?

Rinat Akhmetchin, the Mayor of Norilsk, an industrial city in Russia, has been charged with negligence following a catastrophic oil spill from a local power plant. The spill has been ongoing since 29 May, with over 20,000 tonnes of diesel seeping into the surrounding soil and waterways. On 4 June, the Kremlin issued a state of emergency in Norilsk. The city is situated in Siberia, inside the Arctic Circle, where the local ecology is already severely disturbed due to some extremely worrying symptoms of climate change: a product of the irrational, rotten capitalist system, which is placing the planet in peril.

Last week, Keir Starmer abruptly sacked former leadership rival Rebecca Long-Bailey from her position as Shadow Education Secretary, on the ludicrous charge of “sharing antisemitic conspiracy theories”. This incendiary move rightly provoked outrage amongst grassroots members.

As society begins to reopen, the ruling class is hoping for a return to ‘normality’. But the future will look nothing like the past. A deep depression looms, threatening to throw us back to the 1930s. We must fight for revolution.

The British establishment is attempting to divert the movement against racism down safe-channels – turning the struggle into a polarising ‘culture war’, and offering tokenistic gestures. Instead, we must fight for socialist change.

Britain’s care homes have become a killing field for coronavirus. Cuts to the NHS have pushed patients into social care, causing further contagion and fatalities. To fight the pandemic, the whole sector needs to be nationalised.

It has been 34 years since the assassination of Sweden’s prime minister, the social democratic leader Olof Palme, one of the most noteworthy political figures in the history of the country. Gunned down after a visit to a movie theatre without his body-guards, the circumstances around his murder have been mysterious and the investigation mired by scandals. Many had therefore hoped for a solid conclusion to this long-overdue investigation. But all we got was the closing down of the investigation, in a transparent attempt to bury this embarrassing affair once and for all. Thus, this national tragedy yet again ended in farce.

Contrary to some media reports, the strike and the critical situation at the mines in the Lugansk district continue. Please read our solidarity appeal.

14 June 2020 marked the third year since the sickening tragedy of Grenfell tower, in which years of negligence by Tory-run governments and the Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council led to a fire that claimed the lives of 72 people. The pain of that incident still resonates deeply through the working class. We are still no closer to justice since the last anniversary, with zero arrests of those responsible. And three years on, 23,600 homes occupied by an estimated 56,640 people are still covered in the flammable cladding responsible for the Grenfell fire. 

Since June 6, a mass strike of miners has been going on in the territory of the Lugansk (also known as the Lugansk People’s Republic). A significant number of the striking miners (119 people) are currently underground in one of the mines. 

On 7 June, an event that we predicted and the background of which we’ve long explained took place. Elena Shuvalova, one of the most prominent representatives of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in Moscow, was expelled from the party following a manoeuvre by the right-wing party bureaucracy.

A social explosion is brewing in Britain. The pandemic, Brexit, and now the Black Lives Matter movement are throwing the Tory government from one crisis to another. The rottenness of the whole capitalist system is rapidly being revealed.

The Dutch King has apologised for violence committed by the Netherlands during Indonesia’s independence struggle. The crocodile tears of hypocritical elites do not make up for 300 years of brutal subjugation. The only real justice and road forward can come from the expropriation of Dutch capital: the common enemy of the Dutch and Indonesian workers.