Life in Britain is hard for working class people. Unemployment has reached 2.2 million and continues to grow.
In February 1934, in the wake of a huge financial scandal, fascists in France led an attack on the country’s parliament.
‘Since the first signs of the current crisis began to emerge in 2007 there has been growing interest in Karl Marx’s greatest work, Capital, especially in universities.
Imagine a group of thugs, implicated in terrorism and racist attacks, becoming our representatives in Europe. In the days following Thursday 4 June, the date of elections to the European parliament, we could wake up to find that this is exactly what has happened.
The British National Party’s (BNP’s) "friends" in Europe are an assortment of violent fascist organisations.
‘Marching neo-Nazi paramilitary guards, openly racist members of parliament, ghetto walls erected around Roma Gypsy slums, laws slanted so that social welfare recipients from ethnic minorities are losing their benefits, fingerprinting and mass deportation of ‘guest workers’, judicial and bureaucratic bias against immigrants and unpunished race murders.
In November 1930 the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci wrote from his prison cell on the effects of the unfolding economic depression and the possibilities for revolutionary advance.
Every day seems to bring yet another announcement of job cuts. This is seen as having a terrible effect on the strength of the working class in Britain.
The percentage of workers in manufacturing has been in long term decline (1). There has however been a huge increase in productivity – the amount of wealth produced per worker (2). While the share of manufacturing goods exported has declined their actual value has gone up (3 & 4)
Further and higher education is on the frontline of the government’s assault on the public sector. This is an issue that affects every working class person, not just education workers and students.
Students and staff at Strathclyde University in Glasgow are standing together against the new principal’s plans to sell off parts of the university and sack workers.
Lecturers in the UCU union at London Metropolitan University became the latest group to take action to defend education when they struck on Thursday of last week.
