Ken Loach arrived back in Britain last week to address a meeting of call centre workers who are part of a union drive. It is difficult to imagine any other film director who had just won the Palme d’Or going to a talk to workers about unionisation.
Read our monthly supplement, featuring an interview with journalist Gary Younge on the battle for equality in Britain and the US. Jacob Middleton takes on the slurs that Respect is a 'communalist' party, while Dave Crouch looks at how the Communist Party organised in the East End Jewish community during the 1930s. Also we interview Steven Rose about Darwinism and Stephen Jay Gould, there are Third World Reports on Western Sahara, Sri Lanka, Brazil and Egypt, and much more
When the anti-capitalist movement began to emblazon its banners with the slogan "Another World is Possible", it signalled the revival of a utopianism that had been furled up and forgotten for at least a couple of decades.
Alongside the protests of the unemployed, two mass campaigns dominated politics in the 1930s – against fascism and war. The working class movement and its activists played a central role in spreading the message.
From the moment I was elected president of the union in 1994, I knew it would be a time of harsh struggle. The Philippines is at the cutting edge of imperialism and globalisation.
The Philippines archipelago, made up of over 7,000 islands, was "discovered" by the West in 1521 by the Spanish naval adventurer Ferdinand Magellan.
The crisis in the Philippines has fuelled pressure to make its workers go abroad to find a better life. Nearly 10 percent of Filipinos—eight million people—are now working abroad.
In April 1956 the 22 year old Georges Mattéi received his call up papers to go and fight in Algeria, just like thousands of young men across France. Corsican in origin, and on holiday in Italy, Mattéi agonised about what to do.
For the British trade union movement, the 1930s were a turning point. A long wave of militancy that rose in 1910 crashed in May 1926 when the union bureaucracy called off the General Strike.
The four star Hotel Bauen sits in the centre of the Argentinian capital, Buenos Aires. At first glance it looks no different from any similar establishment. The staff are less servile than those in your average luxury hotel, otherwise it’s business as usual.
Workplaces of all kinds have been occupied – from textiles, printing and metallurgy, to ceramics and industrial bakeries. Schools, hotels and supermarkets have also been occupied.
The political crisis in Nepal has focused the attention of the Western media on Maoism for the first time in decades. An avowedly Maoist organisation – the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) – has led an insurgency which holds most of the countryside and is within an ace of toppling the autocratic king.
