News

Meting out misery - coronavirus outbreaks and the meat industry

As coronavirus spreads through slaughterhouses in the US and Europe, Simon Basketter looks at how the drive for profit is to blame

Richard Horton: the system has failed

Richard Horton, the longstanding editor of the medical journal The Lancet, is scathing about the establishment’s handling of the coronavirus crisis. He told Socialist Worker why.

Out of work and out of money - how lives are being torn apart by profit system

Workers are being pushed to make big sacrifices during the lockdown—but things could get much worse as unemployment bites. Tomáš Tengely-Evans spoke to some of those affected, and argues that the crisis shows why we need a different system

How the sun set on the British empire

As Britain’s rulers try to defend their colonial past, Sarah Bates looks at how resistance, imperialist rivalries and decline ended the biggest empire in the world

W.E.B Du Bois—a pioneer of anti-racist theory and struggle

Du Bois was one of the most prolific and popular sociologists, academics and civil rights activists of the first half of the 20th century

How blood of slavery fed profit system

Defenders of slavers’ statues warn that tearing them down amounts to an attempt to “erase” Britain’s history. On the surface of it, many of them pretend this is about keeping the legacy of slavery visible, not hiding it away.

Fannie Lou Hamer: ‘I am sick and tired of being sick and tired’

The indomitable political activist Fannie Lou Hamer was one of the most urgent and important voices of the US civil rights movement.

Are all white people racist?

Is there a role for white people in the movement against racism? And what should it be?

United States—a history of revolts against racism

Alongside a terrible history of vicious racism in the US, there is a tradition of militant anti-racism. Yuri Prasad looks back at when black and white people have fought back together against the system

Britain’s not innocent—a history of racist cops

When David Oluwale drowned in the River Aire in Leeds in 1969, police wrote “Wog” on the nationality section of his death certificate. His killing was the first black death by cops in Britain—and shows that police racism, violence and cover-up are a very British problem.

‘My son was murdered’—two decades of racist killings

A revolt is exploding over George Floyd’s racist murder at the hands of the cops. Socialist Worker looks at a horrific history of killings in the United States—and the inspiring resistance to them

Tory racist rules leave a million migrants living in squalor

A million people in Britain are banned from claiming any benefits—and the coronavirus crisis will throw hundreds of thousands more into the same situation. Tomáš Tengely-Evans lifts the lid on a horrific, hidden world

Who is really running Britain?

The Dominic Cummings affair has exposed how far the Tories will go to protect unelected advisers. Nick Clark looks at what the scandal says about how society is run

Winners and losers in Covid-19 Britain

We are not “all in this together”. Covid-19 is not some great equaliser that brings everyone together, but rather a crisis that is deepening the fissures in an already unequal society.

Why the world is unequal

The coronavirus pandemic has laid bare the grotesque inequalities between rich and poor countries

Race—a capitalist invention

Scientists are struggling to understand how Covid-19 affects people differently. Socialist Worker shows that the construct of race has more basis in exploitation than biology

‘We can teach the Tories a lesson’—school workers, parents and students speak out over unsafe return to school

The battle over reopening schools could make or break the Tory drive to get people back to work before it’s safe.

How the Spanish flu spread—and why the second wave was worse

What lay behind the horror of a past pandemic?

Coronavirus, capitalism and a crisis of mental distress

For many, lockdown will affect their mental wellbeing. Iain Ferguson and Sarah Bates explore why mental distress is linked to the social system that we live in.

Russia 1917 - how a revolution beat back a pandemic

How would a society that has had a revolution deal with pandemics? A glimpse comes from Russia in 1917. The working class, headed by the Bolshevik party, took power in a revolution there in October. Immediately, they had to deal with waves of disease sweeping large parts of Europe.