The prominent Scottish socialist has been speaking to packed meetings across Scotland as part of his Hope Over Fear tour. Here we print extracts from a speech he gave in Paisley in late June.
The dramatic military advance by Isis militants in the Sunni Muslim areas of Iraq in the early part of the summer pushed the country back towards civil war. The US war and occupation sowed the roots of sectarian division in Iraqi society.
An influential book by Melissa Gira Grant, Playing the Whore, has opened a debate about the nature of sex work, criminalisation and moralism.
“We have seen a massive turnout at the polls culminate in Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s election as president with 93 percent of the vote in the midst of massive popular celebrations.” This is the picture which the counter-revolution’s media is falsely presenting to summarise the presidential elections. The reality is more complex. It is necessary for...
Labour leader Ed Miliband has repeatedly pledged to end “exploitative” zero-hours contracts. We can safely assume that he does not plan to abolish exploitation in a Marxist sense – the pumping of unpaid labour out of one class by another. To oppose such exploitation would be to oppose capitalist profit-making full stop. Nonetheless, the pledge...
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” So wrote the Irish poet W B Yeats as he surveyed the turmoil across Europe in 1919. It would be an exaggeration to say that Yeats words fit Europe’s political situation in the wake of the European elections. The centre is holding but the fraying at numerous edges...
The shock results for Ukip are dragging mainstream politics further to the right, including the Labour Party. Mark L Thomas argues that this can only give a further boost to the racists.
The European elections saw a huge victory for the fascist Front National (FN) in France. The FN came out on top with 25 percent of the votes. This is the first time in its history it has secured first place in a nationwide poll. This is a terrible setback and an urgent call to action....
The big winner of the EU elections in Denmark was the right populist Danish People’s Party. With 26.6 percent of the votes it became the biggest party and doubled its MEPs from two to four. Surprisingly, the two centre-left government parties lost only a few votes and won 25.6 percent. Even more surprisingly, the left...
The Euro and local elections have confirmed that the surge in support of the left wing Syriza was not a flash in the pan. But the party is now shifting to the right.
The election of five MPs from the anti-capitalist Podemos (“We Can”) in Spain has rocked the political establishment. Formed only four months ago, Podemos won a staggering 1.2 million votes – mostly from young people who do not usually vote, but also from many working class voters disillusioned with the social democratic PSOE. With the...
The recent Euro and local elections showed the left making major advances and gave proof of a substantial process of radicalisation in the Irish working class. For more than 80 years politics in the Republic of Ireland was dominated by two Tory parties, Fianna Fail (FF) and Fine Gael (FG). The lead was played by...
