Skip to main content
Advertise with the Morning Star
The fight against the Tories and ‘pressure from without’
From the Anti-Corn Law League to today, lobbying Parliament from the outside, backed up by the angry street activity, can be effective when the working class lacks political representation, writes KEITH FLETT

THE scale of the attack the Tories plan on working people and trade unions is significant. Billions of pounds of cuts in public spending are threatened.

The impact will be felt across public services — not least in the NHS — and in terms of jobs and pay too.

At the same time, the Tories plan to make it even more difficult for trade unions to take strike action to defend living standards.  

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
Veteran Labour MP Tony Benn, leading over 500 OAPs in a march to mark the start of the three-day National Pensioners Convention in Blackpool's Winter Gardens, April 30, 2001
Features / 22 September 2025
22 September 2025

In 1981, towering figure for the British left Tony Benn came a whisker away from victory, laying the way for a wave of left-wing Labour Party members, MPs and activism — all traces of which are now almost entirely purged by Starmer, writes KEITH FLETT

A ballot box arriving during the count for the Blackpool South by-election at Blackpool Sports Centre, Blackpool, May 2, 2024
Features / 11 September 2025
11 September 2025

Who you ask and how you ask matter, as does why you are asking — the history of opinion polls shows they are as much about creating opinions as they are about recording them, writes socialist historian KEITH FLETT

Jeremy Corbyn (second left) and Zarah Sultana, MP for Coventry South (second right) on the picket line outside London Euston train station, August 18, 2022
Features / 26 August 2025
26 August 2025

KEITH FLETT revisits debates about the name and structure of proposed working-class parties in the past

Ramsgate beach 1899
History / 14 August 2025
14 August 2025

The summer saw the co-founders of modern communism travelling from Ramsgate to Neuenahr to Scotland in search of good weather, good health and good newspapers in the reading rooms, writes KEITH FLETT

Similar stories
Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Chancellor of the Exchequer
Features / 17 March 2025
17 March 2025
Starmer’s slash-and-burn approach to disability benefits represents a fundamental break with Labour’s founding mission to challenge the idle rich rather than punish the vulnerable poor, argues KEITH FLETT
A cartoon depiction of the arrest of the Cato Street Conspir
Features / 4 February 2025
4 February 2025
The legacy of an 1820 conspiracy in revenge for Peterloo resonates down the ages, argues KEITH FLETT
A Marx and Engles statue covered in snow
Features / 18 December 2024
18 December 2024
Modern Christmas as we know it, with its trees, dinner menu, cards and time off from work, only dates back to the early days of modern socialism as we know it, writes KEITH FLETT, checking in on Marx, Engels and the Chartists in the 1800s
TRULY MASSIVE: The great
Chartist meeting on Kennington
Comm
Features / 4 December 2024
4 December 2024
Forget Farage and the recent daft demands for a new election against Labour: the greatest petition Britain has ever known gathered millions of names demanding the right to vote — and it didn’t work either, writes KEITH FLETT