General secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions GAWAIN LITTLE calls for support and participation in the national partnership organised to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 1926 general strike
Latest editorial
Give Venezuela back its gold
As Venezuela wins its case to get back €1.3 billion illegally confiscated by a Portuguese bank, the Bank of England should return Venezuela’s gold, writes LOGAN WILLIAMS
vengold
After brutal police crackdowns on pensioners and the forced approval of secret IMF deals, trade unions are finally responding to grassroots pressure and fighting back against savage neoliberal reforms, reports BERT SCHOUWENBURG
Bizarrely, Trump’s latest attacks now include the National Zoo, but his real and racist agenda is to strip everything black from the country’s cultural institutions, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
The transformation of a stable secular state into a fractured ruin largely ruled by Western-backed fundamentalists exposes the hollow nature of ‘multipolarity’ and the absence of principled anti-imperialism today, writes ZOLTAN ZIGEDY
Facing economic turmoil, Jim Callaghan’s government rejected Tony Benn’s alternative economic strategy in favour of cuts that paved the way for Thatcherism — and the cuts-loving Labour of the present era, writes KEITH FLETT
The economic value of disability benefits far outweighs their cost, argues Dr DYLAN MURPHY
As tensions rise in the Middle East, the role of Iran in the region’s political balance becomes ever more significant. STEVE BISHOP assesses the current situation
WITH the recent announcement that Venezuela has succeeded in its legal battle to recover €1.3 billion illegally confiscated by Portuguese bank Novo Banco, the fight to return Venezuelan gold held by the Bank of England must be reinvigorated, with the labour and progressive movements supporting the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign’s demand that this gold must be returned to its rightful owners — the Venezuelan people.
The Bank of England is currently withholding 31 tons of gold bars (of the initial 99.2 tonnes) worth roughly £1.57bn, which the Venezuelan government, through its Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV), deposited there for safe keeping initially in 1980.
These gold reserves would be a vital resource for Venezuela to boost its recent economic upturn and fund public services after the global Covid crisis.
More from this author
From defeating illiteracy to tackling student stress, China’s system transforms lives while putting people before profit — British educators should consider what we could learn from the world’s largest school system, writes LOGAN WILLIAMS
100 years on from his death, the great revolutionary leader’s thinking is extra relevant to today’s time of economic and climate crises, combined with a relentless drive to war, says LOGAN WILLIAMS
With industrial action growing, a major gathering of Labour’s left will make clear whose side we need to be on, writes LOGAN WILLIAMS
NEU activist LOGAN WILLIAMS writes on the need for international solidarity against far-right attempts to destabilise Bolivia’s elected government
