There have been penalties for those who looked the other way when Epstein was convicted of child sex offences and decided to maintain relationships with the financier — but not for the British ambassador to Washington, reveals SOLOMON HUGHES
Fighting the cost of living crisis needs a mass movement
TAM KIRBY argues we can freeze energy bills and the price of essential goods, restore the universal credit uplift and abandon the National Insurance hike — so long as we can build a coalition to tax the rich
Labour’s new Treasury unit will ‘challenge unnecessary regulation’ by forcing nominally independent bodies like Ofwat to bend to business demands — exactly what Iain Anderson’s corporate clients wanted, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
DR DYLAN MURPHY looks at a Big Brother Watch report which exposes the government as an enabler of DWP secret spying on benefit claimants
The EU faces a critical choice: will it remain in the shadow of an increasingly unreliable US ally, or will it forge its own path in a multilateral world where co-operation with China is essential, asks MARC VANDEPITTE as leaders meet for the EU-China Summit
A lot of discussion about how the left should currently organise – including debate on whether the Green Party is a useful vehicle for advance – runs the risk of refusing to engage with or learn from the reasons the left was defeated previously, argues KEVIN OVENDEN
For Egypt trade trumps the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians, but how long can the country’s ‘misleaders’ – and others in the region – continue their indifference against the popular will of their own people, asks ROGER McKENZIE
SATURDAY saw what I hope is the start of building a mass campaign across Britain with trade unions, People’s Assembly groups and community campaigning organisations to call out the Tories and the cost of living crisis they created. Here in Scotland very quickly we went from one protest in Glasgow to events being held in Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee.
In Glasgow, the event held jointly by the People’s Assembly Scotland and the STUC had just a week to organise and very dreich weather but the turnout was excellent. What was even better were the numbers of young people not just attending but on the platform speaking.
I was asked to speak and contribute a tune as the representative for the People’s Assembly Scotland. In the run up, when trying to compile my thoughts on what to say, I was reminded of the last crisis the Tories created that had launched the People’s Assembly Against Austerity movement. When I first heard Cameron, Clegg and Osborne tell us continually that “we are all in it together” I wrote a song for my band called “Don’t piss down my back (and tell me it’s raining)” which became the title of our second album.
More from this author
Trades councils are key to linking up the class struggle at a local level — all unions and union branches must affiliate, writes TAM KIRBY
We must memorialise more of the important events of the workers' movement with real-world events, writes TAM KIRBY, as a new miners’ gala in Fife takes shape
TAM KIRBY laments how the auld are held in contempt because we apparently ‘had it so much better’ – when in fact class struggle has been a battle for every generation
TAM KIRBY told the recent online meeting of the Scottish Committee of the Communist Party that the crisis we are in shows no sign of slowing and the government's response has more to do with the protection of finance and corporations than saving lives
