Climate justice and workers’ rights movements are uniting to make the rich pay for our transition to a green economy, writes assistant general secretary of PCS JOHN MOLONEY, ahead of a major demonstration on September 20
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The left, work and benefits. Eating the rich?
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
Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves (second from left) during an investment roundtable discussion with Black Rock CEO Larry Fink and members of the BlackRock executive board at 10 Downing Street, London, November 21, 2024
Ben-Gvir’s threat to treat the flotilla as terrorists shows how seriously Israel takes the danger of growing solidarity activism from civil society to its standing on the international stage, writes RAMZY BAROUD
ANYA COOK reports from a Majority conference in Newcastle last weekend featuring Jamie Driscoll and Zarah Sultana
A new report from the Citizens Advice Bureau destroys the government narrative about disabled people ‘choosing’ not to work, showing the £3,000 annual cuts will create a two-tiered system based on claim dates rather than needs, writes DYLAN MURPHY
MEDEA BENJAMIN and NICOLAS JS DAVIES argue that it is high time for the UN to get its teeth into resolving the insufferable plight of the Palestinian nation
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
THE former Labour prime minister Harold Wilson argued that the labour movement owed more to Methodism than Marx. Socialists will dispute that but there is no doubt that in the 19th century a good deal of the imagery and words used in workers’ struggles came from the Bible. That is not a surprise when its considered that Marx’s Capital was not available in English until 1887.
One line from the Bible (Thessalonians) which was much used in the first decades of the 19th century and remains relevant now is “he that does not work neither shall he eat.”
It’s a view that is firmly lodged in the mind of right-wing social democracy. After Labour was elected in 1997, Tony Blair tried to push through welfare cuts — in that case to incapacity benefits — and suffered in May 1998 a rebellion of 80 Labour MPs.
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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
KEITH FLETT revisits debates about the name and structure of proposed working-class parties in the past
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
KEITH FLETT looks at the long history of coercion in British employment laws
