As the Stop the War Coalition holds its annual conference, ANDREW MURRAY warns that Britain’s alignment with US foreign policy is fuelling global instability and diverting billions from welfare, wages and public services
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The neoliberal backdrop to the miners’ strike
LORD JOHN HENDY KC explains how the events of ’84-5 were an ideological assault unleashed on the working class in revenge for gains of the ’70s
Police officers march through a mining town
ANSELM ELDERGILL examines the tension between treating children as vulnerable dependants and recognising them as citizens with rights
The tightening of protest rights reflects a broader shift toward repression in Britain’s strained liberal democracy. Socialists and trade unionists must be ready to resist further attacks on our freedoms, warns JOHN McINALLY
Until ministers stop deferring to the market and start drawing hard lines, the public will remain at the mercy of private power, says MATT KERR
As the US intensifies its economic and political pressure it is now vitally important to demand the British government intervene to end US aggression, writes GEOFF BOTTOMS
SEVIM DAGDELEN argues that a legal framework exists for a closure of US and Nato military base in Ramstein
THE miners’ strike of 1984-5 really began in 1947 when Friedrich von Hayek, Milton Friedman and others developed a quasi-philosophical theory to justify the unbridled capitalism of the 19th century. It became known as neoliberalism.
Ironically, 1947 was the year the British coalmines were nationalised, part of the “post-war consensus.” Neoliberalism rejected every aspect of it — from nationalisation to the welfare state and, in particular, the dominant economic theory which underpinned the consensus and mitigated the harshest aspects of capitalism, Keynesianism.
Neoliberalism has many features but of most relevance here is the proposition that trade unions are tolerable — except to the extent that, through collective bargaining, they distort the so-called “labour market.” The price of labour should instead be left to the freedom of individuals to compete against each other to work for the lowest wage each is prepared to accept to sustain life.
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