JOE BESWICK of the London Renters Union talks to the Morning Star’s new Left on Record programme
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Still fighting anti-trade union laws: the IER and CTUF at Tolpuddle
Almost two hundred years on from the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the trade union movement is still having to fight attempts to delegitimise and criminalise its activities, writes BEN SELLERS
Tolpuddle Martyrs' Rally
The unnecessarily violent police intervention at a Quaker place of worship is a PR disaster and will only serve to deepen the chasm between them and the public. SYMON HILL reports
ANDREW MURRAY wonders whether recent opinion polling and a fresh local authority by-election result in Ilford are an indication that the time is ripe for the left to make inroads
Due to the actions of this government, the challenges facing those with disabilities, such as spinal cord injuries, are nigh on insurmountable, argus RUTH HUNT
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
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 Tolpuddle Martyrs, a group of agricultural labourers, were charged with taking an illegal oath 189 years ago. This was a promise of solidarity to each other in their struggle against landowners extracting every last drop of profit they could from the workers’ labour.
The Tolpuddle Martyrs’ arrest and deportation to Australia in 1834 was an early emblem of how the powerful would treat the free organisation of workers for centuries to come. Freedom of association and of assembly, the right to protest, the right to strike and freedom of speech have been a constant battle since.
And here we are, in 2023, fighting the same battles again. The government’s Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill is in its final stages, and unamended, it will all but outlaw the right to strike — a right that has been severely restricted by a succession of anti-trade union laws over several decades.
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