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
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Unions: now is the time for an organising approach
Former head of organising at GMB MARTIN SMITH puts forward eight principles to capitalise on the current wave of militancy
UPSURGE: A PCS on the picket line in May this year
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
THE recent groundswell of wage militancy across the public, private and privatised sectors did not drop out of a clear blue sky — it has been almost 15 years in the making.
The challenge of decades-long wage theft, made worse now by profiteering energy companies driving an inflationary spiral, simply has not lent itself to a “servicing model” trade union response, and needs a collective organising one, centred on workplaces.
Unions were perhaps better equipped to capture this wave of working-class militancy than they might have been — but now is the time for the “organising agenda” to deliver on its promise.
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