BEN CHACKO speaks with Knesset member OFER CASSIF about rising political violence, the prospects for peace and his continuous ‘silencing by suspension’
We still need justice for Cammell Laird 37
MICK WHITLEY recounts the 1984 shipyard occupation that led to Britain’s largest jailing of trade unionists and urges Labour to address this historic injustice 40 years on
The choice between two Blairites to revamp the tepid centrism of our ruling party doesn’t even come as cold comfort as we wander the city streets suffering from their third decade of austerity and the fifth of wage stagnation, writes MATT KERR
HENRY FOWLER puts the strike of public-sector workers in New Zealand in the wider context of deteriorating employment conditions throughout the world’s major economies
MAT COWARD looks back at a protest 105 years ago this month, whose reporting by the media bears uncomfortable similarities with demos today
The Tricontinental Institute for Social Research explores the factors that are bringing today’s highly educated but often underemployed young people out onto the streets, from Chile, to Algeria, to Nepal
The nation’s leading second-hand socialist bookseller that has been running strong for 33 years is changing hands and expanding its vision — now is the time to get involved, buy, donate and support, writes ANDREW MURRAY
THE GMB will use the setting of this week’s Labour Party conference to vow to secure justice for the Cammell Laird 37 — the largest group ever jailed for trade union activity in modern British history.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the occupation of the Cammell Laird shipyard in Merseyside. The yard had employed 20,000 workers at its height in the 1940s, but by the early 1980s, this had dwindled to just 2,000 as the Thatcher government pursued a policy of deindustrialisation and the privatisation of British Shipbuilders in 1983.
When a further 800 redundancies were announced in the summer of 1984, the workforce — recognising that the yard now faced an existential threat — took drastic action and occupied an oil rig and blockaded the gangway of the Royal Navy Destroyer HMS Edinburgh.
The occupation was buoyed by support from the local Cammell Laird Occupation Support Group, city council workers and fellow trade unionists, including striking miners.
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