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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Women's access to culture is being cut off from our earliest years
Reading the Communist Party's recent Class & Culture pamphlet led RUTH McCANN to consider the diminishing space for women to socialise and create
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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
WHEN it comes to culture we are being let down, failed by the government — something made clear by the authors for each of their areas of expertise in the Communist Party’s recent Class and Culture pamphlet. The pamphlet has prompted some conversation in these pages — and I felt compelled to add my voice to that. Artists are soldiers of revolution, said Diego Rivera.
Make space for women! Growing up, I always associated the term spinster with negative connotations, sad and lonely.
Recently I learned the etymology of the word. Historically it named a woman’s occupation as a spinner. To have an occupation as a woman in the past meant having means of one’s own — an income and freedom. To have time to create it is essential to have money and this is why young successful creatives are often from wealthy backgrounds. Watching television I sometimes wonder, did everyone on the screen come through spotlights at Oxford?
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MIKE QUILL reports on a lively conference in Barnsley that took stock of working-class access to culture and proposed strategies to embed culture within the trade union movement
Artists are frequently first in line when it comes to cuts, but society as a whole is left all the poorer – it’s time they were properly valued, says ZITA HOLBOURNE of Artists Union England
Public libraries are facing massive cutbacks by councils looking to make ‘easy’ savings – with Birmingham and Nottingham in the front line. But these are community services that should not be for sale, argues JOHN PATEMAN