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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The political economy of trade: a crucial issue for the left
Global South governments’ sovereignty and ability to decide future economic policy are severely compromised by signing free trade agreements, whose terms are heavily weighted in favour of the already wealthy countries of the global North, writes BERT SCHOUWENBURG
A rally demanding changes to the Trump administration’s revised North American Free Trade Agreement at the House Triangle in Washington DC, 2017
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
ON NOVEMBER 26, the Morning Star editorial suggested that we should follow the century-old nostrum of German economist, Rudolf Hilferding in avoiding the “bourgeois dilemma” of protectionism or free trade and concentrate instead on building a socialist society.
Whether or not they knew anything of Hilferding’s writings, the Zapatista Liberation Army in the Mexican state of Chiapas had different ideas when they launched an armed insurrection on January 1 1994 to coincide with the commencement of Nafta, the North American Free Trade Agreement, promulgated between the governments of the US, Canada and Mexico.
The Zapatistas predicted that a tri-country agreement completely liberalising trade in goods and services spelt disaster for them and the rural working class, and they were not wrong. Mexican farmers had no hope of competing with subsidised products from north of the border and 1.3 million agricultural jobs were lost. In a country where corn (maize) is not merely a crop, but a deep cultural symbol tied to daily life, the effect of Nafta was catastrophic.
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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
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