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
Latest editorial
Alex Salmond: a transformative but limited political legacy
JOHN FOSTER examines how the late SNP leader shifted the party leftwards and upwards, bringing Scottish independence to the forefront while fundamentally failing to address deeper issues of class and corporate capture
Alex Salmond speaks at the SNP conference in Glasgow, October 14, 2016
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
DURING his two periods as SNP leader, from 1990 to 2000 and from 2004 to 2014, Alex Salmond transformed Scottish and, thereby, British politics. In doing so, he helped ensure that Britain’s character as a multinational state could no longer be ignored.
What led to this transformation? Salmond was a forceful and charismatic speaker. He could read his audiences — whether trade unionists or bankers. But it was his politics that were key. They transformed the SNP.
In the 1930s, the SNP had been a right-wing, and sometimes very right-wing, party representing a mixture of romantics, eccentric aristocrats and minority elements within what used to be called the petty bourgeoisie — but it was squeezed to virtual non-existence between a dominant Unionist Party, that harvested a significant Orange vote, and a challenging and relatively radical Labour Party.
More from this author
Ahead of a TUC special Congress next weekend to fight Conservative anti-strike laws, JOHN FOSTER looks back to 1969 and 1972 when similar proposals were defeated through class solidarity and painstaking organising work
JOHN FOSTER recommends the down-to-earth realism of a political memoir that navigates the surreality of Scottish politics
JOHN FOSTER discusses the role of communists in responding to the aggressive militarisation initiated by the US in a world that faces an unprecedented period of acute crisis, as he introduces the international resolution for this autumn's Communist Party Congress
Half a century ago, 8,000 workers took over four shipyards in Scotland and instead of striking, kept working. JOHN FOSTER previews an event to mark this brave action, which not only saved every job, it turned a period of retreat into a working-class offensive
