Scottish Labour's leaders cannot keep blaming Westminster for the collapse at the ballot box, says VINCE MILLS
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When female workers enforced Britain's first minimum wage
MAT COWARD recalls a time when imaginative employment of newsreels helped secure a memorable victory for an industrial action by the chainmakers
(L to R) Handbill for an April 11 1910 National Federation of Women Workers meeting to discuss the chainmakers' strike, with Macarthur's name, as president of the federation, prominent; Mary Macarthur addressing the crowds during the chainmakers' strike, Cradley Heath, Sandwell, West Midlands, England, 1910
[(L to R) Anonymous/Public domain - Edwin Beech/Black Country Living Museum/CC]
Over 30 years since apartheid was abolished, nasty anti-migrant rhetoric sweeps the corporate media. The Commnunist Party is ready to fight back, says ROGER McKENZIE
Over 100,000 people are expected on Brussels’s streets today. Ben Chacko speaks to Belgian Workers Party’s PETER MERTENS on wage and pensions attacks that have united the fightback
FRED BAYER says the cuts to the congress cycle could be disastrous for the Scottish trade union movement
Berlin’s Soviet war memorials are becoming the latest front in a political struggle to ‘de-Sovietise’ German history. NICO POPP reports
Western Marxism is a particular version of Marxist theory developed in – and acceptable to – the capitalist nations of Europe and North America and largely divorced from political action, argues the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY
YOU might well be tempted to set up The National Anti-Sweating League after getting stuck in a tunnel on the rush-hour Northern Line, but a century ago “sweating” had a particular meaning.
In 1899, the House of Lords committee on sweating (look, I’m sorry, but if you're going to giggle every time, we'll be here forever) defined sweatshop labour by three criteria: it was underpaid, the hours were excessive, and the working conditions were unhealthy.
The point being that they meant bad pay, long days and crap conditions that were dramatically worse than the already dreadful norm.
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TUC Midlands marks 20 years of celebrating the 1910 chainmakers’ victory with a festival that connects historical lessons to modern struggles — because working-class history should inspire action, not just nostalgia, writes STUART RICHARDS
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