Head of education, campaigns and organising for the General Federation of Trade Unions HENRY FOWLER explains why it is launching a fund to support trades councils and give them access to a new range of courses and resources
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Class reproduction and untangling the class pay gap in Wales
Our class origin casts a long shadow over our lives — one of the areas in which this manifests is through the existence of occupational sorting and the class pay gap, writes LUKE FLETCHER MS
While working people face austerity, arms companies enjoy massive government contracts, writes ARTHUR WEST, exposing how politicians exaggerate the Russian threat to justify spending on a sector that has the lowest employment multiplier
ANYA COOK reports from the Newcastle citizens’ assembly, where over 240 people gathered to create a people’s manifesto ahead of next year’s local elections – part of former mayor Jamie Driscoll’s Majority movement
While claiming to target fraud, Labour’s snooping Bill strips benefit recipients of privacy rights and presumption of innocence, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE, warning that algorithms with up to 25 per cent error rates could wrongfully investigate and harass millions of vulnerable people
Real security comes from having a secure base at home — Keir Starmer’s reckless and renegade decision to get Britain deeper into the proxy war against Russia is as dangerous as it is wasteful, writes SALLY SPIERS
The plan is to stigmatise and destabilise South Africa in preparation for breaking it up while creating a confused and highly racialised atmosphere around immigration in the US to aid in denying rights to non-white refugees, explains EMILE SCHEPERS
ALAN SIMPSON warns that Starmer’s triangulation strategy will fail just as New Labour’s did, with each rightward move by Labour pushing Tories further right
AN insidious aspect of neoliberalism’s ideological blitz has been to convince certain parts of society that working-class people being unable to “get on” is an individual, moral flaw — some sort of gene-deep character deficiency.
Aside from being — at best — a glib display of ignorance, it also neatly sidesteps any structural analysis of class, what functions people perform in the economy and how this reproduces class privilege.
What our backgrounds are — where we come from, our access to certain social networks, what kinds of support we can access (in short, the kinds of economic, social and cultural capital we can harness) — and how these affect our trajectories, cast very long shadows.
More from this author
LUKE FLETCHER pours scorn on Labour’s betrayal of the Welsh steel industry, where the option of nationalisation was sneered at and dismissed – unlike at Scunthorpe where the government stepped in
LUKE FLETCHER fleshes out Plaid Cymru's plan for the revitalisation of Wales's economy
After Joe Biden’s cynical last-minute clemency for Cuba, the new administration has quickly returned to maximum subversive tactics. This socialist island needs our support now more than ever, writes LUKE FLETCHER MS
The Welsh government is shying away from the obvious answer to a spiralling rental market and increased housing precarity – well-designed and implemented rent controls, writes LUKE FLETCHER
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