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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Germany’s crisis of working-class politics
In the recent federal elections the far-right AfD was able to reach sections of the working class on issues over which the left is divided and unable to articulate a coherent position, a situation that is replicated in a number of other European countries, argues NICK WRIGHT
A man stands in front of the logo at the AfD party headquarters in Berlin, Germany, Sunday, Feb. 23, 2025, after the German national election
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
WHILE attention is focused on the rise of the right-wing populist Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) — and liberal opinion in Britain anxiously parses the difference and similarities of this peculiarly German formation with our own home grown Reform UK — the collapse of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) is the issue exercising Labour MPs.
In the German election the big winner in terms of voter gains is the AfD — with 20.8 per cent it almost doubled its number of voters — while the conservative Christian Democrat/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) increased its vote by 4.4 per cent to total 28.6 per cent. This makes its aggressively right-wing leader Friedrich Merz almost certain to replace the SPD’s Olaf Scholz as chancellor.
The SPD clocked up its worst result in a federal election and its largest loss, eventually winning a humiliating 16.4 per cent.
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