As the Stop the War Coalition holds its annual conference, ANDREW MURRAY warns that Britain’s alignment with US foreign policy is fuelling global instability and diverting billions from welfare, wages and public services
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The price of women’s equality is eternal vigilance
Women’s hard-fought-for rights are facing sustained and serious ideological attack. Let this International Women’s Day be a call to arms, says Professor MARY DAVIS
A woman showing signs of depression (picture posed by a model)
ANSELM ELDERGILL examines the tension between treating children as vulnerable dependants and recognising them as citizens with rights
The tightening of protest rights reflects a broader shift toward repression in Britain’s strained liberal democracy. Socialists and trade unionists must be ready to resist further attacks on our freedoms, warns JOHN McINALLY
Until ministers stop deferring to the market and start drawing hard lines, the public will remain at the mercy of private power, says MATT KERR
As the US intensifies its economic and political pressure it is now vitally important to demand the British government intervene to end US aggression, writes GEOFF BOTTOMS
SEVIM DAGDELEN argues that a legal framework exists for a closure of US and Nato military base in Ramstein
IT WOULD be tempting to mark International Women’s Day as a day to celebrate women’s victories. That would be a mistake because even after 50 years of the Equal Pay Act & Sex Discrimination Act, working-class women in Britain cannot chalk up many victories.
Some have argued that women have made great progress in the 21st century, and thus they question whether it is necessary to continue the debate on women’s inequality.
Compared to previous centuries when women were the property of men and had no rights at all, it is clear that women’s status in many countries has improved, at least juridically — although it has gone backwards in others. However, apart from the right to vote and own property, equality for women as it now exists is based, by an unseen process of co-option, on the successes of a favoured few; for working-class women little has altered.
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Professor MARY DAVIS argues that feminism has been hollowed out by liberal co-option – and only a revival of socialist, class-based politics can restore International Working Women’s Day’s original, radical purpose
Half a century after transformative laws reshaped Britain, women’s rights are again contested. This International Women’s Day is a call to remember how change was won, and to organise to defend it, says KATE RAMSDEN
The legacy of socialist feminists such as Alexandra Kollontai challenges us today to confront an uncomfortable truth: framing prostitution as empowerment lets the abusers of the Epstein class off the hook, warns HELEN O’CONNOR
Sisters came together last weekend for the landmark launch of a new women’s group. ROS SITWELL reports