DYLAN MURPHY looks at how Labour is breaking its pledge to protect the disabled and vulnerable
The origins of International Women’s Day
All those who are celebrating IWD should not forget its socialist feminist roots, says MARY DAVIS
A german poster for International Women's Day from 1914
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A centenary tour of north-west England uncovers powerful exhibitions and archives connecting the history of the 1926 General Strike with the fights facing workers today. General Strike 100 national co-ordinator HENRY FOWLER reflects on his recent visit to partners in the region
WITHIN the last 20 years many thousands of women worldwide have begun to celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD). However, the way in which the day is marked often bears little resemblance to the original IWD purpose and origins.
This is a great misfortune, especially in the current climate in which there is an attack on the fundamental principle of women’s rights.
IWD was founded at the beginning of the last century to both highlight and celebrate the struggle of working women against their oppression and double exploitation.
Today this fight has not been won — their struggle is still our struggle. Thus it is timely to remind women and men in the labour movement and elsewhere of the inspirational socialist origins of IWD in the hope that it will ignite again a progressive socialist feminist women’s movement rooted in an understanding of the class basis of women’s inequality. We can learn from our history, but first we must rediscover it.
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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
One hundred years after 1.7m workers shut the country down in defence of the miners, the struggles that sparked the 1926 General Strike are still with us – and will be honoured on London’s May Day march this year, writes MARY ADOSSIDES
Corbyn and Sultana’s ‘Your Party’ represents the first attempt at mass socialist organisation since the CPGB’s formation in 1921, argues DYLAN MURPHY
Join the traditional march from Clerkenwell Green, which will bring together countless international workers’ organisations in a statement against the far right