TUC general secretary PAUL NOWAK speaks to the Morning Star’s Berny Torre about the increasing frustration the trade union movement feels at a government that promised change, but has been too slow to bring it about
The case of the West End Riots
MAT COWARD remembers when the Conservative HQ at the Carlton Club got engulfed in some street-based class warfare
End of the meeting in Trafalgar Square (illustration from the Illustrated London News)
[Public Domain] 
DIANE ABBOTT exposes the misconceptions, rumours and downright lies perpetrated around immigration issues
With 12,000 fewer teachers since 2010 and dwindling resources, Scotland’s schools desperately need investment to support diverse learners rather than empty promises from politicians, writes ANDREA BRADLEY
Reversing outsourcing is the pre-election promise the government must honour, says Unison general secretary CHRISTINA McANEA
EMAN ABU ZAYED reminisces about the perilous time her family and neighbours endured in northern Gaza and how they were forced, in fear of their lives, to flee south
The EIS president who defended Marxist politics in the 1980s fought Thatcherite educational policies while organising Teachers for Peace rallies and ensuring Morning Star circulation in Scotland’s pit villages and factories, writes JOHN FOSTER
THERE are some riots you just can’t help chuckling at, even if you’re not the sort of person usually given to inappropriate levity. The circumstances which led to the stoning of the Carlton Club, on February 8 1886, would surely be enough to make even the soberest cadre crack a tiny smile.
It began with a pressure group affiliated to the Conservative Party, called the Fair-Trade League, holding a rally in Trafalgar Square to demand “Free Trade within the Empire and Protection against the World.”
Interpreting this as an attempt to win working-class support for conservatism, the Social Democratic Federation, Britain’s earliest self-styled Marxist party, called its own demonstration — same time, same place. It argued that the unemployment then blighting the nation was caused by capitalism, not by beastly foreigners, and could be ameliorated by government support for new co-operative businesses.
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