LOUISE RAW talks to Sabby Dhalu, Kevin Courtney and Steve Wright about why we should all join next weekend’s march against the far right in London
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The ‘Battle of Bexley Square’ 90 years ago has stark resonance today
REBECCA LONG BAILEY looks back to 1931 and a protest of the unemployed at Salford Town Hall. Today’s struggles can draw inspiration and strength from them and their legacy
The Battle of Bexley Square, where police attacked unemployed workers
DIANE ABBOTT says the socialist island has played an outsized role in the fight against racism worldwide — we must stand by it as Trump tries to choke it to death
GAWAIN LITTLE looks at the causes of the far-right resurgence and explains how the General Federation of Trade Unions is helping to combat it
As delegates from the north-east, Yorkshire & Humber meet this weekend in Durham, TUC regional secretary DAVE PIKE speaks to Ben Chacko about the challenges ahead
Prison Officers’ Association general secretary and TUC president STEVE GILLAN looks at what’s missing from the Employment Rights Act, and why we need further legislation
Militarism and war cannot be separated from ‘bread and butter issues,’ argues MICAELA TRACEY-RAMOS — opposing them is central to trade unionism
ON OCTOBER 1 1931, in an era of mass unemployment and poverty, 10,000 unemployed men and women marched to Salford Town Hall at Bexley Square and were met with awful police violence.
They were trying to highlight the desperate situations they found themselves in and to hand in a petition protesting against means-tested benefits and unemployment.
The famous Salfordian author Walter Greenwood was there, and in his novel Love on the Dole he said: “Mounted police appeared at the trot, and, on a sudden, a swarm of plain-clothes men descended from nowhere and began to snatch the placards from the hands of the demonstrators, flinging the posters to the ground and trampling them underfoot … truncheons descending on heads with sickening thuds; men going down and being dragged off, unceremoniously, to the cells.”
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