Robinson successfully defended his school from closure, fought for the unification of the teaching unions, mentored future trade union leaders and transformed teaching at the Marx Memorial Library, writes JOHN FOSTER
Investing in our rail is in everyone’s interest
From its crucial part in industry, to its central importance to our social and cultural life, to the role it must play in our commitment to achieving a carbon-neutral nation, Britain has to back rail, writes MICK WHELAN
Aslef General Secretary Mick Whelan (centre) at a picket line at Euston station in London, as members of the drivers' union Aslef and the Transport Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA) go on strike
A judge in a German court ruled that the ban activity imposed on renowned Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah was unlawful, reports LEON WYSTRYCHOWSKI
At the very moment Britain faces poverty, housing and climate crises requiring radical solutions, the liberal press promotes ideologically narrow books while marginalising authors who offer the most accurate understanding of change, writes IAN SINCLAIR
From Gaza protest bans to proscribing Palestine Action, political elites are showing a crisis of confidence as they abandon Roy Jenkins’s apologetic approach for Suella Braverman’s aggressive ‘hate march’ rhetoric, writes PAUL DONOVAN
ANSELM ELDERGILL examines the legal case behind this weekend’s Tolpuddle Martyrs’ Festival and the lessons for today
Ben Chacko talks to RMT leader EDDIE DEMPSEY about how the key to fixing broken Britain lies in collective sectoral bargaining, restoring unions’ ability to take solidarity strike action and bringing about the much-vaunted ‘wave of insourcing’
The summer of 1950 saw Labour abandon further nationalisation while escalating Korean War spending from £2.3m to £4.7m, as the government meekly accepted capitalism’s licence and became Washington’s yes-man, writes JOHN ELLISON
SOME people talk, a little cynically, you might feel, about “vested interests” — because, if you think about it, all interests are vested. Of course they are. And Aslef, as the union for train drivers for 142 years, has a vested interest in the success — now and in the future — of Britain’s railways.
We have always had such an interest, a vested interest, if you like, since we first came together in Leeds in 1880 to represent the aims and the aspirations of the locomotive engineers and firemen who shovelled the coal into the firebox on the footplate, in the halcyon days of steam trains that brought the countries, towns, cities, and villages of Britain ever closer to each other.
Transport — by river, canal, railway, and road — didn’t just help move people and goods around England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. Better transport, and the economic and social benefits it brought in its wake, was what drove the industrial revolution in Britain.
More from this author
As the labour movement meets to remember the Tolpuddle Martyrs, MICK WHELAN, general secretary of train drivers’ union Aslef, says it’s an appropriate moment to remind the Labour government to listen to the trade unions a little more
Aslef general secretary MICK WHELAN writes for the Morning Star on the eve of the TUC in Brighton, about the pay offer from the DfT, relations with the Labour government, and the union’s motion at Congress calling for the renationalisation of rail freight
MICK WHELAN, general secretary of Aslef, the train drivers’ trade union, writes for the Morning Star as union activists prepare to march through Durham today in a display of working-class solidarity at the 138th Durham Miners’ Gala
MICK WHELAN, general secretary of train drivers’ trade union Aslef, writes for the Morning Star as voters prepare to go to the polls in the general election today
