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
No Turning Back on Labour Rights
The pandemic makes the case for collective bargaining even stronger, argues ADRIAN WEIR
Nurse Ameera Sheikh protests outside Downing Street, London, demanding a pay rise, real protection against COVID-19 and and the release of Public Health England's review into BAME NHS staff's deaths in June
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
To nobody’s great surprise the coronavirus crisis has exposed the dreadful weaknesses in labour law in our country and clearly shown the need for a new framework of labour rights in Britain.
We need radical reform in health and safety rights, individual rights at work and of course rights for trade unions at least compliant with International Labour Organisation (ILO) Conventions 87 and 96, that Britain has signed, that guarantee a right to join a union, a right to organise, a right to collective bargaining and by implication a right to strike.
The ILO is an agency of the United Nations, its Conventions have the standing of international treaties but as the UK government has recently shown its respect for international treaties has been shown to be lacking. Of the expected breach of the EU Withdrawal Agreement government minister Brandon Lewis said, “This does break international law … in a very specific and limited way.”
More from this author
It is only trade union power at work that will materially improve the lot of working people as a class but without sector-wide collective bargaining and a right to take sympathetic strike action, we are hamstrung in the fight to tilt back the balance of power, argues ADRIAN WEIR
Former national policy forum member ADRIAN WEIR cites Starmer’s increasingly right-wing domestic and foreign policies that have led him to quit the party
Next month the certification officer will acquire a raft of new powers to fine unions for a range of ‘offences.’ ADRIAN WEIR reports
ADRIAN WEIR surveys the prospects for a continent under continual threat of imperialist interference and destabilisation
