There have been penalties for those who looked the other way when Epstein was convicted of child sex offences and decided to maintain relationships with the financier — but not for the British ambassador to Washington, reveals SOLOMON HUGHES
The pieces are in place for rebuilding the socialist left in 2024
Morning Star editor BEN CHACKO says militant unions and a growing peace movement create the conditions for a fight to put socialist politics back on the map after four bleak years
Labour’s new Treasury unit will ‘challenge unnecessary regulation’ by forcing nominally independent bodies like Ofwat to bend to business demands — exactly what Iain Anderson’s corporate clients wanted, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
DR DYLAN MURPHY looks at a Big Brother Watch report which exposes the government as an enabler of DWP secret spying on benefit claimants
The EU faces a critical choice: will it remain in the shadow of an increasingly unreliable US ally, or will it forge its own path in a multilateral world where co-operation with China is essential, asks MARC VANDEPITTE as leaders meet for the EU-China Summit
A lot of discussion about how the left should currently organise – including debate on whether the Green Party is a useful vehicle for advance – runs the risk of refusing to engage with or learn from the reasons the left was defeated previously, argues KEVIN OVENDEN
For Egypt trade trumps the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians, but how long can the country’s ‘misleaders’ – and others in the region – continue their indifference against the popular will of their own people, asks ROGER McKENZIE
THIS month marked four years since the defeat of the most serious challenge to British capitalism in decades — Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour leadership.
The coming year marks four decades since the start of the great miners’ strike of 1984-85, whose defeat signalled the decisive victory of Thatcher’s neoliberal project in Britain, prompting a sharp acceleration of her government’s privatisation drive (we lost public control of British Telecom, British Aerospace, British Petroleum, British Gas, British Steel, British Airways, Rolls-Royce and, at the tail-end of her decade in power, the municipally owned water and electricity boards).
Defeat of the miners ushered in a long period of decline for unions. There are less than half as many trade union members in Britain now as in 1980; less than a quarter of workers are covered by collective bargaining agreements, compared to more than half in 1980; the number and size of strikes declined too.
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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’
Incoming Usdaw general secretary JOANNE THOMAS talks to Ben Chacko about workers’ rights, Labour and how to arrest the decline of the high street
Durham Miners’ Association general secretary ALAN MARDGHUM speaks to Ben Chacko ahead of Gala Day 2025
