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
Putting the class politics into union-building
MARTIN SMITH revisits some core organising principles that were to the fore in battles of the ’90s and which remain just as relevant today
Trade unionists on a Britain is Broken march last year
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
OVER the last 30 years there has been a slow, patchy, inconsistent and faltering return to an organic bottom-up organising culture in British trade unions, based primarily on a renewed understanding of the dynamics of class conflict at work.
Truthfully, this evolution was not assisted in any major fashion by the Labour government of 1997 to 2010, whose focus was on individual rather than collective employment rights that could be organised around, enforced as they were on a case-by-case basis through employment tribunals.
With the prospect of another Labour government, unions must learn the lessons of our failure to capitalise on the last one to grow our organisations.
More from this author
Martin Smith speaks to general secretary of the App Drivers and Couriers Union ZAMIR DRENI about his members’ fight against the nefarious methods of exploitation by shadowy app giants like Uber and Bolt
MARTIN SMITH says unions must be proactive if Labour's promises are to be turned into tangible gains for workers
As the prospect of a Labour government becomes increasingly likely, MARTIN SMITH looks at the lessons for unions from the 1997-2010 era and focuses on what our core goals should be today
Former head of organising at GMB MARTIN SMITH puts forward eight principles to capitalise on the current wave of militancy
