TUC general secretary PAUL NOWAK speaks to the Morning Star’s Berny Torre about the increasing frustration the trade union movement feels at a government that promised change, but has been too slow to bring it about
Still fighting anti-trade union laws: the IER and CTUF at Tolpuddle
Almost two hundred years on from the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the trade union movement is still having to fight attempts to delegitimise and criminalise its activities, writes BEN SELLERS
Tolpuddle Martyrs' Rally in 2016
[Rwendland / Creative Commons] 
DIANE ABBOTT exposes the misconceptions, rumours and downright lies perpetrated around immigration issues
With 12,000 fewer teachers since 2010 and dwindling resources, Scotland’s schools desperately need investment to support diverse learners rather than empty promises from politicians, writes ANDREA BRADLEY
Reversing outsourcing is the pre-election promise the government must honour, says Unison general secretary CHRISTINA McANEA
EMAN ABU ZAYED reminisces about the perilous time her family and neighbours endured in northern Gaza and how they were forced, in fear of their lives, to flee south
The EIS president who defended Marxist politics in the 1980s fought Thatcherite educational policies while organising Teachers for Peace rallies and ensuring Morning Star circulation in Scotland’s pit villages and factories, writes JOHN FOSTER
THE Tolpuddle Martyrs, a group of agricultural labourers, were charged with taking an illegal oath 189 years ago. This was a promise of solidarity to each other in their struggle against landowners extracting every last drop of profit they could from the workers’ labour.
The Tolpuddle Martyrs’ arrest and deportation to Australia in 1834 was an early emblem of how the powerful would treat the free organisation of workers for centuries to come. Freedom of association and of assembly, the right to protest, the right to strike and freedom of speech have been a constant battle since.
And here we are, in 2023, fighting the same battles again. The government’s Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill is in its final stages, and unamended, it will all but outlaw the right to strike — a right that has been severely restricted by a succession of anti-trade union laws over several decades.
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