As tens of thousands return to the streets for the first national Palestine march of 2026, this movement refuses to be sidelined or silenced, says PETER LEARY
Latest editorial
Strikes Bill: trade unions and the authoritarian state
We know the legislation intends to compel unions to force a ‘minimum’ number of workers over their own picket line, but how exactly is not clear, write KEITH EWING and LORD JOHN HENDY KC
If the government really wanted to address public finances, improve living standards and begin economic recovery, it would increase its borrowing for investment, argues MICHAEL BURKE
MATT KERR takes a winter journey through poetry, labour and memory, from Glasgow to Newcastle, arguing that our radical past isn’t something to revere from a distance, but a tool still meant to be used
One of Canada’s most revered politicians is a native of Falkirk but is relatively unknown in his original homeland. KENNY MacASKILL tells his story
Labour prospects in May elections may be irrevocably damaged by Birmingham Council’s costly refusal to settle the year-long dispute, warns STEVE WRIGHT
HENRY FOWLER and ROB POOLE explain the significance of today’s Megapicket
THE Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023 received royal assent shortly before the summer holidays.
As readers of these columns will know, the Act imposes new and unprecedented restrictions on the right to strike, these restrictions extending potentially to six sectors: health services; fire and rescue services; education services; transport services; nuclear decommissioning; and border security.
The Act authorises ministers to make regulations for minimum service levels to be provided during a strike in each of these sectors.
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Four decades on, the Wapping dispute stands as both a heroic act of resistance and a decisive moment in the long campaign to break trade union power. Lord JOHN HENDY KC looks back on the events of 1986
The Bill addresses some exploitation but leaves trade unions heavily regulated, most workers without collective bargaining coverage, and fails to tackle the balance of power that enables constant mutation of bad practice, write KEITH EWING and LORD JOHN HENDY KC
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
Falling short of what was promised: many of the new rights in the Employment Rights Bill have defects or escape loopholes that all need addressing, writes LORD JOHN HENDY KC