A survey circulated by a far-right-linked student group has sparked outrage, with educators, historians and veterans warning that profiling teachers for their political views echoes fascist-era practices. FEDERICA ADRIANI reports
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Unions need women and women need unions
As 65 per cent of the public-sector workforce are female, this puts them on the front line of the struggle against privatisation and de-regulation — unions must centre women workers for an effective fightback, writes HELEN O'CONNOR
Low pay, scandalously low levels of sick pay and the failure to grant paid carers’ leave are all issues that plunge working women and families into poverty and are driving increasing numbers of families to food banks and homelessness.
In reopening relations with China, the PM showed an uncharacteristic grasp of power, proportion and Britain’s diminished place in the world – a lesson many in Westminster still refuse to learn, says ANDREW MURRAY
Dockers from Italy, Greece and beyond will stage co-ordinated port blockades on February 6, declaring ‘we don’t work for war’ – in a call in solidarity with Palestine. ALFIO BERNABEI reports
The British Prime Minister’s Beijing visit marked the end of a long diplomatic hiatus and produced tangible, if limited, economic results, says KEITH BENNETT
Schoolchildren who joined a nationwide anti-Trump walkout learned more outside the classroom than in it but could still be penalised, reports LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
The suicide of Tamara Jade Logon after her disability benefits were wrongly withdrawn is the latest in a series of deaths in which coroners have cited DWP failings, exposing a pattern of preventable harm, says DYLAN MURPHY
THE 1980s under Margaret Thatcher marked a regressive period for working-class people as a whole — and women in particular.
The conditions were laid down for a savage assault on the public sector. Competitive tendering was laid out in the provision of domestic, catering and laundering services, which led to the super-exploitation of outsourced hospital workers that we see today.
Monetarist policies, economic deregulation, the slashing of social security, privatisation of public services and anti-union legislation had a devastating impact through deindustrialisation and unemployment rose to three million. State benefits including child benefit were cut and child poverty doubled as Thatcher attacked working mothers for “raising a creche generation.”
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A past confrontation permanently shaped the methods the state will use to protect employers against any claims by their employees, writes MATT WRACK, but unions are readying to face the challenge
Working-class women lead the fight for fair work and equitable pay and against sexual harassment, the rise of the far right and years of failed austerity policies, writes ROZ FOYER
From the ‘motherhood pay penalty’ to low-paid care work, the Morning Star Women’s Readers and Supporters Group in Scotland has been looking at how neoliberalism has been pushing back women’s hard-won gains, writes KATE RAMSDEN
As the government ploughs ahead with £3 billion in welfare cuts, arbitrary office-return mandates, and below-inflation pay rises, women will bear the brunt through deepening poverty and increased caring burdens, argues FRAN HEATHCOTE