Scottish Labour's leaders cannot keep blaming Westminster for the collapse at the ballot box, says VINCE MILLS
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We must end the Americanisation of our prison system
The results of privatisation across our justice sector are catastrophic, writes RICHARD BURGON MP
Over 30 years since apartheid was abolished, nasty anti-migrant rhetoric sweeps the corporate media. The Commnunist Party is ready to fight back, says ROGER McKENZIE
Over 100,000 people are expected on Brussels’s streets today. Ben Chacko speaks to Belgian Workers Party’s PETER MERTENS on wage and pensions attacks that have united the fightback
FRED BAYER says the cuts to the congress cycle could be disastrous for the Scottish trade union movement
Berlin’s Soviet war memorials are becoming the latest front in a political struggle to ‘de-Sovietise’ German history. NICO POPP reports
Western Marxism is a particular version of Marxist theory developed in – and acceptable to – the capitalist nations of Europe and North America and largely divorced from political action, argues the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY
THE Tories quietly confirmed last week that two new prisons are to be handed over to the private sector to be run for private profit. This is the latest push in what I call the Americanisation of our criminal justice system, where keeping people safe comes second to making profits for mega-corporations.
This news came despite two flagship justice privatisations running aground this summer. HMP Birmingham was brought back under public control after unprecedented failures by G4S and the government was forced to bring an early end to the private probation contracts, despite having handed the private companies £500 million in bailout payments in the past 12 months alone.
This push for privatisation and outsourcing goes hand in hand with austerity. As budgets fall, there is a greater push for the private sector to step in, especially where it is impossible to scrap the services altogether, as with prisons. Nowhere is that clearer than in the Ministry of Justice. It’s the ministry which has suffered the biggest cuts under austerity.
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