Democracy and the NHS
The mythology regarding the 1945-51 Labour governments dies hard on the left, particularly in the era of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour which often sees itself taking up the mantle of an older, less compromised, form of state socialism. The foundation of the welfare state and the National Health Service is a special touchstone, with both it and its founder, Nye Bevan (pictured above with nursing staff at Park Hospital, Davyhulme) seen… Continue reading
Nuclear Power At What Price?
March 11th will mark the sixth anniversary of the earthquake and subsequent tsunami that hit the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, releasing radioactive material into the atmosphere in what was the biggest nuclear disaster since the explosion at Chernobyl twenty five years earlier.
The initial earthquake caused the reactors at the plant to shut down automatically, activating the emergency generators. But the tsunami which followed the earthquake flooded… Continue reading
Red Cap Terror and Other Tales from the Samosa Line
In this report from the shop floor, Greenford-based group Workers Wild West write about West London’s immense warehousing sector. Concentrating on Bakkavor’s Cumberland, Elveden, Abbeydale, Harrow and Premier Park sites, they take an in-depth look at conditions and explain how the scandal of Sports Direct is just everyday practice for bosses.
We all heard about the scandal at the Sports Direct warehouse. The newspapers were outraged… Continue reading
Students are suffering — rent strikes are the solution
If you thought that the student mental health “crisis” was something of an exaggeration, let us start off with some fun statistics. According to recent research by the National Union of Students, 78% of students have experienced mental health problems in the last year. Around half of those who have experienced problems with mental health said they have difficulty completing daily tasks.
Overall, the number of students in need of… Continue reading
Hamburg G20: Stop them crawling back to the city
There is more than one way to resist the industrial capitalist system.
One is to stay put where you are and ferociously defend its onslaught.
Another way, which can of course be combined with local resistance, is to take the fight to the system itself and to come together to attack the symbols of its authority.
July 7th-8th in Hamburg presents an excellent opportunity to put this second option… Continue reading
Frack the system: The UK’s hydrocarbon threat
With the fracking industry poised to attempt its largest assault on communities across the country to date, and what would be its most significant advance in this country since 2011 if not resisted, it seems an appropriate time to take a look back at what has led to this threat we are facing and examine what we are fighting for.
The Fracking Threat
The last decade has seen an explosion… Continue reading
Case study: Wage theft at a Liverpool hotel
At the end of last month anarcho-syndicalist group Liverpool SolFed helped a worker on a precarious contract to force a prestigious Liverpool hotel to pay her wages they’d stolen. Her testimony below talks about the problems being faced by migrants in Britain today facing, alongside unscrupulous employers, a system of checks on everything from references to getting a bank account that work to undermine people’s will and ability to… Continue reading
Interview: Anarchists talk about Den Haag and the 2015 riots
Den Haag in the Netherlands has gone through some of the deepest upheavals in the country, including riots in 2015 over the police killing of Mitch Henriquez, arrested on suspicion of carrying a weapon and then throttled, dying in police custody the next day. In this conversation with two anarchist comrades from the city, anarchist journal Avalanche draws out an overview of the context, struggle and projects of… Continue reading
All for the sisterhood: Sisters Uncut
This summer Sisters Uncut opened up an empty flat on an estate in East London as part of their ongoing campaign against cuts in domestic violence services. The flat stayed open for months and was full of activity and people, and the action resulted in some serious changes to Hackney official policy — not least getting a kid’s playground reopened.
Sisters Uncut started in response to massive cuts to women’s… Continue reading
Why covering your face at a protest is the right thing to do
Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol) co-ordinator Kevin Blowe explains why the organisation encourages activists to mask up.
In June 2015 Netpol launched a campaign to try to encourage activists to start covering their faces when taking part in demonstrations and marches.
We saw this initiative as one of the few remaining ways of resisting the growth of intrusive surveillance on the streets, which sees police monitoring social media… Continue reading →