labour
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Demise of Britain’s Welfare State: Largest ever Welfare Cuts. Millions of Families Affected By Paul Mitchell
For the next three years, most welfare benefits will be limited to just a 1 percent rise a year—well below the expected inflation rate and equivalent to a 4 percent cut in real terms. Other benefits have been frozen including Child Benefit and the Working Tax Credit available to low-paid workers. Over nine million families… Continue reading
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The Crisis of the European Welfare State An interview with Asbjørn Wahl
This is the start of a new era of social struggle. Social models, however, cannot be copied, neither from previous phases in history, nor from country to country. Social models are the concrete results of struggles and power relations in society. Continue reading
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Iraqi Children: Deprived Rights, Stolen Future By Bie Kentane
This report will focus on the violations by the occupying forces and the Iraqi government of the Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, Geneva, 12 August 1949, (ICRC) and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Continue reading
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Video: Class Struggles in Crisis: From Walmart to the State
A panel discussion introduced and moderated by Socialist Register co-editor Greg Albo Continue reading
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Reshaping Fiscal Policies In Europe: Enforcing Austerity, Attacking Democracy By Hugo Radice
These proposals, when fully implemented, will not only enforce a permanent regime of fiscal austerity, but also further remove macroeconomic policy from democratic control. For these reasons they need to be vigorously fought right across Europe. But if readers in the UK imagine that they are not affected, since we are not in the Eurozone,… Continue reading
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Movie Review: Django Unchained: Great Vengeance and Furious Anger By Jordy Cummings
Of all the “b-movie” film genres of the 20th century, none was more consistently radical than the spaghetti western. So-named because of its Italian lineage, these films used the setting of the wild west to portray thinly veiled allegories about popular uprisings, class and racial oppression, and armed rebellion against the ruling classes. Continue reading
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UK council leaders warn of social unrest By Robert Stevens
The leaders of three Labour Party-controlled city councils wrote a letter to the Observer, published December 29, warning that the scale of the Conservative/Liberal Democrat austerity agenda could lead to “the break-up of civil society”. Continue reading
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South Africa: The road from 1996 to Mangaung By Terry Bell
The tortuous road to the governing ANC’s centennial conference at Mangaung ends next week. And, not to put too fine a point on it, much of the country is gatvol with the route it has taken and where it has arrived. Continue reading
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Books: Transitional Demands from 1695 By Carl Rowlands
In the work of John Bellers, dating from the 1690s to the 1720s, we can see the earliest calls for nothing less than a National Health Service, a peaceful European state-of-states, vocationally-based alleviation of unemployment and poverty and—bravely in such a period—a plea for the richest to be held responsible for the condition of the… Continue reading
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Building a New World and Tearing it Down: British Working Class Housing Since 1900 By Andrew McCormack
The right to an adequate home is well recognised as essential for participation in any human society[1] and the requirements of adequacy in contemporary industrialized societies are fairly uncontroversial. Yet, whilst thousands of new luxury houses are built for the rich every year, many in Britain remain trapped in conditions reminiscent of the Depression era.… Continue reading
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South Africa after Marikana massacre: Strike wave and new workers' organisations challenge old compromises By Leonard Gentle
Over the November 10-11, 2012, weekend striking mineworkers of the Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) corporation gathered at a mass rally in Rustenburg and howled their defiance of a series of ultimatums issued by the company. At De Doorns, farm workers are on a “wildcat” strike — the latest of a series that has become a… Continue reading
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The Greek Left and the Rise of the Neo-Fascist Golden Dawn By Panagiotis Sotiris
For the past months there has been an intense debate both in Greece but also in international media regarding the rise of the neo-fascist Golden Dawn in Greece. The reason is obvious: for the first time in a European Union (EU) country a political party that in contrast to most of the varieties of the… Continue reading
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Book Review: Wages without work
It is no longer a question of being out of work. The question is: on whose terms will we be unemployed? The financial crisis has thrown millions out of work and destroyed the future possibility of decent work for millions more. Many, if not most, of the unemployed and unemployable are women. With the TUC… Continue reading
The New Dark Age 