UK leftists

Hello comrade.

These so-called "strikes" lack the backing of organised workers, socialist parties, and real trade unions. They’ve hijacked our language while pushing an agenda that doesn’t represent the working class.

Israel’s security cabinet has approved a plan to expand its military offensive against Gaza, with some officials suggesting it plans to capture and occupy the whole of the strip.

Turns? They've been turned!

It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Peter Taaffe, who after a long illness died on 23 April 2025. The loss of Peter is a big blow to the working class movement and Trotskyism internationally. Since becoming active in the revolutionary movement in 1960, Peter made an indispensable contribution, both theoretically and practically in the hard graft necessary to build a revolutionary party and international. Peter was a leading member of the International Secretariat of the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI), Political Secretary of the Socialist Party in England & Wales, and for many years its General Secretary.

James Carville, the political advisor who coined the phrase ‘it’s the economy stupid’ as a campaigning slogan for Democrat Bill Clinton to win the 1992 presidential election, was once asked what he’d like to be reincarnated as. “The bond market,” he replied, “it can intimidate anyone.” 9 April 2025 will be remembered as the day that proved that ‘anyone’ includes current US President Donald Trump.

TUSC are standing candidates across the UK.

The Greens became the largest party on Bristol Council last year, promising change after years of service cuts under Labour. What has this bright new future meant for Bristol? £50 million more cuts!

Below is a transcription of the images. And the letter Farage wrote.

Anti-racists outnumbered fascists in Southampton on Saturday. Around 400 people turned out to show up to 100 fascists that they’re not welcome in the city.

An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.

Battle of Cable Street

Come fight against Tommy 10 Names racial rhetoric. Tommy Robinson from the comfort of his social media accounts has rallied up the troops with promises of a better Britain if we only kick the migrants out. We know that this is simply a sly subversion that masks the real issue and pits us against each other. Working class people have far more in common to these marginalised people they are attacking than they do the right wing talking heads.

The Reform UK conference in Birmingham was a carnival of reaction—and showed that its leaders have a plan to turn it into a mass far right party.

Earlier this year, the Socialist ended an article with the words “Hopefully 2024 will be the year that Oliver gets justice”. Oliver Campbell, who has learning difficulties, was forced into a false confession by the police without a solicitor or appropriate adult present, spent decades in prison and since then campaigning to clear his name. The news that Oliver, convicted of a murder he did not commit in 1991, has had his conviction quashed is an important step towards him realising justice.

Fascism seeks to annihilate working class organisation and obliterate any sort of genuine democracy. But in order to attract supporters it always puts forward a fake revolutionary veneer.

What future does capitalism offer young people? The chasm of wealth inequality grows by the day, as the wealth of the billionaires soars, while wars and climate change inflict misery and threaten the futures of billions of working-class and young people across the globe.

In May, members of the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) elected a campaigning National Executive Committee (NEC) – a coalition for change. But this new NEC majority has so far been blocked by the general secretary and president, both of whom are in the misnamed Left Unity group.

Four Palestine campaigners walked free from Bradford Crown Court on Friday after a jury failed to reach a verdict.

As the Socialist goes to press, Keir Starmer faced a ‘showdown’ in parliament as the hated cut to the winter fuel payment for pensioners went to a vote.

The BBC has revealed that the biggest landlord in parliament, Labour MP Jas Athwal, has tenants in some of his 15 properties that are battling mould and ant infestation. He has since thrown his property manager under the bus, who tenants reported threatened them with eviction when they complained. And to top it off, the properties aren’t even on the landlord register – something he introduced as leader of Redbridge council!

Liberal commentators have been quick to conclude that Britain is experiencing some kind of ‘Damascene conversion’. Starmer’s Labour, they believe, has finally realised that the UK might be complicit in Israeli war crimes!

The Tory government, Kensington and Chelsea council and cladding bosses ‘all contributed’ to the disaster The Grenfell inquiry’s final report paints a detailed picture of the corruption, greed and lies that murdered the 72 residents of the west London tower block.

CrossCountry train guards (train managers/senior conductors) in the RMT rail union are currently being balloted for strike action and action short of strike, due to managers working trains with hugely inflated payments for doing so.

Keir Starmer has said ‘there is a deep rot in the heart of British institutions’. I assumed he meant the Labour Party and the fact that its MPs have declared tens of thousands of pounds of donations from energy companies since the election, the government subsequently hiking households’ energy bills by £149 a year on average.

At 3am bank holiday Monday, a major fire consumed another London tower block covered in flammable cladding.

One month after Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour party was ‘swept to power’ by a paltry 20% of the electorate – the lowest support base of any government since the introduction of universal male suffrage in 1918 – violent protests and riots, instigated by far-right groups, broke out across the country. For those trapped in asylum-seekers’ hostels or mosques under brutal attack from gangs of rioters, the experience was terrifying. More generally, many Black, Asian and Muslim people feel that their safety is increasingly under threat. Tell Mama, a monitoring group tracking Islamophobic hate crimes, reported a five-fold increase in threats to Muslims compared to the same time last year.

Nigel Farage “man of the people” is charging his supporters £1,000 for a photograph and to share a glass of champagne with him.

The revolutionary mass movement in Bangladesh is at a critical juncture. A 17-member interim government has been established, including in it a few young leaders who emerged from the mass protests which toppled the government.

Transport union leader Mick Lynch has said union bosses need to do more to combat flaring anti-immigration protests across the UK and Ireland.

Many Communication Workers Union (CWU) reps and members will now be thinking about what the union will do under the Starmer-led Labour government. Jeremy Corbyn’s popular manifesto promise had been to bring Royal Mail back into public ownership. This was agreed at Labour Party conference since, but was not in the manifesto.

Who is striking and when? Find out the strikes this week and how they will affect you with the UK Strike Action Calendar. Full date listings of all currently planned regional and country-wide strikes.

A recent BBC interview with the president of Guyana, Irfaan Ali, has racked up millions of views. In it, he calls out the hypocrisy of the interviewer questioning his government’s plans to extract billions of dollars worth of oil and gas from Guyana’s newly discovered reserves, on the basis that this will contribute to global climate change.

We need council homes. Over a million people languish on waiting lists for council housing. In the main, these are people who cannot get together huge deposits either for rent or a mortgage, who can’t afford gruelling private rents, and don’t have the ability to buy a home either.

As the sun rose on 24th February 1834, Dorset farm labourer George Loveless set off to work, saying goodbye to his wife Betsy and their three children. They were not to meet alone again for three years, for as he left his cottage in the rural village of Tolpuddle, the 37-year-old was served with a warrant for his arrest.

Now the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) is publishing a statistical review of the election – The 2024 General Election Fact File – a draft report prepared by the TUSC national election agent Clive Heemskerk for the first post-election meeting of the TUSC all-Britain steering committee taking place on July 17th.

The result, in terms of the number of seats, is a Labour landslide, just shy of Tony Blair’s New Labour victory in 1997. But enthusiasm for Keir Starmer’s Labour was absent from this general election. The absolute vote for Labour was 9.6 million, lower than the 10.2 million vote Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour got in 2019, never mind the 12.8 million he got in 2017. Labour’s vote share, at around 34%, is the lowest ever for a general election victor, whereas in 2017 Corbyn got 40% of the vote, the biggest jump for a national party in one election since 1945.

Relief, rejoice, cautious optimism, scepticism… There will be mixed feelings in the minds of working-class people on 5 July. But whatever the cocktail, the fact clear to everyone will be that the Tories, historically the bosses’ primary political party, which has inflicted 14 years of misery on ordinary people, will be resoundingly defeated.

Put the champagne on ice! Because by the time you receive the next copy of the Socialist, the Tories will be out of office.

This post will be segmented as it has been a busy week. Starting with Exeter.

Socialist Party members are standing in the general election as part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, which is standing 40 candidates. Socialist Party members campaign for:

Today on Barrack Road, Exeter, medical professionals lined up out side Exeter hospital to demand better. Our NHS is failing. Nurses, NHS carers, and doctors have been vocal, shining a light on our failing NHS, which has been left to rot by the likes of Tories and Labour government.

Plymouth’s LGBTQ+ Pride parade had been fractured in the lead-up to the event. Some people broke away from planning the march after hearing of the involvement of companies Babcock and BT.

Frank Hester, the Tories' largest donor, has given the Tories £15 million, despite his private company, TPP, profiting from £135 million contracts with the Department of Health and Social Care in under four years. Hester was paid £515,000 in 2021-22 and receives £10 million of dividends. The Tories received thousands more from him after his racist and sexist comments were exposed. The second-biggest donor, billionaire Mohamed Mansour, was a minister in Egypt between 2006 and 2009, giving the Tories £5 million and £600,000 from one of his companies. There are reports that Tory donations are drying up, and Labour is also receiving big donations from the ultra-rich.

Another beautiful venture to Plymouth with Plymouth branch Socialist Party *formally militant*.

It won’t surprise anyone to hear that NHS waiting lists have gone up yet again – despite the Tories repeatedly claiming the opposite – to a staggering 7.57 million. That’s 40,000 more people living with the fear and pain these long waits impose.

My second venture to Plymouth.

I am sure we've all heard the argument that "socialism is easily corruptible." This is a misconception. While there is and has been corruption in socialist structures, it would be of a lesser level to that in capitalist political and corporate society. The only difference is that capitalism calls the same corruption farcical names like "lobbying," "corporate influence," "campaign contributions," "regulatory capture," or "crony capitalism." institutionalized corruption.

We think MPs are paid too much. If you’re elected as a trade union rep in an office or a factory, you don’t get three times the wages of your workmates or four times their holidays. You live on the same terms and conditions, face the same bills, and try and deal with the same financial pressures and problems as the people around you.

The Labour Party today unveiled its manifesto for the 4 July General Election, with wealth creation and economic growth at the heart of the party’s plans.

With the general election less than a month away Starmer remains on course for Downing Street. “Things can maybe get a bit better”, was how the Economist magazine summed up its very faint hopes in the incoming Labour government. Millions of people who, on 4 July, will grit their teeth and vote Labour feel the same, but for very different reasons to the pro-capitalist, neoliberal Economist.

Credit to @Zacryon@lemmy.wtf for posting in a comment section of another community.

Polluting for profit

Renationalisation

Article outlines flaws in UK electoral system as well as incremental changes over recent years to benefit the bosses