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Unemployed Europe and the Struggle for Alternatives

“On 19 January, Tony Blair gave an interview to the European newspaper. He made plain his belief that ‘not just socialism but social democracy as practised in most of Europe is past its sell-by date’. The reason for this judgement is said to be that social democracy has . . .” read more

The Peace Movement and Socialism

“In 1980, confronting a new upsurge of militarism, a number of us joined forces to launch an appeal for European Nuclear Disarmament. This began with a warning: ‘We are entering the most dangerous decade in history’, it said. There is a good deal of new evidence to show . . .” read more

The Choices Before Labour

“Eric Hobsbawm is a distinguished scholar and an original thinker, a historian of the first rank and a Marxist of great eminence. The collection of essays provoked by the Marx Memorial Lecture he gave in 1978 on the state of the labour movement in Britain contains some interesting . . .” read more

The Motor Industry

“Turner, Clack and Roberts have written an excellent book. They show that two distinct general demands have arisen among carworkers: for ‘fair wages’ based on principles of comparability, and for ‘job rights’ based upon a conception of property in the job. Both of these challenge the traditional prerogatives . . .” read more

The State of the AEU

“Last October the Amalgamated Engineering Union counted 1,146,865 members. This is a powerful total: even if the Transport and General Workers’ Union is bigger, it probably does not include quite so many members working in the growth sectors of the economy, and it almost certainly does not embrace . . .” read more

Workers University

“Surely when it was faced with a tacitly hostile Establishment in Whitehall and an actively hostile press in Fleet Street it (the Labour Government 1945–51) should have felt the need for a politically conscious and educated rank and file, such as was beginning to emerge in the . . .” read more

The Confed Package

“The behaviour of the National Incomes Commission is beginning to reveal a somewhat subtle intelligence, which needs marking by the Labour Movement. This distinctly backhanded compliment is not intended as a form of thanks for the very substantial increase in university salaries of whichnic has rather unexpectedly . . .” read more

AEU Elections

“The whole course of the next Labour Government may be very considerably affected by the outcome of two trade union elections which are to take place at the beginning of July. The million-strong engineers’ union, the aeu, is choosing its two chief officers, secretary and president.” read more

The Right to Strike

“In a manner which is typical of the way these things are done in Britain, the House of Lords has emasculated the right to strike. This outrageous statement may seem to be a wild echo of something in the Peking Review or a gem from yet another new . . .” read more

Workers' Control

“Whenever the Labour movement is able to abandon the defensive postures which have regrettably come to seem ‘normal’ during long stretches of its history, and whenever, then, it begins to step over the borders of its allotted prerogatives, one begins to hear again the noise of argument about . . .” read more