The role of trade unions and organised labour in preventing catastrophic climate change is a burgeoning field of research.1 Many academic contributions investigate climate policy issues but leave aside discussion of workers’ action.2 In contrast, this article focuses on past… Continue Reading
A pandemic is first of all a public health crisis. But when containing the infection requires a dramatic reduction in social contact, it rapidly becomes a workplace issue. Under normal circumstances, each day millions of people are concentrated in often… Continue Reading
The year just passed marks the beginning of a new global cycle of revolt. The signs were there by spring.1 By April the Algerian and Sudanese militaries felt obliged to remove the leaders of each country, respectively Abdelaziz Bouteflika and… Continue Reading
Along with Mark O’Brien and several other authors in this journal, I am anxious to understand what lay behind the dramatic drop in UK strike activity from the late 1970s to the early 1990s and the extremely low level ever… Continue Reading
My article “What has happened to the British Labour Movement, and what does it mean for the left in the Unions?”1 has attracted two critical responses in this journal.2 I am grateful to the authors of these papers for their… Continue Reading
Mark O’Brien’s article in issue 157 of International Socialism, “What has Happened to the British Labour Movement and What Does it Mean for the Left in the Unions?”, adds to the debates in this journal over the last number of… Continue Reading
In February to March 2018, tens of thousands of university workers in the University and College Union (UCU) at 65 institutions in higher education took 14 days of strike action, in what was the biggest universities strike ever. The strike… Continue Reading
Making sense of the continuing low level of strike activity in the UK takes on greater urgency with the publication of provisional figures for 2017. These show record lows—by some margin—for two of the three main indicators: number of strikes… Continue Reading
From the early summer to the early winter of 2017 several industrial action campaigns were making the news, both nationally and at more regional and local levels. Rail workers employed by Mersey Rail, Northern Rail and Southern Rail were mounting… Continue Reading
Towards the end of the 1980s and early 1990s strikes, riots and demonstrations forced 19 one-party states in Africa to institutionalise a democratic opposition. But the headlong rush into neo-liberalism and continued structural adjustment policies somewhat de-֊legitimised the ‘birth of… Continue Reading