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Trade unions

Life-long class fighter against racism

Posted on 17th October 2019 by Richard Donnelly

Avtar Singh Jouhl is the national president of the Indian Workers’ Association (IWA GB) and was a leading workplace militant and anti-racist activist in the Smethwick area and in the foundries of the West Midlands from the late 1950s through… Continue Reading →

Interview anti-fascism, Anti-racism, Trade unions

Striking continuity amid great change

Posted on 1st July 2019 by Camilla

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 →

Feedback Strikes, Trade unions

Marxist politics at work during the long boom and its breakdown

Posted on 2nd January 2019 by Camilla

Roger Cox was among the earliest members of the Socialist Review Group (SRG), founded by Tony Cliff in the 1950s, a group that would later evolve into the International Socialists (IS) and then the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). As one… Continue Reading →

Article, Interview the working class, Tony Cliff, Trade unions

Revolutionaries and trade unions: a reply to Mark O’Brien

Posted on 2nd July 2018 by Camilla

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 →

Feedback Strikes, Trade union bureaucracy, Trade unions

Fourteen days that shook the universities

Posted on 2nd July 2018 by Camilla

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 →

Article Education, Strikes, Trade unions, UCU

Why trade union legislation and the Labour Party are not responsible for the decline in strike activity

Posted on 19th April 2018 by Camilla

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 →

Article Strikes, Trade unions

What has happened to the British labour movement and what does it mean for the left in the unions?

Posted on 9th January 2018 by Camilla

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 →

Article anti-trade union laws, Strikes, Trade unions

Fast food rights: organising the unorganised

Posted on 29th June 2017 by Camilla

The question of organising the unorganised is an incredibly broad one, engulfing lessons from historical experience in the trade union movement, as well as deeply ideological arguments on the nature of the working class today. But it’s important to note… Continue Reading →

Article precarious workers, Trade unions

Revolutionaries in the unions: The reality of the strike

Posted on 6th July 2015 by Camilla

The debate around orientations for revolutionaries in the unions today is the result of an uncomfortable but inescapable fact: the level of trade union struggle has remained historically low for 20 years.1 This is true whether we are considering working… Continue Reading →

Article, Feedback Strikes, Trade unions

The rank and file and the trade union bureaucracy

Posted on 2nd April 2014 by ISJ

The crucial problem revolutionary socialists in Britain are confronted with at the moment in relation to trade unionism is the big gap that exists between the level of workers’ anger at austerity and employers’ attacks on the one hand, and… Continue Reading →

Analysis Rank and file, Trade union bureaucracy, Trade unions

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New Resources

For more click on the ‘Resources’ tab above
Tony Phillips’s “What can we learn from Kautsky today?” translated into German
Judy Cox’s “How Marx and Engels fought for women’s liberation” translated into German – thanks to Rosemarie Nünning
Joseph Choonara’s “Socialism in a time of pandemics” translated into German – thanks to David Albrich
Now online: Yuri Prasad and Esme Choonara’s article “What’s wrong with privilege theory?” translated into German – thanks to Rosemarie Nünning
Now online: John Molyneux’s article “In Defence of Party Building” translated into German – thanks to Rosemarie Nünning
Now online: Sheila McGregor’s article on social reproduction theory has now been translated into German – thanks to Rosemarie Nünning
Now online: Brazil: how big a defeat? Interview with Valério Arcary
Now online: Rosemarie Nünning on the history of abortion law in Germany – Between “birth strike” and “race treason”: The history of Paragraph 219a of the German Criminal Code
New to our translations page: Lise Vogel und die Politik der Frauenbefreiung (Nicola Ginsburgh on Lise Vogel and the politics of women’s liberation in German)
Now online: Syrian revolutionary socialist Ghayath Naisse interviewed on the brutalisation of Syria, the goals of those intervening and the prospects for socialists in the region.
Online only “How to stop the tanks” by Ron Margulies on the attempted coup in Turkey
Egyptian Revolution timeline
International Socialism has covered events in Egypt from the strike waves that led up to the revolution, the events of 2011 themselves and the situation since: here is a timeline of key articles
Now online, Ellen Meiksins Wood (1942-2016) writing in International Socialism in 1987
Black history, police racism, Islamophobia and contemporary debates on oppression- Articles and book reviews for black history month
Videos of the International Socialism conference on Marxism and nature featuring Ted Benton and Ian Angus
Videos and transcript of the International Socialism debate on Syriza and Socialist Strategy with Stathis Kouvelakis and Alex Callinicos
Online only: Vincent Sung analyses the roots of Hong Kong’s umbrella movement protests here
Online only: Bob Light remembers the 1974-5 Portuguese revolution
Videos from the International Socialism event on ‘Work, Class and Resistance’ with Jane Hardy, Kevin Doogan, Lucia Pradella and Jim Wolfreys
Videos from the International Socialism event on ‘Marxism and Revolution Today’ with Alex Callinicos, Claire Ceruti, Neil Davidson and others
Video: International Socialism seminar on “Egypt, Tunisia and revolution in the 21st century” with Gilbert Achcar and Anne Alexander
“The sex work debate: a response to Jess Edwards” by Thierry Schaffauser
Audio: Alex Callinicos on the International Socialist tradition in political economy
Audio: full recordings from the recent International Socialism conference Marxism and Political Economy
Audio: Harman, Brenner and Itoh discuss the world economy today at Historical Materialism’s annual conference

From our archives

The roots of gay oppression (Norah Carlin 1989)
The ‘workers’ government (Chris Harman 1977)
A critique of Nicos Poulantzas (Colin Barker 1979)
Theories of Patriarchy (Lindsey German 1981)
Mike Kidron on Marxist political economy (1974)
The State and Capital (Chris Harman 1991)
Gramsci versus Eurocommunism (Chris Harman 1977)
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