The Mark Andrew Development (MAD) hospitality group recently went bust, leaving over 100 workers in the City of Manchester without a job. 125 staff at pubs, clubs and other venues in Manchester all owned by MAD entertainment were given no warning or support from their employer when the company went into sudden liquidation overnight. With the crisis of capitalism deepening everyday, we see numerous examples such as this plunging workers into Read more…
Last year the University of Nottingham Living Wage Campaign, an alliance of trade unions, student societies and local campaigning groups, managed to get the University to agree to pay the living wage, resulting in a pay increase for 400 staff. This victory has been undercut however as it has emerged through discussions with cleaning staff that this increase in wages has come alongside a drastic increase in working hours. It seems Read more…
Last week, chancellor Philip Hammond published the Budget for the coming year. In spite of claims that ‘austerity is ending’, recent events have clearly proven otherwise. One of the Budget’s most controversial elements was a promise of £400 million to schools so that they could buy ‘little extras’. Understandably, this announcement had attracted anger from teachers, parents and students across the country. Hammond’s choice of phrasing makes it sound as if Read more…
Far-right presidential candidate, Jair Bolsonaro, was elected with 55 percent of the vote in the Brazilian elections last Sunday. He defeated the Workers’ Party (PT) candidate, Fernando Haddad, who received 45 percent. From day one, students and youth have been first into the breach, leading the fight against the reactionary new regime. How did Bolsonaro win? Bolsonaro is an intensely reactionary politician: misogynistic, homophobic, racist and virulently anti-socialist. He has described Read more…
Precarious employment has become a typical feature of our lives under capitalism. More and more, workers are being forced to accept low pay, poor working conditions and minimal rights as standard. Over 10 million people in Britain are currently considered to be in precarious work. This includes zero hours contracts, temporary employment, underemployment or the hollow ‘self-employment’ of companies like Uber and Deliveroo. This represents an absurd number of people in Read more…
Last July, Elin Ersson, a 21-year-old Swedish student stopped the deportation of a 52-year old Afghan man who was set to be deported back to Afghanistan from Gothenburg Airport. She refused to sit down, which meant the plane they were on was unable to take off. She faced the contempt and, in some cases, anger of many of her fellow passengers but stood her ground firmly in defence of the man’s Read more…
Earlier this week we reported on Marxist student comrades winning NUS elections at UEA, SOAS and Sheffield University. We are pleased to report that Josh, Erin, Lily and Nico will be joined by Nick and Dora from UCL at the NUS Conference in Glasgow in April! Nick Oung, Dora Dimitrova and Edgar Sait-Jones ran campaigns to represent the UCL student body at the NUS Conference on an openly revolutionary socialist platform. Read more…
I am a primary school teacher from London and I used to believe in reformism. I wished for someone like Corbyn to come along with new ideas and shake everything up. Sure enough, he has now come along and promises housing, free education and childcare. However, now he is faced with two problems in delivering on his promises. First, the finance secretary will say they can’t afford it. Secondly, the few Read more…
Recently I’ve been trying to get a pay rise (working as a waiter in a busy Japanese restaurant). Moving from £9 per hour to £10 per hour (which would still fall below the London Living Wage or any measure of decency). Even if this is achieved, I’m aware that many others can only dream of getting £9 per hour, with so many having to scrape by on far less with zero-hours Read more…
On 30 October the IWGB will be facing Uber at the Court of Appeal as part of the ongoing battle over workers’ rights. A victory would put us one step closer to ending the attack on our rights that so-called “gig economy” bosses are conducting with near impunity. This is not just about Uber drivers, but about all of us that are being forced into increasingly more precarious forms of work. That’s Read more…
Across the country Marxist Students have been running campaigns to be elected as delegates to the national conference of the National Union of Students (NUS) which will be taking place in Glasgow in April 2019. We started off in the University of East Anglia where three comrades ran on a strong socialist program intent on turning the NUS into a fighting force against marketisation by uniting with workers on and off campus. Read more…
Join the Marxist Student Federation at Revolution 2018, a three-day festival of Marxist ideas held at Student Central on 19-21 October! One of the many topics of discussion will be the French Revolution of May ’68. In preparation, we republish this article by Alan Woods on the matter. May 1968 was the greatest revolutionary general strike in history. This mighty movement took place at the height of the post-war economic upswing Read more…
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