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10,000 opportunities but not a single job
Welcome to another instalment of the crisis of capitalism Andy Burnham’s Labour administration has announced the launch of the new Modern Work Experience Programme with Sainsbury’s, suggesting that it will make 10,000 ‘work experience’ positions available to young people in a supposed attempt to address declining employment among teenagers leaving school. According to The Independent,…
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The late and unlamented Eddy Shah
Reposted from CPGB-ML The news that newspaper proprietor Eddy Shah had died at the age of 81 did not make headline news, notwithstanding the obituaries sections. Indeed, the name Eddy Shah would today only have resonated with people of a certain age, given that his coming to prominence in his field occurred over 40 years…
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Wait For Me
First published in Pravda in January 1942, Konstantin Simonov’s Wait for Me became a symbol of love and hope among the soldiers of the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War. Written from the front and dedicated to his beloved, its words spoke to millions separated by war. It is worth sharing not merely as…
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Crime does not keep office hours
I was out in a local town yesterday when a young lad approached me. He was not from the area and his bike had been stolen. He had managed to find the local police station, only to discover that it was closed. His phone battery had died, so he asked whether I could look up…
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The Battle of Walkley, Sheffield 1922
A look at how the Unemployed Workers’ Movement helped poor workers stand up for themselves against landlords, bailiffs and police in the 1920s and 1930s. Reposted from our comrades CPGB-ML It’s summer 1922 and the postwar recession is biting hard in Sheffield, with 49,000 on unemployment benefit and thousands more having exhausted this and scraping…
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Dirty Dublin
See, I do come from a dirty Dublin. I come from a 2-for-15, “fuck the Queen” for any apparent reason type Dublin. A tricolour with Silk Cut burn marks on a sleeve hanging out a window of D15 for a whole family to see, or a family that went off tenement housing on Queen Street…
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From Gaza to Britain: imperialist war and the fight against fascism
The genocide in Gaza has laid bare the barbarity of the Zionist settler-colonial state and the active role played by British imperialism in sustaining it. Britain does not simply ‘collude’ in the genocide of the Palestinians; it is a participant and an active imperialist aggressor. British imperialism bears direct historical responsibility for the colonial project…
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When flags & factions replace the class struggle
The Palestine flag has become embroiled in Britain’s culture war. The ruling class has many different avenues for creating division within the working class but its objective is always the same: keep the working class divided and looking in every direction – except up!One of its current tactics is to demonise Islam and embolden reactionary…
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The story of the English Revolution
Published in 1949 to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the execution of Charles I, this short pamphlet gives a wonderful overview of the real content and meaning of the earth-shaking event that was the English revolution. Written by the excellent CPGB historian AL Morton and published in 1949, this short history gives a wonderful overview…
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To Chaadaev
Love, hope, and quiet gloryDid not warm us for long with their deceit,Our youthful amusements have vanished,Like a dream, like morning mist; But in us still burns the desire,With a soul impatient under the yoke of fate,We heed the call of our homeland. We await with longing and hopeThe moment of sacred freedom,As a young…
“ A class cannot exist in society without in some degree manifesting a consciousness of itself as a group with common problems, interests and prospects”
– Harry Braverman