Browsing Tag

trade unions

17 posts
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Waiting list crisis: Fight to reclaim our NHS!

In April, Health Minister Robin Swann admitted that it could take 10 years to address the waiting list crisis in Northern Ireland. With the suspension and curtailment of many services, the Covid-19 pandemic had a massive impact on waiting lists. Even before this, however, Northern Ireland’s health waiting lists were amongst the longest in Europe, and the longest of any NHS region. 

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The Battle of Cable Street: Lessons for combatting the far right

84 years ago today, on 4th October 1936, Communists and socialists came together with Jewish and Irish workers in an historic stand to stop Oswald Mosley and several thousand of his fascist Blackshirts from marching through the East End of London. In what became known as The Battle of Cable Street, Mosley and his thugs, with police protection, were blocked by an estimated 300,000 counter-protesters across east London.

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Trade unionists: reclaim our history of workers’ unity

Workers face many problems in 2019 – from the ongoing effects of the cuts, years of below-inflation pay rises, and the ever present threat of sectarianism. In 1919, 1944 and 1969 the working class were given a powerful lead by militant workplace activists. In each period they also had trade union-linked political representation. We need to learn from these struggles, rebuild fighting trade unions, and recreate a socialist political alternative. We need to reclaim our past.

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Brexit and the Irish Border: A Warning to the Workers’ Movement

On March 29th 2019 the United Kingdom is scheduled to leave the European Union. For seventeen months the British government and the EU negotiators have been struggling to reach a legally binding “withdrawal agreement” to govern the terms of UK withdrawal, including the “divorce bill” or the sum the UK pays to settle its obligations to the EU, and a “political declaration” outlining the basic shape of a final deal after further negotiations.