For equality, against bigotry

Over 100,000 people in the UK are living with HIV. With less than five years remaining until 2030, the goal of achieving zero new HIV cases is within reach, but this will only be achieved if we confront the stigma and inequality that continue to prevent people from accessing testing, treatment and support. Medical advances have transformed HIV outcomes in recent years. In England, 98% of people accessing HIV care now have an undetectable viral load due to effective antiretroviral treatment. This means they cannot pass the virus on through sex, the basis of the U=U message (Undetectable =...

Yanar Mohammed, Iraqi socialist-feminist and co-founder of the left-feminist NGO Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), has been killed outside her home in Baghdad.

Dear Comrade Editor Your piece CPB Votes for Backlash, which asserts among other things “the party’s (the Communist Party of Britain) years-long habit of supporting anti-trans-rights arguments and campaigns” and this is a “shameful attack on trans rights”, really is a disgraceful smear and the opposite of the truth. The Communist Party and the socialist daily Morning Star (which is not “controlled” by the CPB) have consistently demanded for all oppressed sections and groups in society, whether on the basis of gender, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, culture, immigration status, language...

The latest round of peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine is underway. After multiple unsuccessful attempts over the course of Trump’s first year in office, this plan appeared, almost out of nowhere, on 20 November. It's the result of a joint scheme by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who had played some undefined role in the Gaza ceasefire agreement, and Trump’s special envoy to Russia Steve Witkoff. The American team claims that the initial 28-point plan was drafted with the input of Rustem Umerov, the former Ukrainian Minister of Defence who is himself embroiled in a corruption...

RMT general secretary Eddie Dempsey has published a new article in Tribune, arguing that the disconnection between the working class and the organised left is partly down to the left focusing too heavily on issues such as "gender, race, and climate", which Dempsey argues are the "preoccupations" of "middle-class activists."

The Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has announced the government’s intention to proscribe Palestine Action, placing it on the list of banned terrorist groups and making it illegal to be a member. This is in response to supporters of Palestine Action breaking into the air base RAF Brize Norton near Oxford and spraying red paint into the engines of two military aircraft. The extent of the British military’s support for Israel’s war of destruction on Gaza is unclear, but according to Declassified UK the RAF conducted over 500 surveillance flights over Gaza between December 2023 and March 2025 (the...

On Wednesday 16 April, the Supreme Court ruled that the meaning of sex under the Equalities Act 2010 means biological sex. The ruling is a serious setback for trans rights, and places the UK behind almost everywhere else in western Europe on gender recognition. The Saturday after the ruling, 19 April, tens of thousands of people gathered in Parliament Square in protest. Workers’ Liberty activists were central to bringing together a coalition that organised the protest, which included rs21, ACR, Workers’ Power, and trans rights and labour movement groups such as Pride in Labour, Labour For...

'After the Act', showing at London’s Royal Court Theatre from 21 May to 14 June 2025, tells the story of Section 28, and the teachers, pupils and activists who lived through it. Kelly Rogers spoke to writer and director Billy Barrett and writer and actor Ellice Stevens. The play opens with Section 28 of the Local Government Act, 1988, projected onto a screen: A local authority shall not— (a) intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality; (b) promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended...

In December 2023, draft non-statutory guidance was released for schools and colleges in England on “Gender Questioning Children”. The official consultation ended a while back, but the draft is still only a draft. The government says only that it will respond “in 2025”. Given the backwash spun from the 16 April Supreme Court ruling, some pessimism is in order. The draft guidance was markedly different from most widely-used previous guidance documents in its emphasis on exclusion of trans people from single-sex spaces and on “outing” transgender children to parents. In a 2022 study by Gallup, 43...