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Demonstrations started in the first week of full Taliban rule, particularly in Herat in the west of Afghanistan and in Kabul and other major cities. In these cities at least women before the collapse of the old government had some basic rights, like having jobs and going to school and university.

The Labour Party’s Conference Arrangements Committee (CAC) has sparked outrage by ruling out of order the “Green Jobs Revolution” motion promoted for Labour conference by the Labour for a Green New Deal (LGND) campaign and submitted by at least 21 Constituency Labour Parties (CLPs).

The 24 September global youth climate strike has the potential to help reboot the climate movement. It has been called by “Fridays for Future”, the international organisation most closely associated with the wave of youth climate strikes initiated by Greta Thunberg in Sweden in 2018.

Dubbed #UprootTheSystem, the call-out for this climate strike is openly left-wing and internationalist. #FridaysForFuture (FFF) are not deeply democratic, and assessing the turnout later this month is difficult.

Social care needs a transformation comparable to the transformation of UK healthcare seven decades ago through the NHS. It seems likely such a policy, for a public care and support system, would be popular, if strong enough voices argued for it. At the moment the forces campaigning for anything like it are weak, but the issue is centre-stage as never before.

At the National Executive Committee of the public services union Unison on 14 July, a full time official blocked a message of support to striking hospital workers in Israel on grounds of the union’s “Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions” (BDS) policy.

The treatment backlog threatening the NHS is a symptom not just of the pandemic, but of long-worsening problems that preceded it and sharpened its impact.

The 2021 Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) Convention was held online from 30 July to 8 August. With 94,000 members — it has grown fast since 2015 — the DSA is the largest socialist organisation in the USA since the Socialist Party led by Eugene Debs at the beginning of the 20th century.

We covered the 2019 Convention at bit.ly/dsa-2019.

TUC Congress (online, 12-14 September) did not advocate anything like clear policies to address the multiple emergencies the working class faces — let alone struggles to win them.

With the climate emergency rising in public consciousness across the world and a shift towards anti-capitalist politics among younger people, we might think the Green Parties would be presenting themselves as radical anti-capitalist forces to win people from Labour or Social Democratic parties which have become wedded to neoliberalism and dwindled into bureaucratic husks. However, in practice the opposite is happening.

In my Constituency Labour Party (CLP), when we discussed which motion to prioritise for Labour Party conference, much of the left argued that a motion calling for Proportional Representation (PR) was the most important, more important than my class-struggle “Build Back Fairer” motion.

The PR proposal was, so they argued, the door which opened the way to everything advocated in the other motions.

The Elections Bill, designed to suppress turnout in UK elections, is yet another weapon in the Tories’ multi-faceted assault on democracy (Police Bill, Spycops Bill, Overseas Operations Bill, threat of a new anti-strike law).

Workers cleaning Facebook’s London offices for Churchill Cleaning will protest again on 17 September as part of their fight against workload increases, harassment of workers and victimisation of their union rep.

Back in the weeks after the murder of Sarah Everard by Metropolitan Police officer Wayne Couzens, militant protests against the government’s Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill swept the Labour Party into voting against the Tories’ plans in Parliament, which Keir Starmer’s leadership had not intended to do. They also swept trade unions into making public statements and so on against the Bill.

Worldwide, “serious and critical cases” of Covid in hospitals stand at 105,000 and increasing, only just below the all-time high of 114,000 on 29 August.

The counted death rate per day has decreased a bit in recent days, and is now 50% below its peak in January 2021, but is still higher than at any time before mid-November 2020.

Care and Support Workers Organise protest in Manchester on their day of action, 4 September

TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady is right to respond to the talk of National Insurance increases by arguing that “it’s time to raise taxes on wealth to fund social care properly”.

A section of the right is are using phrases like “intergenerational fairness” to justify removing the triple lock which guarantees substantial increases in the basic state pension (by average earnings, inflation or 2.5%, whichever is higher).

Workers' Liberty published this on 14 September 2001.

Against the barbarism of the New York massacre, we fight for socialism

To use civilian planes, full of people, to attack buildings full of civilians, mostly ordinary workers, is a crime against humanity, whatever the supposed aims.

This weekend (12-14 September) the Congress of the TUC, representing 48 trade unions with the best part of six million members, meets online.

The TUC General Council’s two statements to the Congress run to over 3,600 words. They diagnose some of UK society’s immediate problems, at least, and advocate a number of good and important things.

The Hazara community in the UK is many thousands strong, with a substantial presence in lots of cities.

The 13 energetic days of XR’s “Impossible Rebellion” finished the same day as Hurricane Ida: Saturday 4 September. What’s next in the fight against climate crises?

The priorities vary from city to city, from workplace to workplace, but I note some ideas below.

On 3 July, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, South Korea’s national union federation, organised a rally of 8,000 workers in Seoul to demand measures to protect lives and save jobs in the Covid-19 pandemic. (South Korea has had a relatively good record on Covid, but a relative case surge since the middle of June.)

The global Palestinian population is estimated at around thirteen million. There are big Palestinian communities in some countries of the Americas – half a million in Chile, over 250,000 in the United States, 250,000 in Honduras, and 200,000 in Guatamala – but most Palestinians live in countries in the Middle East.

20 August was the 45th anniversary of the start of one of the most important struggles in British working-class history, the two-year strike by Grunwick film-processing workers in North West London. This is the second of two parts of an abridged version of an article written by Jean Lane in 1998: full version with photos, links and resources here.

As a result of the absurd threat to expel Bakers’ Union President Ian Hodson from the party, the union is holding a recall conference, with the implication that it could disaffiliate.

Around 100 people joined a solidarity rally for Unison Branch Secretary and national President Paul Holmes on Monday 6 September as his disciplinary hearing began. Holmes was suspended by Kirklees Council in November 2019. The council is not holding the hearing at council offices as would be usual, instead paying for a four-star hotel on the outskirts of Huddersfield.

More on Afghan refugees here.

The Taliban’s seizure of power in Afghanistan threatens the rights and lives of millions. The most immediate duty for the left and the workers’ movement in Britain is to fight to force open the borders for every refugee who wants to come here.

From 23 August, environmental activists from across the UK descended upon London for thirteen days of bold and creative direct action against climate change and its financing, XR’s “Impossible Rebellion”. It was smaller than previous pre-Covid rebellions, but still numbered thousands every day. And not just for a single march, then a coach home: for marching, actions, and confrontation with the police all day long, day after day.

The peoples of Afghanistan are being overrun. Those who can, will flee; some will submit to a new regime extinguishing women's rights and personal liberties, as well as collective civil rights; some will be massacred.

The Afghan army, nominally over 300,000 strong, equipped, funded, and trained by the USA over 20 years, offered almost no resistance to the Taliban advance, even though the Taliban is still mostly a scrappy militia of young men with Kalashnikovs on motorbikes or pick-up trucks.

20 August was the 45th anniversary of the start of one of the most important struggles in British working-class history, the two-year strike by Grunwick film-processing workers in North West London. This is the first of two parts of an abridged version of an article written by Jean Lane in 1998: full version with photos, links and resources here.

The Labour Party’s work and pensions spokesperson Jonathan Reynolds has attacked the government’s 1 September £20pw cut to Universal Credit (UC), and called the UC system “fatally flawed” — but said vanishingly little about would what Labour would do differently.

Reynolds refused to pledge that Labour would reverse the cut, let alone indicate a higher level of Universal Credit. His defence of not being able to set a figure so far from an election is an absurd evasion.

The Plymouth shooting of 12 August which left five people plus the perpetrator dead is the latest in a series of incel-related mass shootings that have occurred since 2014 in the US, Canada, Germany and now the UK.

Some have called for the killing to be described explicitly as misogynistic terrorism. That is certainly understandable. The murderer had had a history of posting misogynistic and homophobic comments online.

The Tories’ Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill has not, so far, been substantially amended in Parliament. It still constitutes an assault on the right to protest, on workers’ rights to strike and picket, on migrants and on Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities.

The Bill’s second reading in the House of Lords has been set for 14 September. Yet the latest round of protests against the Bill, on 21 August, was small and weak, with hundreds rather than thousands in London.

Order our booklet, published July 2021, here.

The rebellions which became known as the “Arab Spring” began in Tunisia in December 2010, quickly spreading to Algeria, Egypt and other states. Mass movements demanding freedom and democracy took to the streets.

• To download / print our petition calling on the trade unions, Labour Party and Green Party to campaign for public ownership and democratic control of the big banks and financial institutions, so their resources can be used to tackle climate change, boost living standards and reduce inequality, instead of funding fossil fuels and increasing the wealth of the rich at our expense - click here. Online version can be signed here.

About a thousand protesters, mostly people of Afghan origin or background, took to the streets in London on 28 August to protest against the Taliban.

Placards also called for a more open door for refugees, and support for the rights of the Hazara minority in Afghanistan. Many protesters waved the Afghan flag (dating, with many variants and interruptions, from 1930), which has also been waved on small anti-Taliban protests inside Afghanistan.

20 August 2021 was the 45th anniversary of the start of one of the most important struggles in British working-class history, the two-year strike by Grunwick film-processing workers in North West London. Below we republish an overview of the strike and its significance written by Jean Lane in 1998, with a short introduction from 2012. The kind of lessons Jean highlighted in 1998, from the strike's magnificence but also its galling defeat, were still relevant in 2012 and are relevant today.

We call on activists in trade unions and local Labour Parties to put motions supporting an open door for refugees from Afghanistan, and to support street protests for refugee rights.

• Disaster in Afghanistan: how the Taliban won (August 2021)

• A disastrous invasion and a disastrous withdrawal (August 2021)

• Afghanistan, the left, and the "third camp" (August 2021)

• Timeline 1921-2021

In November 2018, the longtime Irish-based Trotskyist Rayner Lysaght debated with Sean Matgamna, a founding member of Workers’ Liberty, on Marxist perspectives on Irish history and the Irish revolution. The following day they had an extended discussion on related topics. This has been recorded and released as nine videos.

The government still owns a majority of one of the UK’s biggest banks. Instead of using that stake to impose any kind of public accountability or social responsibility on NatWest, the Tories are pushing ahead with the sell-off of the government’s stake – at a massive loss to taxpayers. Yet the labour movement is silent.

Despite a majority of its shares being owned by the government, in the last four years NatWest Group has provided over $13bn of funding for fossil fuel projects, 46th worst of all the many thousands of banks in the world.

After this article was written, Workers' Liberty members and supporters in Unite the Union decided to back Sharon Graham for Unite General Secretary: see our statement here. Naturally we also continued to argue for the kind of criticisms and ideas outlined below! For more debate and discussion on the election, see here.

On 13 August the Labour Party started sending out letters threatening people with "Automatic Exclusion from Membership of the Labour Party" under the terms of the "ban" on four groups decided by Labour's National Executive (NEC) on 20 July.

The recipients were given seven days to show they weren't associated with any of the four groups. The well-known film director Ken Loach refused to attempt to show that, and has been expelled.

Dan La Botz is a US socialist active in the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and Solidarity. He is a co-editor of the independent socialist journal New Politics, and a supporter of the Internationalism from Below initiative. He spoke to Daniel Randall of Workers' Liberty about debates in and around the DSA, especially about what approach the organisation should take to international issues.

Uncharted waters: social responsibility in Australian trade unions , by Greg Mallory (2005) investigated the NSW BLF Green Bans. Until recently Greg had been President of the Brisbane Labour History Association for 17 years. Workers Liberty has previously reported on his research into Green Bans: see here and here.

The death on 18 July 2021 of Michel Husson means a large loss of light and sparkle in the world of discussion and debate in Marxist economics.

Unlike almost anyone else today, or maybe even in history, Husson was equally at home in abstruse "Marxist high theory" debates about value and price, in hypothesising about broad epochal shifts in capital's modes of self-regulation, and in detailed everyday statistical investigations (would a cut in the working week reduce unemployment, how much, under what conditions?)

The USA is sending 5,000 troops to Afghanistan, boosting its military presence above anything since late 2020. The UK is sending 600, and the USA has another 4,000 stationed nearby in support.

These troops were not sent to assist the collapsing Afghan army as the Taliban entered Kabul (on 15 August) after sweeping almost all the country's cities since it took Zaranj on 6 August, and a series of rural areas since 4 May. Or to protect the people of Kabul, including the thousands of refugees who have fled there since the Taliban took their home cities.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has now opened up an attack on the very existence of independent trade unions in Hong Kong.

“Its main effect will be to add an extra dose of cruelty to the existing arrangements.” That’s the impact the Tories’ Nationality and Borders Bill — just passed by the House of Commons for a second time — will have on asylum-seekers, as summed up by migration writer Daniel Trilling. The arrangements are extremely cruel already.

UK-based international banking and finance giant HSBC has increased the “bonus pool” for its bankers by 50%, to £650m, after its profits grew more than fourfold in the second quarter of 2021. It says it may increase it further before pay-outs early next year.

Last year HSBC paid 324 of its bankers more than £850,000 in salaries and bonuses, while eight received more than £4m and one more than £8m.