Social and Economic Policy

Children's rights, crime & justice, immigration & asylum, pensions, poverty, youth, ...

Inequality keeps spiralling

At 1pm on 4 January, CEOs of the FTSE 100 top firms had already pocketed more than the middling (median) UK wage for the whole year. According to the High Pay Centre those CEOs are now on an average of £3.81 million a year, and their year-on-year rise at 9.5%, while the middling wage has gone up 6%. Broadening out to bosses at smaller firms, and near-top managers at big firms, the top 1% of UK full-timers are on £145,000 or upwards, and will have overtaken the annual pay of the median full-time worker by 29 March. This inequality is increasing, despite sizeable recent increases in the minimum...

Tories push an ugly “new normal”

The Conservatives are reaching new lows in their recent lurch to the right. We have had the de facto abandonment of the net-zero target with the postponement of the ending of petrol and diesel car sales and the licensing of new oil drilling in the North Sea. Rishi Sunak has falsely claimed that the Labour Party’s “eco-zealots” plan to tax meat. A government minister has retold the alt-right conspiracy theory that fifteen-minute cities (a reasonable planning goal that people live within easy walking distance of amenities they need) is an attempt to control people’s lives. The underlying...

SWP: Forget elections! Radical action needed!

Despite the wall-to-wall Scottish media coverage of campaigning in the run-up to last Thursday’s Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election, some people on the doorstep nonetheless responded to canvassers with the question: “By-election? What by-election?” Perhaps their source of information (i.e. their source of an absence of information) was Socialist Worker , paper of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). Tucked away in a small article on page three of issue 2874 of the paper (27th September) were four short sentences mentioning that the by-election would be taking place and that “media reports”...

Iranian workers protests spread

On 27 September 17 workers employed by the Iranian company, the National Steel Group, were sentenced to prison and flogging. The trial took place in the southern city of Ahvaz. The workers were charged with, “disrupting public order by inciting disturbance and controversy” and their “crime” was to demand wage increases, and that the company implements the very basic protections provided by Iran’s employment law. The workers can avoid three-month prison terms if they pay fines of 2.5 million tomans (about £40). The fine will be difficult to pay as the working-class has been the main victim of...

Gove sends in Commissioners to raid Birmingham

On 19 September, the ironically titled Levelling Up Secretary, Michael Gove, announced he would be sending in commissioners to take over the running of Birmingham city council. The commissioners will very likely oversee the plundering of Birmingham, with the sale of council assets such as landmark buildings, jobs cuts, and funding cuts that will massively impact the charity sector. Two observations. One, for years the argument from the Labour Right and the official Left has been that Labour councils shouldn't actually resist implementing austerity (as with Lambeth and Liverpool councils in the...

Labour, democracy, and Rosebank

Activists from Workers' Liberty and supporters of Solidarity will be at Labour Party conference and women's conference, 7-11 October in Liverpool. We'll be there to help the efforts of Free Our Unions, the Labour Campaign for Free Movement, the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign, India Labour Solidarity, and other campaigns; to sell literature, seek discussions and contacts. There will be demonstrations for the NHS and for abortion rights on Saturday, for free education on Sunday. And agitation for a block on new North Sea oil and gas fields, following the Tories' decision to "max out" licences in...

Take the wealth from the billionaires

Labour’s current policy, as outlined by the National Policy Forum, is hobbled by refusing to tax the rich, beyond closing a few loopholes. A small wealth tax, or even making the tax rate on “unearned” income equal to that on “earned” income, could raise more than enough to fix up the NHS. The Labour leaders’ commitments to retain Tory tax policies, with only marginal tweaks, to stick to arbitrary Tory targets for cutting government debt, and to keep military spending high, mean continued ruination. Inequality of wealth has risen recently in many countries, more than inequality of income...

Unless we tax the rich, worse is to come

The year 2022, summarises the broadly Blairite but fact-rich and realistic Resolution Foundation, “was a disaster for living standards” — “but the worst is yet to come”. A lot more people are dependent on food banks. A lot of people this winter will not afford to heat their homes or cook properly. Many people are now paying cash for private medical treatments where NHS waiting lists are impossibly long, and many others can’t possibly afford that. Beyond the issue of people being unable to afford basics, broader class inequality, with its taunting wounds to worse-off people from the sight of...

Jina Mahsa Amini, one year on

September marks one year since the murder of Jina Mahsa Amini, a young Iranian-Kurdish woman who was killed in detention following her arrest for allegedly violating Iran ’s compulsory hijab law. Her murder sparked the most significant protests against the Iranian regime since the 1980s and the strength of the uprising prompted the Iranian regime to take the notorious morality police off the streets. CRACKDOWN It has been confirmed that more than twenty thousand people have been arrested and hundreds killed in the subsequent crackdown, with the real number expected to be much higher. Sentences...

Notes from Berlin: what we can learn from the hospital movement

In September 2021 thousands of healthworkers launched an indefinite strike at Charité and Vivantes, two of Berlin’s large municipal hospitals. So began the Krankenhausbewegung - Berlin’s Hospital Movement. After a month, they won. A year later, nurses in the UK underwent their own industrial awakening, as the Royal College of Nursing balloted for nationwide strike action over pay. The differences between the disputes could not have been more stark, as a series of obstacles — some erected by anti-union laws, others by their own union — combined to defeat the UK nurses, despite overwhelming...

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.