On November 6 you have an opportunity to
make your voice heard.

Did you ever brave as a steel mill slave
The heat from a furnace door,
That takes from your soul such a hellish toll
That you wish to live no more?

Have you bent your back in the coal mines
black
Where death plays a winning hand.
With gas as his trump and you as his chump
Your life to spare or demand?

On a railroad train in the sleet and rain
Where lives are cheap as dirt,
Have you slipped and fell toward the Jaws
of Hell
And escaped to live unhurt?

12,000 joined the march in London (police figures) on 17 October, when teachers struck there and across other regions over pay, workload, and pensions.

Marchers were keen to see the leaders of the two big teachers' union, NUT and NASUWT, name the day for a further national strike in November.

A comprehensive Trotskyist response to the new age which opened with the American atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. It was published in Labor Action, New York, at the end of 1945.

"The impact of the bomb was so terrific that practically all living things, human and animal, were literally seared to death by the tremendous heat and pressure engendered by the blast." - From a Tokyo broadcast describing the result of the atomic bomb dropped by a Superfortress on Hiroshima.

"The impact of the bomb was so terrific that prac-
tically all living things, human and animal, were liter-
ally seared to death by the tremendous heat and pres-
sure engendered by the blast."
—From a Tokyo broad-
cast describing the result of the atomic bomb dropped
by a Superfortress on Hiroshima.
The explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki of the
missiles that were produced by the United States for
the "democratic" camp and dropped on what we were
told was an "ape-like, bestial and inhuman" people are

This special publication for Black History Month 2013 (republished January 2014) is adapted from a presentation given at Ideas for Freedom 2013.

To download the PDF, click here.

"Many people have an idea that slavery in the United States was abolished through the benevolence of white 'liberals' such as Abraham Lincoln - but that popular racism made white supremacy afterwards inevitable. The real history is different...

On 17 October teachers in London, the South East, and South West will strike as part of a campaign of opposition to a whole series of attacks on our pay and conditions.

This is the third and final part of a calendar of regional strikes, each one covering a bigger area than the last. A national strike is planned in November. If the previous strikes in the North West on 27 and Yorkshire, the Midlands, and the East on 1 October are anything to go by, then 17 October will be well-supported, will feature large marches and rallies, and will help build union organisation in schools.

The ongoing struggle of teachers in Brazil faces increasing state repression.

Teachers have been involved in continuing struggle over the past few years. In 2010 teachers in Sao Paulo were involved in strikes over pay, demonstrations every Friday were repressed by police.

Starting in 2012, the union called strikes to make the government implement a minimum wage for teachers that had been voted through the parliament five years ago.

Firefighters in England and Wales will take further strike action for five hours on Saturday 19 October in the ongoing dispute over pensions.

The action takes place after firefighters in Scotland voted not to strike for the time being, after the Scottish government offered some concessions. The ballot result is a blow to united action in the face of a common attack and a significant fault line for future negotiations on other matters.

University staff are preparing for strike action over pay this autumn after the three biggest campus unions backed campaigns to force up the employers’ offer of just 1%.

Lecturers’ union UCU voted for strikes by 61.5 to 38.5% and action short (generally seen as a more effective tactic in the sector) by 77 to 33%. 64% of Unite members backed strikes, and Unison members also did so by a slim margin.