The following statement on the war in Ukraine was issued by NIPSA (the Northern Ireland Public Service Alliance), the largest trade union in Northern Ireland, on 28 March. The statement presents a class approach to […]
“We were already having problems with food prices… What countries are doing now is exacerbating that, and the war is putting us in a situation where we could easily fall into a food crisis,” said […]
The Ukraine war has again brought to the fore the plight of refugees. It has created 3.5 million Ukrainian refugees, making it the largest refugee crisis faced by Europe since World War Two. Scenes of […]
The ‘Inequality Kills’ report by Oxfam shines a light on the horrific poverty conditions experienced by billions around the world. It has been further exacerbated during the Covid pandemic – 99% of the world’s population […]
The policies of the Tory government, putting profit before safety, continue to punish working-class communities with unsafe workplaces and a cost of living crisis. It is vital that the trade union movement mobilises the strength […]
New Covid-19 variants are inevitable but the threat to world health comes from profit-driven capitalism. Early reports indicate the Omicron variant is more infectious than Delta. It is not yet known whether Omicron infection is […]
The proposed extradition of journalist and whistle-blower Julian Assange from Britain to the United States is a threat both to those who expose the wrong-doing of America’s ruling élite, to free speech, and to journalism […]
The recent acute shortages of energy, goods, and labour in some sectors in the UK stem in large part from UK-specific capitalist failings. But the volatile world situation is part of the background to those […]
The explosive leaking of 6.4 million documents and 1.2 million emails, the ‘Pandora papers’, showing the grotesque activities of the super-rich, stashing billions of US$ in offshore accounts to avoid tax and to launder money, […]
In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, with fears of rising unemployment as the furlough scheme is wound up, and the full extent of the economic scarring from the pandemic is revealed, there are also […]
The pandemic hasn’t just exposed the class divide here in the UK. It’s also brought many tensions and inequalities between nations in an already fractured world to the surface. If the rapid spread of the […]
One hundred comrades from the Committee for a Workers International (CWI) attended an extended meeting of its International Executive Committee from Friday 9 April to Sunday 11th April. Due to coronavirus restrictions, the meeting was […]
In recent weeks new Covid infections have fallen steeply. Over 32 million people have had their first vaccination. Most of us are looking forward to activities we’ve been deprived of for much of the past […]
The first UK death from Covid-19 was recorded on 2 March 2020. Twelve months and over 120,000 deaths later, most people have been through greater upheavals than since the second world war. The UK has […]
Across the globe, at least 2.4 million people have now died from contracting Covid-19. Livelihoods have been wrecked and economies have crashed, with the world economy shrinking by over 4% and the UK suffering a […]
The Biden administration’s January 26 joint agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin to sign ‘New START’, a five-year extension to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, was greeted with some relief. After the US withdrawal from […]
The European Commission has been forced into a humiliating climb-down following its attempts to control exports of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, which threatened a ‘vaccine hard border’ in Ireland. The EU’s threat to stop vaccines […]
For over a year, the Covid-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc across the globe, causing over two million deaths and unleashing enormous economic and social crises. 2021 has ushered in new lockdowns in the UK, Germany […]
As the year 2020 comes to a close the turmoil and convulsions that have shaken global capitalism continue. The year has been a turning point in history, affecting every aspect of society. Commentators and historians […]
Around £320 billion is lost annually to corporate tax abuse and private tax evasion, the equivalent of nearly 34 million nurses’ salaries, according to the Tax Justice Network. Poorer countries are most affected, with tax […]
Covid-19 vaccines in record-breaking times have raised millions of people’s hopes that life will return to normal next year. But speed has also made many worry that corners are being cut in the race to […]
News that early results from a Covid-19 vaccine – produced by US-based pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, in conjunction with German company BioNTech – showed 90% effectiveness has been greeted with relief. Another vaccine trial, by US […]
On 7 October, after a trial lasting five-and-a-half years, the neo-Nazi organisation Golden Dawn was found guilty of being ‘a criminal organisation’. Outside the court in Athens, 15,000 anti-fascist protesters celebrated the news, displaying slogans […]
More than six months of the global COVID pandemic and global crisis have exposed everything that is rotten in this era of capitalist decline. Global capitalism is in a putrefying prolonged death agony, which is […]
A decade ago, following the worldwide financial crash, a Financial Times editorial congratulated capitalism on a bit of luck that “the left” was “missing in action in what should have been its finest hour. In […]
The intimate connections between organised crime, high finance, and the capitalist state have been exposed. Documents leaked from the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) detail over $2 trillion of suspect transactions over two decades. […]
Thousands of university and college students are returning to further and higher education campuses despite warnings this will lead to significant outbreaks of Covid-19. The University and College Union (UCU) and other education unions are […]
Governments around the world failed to protect people from Covid-19. Now they are desperately looking to vaccine development. Mass vaccination seems the best way to end the nightmare of further waves of infection, repeated lockdowns, […]
Covid-19 has disproportionately hit disabled people. This is one of the effects of capitalist society, which is disabling and puts profit before lives, including the people it disables. Around one-fifth of the population of England […]
The devastating impact of coronavirus in Scotland was underlined on 11 June when National Records of Scotland reported that 4,000 people had so far died from confirmed or suspected Covid-19. Scotland’s ‘excess mortality’, while slightly […]
Anatoly Chubais, the Russian oligarch, Chairman of Rusnano and one of the main initiators of privatisation in the 1990s, warned Forbes magazine recently about the consequences of the pandemic and the global crisis of 2020 […]
Covid-19 recognises no borders. It has killed hundreds of thousands, ravaged economies across the world and is not finished yet. All governments have been put to the test and poured billions into protecting their economies, […]
Just six months ago, Boris Johnson swanned into office as British Prime Minister, with the biggest Tory parliamentary majority since 1987. The Socialist newspaper, in our special edition produced the day after the general election, […]
On May 11, Vladimir Putin ended the “non-working days” regime and local authorities are gradually ending the self-isolation rules. This is happening while Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, Putin’s Press Secretary, Dmitry Peskov, and the head […]
During the spread of coronavirus into Malaysia in the middle of February, the ruling government – the Pakatan Harapan (Coalition of Hope) – which was in power for one and a half years, collapsed. A […]
According to the Iranian regime, towards the end of May, the number of people in Iran infected with covid-19 was over 140,000, and the number of people who have died as a result of the […]
The figures for Covid-19 deaths in Britain, broken down by ethnicity, caused widespread shock and anger when they were released on 7 May by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). After adjusting for age, black […]
Tens of thousands of angry demonstrators poured onto the streets of Hong Kong last weekend, not only defying social-distancing regulations, but confronting police armed with tear gas, pepper spray, and water cannon. The sudden announcement […]
Few could have imagined when the Tories won the 2019 general election in Britain that five months later they would be carrying through measures of state intervention beyond the scale even of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour […]
It was always unavoidable that mistakes would be made during the handling of this pandemic. No public health threat on this scale has existed in any developed economy for many decades – and given that […]
Five months after Covid-19 reached the United States, the Trump administration and US capitalism have still failed to mobilise an effective response to the pandemic. Parts of the country began reopening for business on 1 […]
Laura Spinney’s book, Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World (published by Cape), on the 1918 flu pandemic, was first published in 2017. Now in the midst of a […]
The corona crisis has entered a new phase, in terms of health, the economy and geopolitical relations. It has confirmed the main trends outlined in previous statements produced by the CWI. A new era of […]
With planning, personal protective equipment (PPE), ventilators, and other key products should have been easy to provide. Yet as each day goes by, the scale of the government’s unpreparedness for the Covid-19 crisis becomes more […]
“Meet the new messaging: same as the old messaging. Only even vaguer and more confusing. Not so much 15 minutes of TV fame as uncomfortably like watching someone have a breakdown in front of you. […]
After a pause for a little over a month with the covid-19 lockdown, new protests have erupted in Lebanon, as the situation for workers has become desperate. Unemployment has reached 30%, while hyperinflation is worsening, […]
Like many ruling administrations internationally, the Scottish National Party (SNP)-led Scottish government has seen an increase in approval ratings and support during the Covid-19 pandemic. A recent YouGov poll found 74% of Scots held the […]
Donald Trump’s latest outburst against China over the origins of the coronavirus does not come as a surprise. As deaths from the disease and mass unemployment continue to mount and the US economy faces its […]
The cost of the Covid-19 industry-wide shutdown is being passed to workers in unpaid wages, compulsory leave, and retrenchments. Comair has followed SAA and SA Express into business rescue. Cabin crew and pilots are under […]
This week will mark seven weeks since Britain entered lockdown. It appears that the death rate from Covid-19 is finally starting to fall. Nonetheless, the official number of deaths is now higher than every European […]
CWI- Please inform us if you are reproducing any material from this site.