Those We’ve Lost
2020 saw a number of leading lights of the international socialist movement pass away. From Belfast to Bolivia, Glasgow to Ghana, we remember a selection – and pay tribute to their lives in struggle.
4353 Articles by:
Miriam Pensack
Miriam Pensack is a writer, editor, and doctoral candidate in Latin American history at New York University.
Bolivia’s Resistance Shows the Way Forward for the Left in 2021
In 2020, Bolivia’s social movements were faced with a brutal right-wing coup regime. Instead of retreating, they rebuilt – and won the struggle for democracy against all odds.
2020: A Workers’ Perspective
As 2020 draws to a close, we hear from those at its frontlines: nurses, teachers, posties, binmen – the workers who’ve kept society going through Covid-19, despite the best efforts of the government.
Keep the Schools Closed
As Covid wreaks havoc on the NHS, the government’s plan to open schools this Monday is a serious risk to public health. School workers have a duty to push back – and we have a duty to support them.
2020: A View from the Left
2020 has been a difficult year for the socialist movement, with significant defeats in many countries – but the Left’s answers to the crises we face remain far more compelling than any offered by the Right or Centre.
How Corbyn-Style ‘Democratic Ownership’ Is Taking off in Denmark
This month’s Danish budget promised more state spending, but also to help workers take control of their workplaces. The democratic ownership agenda might be dying in Labour – but it lives on elsewhere.
10 Ways Corporations Have Exploited Covid-19
For many, 2020 has been a nightmare; for others, it’s been a moneymaker. Big corporate interests have profited from the pandemic – and screwed the workers who kept society running.
The Fight Facing Unions in 2021
2020 was a difficult year for trade unions – from mass redundancies to ‘fire and rehire’ schemes. But there were also seeds of worker militancy, and these provide hope for the struggles ahead in 2021.
A World to Win’s Top 5 Moments in 2020
As we head into 2021, Grace Blakeley reflects on the first months of A World to Win podcast – and remembers some of the show’s highlights along the way.
Covid-19 Has Exposed Our Broken Care System
The commodification and marketisation of care – and its unloading onto the underpaid and unpaid – has been brutally exposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. In its wake, we need an entirely new system.
How Neoliberalism Made Britain Vulnerable to Covid
Neoliberalism has marketed itself on efficiency and pragmatism for almost fifty years, but Britain’s experience of Covid-19 has exposed those claims as false – at the cost of many thousands of lives.
How Students Beat the System in 2020
This year, students exposed the myth of England’s ‘meritocratic’ education system and overturned the government’s A Level results. But dealing with the class divides in our schools will be a far longer struggle.
Ireland’s Carceral Cure for Poverty
For much of the twentieth century, Ireland’s ruling class resisted social-democratic reforms. Instead, they treated poverty as a moral failing – and built a brutal carceral state to correct it.
For the Tories, the Return of the Death Penalty Is Not so Farfetched
Rumours that Home Secretary Priti Patel was exploring the reintroduction of the death penalty were met with surprise – but it would just be the latest chapter in a decade of Tory governments devaluing human life.
Silent Houses
The doomy sound of Belarusian group Molchat Doma has resonated with both western and eastern youth. Is it a musical Soviet nostalgia or something more telling about our own times?
Socialise Big Tech
The ‘big five’ tech giants – Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft – have extraordinary control over our lives. Regulating them isn’t enough, they have to be brought under democratic public ownership.
How Air Pollution Is Killing Britain’s Working-Class
Earlier this month, Ella Kissi-Debrah became the first British person to have air pollution recorded as a cause of death – but she won’t be the last. In poorer urban communities, it is increasingly a matter of life and death.
The Socialism of William Morris
William Morris is most famous for his iconic patterns, but a new collection of his writings shows the other passion of his life: a conviction that only the overthrow of capitalism could liberate humanity.
A Very Tribune Christmas
In 1937, Tribune ran a Christmas editorial paying tribute to workers imprisoned in the struggle against fascism and capitalism – and calling for a renewed fellowship of labour across the world.
Gerrard Winstanley’s Christian Communism
For Diggers leader Gerrard Winstanley, any Christianity which focused on individual salvation was bankrupt – Christ’s message was a revolutionary doctrine that demanded rebuilding society in the common interest.