Economics, economics, economics. That’s what the 2010 UK election was about, and it seems to be the main thrust of the American one. Unemployment and job figures are the battlefield. Gross Domestic Product and AA+ credit ratings are the weapons. The Federal Reserve might be a potential ally, and the […]

In a new ten part series of articles, CHRIS ROBINSON traces the story behind the grassroots struggle against the poll tax – how it was organised, how it defeated this hated policy, and how the movement was instrumental in the downfall of Margaret Thatcher. ‘The lessons we learned yesterday, can be put into practice […]

My weigh in on the media’s coverage of the death of Margaret Thatcher: my reaction to the reactions.    Whatever you think about Thatcher, old women, strokes, strikes, Tories, the dead; your view was probably echoed thousands of times across the internet last week. At lunchtime on Monday, the web experienced […]

Margret Thatcher. The only political leader in Britain whose time in office is automatically referred to as a “reign”. Her time in office can be considered akin to the 11 years of tyranny to rival that of Charles 1st, the last UK monarch to wield real executive power. Like the intrepid King, […]

After forty years of work within Labour, by 1991 the Marxists of the Militant Tendency were virtually emptied out of the party for fighting Thatcher’s unpopular poll tax.

Concrete events showed me the way to become a socialist. I come from a traditional Labour family and grew up on a council estate in North-West England. There was mum, dad and five kids. We voted Labour and just about everybody in the neighbourhood voted Labour. That’s the way it was. Voting […]