Socialism Today – Page 2 – Socialist Party magazine

How will the Greens develop now?

1 June, 2026Admin

In the wake of the May elections in England and Wales, HANNAH SELL assesses the significance of the Greens’ ballot box surge and their claims to be a ‘workers’ party’.

The May 2026 elections were a turning point in Britain. The votes of both Labour and the Tory party collapsed; ending the duopoly via which capitalism has ruled for the best part of a century. The right-wing populists of Reform surged, and so did the Greens. Under their new ‘eco-populist’ leader, Zack Polanski, the Greens won an average of 17% of the vote across English local authorities, resulting in 441 extra councillors and winning control of five new councils. In Wales the Green vote share was a more modest 8% because Plaid Cymru were seen by most voters as the more effective way to protest against Labour and block Reform. Nonetheless, in these elections the Greens were the main left alternative to the establishment parties and to Reform. Meanwhile, Green Party membership has soared to 230,000.

Behind the Greens’ debate on anti-Zionism

1 June, 2026Admin

A debate has broken out recently in the Green Party in Britain over what constitutes ‘anti-Zionism’. In a contribution to the discussion JUDY BEISHON explains the need to take a class approach to this issue, which has a relevance well beyond the Greens.

The horrific war against the Palestinians in Gaza, along with ongoing ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and brutal onslaughts on Lebanon and elsewhere in the region, has led to widespread condemnation of the ultra-right Israeli government by ordinary people worldwide.

Trying to counter the expressions of mass opposition and anger, many states have stepped up repression against anti-war protesters. Also, allegations of antisemitism, including equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism, have been widely used as a political weapon by the political right against the left, to try to undermine the left and weaken opposition to the Israeli state’s massacres, repression and wars.

The socialist approach to the EU

1 June, 20261 June, 2026Admin

Ten years on from the referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union, and with Brexit now an issue in both the unofficial Labour leadership race and in the debate on the character of the Greens, we reprint an article by CLIVE HEEMSKERK, first published in Socialism Today No.201, September 2016, under the title, Corbyn’s Brexit Opportunity. Written during that year’s challenge to Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership by the pro-remain MP Owen Smith, it argues the case for a socialist approach to the EU.

The main forces of British and international capitalism did everything they could to secure a vote in the June 2016 referendum to keep Britain in the EU. US President Obama made a carefully choreographed state visit. The IMF co-ordinated the release of doom-laden reports with the chancellor George Osborne. And then there was the shameful joint campaigning of right-wing Labour Party and trade union leaders with the Tory prime minister of the time David Cameron and other representatives of big business. A propaganda tsunami of fear was unleashed to try and intimidate the working class to vote in favour of the EU bosses’ club.

The 1926 general strike: working class power on display

6 May, 2026Admin

This issue of Socialism Today is a special anniversary edition to mark the centenary of the 1926 general strike, the greatest movement to date in the history of the British working class. The opening overview article which follows below is from a major work by LYNN WALSH, written for the fiftieth anniversary of the strike in 1976 and first published in issue No.11 of the Militant International Review, our predecessor magazine, and reprinted here for the first time since.

General strikes are not accidental occurrences, simply the result of mistakes or misunderstandings between leaders. Nor can general strikes be brought about merely by small groups of political activists calling for general-strike action regardless of the time and conditions. A general strike inevitably arises from the open clash of class forces. Like all such clashes on a large scale, a general strike is inevitably rooted in the relationship of economic and political forces, and prepared and precipitated by events. This was certainly true of the 1926 strike, which flowed from the momentous struggles after 1918, marking a decisive turning point of the class struggles in the inter-war years.

“The whole of Europe is in a revolutionary mood”, the British prime minister David Lloyd George wrote to the Paris Peace Conference, meeting after the end of hostilities in the first world war. “The whole of the existing social, political and economic order is being called into question by the mass of the people”. Britain was no exception. Faced with revolts in India and Ireland, the British ruling class was also confronted by a radicalised working class at home. In 1919 there was an enormous upsurge of strikes (35 million days lost) as workers struggled for better conditions and to strengthen their organisations. In many areas, councils of action – soviets in all but name – sprang up to prevent British intervention against the October 1917 revolution in Russia.

Why did the Minority Movement fail?

6 May, 2026Admin

The National Minority Movement, formed in 1924, involved at its height a quarter of the trade union membership and had experienced and authoritative class fighters as leaders. So why didn’t it shape the course of events in May 1926, asks PAULA MITCHELL?

“If the British proletariat had a leadership that came near to corresponding to its class strength and the ripeness of the conditions”, said Leon Trotsky speaking during the 1926 general strike, “power would pass out of the hands of the conservatives and into the hands of the proletariat within a few weeks. But such an outcome cannot be relied upon”.

In today’s volatile, crisis-ridden world, one thing unites all the sparring interests of capitalist powers and big businesses: the attempt to maintain profits and power on the backs of the working class. The only way forward to a secure, decent life for the vast majority of humanity is to break with capitalism and build a socialist society. Huge struggles lie ahead. Building working-class organisation and leadership is paramount.

In this hundredth anniversary year of the 1926 general strike – the closest the working class in Britain has come so far to revolutionary change, betrayed by the leaders of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) – the experience of the National Minority Movement (NMM) is rich in lessons for the struggle for organisation and leadership today.

The general strike today

6 May, 2026Admin

The strike wave of 2022-2023, the biggest in Britain since before the shift in class relations that followed the collapse of Stalinism at the end of the 1980s, brought the question of the general strike back into political discourse. Reprinted below is an article by HANNAH SELL, first published in the September 2022 edition of Socialism Today, No.260, looking at the possibilities of general strike action in the modern era.

In Britain in 2017 just 33,000 workers took part in industrial action, the lowest level since records began in 1893. The numbers, at 39,000, were barely higher the following year. Against this background many on the left, including some who parted ways with the Socialist Party, turned away from the organised working class as the key force in the struggle to change society.

1926 and its roots

6 May, 2026Admin

The General Strike 1926: A New History

By David Brandon

Published by Pen & Sword Books, 2023, £25

Reviewed by Harry Cooper

This book by David Brandon, a lecturer and author particularly of railway history, is an excellent and comprehensive history of the 1926 general strike. One of its major strengths is its focus on the economic context, and particularly the decline of Britain’s industrial power and the crisis in the coal industry, leading to a decisive showdown between capital and labour.

In this context, Brandon carefully reviews the failure of the trade union leadership, their cowardly role, and their fear of a major social upheaval challenging the capitalist order, which led the TUC to sell out the general strike.

Hubris meets reality

1 April, 2026Admin

Amid the unfolding chaos and turmoil of Trump’s war on Iran, HANNAH SELL assesses its origins and global consequences.

The conflict that has raged for over three weeks in the Gulf, and continues as we go to press, is the third US war in the region since the end of the Cold War more than three decades ago. Every aspect of the current conflict demonstrates the weakening of US imperialism over that period. President Donald Trump’s chaotic and reckless approach is both a reflection of the USA’s relative decline and an accelerator of it. Whatever happens from here, the consequences are certain to include a new, qualitative undermining of the power and authority of US imperialism.

What strategy for the ‘lost generation’?

1 April, 2026Admin

“This country is now facing the existential risk of a lost generation”. Those were the words of Alan Milburn, the Blairite former health minister, speaking in February about his ongoing review into ‘NEETs’: young people not in education, employment, or training.

The ‘Milburn Review’ is set to be released in the summer, with an interim report due later this spring. According to the most recent figures published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), almost one million 16-24 year olds in Britain (957,000) were in the category of NEET as of December 2025.

Labour’s new attack on local government

1 April, 2026Admin

Local government reorganisation is being presented by ministers and council leaders as a rational, modernising reform – a necessary step to “streamline services”, “drive efficiencies” and create “strategic authorities fit for the future”. In reality this poses one of the most serious threats to local democracy, jobs, pay and public services in a generation. For working-class communities and council workers alike, local government reorganisation risks becoming austerity by another name.