Articles

Liz Truss Resigns After Six Weeks as UK Prime Minister British Prime Minister Liz Truss announces her resignation, as her husband Hugh O’Leary stands nearby, outside Number 10 Downing Street, London, Britain October 20, 2022. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls By Elizabeth Piper, Andrew MacAskill and Muvija M / Reuters LONDON (Reuters) -Liz Truss said on Thursday she would resign as British prime minister, brought down just six weeks into the job by an economic programme that shattered investor confidence and enraged much of her Conservative Party. Speaking outside the door of her Number 10 Downing Street office, Truss accepted that she had lost the faith of her party and said she would step down next week, becoming the shortest-serving prime minister in British history. Truss, who had...

The truly unquenchable greed of our imperialist rulers has reawakened the anger and will to resist among the working class in Britain. The refreshed, and refreshing, willingness of many groups of workers to take strike action, from bus drivers and railway staff to Amazon workers, postal staff and even criminal barristers seems to have shocked some people.   Those feelings of anger and resistance are not confined solely to those in work however. The vast majority of the working class, whether in work or on benefits, are feeling them to a greater or lesser degree, even the higher strata who would have thought themselves above such a thing not very long ago are now showing signs of stirring. The food shortages and price increases, the fuel price hikes that take even t...

Royal Mail postal workers, already on strike on 26 and 31 August in a dispute over pay, have now also voted overwhelmingly for further industrial action over working conditions. The Communication Workers Union (CWU) reported that almost 99% of its members voted in favour of taking further strike action on a 72% turnout. Clearly the lead taken by the rail workers and dockers in refusing to take cuts in their pay and working conditions, at a time when the cost of living crisis is already pushing people onto the breadline, is having a tonic effect on workers everywhere. Royal Mail bosses blame workers for the losses the company is making, resorting to the crudest blackmail and threatening that if there is not a “significant operational change” (that is, unless workers accept the i...

The global internet sales and home entertainment giant, Amazon, has seen the British section of its massive 1.5 million worldwide workforce take unexpected steps into militant resistance as a result of a derisory pay offer. Amazon does not recognise any trade unions in Britain for the purposes of pay and conditions bargaining although some of their staff are members of the GMB or Unite. Spontaneous walkouts, sit-ins and slowdowns have hit Amazon sites in Bristol, Tilbury and Coventry with others set to join in. Both the unions mentioned have been mildly supportive of the workers’ actions, but both went to great pains to stress that any action was nothing to do with them and claimed to workers that, if they were recognised by Amazon for bargaining purposes, the pay offer would h...