Class Struggle n°85 · October 2009

This year's annual Trade Union Congress conference, from 14-17 September, has taken place in the context of one of the most severe offensives against the working class seen in decades. 600,000 jobs have been lost officially in just 12 months, there have been unprecedented lay-offs and wage cuts, pension …

The campaign for next year's general election has begun - and its main focus is already evident: it will be about public expenditure cuts, all round. That was Brown's message in his speech at the annual TUC conference, which he used to kick-off this campaign. In the run-up to …

While the electoral process for the re-election of Afghan president Karzai has turned into farce - albeit a potentially dangerous one, due to the considerable amount of ballot-rigging involved - all the indicators coming lately from Afghanistan show that, contrary to past western optimism, the war is getting more bloody …

South Korea is, together with Japan, the Asian country with the most social and economic characteristics in common with Europe's industrialised countries. But, unlike in Europe, the world economic crisis, especially after the collapse of US bank Lehman Brothers, has dealt a double blow to the Korean economy, over and …

Although little is said about them in the media, Europe's poorest countries have been affected far more drastically than any others by the economic crisis - and this, despite the fact that, unlike Britain, they never experienced anything like the so-called "affluence" driven by an over-inflated credit bubble, which preceded …