Eighty years ago in 1931, Labour right-wingers joined with the Tories to form a National Government. This act had but one purpose. Like the Coalition government of today, its aim was to carry through ruthless cuts to save the profits of capitalism. Rob Sewell looks back at the great betrayal.

The riots in Britain are only a symptom of a general crisis of capitalism.  The Marxists will not join with the bourgeoisie and its agents in their hypocritical chorus of denunciation. Our duty is to find a road to the youth, to help them to find the right road – the revolutionary road, the road to the socialist reconstruction of society.

The phone-hacking scandal that has led to the closure of the News of the World newspaper has brought to the surface the real state of things within the British establishment. The rottenness of a regime, that prides itself at being a model of “democracy,” is out in the open for all to see. What has now been revealed is that a powerful media empire that for years has played a key role in British politics, making and unmaking political leaders, has been buying police officers, using influence with politicians, and all this peppered with out and out criminal activity.

Pay more! Work longer! Get less! This is the stark and uncompromising message on pensions that the Tory- dominated government is sending to millions of working class people. In the public sector, six million state employees will find that the expected reward of a half-decent pension in exchange for low wages during their working life is now being taken away. In the private sector of the economy 87% of final salary schemes have been abolished as being “unaffordable”, the latest one being Unilever in April. Not content with attacking directly the living standards of the working class with job losses, wage freezes or even wage cuts, the government is also reducing living standards

Over the recent period, splits and divisions have opened up within sections of the ruling class, which reflect a deepening unease over the crisis and the effects it is having on British society.

The phone-hacking scandal that has rocked the British establishment in the past week is not only bad news for Rupert Murdoch's News of the World and its parents NewsCorp and News International, who have now had to sacrifice their main paper, it is bad news for the politicians, the police and the capitalist class as a whole.

Cameron and Osborne appear oblivious to the crisis unfolding in front of their very noses. While standing on the edge of a precipice, they are busy reassuring everyone that Britain has nothing to fear from the European financial crisis. They are the modern equivalent of the emperor Nero, who fiddled while Rome burnt. British banks, they say, are sound and with enough capital to insulate themselves against a sovereign debt crisis across the Channel.

Thousands of trade unionists hit the streets of London and other cities all over Britain today in a national strike called by the Public and Civil Service Union (PCS), the National Union of Teachers (NUT), University and College Union (UCU) and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) to protest the government’s plan to vandalise pension schemes. This was an important turning-point for the British labour movement.

We are being reassured that the financial crisis gripping Greece cannot reach Britain. Many facts and figures are provided to back this up. However, a closer look at the situation reveals the real underlying financial crisis that sooner or later must surface in Britain also. In this article Adam Booth looks at the situation in Greece and Europe as a whole and shows how Britain cannot escape the inevitable.

“From Scotland to Spain, the problem is the same!” was one of many slogans being shouted from the streets of Edinburgh today (29^th may) as around 200 - 300 people (most from Edinburgh’s sizeable Spanish community) organised to demonstrate in solidarity with revolutionary movements in Spain and elsewhere in Europe.

The Walton by-election, in Liverpool, took place in July 1991, twenty years ago. It arose after the sudden death of Eric Heffer, the left-wing Labour MP for Walton. At the time it created quite a political stir. It was also a key factor in the demise of the Militant, which had boasted it could win the seat, but failed miserably. The whole episode played into the hands of Labour’s right wing that used it to expel Militant from the Labour Party. To understand what happened we need to take a brief look at the background.

On Thursday history was made as the Scottish National Party, who only a decade ago seemed destined to play second fiddle to the Labour Party in Scottish politics, became the first party in the Scottish Parliament's twelve year history to form a single party majority. More importantly, for the first time there is a pro-independence majority in the Parliament, and consequently a referendum on whether Scotland should leave the United Kingdom will be held within the next five year term.

Elections are simply a snapshot of the mood at any particular moment in time, but they can reveal a lot about the real underlying processes taking place in society. That was the case with the May local elections, which marked the first anniversary in power of the Coalition government and from which we can draw important lessons.

As the election results come in (with the AV vote expected tonight) we take a quick look at what they all mean. We will return to these questions shortly  with a more detailed analysis.

Saturday 26th March 2011 marked a watershed point for the modern Labour Party. The Trade Union Congress had called for workers, students, pensioners and all those affected by the coalition cuts to converge on the capital. The question was: would Labour show up to the party too?