100 days to COP26
Tomorrow marks 100 days until the start of the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow. It is due to take place in November having been pushed back a year, due to the Coronavirus Pandemic.
Bezos and Branson space bonanza: Innovation or vanity project?
Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson have the resources to lift millions of people out of poverty. By leeching off the sweat and blood of the thousands of workers of Amazon and Virgin respectively, the pair have amassed fortunes that exceed that of entire nations.
Freedom day: a gamble or a safe bet?
Whilst Tory ministers celebrate so called “freedom day” in England, coronavirus is ripping through the UK, leading to mounting health problems caused by long Covid and pressures on the overstretched NHS. Once again, the Tories are putting profits before lives in a cruelly expected fashion. Boris Johnson ended mandatory Covid-19-related restrictions on Monday (19 July 2021). This is despite the fact that the country is now seeing over 50,000 new Covid-19 cases per day and there are still no plans to make vaccines generally available to under 18s.
Keir Starmer set to expel 1,000 Labour members
In what seems like the everlasting ideological war for control of the Labour Party, three groups and their respective members are to be removed from Labour … The accumulation of these suspended groups totals to about 1,000 members. Losing this many members cannot be good for a party which has already seen a massive decline in membership since Starmer’s took over as leader of the party. The ideological war of the Labour Party has been going since nearly it’s inception in 1900.
Report by ex-UN rapporteur highlights failures of bus privatisation
A new report from former UN special rapporteur, Philip Alston, highlights the utter failure of bus privatisation in the UK, making a scathing critique of Britain’s ‘expensive, unreliable, fragmented, and dysfunctional bus system.’
UK military: harbingers of death or climate change activists?
Whilst visiting the US, Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, has disclosed the Tories’ military plans, suggesting that British soldiers will wage secret wars and employ new types of warfare. Furthermore, he asserted that the military was capable of handling climate change, population growth, and migration. Wallace added that the Tory government was still keen to be close to American power.
Government sanctioned killers who committed crimes in Ireland go unprosecuted
British prosecutors in the north of Ireland have taken the decision to not prosecute two soldiers who were found to have killed innocent people during the Troubles. Tory MPs have attempted to justify the outcome as some form of reconciliation of the Troubles; however for those who have lost friends, family and loved ones reconciliation is a far away thought when state sanctioned killers still walk the streets.
EU court rules to allow hijab bans in the workplace
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled that workplaces within the EU are free to ban hijabs and other visible religious dress.
YCL100: ‘The Defence of Madrid’ by Phil Gillan (1937)
Phil Gillan, a Young Communist League member from Glasgow, was the first of 549 volunteers from Scotland to join the Spanish Civil War. Fresh from the battlefield, he writes about his time training in the Tom Mann Centuria before serving within the Thälmann Battalion, and the realities of war against the fascists. After miraculously surviving a serious injury inflicted by German Nazis, he returned home where he told his story, and helped to recruit many others to join in the united fight for freedom
YCL100: The Spanish Civil War and The International Brigades
The 17th July 2021 marks the 85th anniversary of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. Joe Weaver takes a look at what happened, and the contributions made by members of the Young Communist League & Communist Party of Great Britain.
