Socialism Today May 2024 editorial For most of April Iran and Israel appeared to be teetering on the brink of an all-out war, which could have engulfed the whole of the Middle East in flames. The month opened with Israeli missiles flattening the Iranian consulate in Damascus, killing sixteen, including a top general and eight other officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. This was a major escalation from previous Israeli assaults on Iranian-backed forces in Syria, attacking supposedly inviolable diplomatic ‘territory’. From the point of view of the Iranian regime, to have not responded wo ..read more

The working class makes change Robyn Makings, South Yorkshire Socialist Party I joined the Socialist Party because I don’t feel that any big parties currently offer a genuine voice for the working class, at a time when that is needed more than ever. If change is going to come, it will fall on the shoulders of the working class to bring it about ourselves. So I wanted to get active in whatever small ways I could, by getting involved with others locally and nationally. I have a particular interest in how artists can involve themselves in politics. And how they can use their skills to influence a ..read more

Vote Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition on 2 May Nadia Ditta, Southampton Socialist Party and TUSC candidate in Bevois ward The cost-of-living crisis, and the continuous cuts to services and facilities. Council tax rises, gas and electric going up. Every attack hits the working class hard. People face hardships, forced to make difficult financial decisions. Meanwhile the rich get richer. It’s events that trigger us, that make us say ‘enough is enough’ and to fight for our rights. For me, it was the Israeli state’s war on Gaza – supported by both Tories and Labour. Every day in my community ..read more

The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) is standing 280 candidates in the 2 May council elections – the sixth-biggest stand nationally. Dave Nellist is a Socialist Party National Committee member, Chair of TUSC, and a former Labour MP. He explains why the Socialist Party is taking part in the TUSC stand, and how socialist councillors could use their platform to fight for working-class interests. Can you explain why the Socialist Party, part of TUSC, is standing candidates in this May’s council elections? Fourteen years of Tory austerity have drained local councils. Several, including ..read more

Dan Smart, Social worker and UNISON South Gloucestershire, branch secretary (personal capacity) Social care provision is in the midst of a perfect storm and faces massive challenges ahead. At the end of last year, 2.4 million people in the UK over the age of 50 were in need of care services but were getting none. This is an indictment of a system that was fought for, as part of the welfare state, to ensure that those who most need support in society receive it. During the Covid pandemic, people stood on their doorsteps to clap social care workers who had up until then felt ignored. On the back ..read more

Josh Asker, Editor of the Socialist 18 children and four others were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Rafah on 20 April. Nine people were killed the night before in the city into which over a million Gazans have been driven, fleeing for their safety. The death toll now exceeds 34,000. The spectre of a full-scale offensive on Rafah looms; threats have been repeatedly made by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The US House of Representatives has just approved $26 billion of aid to Israel, part of a bill that bans US funding for the UNRWA, the UN aid agency providing relief in Gaza. And ..read more

Ellen Kenyon Peers, Waltham Forest Socialist Party There are 63,000 Londoners in temporary accommodation. Labour Mayor of London Sadiq Khan’s housing strategy has started building 20,000 homes by 2024, far less than the 100,000 needed to keep up with demand. Council housing stock has been depleted by right to buy, poor maintenance, chronic underfunding by central government and councils pushing the redevelopment of council homes into a mixture of private and ‘social rent’ properties – neither of which are affordable for the majority of residents. Unaffordable Nancy Taaffe, selected by Waltham ..read more

Bristol – Labour and Greens vote for Tory cuts Annabel Griffiths, Bristol North Socialist Party For eight years in Bristol, a Labour mayor has sat back and allowed the cuts demanded by the Tories. Support for the Greens has risen recently here. But voting for a party that refuses to vote against cuts, like the Greens, is not going to transform our lives. When the Greens ran Brighton Council, the cuts to public services under their noses meant that the bin workers had to go on strike against them – a slap in the faces for those people who thought they were voting for a party that fought for a b ..read more

Agnieszka Kowalska, Oxford Socialist Party I’ve worked on a dementia ward with only six staff for 20 patients – three nurses and three health care assistants (HCAs). If a patient had a fall, it would need a minimum of two of us to get them back to their feet. Sometimes we would need four or five, leaving the rest of the patients alone. It was the responsibility of us HCAs to deal with call bells. Many would repeatedly use them, not understanding that they had already called someone. This would happen permanently throughout the 11.5 hour shift with only 1 hour break. We were forced to do any tr ..read more

Editorial of the Socialist issue 1272 Reasons to be fearful have increased as tensions in the Middle East have been ratcheted up. The regimes in Israel and Iran have traded blows. There has been an explosion in Iraq at the Kalsu military base. Settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank continue. An Israeli airstrike in Rafah killed at least nine people, six of them children. Famine stalks Gaza. There the death toll has risen to over 34,000. Revealed again by this bleak situation is that ‘they’ – the ruling classes internationally, representing capitalist interests – have no plan of how t ..read more