Support this struggle!

Long long time ago, I can still remember
How winter snow would make me smile
And I knew when I had my chance
We’d come inside to warm and dance
And maybe we'd be happy for a while

But February made me shiver
With every bill that they delivered
Bad news on the mat
How the feck can I pay that?

We've put our products' prices up,
that's what we chose to do
The power firms are doing it,
so we can do it too

We're going to charge a fair chunk more
to everyone who buys
If they won't pay our higher rates,
we'll cut off our supplies

We need the extra income for
the bigger bills we get
And that's how we will justify
the tariffs that we set

'The Eleventh Commandment' at a flash rally in support of RMT rail strikes, Brighton, 25 June 2022.

Pompous & Opulent
Prosperous & Ostentatious
Profiteering & On-the-take

Parsimonious & Obstinate
Penny-pinching & 'Orrible
Private & Obscene

Perfidious & Odious
Poisonous & Objectionable
Punishing & Oppressive

Petition & Organise
Protest & Outrage
Picket & Occupy

Public & Ownership.

TUC Disabled Workers’ Committee strongly opposes the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill.

The Bill includes new duties which oblige public services to share service users’ information with the police, which is an unacceptable shift away from a public health approach to an authoritarian approach, which will erode trust between public services and disabled people.

The TUC's Disabled Members' Committee has made this statement: Accessible public transport is essential for disabled people to participate in society on an equal and independent basis. To be genuinely accessible, public transport must be adequately staffed by workers with decent standards of training, pay, conditions and security of employment.

At this year's TUC Women's Conference, one of the motions we debated was about working shifts, particularly women's safety on late shifts. This was my contribution to the debate.

You can watch the video of this speech here.

I'm Janine Booth, RMT, and I've worked on London Underground for over 25 years.

Published in Women's Fightback 26, Autumn/Winter 2021

Kelly Lindsey, former head coach of the Afghanistan women’s football team – and before that, US international player – spoke to supporters before Lewes FC women’s home friendly against West Ham on 22 August. She has been working to secure safe evacuation of footballing women and girls from Afghanistan, along with the director of women’s football, a human rights lawyer and FIFPRO (the international professional footballers’ federation, their trade union body). “For seven days straight we’ve created a team in the US, a team in Australia, a team in Europe, we have passed the baton all day and all night to try to keep the process going and try to keep the pressure on and try to keep pushing the government and try to keep pushing sports organisations.“

Published in Solidarity 589, 21 April 2021.

Europe’s richest football clubs have announced an exclusive Super League, but have met with near-unanimous opposition.

China jails citizen journalist for Wuhan reports

Four years in jail for citizen reporter
Who spread the news from virus-struck Wuhan
Her mother cries in court to lose her daughter
She showed the world the sickness, did Zhang Zhan
So ominous the charges that they brought her
For breaking China’s free expression ban
Their stricken morals under smoking rubble,
‘Picking quarrels and provoking trouble’