Archives: Episodes

Decolonising the Trade Unions – Part 1

Long time union organiser Nigel Flanagan – whose career has taken him as union militant, strike leader, full time organiser and activist to diverse corners of the global labour market, brings his experience to bear on the new possibilities that exist for strengthening the trade union movement, and questions the bases for the "new optimism" since the recent wave of strike action. Not simply a reflection on his experience, Flanagan brings to the question of organising a sharp and critical analysis of the problems thrown up in the new world of work. Transatlantic and once fashionable organising theory is subject to a searching analysis and an uncompromising eye is cast over the latest developments in the trade union world. Reading Nigel Flanagan’s words is a bruising experience for some but his starting point is one of fraternal criticism and solidarity. Read more »

Decolonising the Trade Unions – Part 2

Wyndford Belongs to its People

We interview Stephanie Martin about the struggle for decent housing and the environment, both squared up against gentrification and corporate greed in a Glasgow estate. As chair of Wyndford Resident’s Union, Stephanie supported the community's fightback against energy price gouging in April 2022, when they forced SSE to enact a price freeze for 10,000 households across Scotland. The struggle continues against the Wheatley Housing Association's attempt to gentrify the area and force the current residents out of their homes. Read more »

No Democracy Without Public Ownership

In this second of our podcasts on public ownership, we talk again with academics John Foster and Robert Wilkinson about the realities of public ownership in a capitalist societies, targeting and innovation, the centrality of public ownership to Britain's Road to Socialism, and how public ownership as the vehicle and expression of a mobilised working class is essential for the achievement of real democracy. Read more »

Public Ownership: The Secret History

In this episode we talk to academics John Foster and Robert Wilkinson about the real history of publicly-owned entities and Britain, and how that reality differs from the mainstream narratives peddled by the ruling classes and their media. The history was by no means faultless, and we also talk about the lessons that we can learn from study of what actually happened. These lesson form the bases of our next podcast: the importance of public ownership to building a just, sustainable economy, and how the new publicly-owned entities can redirect the priorities of economic activity and transform the experience of working life for our people. Read more »

Fighting Apartheid: The London Recruits

In the 1960s the ANC had been decimated. ANC leader Nelson Mandela and a significant number of those in the freedom movement were serving long life sentences. Others were either dead or in exile. The Apartheid Regime boasted that the ANC were defeated, that their racist regime would last a thousand years. Resistance was futile, they claimed. Oliver Tambo, the new ANC leader, saw that the regime’s propaganda had to be answered. From his base in Tanzania, he summoned a young ANC activist, Ronnie Kasrils. His task would be to go to London and recruit white activists to go into South Africa to carry out agitational work on behalf of the ANC. They wanted white people because they could move around racist South Africa freely. Here we talk to two of those brave Recruits who went to South Africa as very young men in those bleak days, one of whom spent five years in a South African prison as a result. This is a unique insight into an important part of the struggle against racism and imperialism, have a listen. Read more »

The Railway Revolution

And the railway workers continue the tradition of moving the working classes forward, and aggravating the ruling classes. In this podcast we are joined by railway workers and union activists, Sarah-Jane McDonough and Rob O'Connell, to discuss the strife in the railways in the context of the wider class struggle, both speaking in a personal capacity. Read more »

Take Back the Mail

In this podcast, two postal workers talk about the background to the current dispute, why they deserve a pay rise, why privatisation has been a disaster for the Royal Mail, and how we can help in their struggle with a management determined to extract as much value as they can for their institutional shareholders. Read more »

Hong Kong and Sovereignty

In this episode, to mark the 25th anniversary of the return of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China, Stewart McGill talks to journalist Kenny Coyle about the past, present and future of the territory. Read more »