News and Analysis

By Jaime Davies Two years and six months ago we tragically lost a brilliant comrade and a wonderful friend, Socialist Party member Bethan Roper. Our loss, both personally and on the battlefield of class struggle, is still difficult and painful to come to terms with. Her family, friends and comrades will always feel it, and will continue to press for ...

By Rob Williams The sparks, rank and file construction electricians in Unite, have yet again defeated the de-skilling agenda of the big electrical contractors. EDF Energy, Balfour Beatty and NG Baileys opened up their offensive almost a decade to the day when workers kicked off their ultimately successful 6-month fight against the BESNA contract, the last main attempt by the ...

By John Williams The Socialist Party has restarted campaign stalls in Barry in South Wales as the lockdown has lifted. We’ve been calling for support for a 15% pay increase for NHS workers. The response has been really good – we’ve spoken to several health and care workers who are outraged over the proposed 1% pay ‘rise’, and agree with ...

Trades Councils in Wales again played an important role pushing a fighting agenda forward for the trade union movement, with Socialist Party members prominent moving and seconding the key motions on the most important issues. Opposition to plans by the Wales TUC bureaucracy to reduce trade unions in Wales to mere cheerleaders of the newly elected Welsh Labour Government is ...

By Dave Reid and Alec Thraves Welsh Labour has won the Welsh parliament election with an increased vote and seats. Mark Drakeford’s government benefited from the “incumbency factor” and actually increased its number of seats in the Senedd to 30, half of the 60 seats. This was despite polls at the beginning of the Covid crisis indicating that it would ...

Over 40 sparks descended on the Bouygues site at Cardiff University where NG Baileys is working. NG Baileys and Balfour Beatty have been trying to use trainees at reduced rates of pay to install the electrical system at the giant Hinkley Point nuclear power station construction site as so-called Electrical Support Operatives (ESO), which would then be rolled out across ...

Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition launches its election campaign in Wales TUSC’s Welsh parliament election campaign got off to a cracking start when over 70 attended the campaign launch meeting online, many of them brand new to the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC). In just a few short weeks TUSC has succeeded in attracting enough new supporters to stand ...

By Joe Fathallah Up to 300 people attended a demonstration in Cardiff city centre on Saturday April 10th, organised by Young Socialists Wales, in support of Siyanda Mngaza, an innocent black woman serving a four-and-a-half-year prison sentence. In May 2019, Siyanda was brutally attacked whilst on a bank holiday weekend by a group of three people, two of them male ...

By Ben Golightly Almost one in three children in Wales live in poverty! Even before the Coronavirus pandemic, the EHRC estimated that UK Government tax and welfare reforms would push a further 50,000 children into poverty. This has happened on Welsh Labour’s watch. The Welsh Government’s recent Child Poverty Strategy sets out an action plan which boils down to little ...

By Dave Reid Engineers working for BT’s Open Reach are taking another five days of strike action at four workplaces across South Wales against the imposed re-grading of their jobs. A newly aggressive management at BT are attempting to force the repayment project engineer (RPE) workforce to move to new management grades that would undermine their terms and conditions, put ...