Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Don’t boycott Israel’s Standing Together movement

Workers' Liberty @workersliberty.bsky.social · 2h

A reply to the Palestinian Academic Committee for the Boycott of Israel (PACBI) and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) in the UK.

workersliberty.org/story/2025-1...

Taken with thanks from here

Sudan: horror continues despite ceasefire talk

Workers' Liberty @workersliberty.bsky.social · 6h

On 12 September, the US announced a fresh bid to end Sudan’s two-and-a-half-year civil war. But so far the announcement appears to have had little impact on the ground.

workersliberty.org/story/2025-1...

On 12 September, the US announced a fresh bid to end Sudan’s two-and-a-half-year civil war. But so far, at least, the announcement appears to have had little impact on the ground. The war has left…

Reproductive rights through class and race: Margaret Sanger and Marie Stopes

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Workers' Liberty @workersliberty.bsky.social · 19h

While contraception can be celebrated as a milestone in women's liberation, its history is also deeply entwined with misogynoir – a term that describes the unique forms of discrimination faced by Black women.

www.workersliberty.org/story/2025-0...

Picture: Marie Stopes in her laboratory During the second wave of feminism, many white feminists championed reproductive rights, but they often failed to address the painful history and trauma…

The “Rockwell paradox” and fatherhood

Workers' Liberty @workersliberty.bsky.social · 22h

A review of 'Fatherhood, A History of Love and Power' by Augustine Sedgewick.

workersliberty.org/story/2025-1...

“The history of fatherhood is a succession of identity crises spanning thousands of years.” A History of Love and Power by Augustine Sedgewick is a sweeping and provocative attempt to chart how…

Tories say they will scrap net-zero

Workers' Liberty @workersliberty.bsky.social · 1d

Kemi Badenoch has pledged the Tories to repeal the Climate Change Act, the 2008 law mandating future governments to cut carbon emissions.

workersliberty.org/story/2025-1...

Seeking to regain ground from Reform, Kemi Badenoch has pledged the Tories to repeal the Climate Change Act, the 2008 law mandating future governments to cut carbon emissions. David Cameron’s Tories…

School libraries: Labour’s plan is not enough

Workers' Liberty @workersliberty.bsky.social · 1d

In Britain, libraries – both school libraries and public libraries – have suffered from decades of neglect. And the decline of children’s reading reflects that.

workersliberty.org/story/2025-1...

I learned two things this morning that came as a surprise. The first is that there are 1,700 primary schools in England that do not have a library. And second, under the law, every single prison is…

Do they get paid for this?

Workers' Liberty @workersliberty.bsky.social · 1d

The Morning Start, whose coverage of anything to do with China has long been little more the propaganda for the Chinese Communist Party (i.e. the Chinese ruling class) has gone into propagandist overdrive.

workersliberty.org/story/2025-1...

The editor of the Morning Star, Ben Chacko, was an honoured guest at The Belt and Road Media Co-operation Forum in the Chinese city of Kunming on 17 September. Since then the paper, whose coverage of…

Pink-pilled: reflections from summer camp

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Workers' Liberty @workersliberty.bsky.social · 1d

Can fitness and wellness culture act as a pipeline toward more extreme ideologies?

www.workersliberty.org/story/2025-0...

Can radicalisation begin with seemingly innocent content — like posts that randomly appear on our Instagram feeds? Can fitness and wellness culture act as a pipeline toward more extreme ideologies?

Our case for backing Ukraine

Workers' Liberty @workersliberty.bsky.social · 1d

In resisting the Russian invasion, Ukraine is fighting a war of national liberation, akin to the Vietnamese resisting French then American imperialism in the 1950s and 1960s...

workersliberty.org/story/2025-1...

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues unabated. All talk of peace deals has now fallen quiet, and Putin has resumed (in fact, he never stopped) the bombing campaign that the Ukrainian population…

Zarah Sultana and her political mix

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Workers' Liberty @workersliberty.bsky.social · 2d

Summary from reports by local Workers’ Liberty activists.

workersliberty.org/story/2025-1...

On 24 September Zarah Sultana addressed a rally in Sheffield organised by Sheffield TUC. About 350 came. Overall the crowd was older, but with a few dozen younger people in attendance. Sultana said…

“Your Party” plans remain opaque

Workers' Liberty @workersliberty.bsky.social · 2d

Who is actually running the Your Party project? Most assume Corbyn has delegated it to Karie Murphy, but beyond her there seems little visible capacity.

The rollout of the new party – perhaps we should now just call it the new Jeremy Corbyn party – continues. On 24 September the official membership portal finally opened, following Zarah Sultana’s…

The government plans to introduce “digital ID”, in the first place an electronic identity record which you can access, linking such items as National Insurance number, NHS number, etc. The plan is…

Workers' Liberty @workersliberty.bsky.social · 2d

A future Reform or Reform-Tory government will be able to expand the proposed ID system into one putting very many of us in fear of being challenged at any time by cops to prove our identity.

Digital ID is a snare

As anyone who has tried to view pornography online since 25th July will know, the Online Safety Act 2023's protection of children codes of practice have come into force. Social media platforms and…

Workers' Liberty @workersliberty.bsky.social · 2d

The Online Safety Act has had negative implications for sex workers.

www.workersliberty.org/story/2025-0...

The Online Safety Act

Rotten apples or rotten barrel?

Workers' Liberty @workersliberty.bsky.social · 2d

Misogyny and racism are inevitable in a force whose primary role is to protect the powerful and propertied, and which is set up as a walled-off, hierarchical culture “above” and separate from the general population.

A police sergeant has been suspended and arrested after a BBC Panorama investigation found London cops denouncing immigrants from anywhere near the Middle East as “scum”, calling for immigrants to be…

Restore the right to protest!

Workers' Liberty @workersliberty.bsky.social · 3d

New Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood plans to introduce even more curbs on protest.

New Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood plans to introduce even more curbs on protest. The measures are specifically directed against the “Defend Our Juries” protests at the government’s banning of…

Protests multiply inside Israel

Workers' Liberty @workersliberty.bsky.social · 3d

In the West Bank, Israel’s project of military occupation and settlement, possibly driving towards formal annexation, continues. Road construction and settlement building in Palestinian areas has moved forward.

In the West Bank, Israel’s project of military occupation and settlement, possibly driving towards formal annexation, continues. Road construction and settlement building in Palestinian areas has…

Nigel Farage’s Reform is strengthening its lead in opinion polls, currently up to 15% over Labour. It is doing that on a prospectus that could be called “Trumpism for Britain”. It wants “mass…

Workers' Liberty @workersliberty.bsky.social · 3d

Editorial: Reform is strengthening its lead in opinion polls on the prospectus that could be called “Trumpism for Britain”. It wants “mass deportations” as the cure for all social ills, plus repression and cutting taxes.

www.workersliberty.org/story/2025-1...

Trump’s world or ours?

Materialists - separating the feminists from the classists

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Workers' Liberty @workersliberty.bsky.social · 3d

New issue of solidarity out now! Trump’s world or ours?

www.workersliberty.org/publications...

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Workers' Liberty @workersliberty.bsky.social · 3d

Review of 'Materialists', the second film by acclaimed director Celine Song.

www.workersliberty.org/story/2025-0...

This review contains spoilers 'Materialists', which came out in August, is the second film by acclaimed director Celine Song, known for the 2023 indie hit 'Past Lives'. Like Past Lives,…

“Peace is the only way forward”

Workers' Liberty @workersliberty.bsky.social · 4d

📅Ideas for Freedom takes place on 22-23 November in Islington.
🤔 + debate on 'A New Party' on Friday 21 November, 7pm at Indian YMCA, Fitzroy Square, London W1 6AQ.
🎟️ More + tickets: www.workersliberty.org/iff25
🥐Free creche, cheap food and crash accommodation.

Workers' Liberty @workersliberty.bsky.social · 4d

Standing Together co-director Alon-Lee Green’s statement on the 2nd anniversary of 7 October 2023

Image shows a UK Friends of Standing Together vigil in London On October 7, exactly two years ago, we experienced a horrific massacre by Hamas, which invaded Israeli communities, murdered, kidnapped,…

Jean 'Binta' Breeze: close to the heart

Workers' Liberty @workersliberty.bsky.social · 4d

Jamaican-British poet Jean 'Binta' Breeze was a key figure in raising black women's voices in a poetry scene where white men dominated.

www.workersliberty.org/story/2025-0...

Jamaican-British poet Jean 'Binta' Breeze was a key figure in raising black women's voices in a poetry scene where white men dominated. In the 1980s, 'dub poetry' was an emerging movement that fused…

How the EHRC is failing trans people

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Workers' Liberty @workersliberty.bsky.social · 5d

The Supreme Court's ruling on the definition of the protected characteristic of 'sex' in the Equality Act 2010 has had several negative ramifications.

www.workersliberty.org/story/2025-0...

On 15th April, the Supreme Court announced their ruling on the definition of the protected characteristic of 'sex' in the Equality Act 2010, stating that it refers to the sex recorded on a person's…

Conscientious objection and the fight for abortion access in Italy

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Workers' Liberty @workersliberty.bsky.social · 6d

Access to abortion in Italy is still heavily restricted and the rate of conscientious objection is so high that those who want or need to end a pregnancy are routinely forced to travel to another region for it.

www.workersliberty.org/story/2025-0...

Some may take it for granted that, just because there are laws in place that protect people, our basic rights are generally safe across the board. But in 2025 we still find ourselves having to fight…