On the day that the gym at Kirklees stadium was closing with just one weeks notice, Kirklees Council released the news that at their cabinet meeting on 12th December that two under threat leisure centres would be recommended to stay open. Iain Dalton, Socialist Party Yorkshire secretary This announcement from the council, whose leisure services…
4/11/23 – Leeds – ‘we expect better’ Through the weekly demonstrations, the focus has moved to Labour and Keir Starmer. “We expect better”, a speaker said. And the political awareness of demonstrators is growing as the demos go on. People are realising that Labour does not represent the working class anymore. Mentions of socialism are…
To chants of “Cutback, fightback” and “Kirklees Council, shame on you” campaigners marched from Batley to Dewsbury to highlight the savage cuts being carried through by the council. Iain Dalton, Socialist Party Yorkshire Secretary With a £47m hole in their finances for next year, the last few months have seen more and more announcements of…
For the third time in as many weeks, thousands of people marched through the streets of Leeds against the ongoing siege and bombardment of Gaza by the Israeli state. Iain Dalton, Leeds Socialist Party Those joining the demonstration were motivated by a mix of anger at the devastation being wrought on the people of Gaza,…
Over the weeks of campaigns the scale of the cuts has seemed to get worse, with arms-length leisure service providers ‘Kirklees Active Leisure’ now guaranteeing to keep only Huddersfield and Spen Valley leisure centres open. This time last year it ran 13 centres across Kirklees! On our first stall we found that many people were…
Iain Dalton, Socialist Party Yorkshire secretary Over 100 people crammed into the Al-Hikmah Centre in Batley, West Yorkshire, on 29 September to discuss how the cuts to local services planned by Kirklees Council could be opposed. In August, the council announced it had overspent by £27 million on last year’s budget and there was a…
Uni of Leeds – ‘what is socialism?’ The question “what is socialism?” was asked a lot. When we explained, most agreed that a mass workers’ movement is needed and that they would like to see a socialist society in the future. One international student from the US explained to me how the costs work for…
130 years ago, in the second half of 1893, 300,000 miners across Britain’s major coalfields were locked out for four months, with employers demanding a 25% wage cut. Workers resisted, different methods of trade union organisation were put to the test, and the forces of the capitalist state showed their repressive role. Iain Dalton, Socialist…
On 20th July, Consultants organised in the BMA became the latest group of NHS workers to join the strike wave. Like other NHS workers they have seen a big decline in real terms pay over the last fifteen years which the current high rate of inflation is compounding. Iain Dalton, Leeds Socialist Party Many consultants…
Days 40 to 42 of strike action by Unison members at University of Leeds, as part of the national pay dispute, targeted the inputting of marks at the university in the run up to the release of students results on Thursday 13th June. Iain Dalton, Leeds Socialist Party Combined with the ongoing marking and assessment…
