The period of the 1880's and 1890's in Germany was a period of rapid industrialisation carried through under the guidance of the repressive German state. It saw the birth and growth of German Social Democracy as the mass workers party. It drew women, and children, into industry on a large scale.

It was in this situation that women within the SPD-particularly Clara Zetkin struggled to lay the basis for a socialist led, working class based women's organisation. In 1891 the first issue of Die Gleicheit, subtitled 'for the interests of working women' appeared. It was an independent paper, with its own editorial board, led and coordinated by Social Democratic women, themselves disciplined party members. Read more...

In a continuing debate over the black question in the USA, GR McColl argues that the comrades of the Trotskyist Fraction remain wedded ahistorically to Trotsky’s slogans of the 1930s rather than developing a concrete analysis of today’s situation. Read more...

Sir Oswald Mosley, MP, split from Labour to form the New Party in March 1931, together with a group of left MPs. By October 1932 Mosley had transformed the party into the British Union of Fascists. Paul Morris recounts the events that led to his movement’s defeat. Read more...

14 August marks the fiftieth anniversary of India’s independence. Richard Brenner examines how the British Raj met its end, not through some enlightened decision to “give India self-government” but through the actions of the mass movement against foreign rule, led by the Indian National Congress and its foremost representatives, Mahatma Ghandi and Jawaharlal Nehru. Read more...