While international actors discuss governance and reconstruction, Netanyahu has made it clear that Israel has no intention of ending its military occupation, says RAMZY BAROUD
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How can we keep social work politicised?
In the past, egalitarian trade union politics went hand in hand with how we saw our role in society itself — we must fight to preserve that in the changing sociopolitical context, writes KATE RAMSDEN
NICK WRIGHT continues his series analysing the trends in European politics
We have the alternative economics, histories of our struggles and the confidence to change the world
General Federation of Trade Unions assistant general secretary HENRY FOWLER reports on the final day from the GFTU’s residential Summer School at the Workers’ Retreat, Quorn Grange Hotel
Capitalism has exploited — and polluted — our natural resources for too long, it’s time we treated our rivers as living beings, writes MIRIUM GAUNTLETT, LIAM SHAW and ROX MIDDLETON
Treating the Clacton by-election as a joke risks reinforcing the Reform leader’s claim to be the victim of an out-of-touch Establishment, argues JOHN McINALLY
MPs and others called for the urgent release of tortured Palestinian doctor, Hussam Abu Safiya, held hostage by Israel and reportedly near death, reports LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
HAVING just retired after 43 years as a social worker, I’ve had the opportunity to look back at the changes to our profession since I qualified back in 1980.
Many will argue that social work has become more “professional” as a plethora of research has been published into all aspects of the social work role, alongside tools for assessing service users on all sorts of things — their likelihood of reoffending, their ability to care for their children, their need for adult services — and frameworks for writing all sorts of different reports.
This has been presented as progress, but many of these developments have focused practice on the individual rather than setting it within the wider social and political context, understanding that the vast majority of the people we support in social work live in the poorest communities and are the most disadvantaged. The practice has become more focused on “individual failings” and social work has often been experienced by service users as both unhelpful and judgemental.
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TIM ROBERTS says unions have always led on the fight for equality as well as for justice at work
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Half a century after transformative laws reshaped Britain, women’s rights are again contested. This International Women’s Day is a call to remember how change was won, and to organise to defend it, says KATE RAMSDEN
The visa system traps workers with abusive employers, creating a vulnerable workforce scared to complain for fear of deportation — that is why we’re campaigning for a ‘common sponsorship’ model instead, writes FAVOUR DAVIDKING