Something surprising happened in September. Ed Miliband managed to dominate the party conference season and even make mainstream politics spark to life for once.
Miliband's decision to respond to the Tories' boast the economic "recovery" vindicates their austerity measures by focusing on what he rightly called the "cost of living crisis" gave some expression to the mood among millions of workers across Britain.
In June Ed Miliband and Ed Balls signalled that a future Labour government will accept the framework of the Tories' austerity plans and put a cap on welfare spending. Iain Ferguson looks at Labour's shift to the right and challenges the myths about the welfare state used to justify this turn.
"Even in these hard times, is it too much to expect an opposition to oppose now and again?" (Sunday Herald, 16 June).
For historians of the British Labour Party, June 2013 is likely to be remembered as a key milestone in Party's political and ideological evolution.
The People's Assembly will be a focus for many wanting to see a fightback. Charlie Kimber argues this is welcome, but we need to address the role of trade union leaders and the Labour Party if we are to build a movement that can break the government and its savage austerity programme
On 22 June, unless you have a very good excuse, you must be at the People's Assembly in London. Practically every trade union leader is scheduled to be in one room alongside hundreds of rank and file activists as well as people who have led campaigns against the bedroom tax, fought to defend the NHS and headed up the revolt by disabled people.
Brian Richardson examines the battle lines being drawn around immigration. We also publish an extract from the updated pamphlet Immigration: The Myths Spread to Divide Us that puts the case for opposition to all immigration controls.
The next general election is still two years away, but the battle lines are already being drawn. In a series of carefully planned announcements, the mainstream parties have all made it crystal clear that immigration will be at the top of the political agenda. The 2015 election looks set to herald the most racist campaign in a long time.
Do revolutionary parties, like the Socialist Workers Party, that draw on the method of organising developed by Lenin and the Bolsheviks still fit in the twenty first century? Alex Callinicos challenges the critics and argues that Leninism remains indispensable
The demise of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and of the political tradition that it seeks to embody have been widely proclaimed on the British left in recent weeks. Thus the columnist Owen Jones has announced that "the era of the SWP and its kind is over." Is he right?
At Labour's annual conference Ed Miliband claimed his party could unite Britain as "one nation". Mark L Thomas looks at the reality of Labour's arguments for a responsible capitalism
The Labour List website ran a headline in early October declaring, "There's a class war being waged in Britain - but not by Labour."
This was meant to be a compliment, not a criticism, of Ed Miliband's attack on the Tories as the real enemies of "One Nation" Britain. Yet, of course, it's an observation that is close to the mark.
Unite is Britain's biggest union. The approach it takes to combating austerity and job losses makes a big difference to workers in all sectors. Eddie Cimorelli asks whether Unite is living up to its militant image
Unite has been derided in the right wing press as a union pushing a backward looking confrontational agenda apparently belonging to a bygone age. Len McCluskey, Unite's general secretary, was condemned before the Olympics when he declared that "the unions, and the general community, have got every right to be out protesting.
Respect's landslide by-election victory, which swept George Galloway back into parliament as the MP for Bradford West, sent shockwaves through the mainstream parties. Mark L Thomas looks at why Galloway won and what his victory shows about the possibility of success for electoral challenges to the left of Labour
A few days after the Bradford West by-election, a shellshocked Labour activist described his experience of the campaign: "From around 15 March till the 22.... it seemed we were going to win - we had our headquarters set up in each ward and our campaign was leaps ahead in backing, money and numbers....[then] during this last week I'd check the #bradfordwest hash tag, and for every pro-Labour tweet there were easily ten pro-Galloway ones, seemingly from young Asian Bradford constituents...We'd pass kids in the street who would shout 'Galloway' at us all the time.
Estelle Cooch and Jack Farmer spoke to Owen Jones, a left wing member of the Labour Party and author of Chavs, about New Labour, capitalism and the demonisation of the working class
What was it that first motivated you to write Chavs?
Above all it was to put class on the agenda. I wanted to challenge this idea that we're all middle class now and that all that remains of the working class is a feckless rump. The point is that if you don't have class, then you don't have class politics and if you don't have class politics, then you don't have a left.
Many people have been rightly outraged that Labour leader Ed Miliband has refused to back the public sector strike that is set to rock the government at the end of this month. But, argues Amy Leather, it is mistake to think that Labour has ever consistently supported strike action
Cries of shame greeted Labour leader Ed Miliband as he spoke at the TUC conference in September. Despite his declaration of pride in the relationship between the trade unions and the Labour Party, he went out of his way to denounce the strike planned for 30 November when millions of workers will take on the Tories.
