 At 2017 draws to a close you'd be forgiven for thinking that the period of social movements is over. Everybody's in the Labour Party, nobody's on the streets and it all seems quiet for the first time since 2010. So what's going on? Well it's not like everybody's lives have got so much better, our rent is still going up, our wages are still going down, the environment is still heating up and the far right is still growing. So what are people taking the streets over now? Well in 2017 we saw a new wave of radical trade unionism and housing activism coming to the fore. These are the five struggles of 2017 that put the class in class struggle. Pitch House. The Pitch House dispute has seen everything from community pickets to trade union victimisation by the bosses, but the struggle has gone from one cinema, the Ritsey in Brickston to many across the capital. There are now six involved in the strike and it is the longest cinema strike in UK history. What the bosses, Cineworld, who hide behind the name Pitch House are doing is refusing their workers the basic rights they deserve at work. So a living wage, paternity and maternity pay, trade union representation amongst others whilst at the same time paying their boss £2.5 million after bonuses and just to really put the icing on the cake, giving him his own private toilet in Cineworld HQ. Now this struggle has given a huge example to those in the private sector who are taking the fight against low wages and bad conditions. People like Mook Strike, Deliveroo, all these companies have taken inspiration from and developed alongside the Pitch House dispute. It really shows that workers in these kind of positions in precarious jobs in the service sector can have power, can organise and take on the bosses. Four, keep the guard on the train. Keep the guard on the train began with a dispute with Southern Rail over the issue of driver only operation. The RMT said that if driver only operation was allowed there would be negative consequences for the security of customers and workers would lose their jobs. It went from a single struggle in one company to now being across five companies across the UK and being the longest running strike in the RMT's history. Workers on Southern Rail have now taken 39 strike days alone by this December and it's been going on for over a year. The organisation and action of railway workers has been one of the major reasons why the transport sector accounted for over half of all strike days in the private sector this year up to August 2017. Three, Acorn. Acorn began in 2014 as a local organisation based in Bristol but 2017 was the year that the Renters Union broke out of local isolation and started forming branches across the country. From Bristol it's now gone to Newcastle, Sheffield, Brighton and Manchester and all of these new branches are winning as they go. In Bristol the oldest branch won an £8.5 million victory as they prevented the council's attempt to remove council tax exemption from the poorest residents of the city. In Sheffield over 100 people were mobilised to a demonstration to prevent an eviction and in Brighton rent strikers were recently helped to win a £64,000 compensation victory by the Acorn branch there. Two, outsourced workers at the University of London. Outsourced workers in the capital have been organising for about 18 years and this year 2017 that slog paid off with a slew of victories. At Soas workers won the ability to be brought back in-house after facing an intense campaign of oppression by management which included in 2009 the deportation of nine workers. At LSE after a series of disruptive strikes workers won there and were brought back in-house on in-house conditions and the IWGB and Alina campaign at the University of London to bring outsourced cleaners and security staff there back in-house on the same conditions as in-house staff. Now across London other workers and cleaners are joining them so you see the same thing at the ISS South London hospital workers you see the same thing amongst underground cleaners all of them are joining the fight and showing that migrant workers in the capital know how to fight and develop class power at the point of production. 1. BiFab. The BiFab plant in five Scotland produces parts for wind farms. When the company teeters on the edge of bankruptcy and wages stop being paid to workers they organised to take over the plant lock the bosses out and complete orders that they had outstanding. This put a huge amount of pressure on the Scottish government and BiFab to come to an agreement to save the company which they did in November saving all 1,400 jobs. So that is it BiFab the workers occupation there wins the 2017 top five struggle competition but what does this look like for the future? What are we looking at in 2018? Well it's likely the labour movement is going to keep on kicking off so there's a number of potentially big strikes coming up around pensions for UCU and the public sector pay cap for a large number of TUC unions but as we know it's quite unlikely they're going to lead the way we should probably be looking at unions like UVW, IWGB to be leading the way with militant action on the ground alongside this is going to be a huge amount of pressure generated by the implementation of universal credit which is going to mean that many people are under real serious pressure in terms of housing their access to goods and services and all kinds of you know basic living that the Tories don't want them to do. So this is likely to produce some kind of struggle some kind of organisation which actually goes beyond the Labour Party but alongside this if the Labour Party do form a government in hopefully 2018 what does that mean for grassroots struggles? Well at the current going they need to be much stronger if that Labour Party is going to have a chance to implement what it really wants to implement. It's not going to be able to nationalise everything and get rid of like the bankers and do all of that stuff if on the ground there's not very much class power. What we really need to see in 2018 is a regrowth in working class movements if we really want to see the chance of a proper working class government.