Left groups and people

En français . Once upon a time, in a faraway land called the Soviet Union, Ukrainians and Russians lived happily together. But then some wicked bureaucrats destroyed their country. This gave NATO generals, who were just as black-hearted as the bureaucrats, the chance to seize new lands. So Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. This sums up the analysis of the war in Ukraine provided by the French socialist newspaper Lutte Ouvrière (LO, Workers’ Struggle). According to LO, “the Ukrainian and Russian peoples are linked by a long shared history and culture. … For 70 years they lived within the Soviet...

Denys Pilash of Ukrainian socialist organisation Sotsialniy Rukh (Social Movement) spoke to Ruth Cashman. Denys Pilash is tired. He travelled 600 miles from Ukraine’s capital to Lviv to host the European Network for Solidarity with Ukraine delegation , then after sleeping on a floor he translated between English and Ukrainian for a conference that overran several hours. With no break he moved from interview to interview with visitors keen to hear his take on the invasion, the situation for the Ukrainian left, and the future of Ukraine. Still, he sits with us for an hour explaining the work of...

On 7 May Jean-Luc Mélenchon launched his slate for France’s 12 and 19 June National Assembly elections, NUPES, the New Ecologist and Social Popular Union, with a rally of 1,500 in the Paris suburb of Aubervilliers. The slate will have a common platform, not yet published, but featuring a rise in the minimum wage, a price freeze on some basic goods, a restored wealth tax, reducing pension age towards 60, and green policies. It shares out constituencies between Mélenchon’s own La France Insoumise, the Socialist Party, the Communist Party, and the green EELV. Its proclaimed aim is to force...

A week after it emerged the US Supreme Court plans to overturn the pro-choice legal judgement Roe v. Wade , some analysis and reports from the US left. "They have the courts, we have the people" From Democratic Socialists of America The time to hit the streets is now: we call on all DSA chapters, members, and electeds to mobilise immediately against this violent attack on abortion rights. Commit to this fight here. We demand Congress pass federal legislation to protect abortion as a human right and repeal the filibuster if needed to do so. We call on organised labour, workers, and unionists to...

One of the most successful acts of civil disobedience in Britain took place on 24 April 1932. The mass trespass on Kinder Scout on the moorlands of North Derbyshire was one of the major steps in eventually opening up the countryside for increased access to all and breaking the exclusive privilege of wealthy landowners and their grouse-shooting pals. Three groups of ramblers, many of them members of the Young Communist League, approached Kinder to be met by violent attacks from gamekeepers. The trespassers defended themselves and there were five arrests. The five received prison sentences of...

Outside of the foetid recesses inhabited by red-brown figures like George Galloway and Chris Williamson, few political figures in Britain openly support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Even Putin’s admirer Nigel Farage has been keeping a low profile since the invasion. Much more numerous — particularly on the left — are those who claim to oppose the invasion but also oppose Ukraine obtaining arms with which to fight the invaders. This is the stance of the Stop the War Coalition, the Communist Party of Britain / Morning Star and the SWP / Socialist Worker . The argument comes in various forms, e...

Alan Gibbons, a Labour councillor and well-known local campaigner in Liverpool, and a member of Momentum’s National Coordinating Group, has been expelled by Labour for an interview for Socialist Appeal’s newspaper in January 2021 — six months before SA was proscribed. Gibbons has taken a strong and vocal stand in solidarity with Ukraine against Russian imperialism (unlike Socialist Appeal!). He and other Labour councillors in Liverpool who refused to vote for the last council budget were excluded from the Labour whip a while back. Now they have set up their own group in the council: as they...

My initial instincts were to agree with Martin Thomas’s criticism of Eric Lee’s article, that the forces that destroyed SDS should not be conflated with “ultra-leftism.”

Eric Lee is right ( Solidarity 628 ) that Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) activists need to learn from the collapse of SDS in 1969. An account by Third Camp socialists at the time is on our website here . I think it shows Eric’s presentation is skewed. The trouble with SDS was not excessive influence of previously organised “far Leftists” with “their own agendas”, i.e. of groups with some previous political education and overview. Just the opposite. Many of those who wrecked SDS did it under the banner of spurning the “Old Left”. Meanwhile, those round Michael Harrington, initially in...

Sixty years ago, the United States was still in the grip of the McCarthy era. The Attorney General would regularly update his list of “subversive” organisations. Communists and other leftists were denied platforms in many places, including universities. Racial segregation remained in place in the Southern states. And young people were largely depoliticised, attending university in record numbers but showing little interest in changing the world. And then at a conference held in Port Huron, Michigan, the moribund League for Industrial Democracy decided to relaunch its student arm under a new...