Solidarity 062, 18 November 2004

Steve Cohen reviews “An Execution In The Family” by Robert Meeropol, St Martins Press New Labour is a clean machine. On the bridge over Victoria Station in Manchester there used to be a slogan daubed well before the age of spray paint. In bold white-wash it demanded “Save the Rosenbergs”. This was obliterated by the Labour council some time in the 1990s. I want to restore it. Thanks to that slogan, by my eighth birthday I’d become politicised on one significant issue — the cruelty, corruption and anti-communism of the USA political and judicial system. In particular I understood that we were...

Philip Havering reviews Anti-capitalism: where now? Edited by Hannah Dee. Bookmarks, 2004, £6 In his keynote chapter in this book, published by the SWP, Alex Callinicos describes the political differentiation that he sees in the global justice movement. He dates it from the Genoa demonstration of 2001 and, especially, 9/11 and Bush’s war on terror. Three “parties” have emerged: a reformist right associated with ATTAC France; a radical left (Rifondazione in Italy, the LCR in France and the SWP in Britain); and the autonomists. For years the SWP has played along with the leading reformist...

In the looming General Election a joint campaign against Blair will be mounted by four left parties. These will offer an alternative to the right-wing policies of privatisation, war and environmental destruction offered by both the major parties and the Lib Dems too. A meeting in London on Sunday 24 October agreed wide-ranging cooperation, including jointly agreed policy, between the Socialist Party, the Alliance for Green Socialism, the Alliance for Workers Liberty and the Socialist Alliance Democracy Platform. These parties will contest dozens of seats across the country in the coming...

When it happened minds came together. Struggles converged like many rivulets forming a powerful river. Floating hopes joined to become an unstoppable Hope. It all flowed towards the future. This was the force of the just-ended Zimbabwe Social Forum as thousands of radical spirits came together in central Harare from 28-30 October. Problems were attacked, common struggles found. Visions of The Society We Want abounded, strategies were laid out. The future was on the horizon, it felt. The Powers-That-Shouldn’t-Be had tried to stop the event. The police denied us “permission” to host the forum...

Now showing at Tate Modern London, until 23 January 2005, is a very comprehensive exhibition of the work of photographer Robert Frank. His groundbreaking documentary work of the 50s came together in his book The Americans . For two years he travelled America taking pictures: they showed the diversity and the social divisions of the American people in a changing society. They also showed individuality. Above “New York City” 1955. Swiss-born Frank always retained the vision of an “outsider”. His later, more experimental, film work — he filmed a loose story about the beatniks — is perhaps less...

I once bought a tape of songs from the 1984-5 miners’ strike, and what did I find in amongst the songs by miners and about miners? A song about the 1982 British-Argentine war over the Falkland Islands which took it for granted that the right socialist approach was to back Argentina — the Argentina of the butchering military junta under Galtieri. That had been the line of a sizeable part of the left, though not, as it happened, of the SWP, nor of Solidarity’s predecessor Socialist Organiser. In the tape about the miners, it was there as, so to speak, part of the “furniture” of the conventional...

A reply to Sean Matgamna’s “Reactionary Anti-Imperialism” Sean Matgamna’s article (“Reactionary Anti-Imperialism” [Solidarity 3/60]) was a useful brick to throw at reactionary anti-imperialists but was dishonest on three counts. First, Matgamna pretends the AWL has had a consistent position of clear support for the IFTU. In fact, the AWL joined the idiot chorus that attacked the IFTU after Labour Party conference. Martin Thomas wrote: “The actual effect of the Labour Friends of Iraq/Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions intervention at the Labour Party conference was to give Blair a free hand to...

Peter Thomas examines the work of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, who died in October Derrida is often regarded in the Anglophone world as a leading French postmodern philosopher whose doctrine of “deconstruction” propounded a moral relativism and political passivity. In fact Derrida was neither French nor post-modern. He was as opposed to doctrines as he was insistent on the necessity of moral and political choices and commitments. He was, to be sure, a philosopher, but one whose life and work were spent interrogating and problematising precisely those responsibilities which accompany...

At the Stop the War Coalition's National Council meeting in Leeds on Saturday 13 November the SWP leadership forced through a remarkable decision. It voted down a motion which would have committed the Stop the War campaign to an immediate end of the occupation of Iraq. Yes, you did read that correctly. We now have a "Stop the War" campaign that refuses to support an immediate withdrawal of the occupying troops. This is a stunning betrayal of the thousands involved in StW and the millions whom have supported it. Anyone opposing the platform (i.e. SWP) position — or even voicing mild criticism...

On 8 November, a National Union of Students “extraordinary conference” — the second in five months — met to rubber-stamp the attacks on democracy being proposed by the NUS leadership, including cuts to the size and lenght of NUS National Conference and a regressive reform of affiilation fees. With fewer than 400 largely self-selected delegates the result was pretty much a foregone conclusion. We were told that the “reforms”, which are supposed to help NUS solve its financial crisis, could not wait until a properly representative National Conference next term. In fact, reducing NUS democracy...