Solidarity 126, 7 February 2008

About 70 activists from around the country met at the Common Place social centre in Leeds on 26/27 January to discuss a range of proposals after last summer’s Heathrow Camp against Climate Change. The key concerns were to “join the dots” of what may appear to be a list of single issue campaigns so that the overall anti-capitalist stance towards the issue of climate change is registered. There was a very healthy culture of focussed and respectful discussion and a series of important consensuses were reached. The summer’s actions are to be even more ambitious than the two previous years. The...

Climate change will remain a significant ecological and political question for the foreseeable future. Marxists like the AWL believe that the working class is the essential social agent in that struggle. We hope the Campaign against Climate Change trade union conference on 9 February will help the drive to win the labour movement to action on the issue. For Marxists, climate change is the product of class relations and in particular of capitalist social relations of production. The Marxist account of capitalism centres on the exploitation of waged labour by capital. The same processes that...

It was the fusion of blues with ragtime and Jazz in the early twenties by band leaders like Handy that popularised the blues. His signature work was the St Louis Blues. The other way blues reached white audiences was through the classic female blues performers, the music evolving from informal entertainment in bars to entertainment in theatres. The blues performers were organised by the Theatre Owners Bookers Association (also known as “Tough on Black Asses”). Musicians performed in nightclubs such as the Cotton Club, juke joints and infamous bars along Beale Street in Memphis. At the same...

Irish — The Remarkable Saga of a Nation and a City tells the story of the Irish in Glasgow. The real origins of Celtic FC and those responsible for the religious sectarianism between Celtic and Rangers are also explored — something that only began several years after the clubs were founded. Both players and fans socialised after the games in the early years. The strength of Burrowes’ account lies in his prose style and great anecdotes that brings home to the reader the level of exploitation and oppression that the Irish went through. The story of the Irish in Glasgow really is a “remarkable...

The Shock Doctrine: the rise of disaster capitalism is a recent book written by left-wing writer, journalist and broadcaster Naomi Klein (author of No Logo ). The book’s central theme revolves around how for the past 50 years, neo-conservatives, adherents of the right-wing economist Milton Friedman, have been consciously initiating and exploiting “shock” events to bring about “free market capitalism” and to destroy the public sphere (a theme which was featured in No Logo). By shocking and cowing populations into submission, corporations, backed up by right wing governments, have been able to...

According to Anamaria Marinca, one of the two lead actresses in 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days , “It isn't a film that is pro-abortion, neither is it against it; it's not as easy as that.” This may be true, but 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days leaves you in no doubt about the horrific reality of illegal abortion. It is set in Romania in 1987. Abortion has been illegal for 20 years, as has contraception, (in order to swell the population), and an estimated 500,000 women have died from backstreet abortions. Otilla (Anamaria Marinca) and Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) share a room in a student dormitory. Gabita is...

Continuing a series on the politics of the early modern British socialist movement with a brief assessment of the politics of the socialists in the last twenty years of the nineteenth century. “Do not on any account whatever let yourself be deluded into thinking there is a real proletarian movement going on here. I know Liebknecht tries to delude himself and all the world about this, but it is not the case. The elements at present active may become important since they have accepted our theoretical programme and so acquired a basis, but only if a spontaneous movement breaks out here among the...

In his reply to my article on the US elections (Solidarity 3/124) , Eric Lee displays complete indifference to the principle of working-class political independence. It’s true, perhaps, that describing the Republicans and Democrats as “almost identical in policy terms” was a bit flat-footed on my part. But my statement was nowhere near as off the mark as Eric’s claim that “on every single policy issue that concerns American voters, regardless of their class, Democrats and Republicans come down on different sides.” Both parties: against socialised healthcare. Both parties: for keeping the bulk...

There are a lot of myths about accounting. Some of them accountants don’t like — which have to do with their being drab failures as human beings. But they put up with those myths, because they make such a lot of money out of the other set of myths. The other mythology says that accounting is not only dull but also fiendishly complicated financial engineering. So the accountants who write and decipher companies’ financial reports deserve massive salaries: civilians would be baffled and bewildered if they tried to join in. Some accounting is startlingly dull, some is difficult. Quite a lot is...

Councils are preparing their budgets for 2008-9. Some councils, notably Newcastle and Southampton, are planning sizeable cuts. In recent years, such cuts have been rare. Cumulative central government controls since the 1980s have reduced local councils to little more than local agents of central government. About three-quarters of local councils’ budget comes in allocations from central government; rates for the council tax which is most of the other quarter are subject to central government “capping”; councils are legally obliged to do some things, and restricted by law and government...