Solidarity 281, 10 April 2013

The Marxists on oppression

The fourth part of a review article looking at the themes of John Riddell’s new book of documents from the early communist movement. The week Paul Hampton looks at how they debated women’s liberation and other issues of oppression. The early Communist International’s focus was on working class self-liberation and this was reflected in the time spent on discussions on party building, work to transform the labour movement and on the specifics of class struggle strategy. But the Bolsheviks had made their reputation as tribunes of the people, taking up any and every matter of injustice and...

Help us raise £15,000

It’s been a good week for the AWL fund appeal, but we’ve had to step up to respond to a crisis. The risograph in our office finally gave up the ghost after a decade of dedicated service. A risograph is an industrial duplicating machine — basically a heavy-duty photocopier — which allows us to copy the thousands of leaflets, posters, and campus and workplace bulletins that we use in our organisation’s day-to-day activity. For the purposes of persuading people to take active ownership of revolutionary ideas, social networking and the internet in general can’t replace face-to-face contact, and if...

Thatcher: now her politics must die

If we believed in a hell, we would have no doubt Margaret Thatcher would now be in it. Now we must send to hell, too, the politics which she represented. Labour leader Ed Miliband declared that: “We greatly respect her political achievements and her personal strength”. With a low-key comment that he “disagreed” a bit with Thatcher, he said that she had “moved the centre ground of British politics”. That, from a Labour leadership always keen to claim that it is occupying that same “centre ground”. In 2002 the Labour government — Labour, not Tory — repealed old rules banning monuments for living...

Labour must make a positive case for welfare

The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled, as the Kevin Spacey character argues in The Usual Suspects, is convincing the world that he doesn’t exist. Given our government’s success in persuading the electorate, millions of claimants included, that it doesn’t need the welfare state, I’m starting to suspect that Old Nick numbers among Lynton Crosby’s sources of inspiration. The sheer crudity of the Daily Mail’s now infamous “Vile product of welfare UK” front page, directly linking Mick Philpott’s murder of six kids to his receipt of benefits, probably came across as just that little bit too...

Better to break the whip than vote for cuts

Gary Wareing is one of the “Hull Three”, three Labour councillors who voted against a cuts budget on the city’s Labour-controlled council. Along with Dean Kirk and Gill Kennett, Gary has been suspended from the Labour group. He is involved in the Labour Representation Committee and the Councillors Against Cuts campaign. He spoke to Sam Greenwood from Solidarity . We are against austerity as a means of solving the current problems that the council and the country has got. We weren’t happy about being bailiffs for the Tory government and making their cuts for them. That is not what we were...

Stop “bedroom tax” evictions!

Across the country demonstrations and meetings have been held against the “Bedroom Tax”. The organisers vary from area to area — a patchwork of community groups, union branches, Labour Party people and left groups. The chief demands are for councils and housing associations to re-classify homes (so that they are counted as having “studies” or “storerooms” instead of “excess” bedrooms) and to pledge not to evict tenants who can’t or won’t pay. Dundee and Brighton and Hove councils have said they will refuse to evict people who fall into arrears on rent payments due to the “Bedroom Tax”...

Who are FEMEN?

When Tunisian feminist Amina Tyler posted topless pictures of herself online with “Fuck Your Morals” and “My body belongs to me and is not a source of anyone’s honour” written across her chest, she received death threats and was put in a psychiatric hospital. “Topless Jihad Day” was the Ukrainian feminist group FEMEN’s response. In various cities, topless activists’ slogans were “Free Amina”, “Fuck Your Morals”, “Bare Breasts Against Islamism” and “Viva Topless Jihad”. A few FEMEN supporters also wore fake beards to dress as stereotypes of Arab men. Some Muslim women reacted against this...

Rank-and-file teachers' network makes plans

At this year’s National Union of Teachers conference (29 March – 2 April, Liverpool), delegates debated what strategy the NUT should adopt in response to Michael Gove’s attacks on teachers’ pay, due to come into effect in September 2012. The NUT Executive’s priority motion promised a rolling programme of industrial action alongside NASUWT (Britain’s other major teaching union), leading up to national action sometime in the autumn. But the proposal was devoid of strategy or even any concrete commitments about when action would take place. This is despite existing NUT policy which should commit...

Why I joined the AWL and why you should

I have never been in a revolutionary socialist party before and I don't think I was serious about socialism until very recently. I had a comfortable middle class upbringing where religion was the focus of our lives and the economic system we live in was seen as inevitable. I worked for a religious liberal charity for a year and then went to an extremely middle class university where I don't think I was challenged – I was already far to the left of many of my peers, but for the first two years still actually a liberal social democrat. I was radicalised by comrades in the student movement and I...

Justice for Steven Simpson

Content Warning: Contains Description Of An Ableist/Homophobic Killing. In the early hours of 23rd June 2012, Steven Simpson was set on fire by 20 year old Jordan Sheard who had gate-crashed his house party in Cudworth near Barnsley. He had been verbally abused, stripped of his clothes and had phrases like “I love dick” and “gay boy” scrawled across his body. He was then doused in tanning oil, Sheard lit his crotch with a cigarette lighter and the flames engulfed his body. Those involved fled as Simpson’s neighbour tried desperately to put out the flames. Simpson died the next day after...

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