Solidarity 288, 5 June 2013

Readers with a knowledge of the history of Trotskyism will know that the USSR’s invasion of Finland on 30 November 1939 marked a turning point for the movement. It triggered a fierce debate, and eventually a split among the US Trotskyists. What is less well known is that a contemporary parallel development emerged among the Wellington [New Zealand] seafarers. The Evening Post of 7 December 1939 reproduced the full text of a long resolution passed by a stop-work meeting of the Federated Seamen’s Union which expressed its “profound sympathy with the people of Finland now suffering under a brutal...

The Sunday Times Rich List: the 1,000 richest people in the UK got £35 billion richer in 2012-3, expanding their wealth to £450 billion. The worse-off: the charities Oxfam and Church Action Poverty reckon that 500,000 in Britain today depend on food banks. They are building on figures from the Trussell Trust, one food-bank provider, which fed more than 350,000 people in 2012/13. As recently as 2009/10 it fed only 40,000. Bankers’ bonuses: they totalled £13 billion in 2011-2, about the same as in 2010-11. The hungry: to use a food bank, you must get a letter from a doctor or social worker or...

On 14 May, a new opposition voice emerged within the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP): a blog, anonymously-edited since it is outside the pre-conference three months each year when dissent within SWP is licensed. The Faultlines blog represents a section of the “moderate” wing of the opposition at the SWP’s 10 March special conference. The more strident oppositionists (between 200 and 400, according to different posts on Faultlines) quit soon after that conference. Some of them have formed a loose new grouping, the International Socialist Network, which has a public launch on 8 June (1 pm at...

The launch, on average, of three food banks each week across Britain is a sign of our times. In spite of the success of the latest smart phones etc, capitalism is in decline. It can no longer afford the welfare state. So food banks have to pick up the pieces and fill the gaps. There are now more than eight million people whose income from “self-employment” and part-time jobs is precarious. We need a workers’ government, based on and accountable to the labour movement, and serving the working class. The working week needs to be reduced to 30-hours with no loss of pay and the minimum wage raised...

Usually I enjoy reading Pat Murphy; he is generally on the ball and has a fine wit. However his article on the Woolwich atrocity (“The blowback theory”, Solidarity 287), is confused and unfocused. This attack was carried out by jihadists who have a particular interpretation of passages in the Koran relating to the waging of war against their perceived enemies of Islam and the Prophet. The fact that we should have to go all the way back to religious history after a hundred years of Marx and Freud is a sad reflection on the current state of affairs. Up to now socialism has failed the Arab masses...

In my previous comment about the Stalinists on London May Day marches ( Solidarity 286), I wrote that we should look to “do with the Stalinists what some AWL comrades did in 2009 with a contingent of the Sinhalese-chauvinist JVP on the London May Day march: challenge them, heckle them, demand answers. (The JVP quit the march)”. My difference with Eric Lee ( Solidarity 287) is not that I “refuse to confront” the Stalinists on the streets. I disagreed with Eric’s proposal that we should lobby the London May Day organisers to make some rule or decree banning the Stalinists. Better to lobby them...

You are absolutely right to conclude that a whittled-down consensus will not inspire people to political activity (“How to make Left Unity”, Solidarity 284). If any of the groups on the left had an inspiring and coherent strategy they would be doing very much better and we would not be despairing at the state of the left. The left as a whole is weak and disorientated or in some cases stubbornly confident of success in the far-off future. We need unity, but not for the sake of unity. There is no point simply huddling together with those politically close to us simply to feel there are a few...

From the Turkish revolutionary socialist group Marksist Tutum Resistance against the planned destruction of Gezi Park — whose trees are to be felled to make way for a shopping centre — has become a mass movement. Park workers, labourers, students, artists and intellectuals have been opposing the construction machines and resisting the police. On 1 May, workers and socialists were also victims of furious police attacks when they demonstrated in Taksim Square. Construction machines stood ready to cut down the park’s trees, but demonstrators, joined by [pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party]...

“To be revolutionary today is to apply the Constitution, because only from here can start the social and political reconstruction of the country”, proclaimed Maurizio Landini, secretary of the metalworkers’ union federation FIOM from the platform in Bologna on Sunday 2 June. It was the latest manifestation of the Italian left’s attempt to cobble together an “alliance of resistance” to the ruling coalition of Italy’s two biggest parties, the supposedly-left PD and Berlusconi’s really-right PDL. Landini’s line is now common currency for a motley collection of would-be saviours of the Italian...

Fears of rising repossessions have been sparked as Irish politicians discuss a bill to clear up gaps in existing housing legislation. The Land and Conveyancing Law Reform Bill 2013 seeks to remedy a legal problem which arose from a High Court judgment in 2011. The decision made it difficult for mortgage providers to obtain orders of possession on mortgages created before 1 December 2009 unless court proceedings had started before that date. Ireland’s repossession rates are relatively low, currently standing at 0.25 per cent compared to three per cent in Britain and up to five per cent in the...