Solidarity 3/161
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Download pdf (see "attachment").
Solidarity 3/161, 22 October 2009
Against Islamism and Fascism — for Secularism and Workers' Unity (London, 31 October)
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Protest against "Islam4UK" and "EDL: St George's Division" - 1-2pm, Saturday 31 October, Edith Cavell statue, St Martin's Place, London WC2 (between National Portrait Gallery and St Martin's In The Fields).
Facebook event here
On 31 October, two groups of bigoted reactionaries will take to the streets of London to promote their racist, oppressive and anti-working class worldviews.
Stop the English Defence League in Leeds on 31 October. Learn lessons from Manchester.
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On 10 October, the far-right English Defence League got more than 500 people onto the streets of Manchester, and had more or less a free run of the city centre. That set a very dangerous precedent.
Primary schools: another way of educating
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For the past three years a team from Cambridge University comprising fourteen lead-authors and scores of researchers has undertaken the most comprehensive and thorough-going analysis of the state of Britain’s Primary education service since the ground-breaking Plowden Report of 1967. The team published their Final Report on 16 October. Democracy is its key theme.
Egypt: the rise of the working class
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In April 2009, a familiar scenario was repeated, as Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak’s police apparatus assaulted planned demonstrations and a Mahalla textile workers’ strike. A year earlier, many activists and ordinary people from Mahalla received sentences in politically charged criminal trials for “planning the 6 April strike in 2008.”
Italy: Berlusconi, Craxi and P2
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Over the last four months Italy’s right-wing government has been increasingly threatened by the fallout from the sex scandals surrounding Prime Minster Silvio Berlusconi. Are we now seeing a serious political and constitutional crisis?
Labour Representation Committee: a chance to regain momentum
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The Labour Representation Committee, a Labour-left group sponsored by six trade unions and associated with John McDonnell MP, holds its conference on 14 November.
Labour Party conference: "the best for thirty years"
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A Labour Party activist long centrally involved in battles for democracy in the party spoke to Martin Thomas about the vote at Labour Party conference this year to have OMOV (direct election) for the constituency places on the National Policy Forum.
Glasgow North East By-election: three contests underway
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The Glasgow North East by-election, triggered by the resignation of the sitting Labour MP and House of Commons Speaker Michael Martin, will take place on 12 November.
There will be three contests in this election.
New row in the Socialist Workers Party
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Isaac Deutscher made a career out of divining the twists and turns in the Stalinist Russian state apparatus. Alongside his much praised but flawed biography of Trotsky he produced several apologias — posing as rational analysis — for the USSR.
His success, his plausibility, was in large part a function of a certain literary flair combined with sufficient chutzpah to fabricate what he — and everyone else outside of the ruling clique of Stalinist Russia — could not possibly know. There’s a certain temptation to replicate his method when dealing with the latest manifestation of crisis in the Socialist Workers Party.