Nicaragua

Morning Star mentions Nicaragua again

For several years until last Saturday (22 April) the Morning Star had little to say about Nicaragua. The last significant coverage was in November 2019, when it published a fawning interview with “the much loved” President Daniel Ortega, by its (then) international editor Steve Sweeney. The overall tone of the interview can be gauged by the contribution of Ortega’s wife and Vice-President Rosario Murillo, praising her husband as “a strong leader because of his [Catholic] faith” and stating “Daniel has wisdom and humility, he is very humble.” This was just over a year after more than three...

From St George to Xi Jinping

The Times (18 May) has splashed our denunciation of the wearing of the old Russian imperial emblem, the St George Ribbon, by some members of Lewisham Momentum. The incident is only a specially gaudy display of the general political trend of the section of the Labour supposed-left which gravitates around the Morning Star. The Morning Star is the continuation of the Daily Worker, which for decades from 1930 was a mouthpiece for the regimes of Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev. It saw the old USSR as “socialist”. It based that claim largely on the fact that all sizeable industry in that regime was...

Our debate with Jeremy Corbyn on Nicaragua, 1983

Our criticism of Jeremy Corbyn's politics is not of yesterday. From 1978, and through the early 1980s, Jeremy Corbyn wrote frequently for Socialist Organiser , a forerunner of Solidarity . The picture above shows him on the platform (to the right) at a conference organised by Socialist Organiser in September 1983, the same month as the political exchange of opinions reprinted below. The exchange was on Nicaragua, where in 1979 the old US-backed dictatorship had been overthrown by the left-wing, Cuba-oriented Sandinista movement. Many on the left besides Jeremy Corbyn were uncritical...

Once left wing, now corrupt

At least 83 protesters have been killed so far as Nicaragua’s once-left-wing president Daniel Ortega deploys police and troops against street demonstrations and blockades demanding his resignation. The protests first exploded in mid-April against Ortega’s plan to increase workers’ social-security benefits and cut pensions. On 22 April, Ortega retreated on that. Protests have continued. They reached a new high on the weekend 26-27 May, after talks mediated by the Catholic Church broke down. Ortega’s main bases of support have been the bosses’ group COSEP (Superior Council of Private Enterprise)...

Workers' Liberty 11 Survey

Click here to download article as pdf . International round-up: PLO goes for two states; Yugoslavia's "market socialism" crumbles; aftermath of the economic crash; crisis in Nicaragua; gains for PT in Brazil; EEC's "single market"

Reviews: Rushdie, Kowalewski, Heffer, Bornstein and Richardson, Parisot, Badayev and Cliff

Jim Denham reviews "The Jaguar Smile", by Salman Rushdie. Martin Thomas reviews "Rendez-nous nos usines", by Zbigniew Kowalewski. Stan Crooke reviews "Labour's Future: socialism or SDP mark II", by Eric Heffer. Bruce Robinson reviews "War and the International", by Sam Bornstein and Al Richardson. Jane Ashworth reviews "Johnny Come Lately: a short history of the condom", by Jeanette Parisot. Jack Cleary reviews "Bolsheviks in the Tsarist Duma", by A Y Badayev with an introduction by Tony Cliff. Click here to download pdf .

Is Nicaragua socialist?

Seven and a half years after the Sandinistas overthrew the hated Somoza dictatorship, clearly there have been significant gains; but the working class in Nicaragua neither holds power through its mass organisations, nor through a political party which has been built on the basis of working-class struggle... Click here to download pdf.

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