Jeremy Corbyn

The left which has flooded into Labour since Corbyn’s leadership campaign in 2015 now holds the balance of power within the Party. But what kind of left is this, and where is it going? In the last issue we reported ( bit.ly/2FwqstG ) on the 23 April AGM of Lewisham (south London) Momentum. An amalgam of groups and individuals behind a slate headed by Aaron Bastani from Novara Media (although Bastani did not show up on the night) sought to oust the old steering committee, and eventually left the meeting hall to run their own “AGM” in a pub’s public bar. The coalition organised “behind the...

That the Labour left movement Momentum has released a statement taking on antisemitism in the Labour Party and the left is welcome. Until now Momentum had been silent on the issue, and had made no suggestions for political education or training on the issue. The statement from the group’s National Coordinating Group goes some way to addressing these shortfalls but is not as comprehensive as the one agreed by the Momentum Steering Committee in 2016 but never released. The 2016 statement calls for the implementation of the Chakrabarti report and for a fairer disciplinary process that would avoid...

It is strange to see things for which Solidarity and Workers’ Liberty have long been despised and abused, among much of the left, the kitsch left, now being brandished as weapons against the Corbyn Labour Party by our political enemies. Certainly “left-wing” antisemitism, expressed as “anti-Zionism”, is a malignant and powerful force on the left. Especially among the would-be revolutionary left, who on many other things say what we say. The core of the antisemitic infection is denial that Israel has a right to exist — insistence that it is a historically illegitimate state which should be done...

Pseudo-political Disneyland I really enjoyed reading Dan Katz’s article on pulling down statues. He makes a number of valid points. Maybe I can add a few details. After it was pulled down, Stalin’s statue in Budapest was smashed up and one part of it was used as an improvised public urinal. Pretty soon after, all parts of the statue disappeared including the boots which initially remained stuck on their plinth. Rumour has it that everything was melted down. There is a vivid reconstructed scene depicting the toppling of the Stalin statue in Marta Mészáros’ film ‘Diary for my Father and Mother’...

The contest which has opened up over who will replace Iain McNicol as General Secretary of the Labour Party should be an opportunity to talk about what a left-led Labour Party should be like in its culture and structures. Whether it can be anything other than an acrimonious factional battle, and one that is impossible for ordinary Labour members to decode, remains to be seen. First of all it should be an open contest. That was Momentum Chair Jon Lansman's stated reason for standing, and he is right against the leadership of the Labour Party who want Unite official Jennie Formby to get the job...

Editorial from Solidarity 462 Speaking at a Labour Party event on 10 February, Jeremy Corbyn reaffirmed Labour’s 2017 manifesto pledge “to bring energy, rail, water, and mail into public ownership and to put democratic management at the heart of how those industries are run”. “By taking our public services back into public hands”, he said, “we will not only put a stop to rip-off monopoly pricing, we will put our shared values and collective goals at the heart of how those public services are run”. He promised “a society which puts its most valuable resources, the creations of our collective...

On the Andrew Marr show on Sunday 28 January, Jeremy Corbyn affirmed that “the position of the party is that where you have self-identified as a woman, then you are treated as a woman.” Although the NEC is yet to make a formal announcement, it is expected that it will affirm that transwomen can self-define in order to stand on all-women shortlists and in women’s sections of the Labour Party, and will not be asked to have a Gender Recognition Certificate. Corbyn′s position is correct, and his statement is a welcome affirmation of what had been the norm for transwomen in the Labour Party before...

The author Alan Sillitoe described how, as a national serviceman aged 19 in 1955, he was got to read Robert Tressell’s The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists by an eager colleague saying: “This is the book which won the 1945 election for Labour”. The Tories, in 1945, tried to counter by mass-distributing a book of their own, Friedrich von Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. The political shift of 1945 was shaped by books, and conversations around books, not by tweets or memes. If we want a similar big shift today, we need similarly heavy ammunition. Over the last two and a half years, allowing for...

In response to a tweet from Labour MP Kate Osamor supporting the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn clarified his own position on Israel/Palestine. He made clear, again, that he supports an end to Israeli occupation and a genuine two-states settlement; an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. He also reiterated that while he supports targeted boycotts of settlement produce, he does not support a blanket boycott of Israel. There is much to criticise in Corbyn’s international politics, particularly in his politics on the Middle...

The result of the June 2017 General Election was decisive in cementing, at least for a time, the Corbyn leadership of the Labour Party. 
 We argued at the time of the election being called that; “We think it is a mistake for Labour to vote in Parliament for an election now. No democratic principle obliges us to accept the Tories calling a snap election at a moment chosen to suit them – before things get sticky with Brexit – and when Labour still needs time to do the necessary job of re-educating a public trained for decades now in bleak, no-hope, no-options conservative thinking.” With the...