Left groups and people

After opening itself out so that people can join as members, rather than just being an office with initiatives which activists on the ground can support, Another Europe is Possible is calling a conference on 8 December in London. Members will be able to debate and vote on structures and strategy.

On 13 November, the left Labour website The Clarion put out an appeal against the “culture of lying and harassment... poisoning the environment of the left” promoted by the anonymous “Red London” Facebook page.

New signatories to that statement in the last week include Sean Hoyle, national president of the Rail, Maritime and Transport Union (RMT), and other RMT activists: Marie Harrington, London Transport Women’s Officer; John Leach, London Transport Regional Organiser, etc.

On 8 December Another Europe is Possible is hosting a democratic conference, where members will be debating and voting on documents relating to the organisation's structures and strategy. With Brexit round the corner, continued division in the Tory Party and the Labour Party, at the moment, just standing aside - it is more important than ever that the left builds a strong, grassroots campaign against Brexit, with positive demands for free movement and workers' rights, and a vision for a socialist Europe at its heart.

Private Eye magazine used to carry a regular column ("The Controversial Voice", sometimes "The Alternative Voice") by a fictional character called Dave Spart who specialised in banal non-sequiturs in a parody of leftist jargon, usually ending up contradicting himself.

I was reminded of Comrade Spart as I watched Aaron Bastani’s denunciation of the Royal British Legion (RBL) on his Youtube vehicle The Bastani Report, part of the Novara Media operation run by Comrade Bastani, and streamed live on 6 November.

There is now a single unified “left” slate for the expanded Labour Party National Constitutional Committee.

With the backing of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, Momentum and several smaller organisations, this slate will probably receive many Labour Party nominations and the majority of the delegate votes.

The opposing slates from Labour First and Open Labour are yet to write anything publicly on what they see as their role on the NCC.

Martin Thomas discusses In Defence of Bolshevism and some other modes of politics.

This book, by way of polemics and discussions from different eras, explains what “Bolshevism” means in the field of left-wing political organising. Another way of summing it up would be: the opposite of 38 Degrees.

A debate is ongoing in the pages of French revolutionary journal Convergences Révolutionnaires, on the topic of Israel and Palestine. Convergences is the publication of the Étincelle group, with whom Workers’ Liberty has longstanding links.

The headlines following from Saturday’s People’s Vote demo have, understandably, focused on its size. Organisers say 670,000 people took part.

If true, that is bigger than the Trump demo this summer. It’s plausible that it was bigger that the anti-austerity March for the Alternative in 2011, at the height of the public-sector strikes. It’s possibly the largest since the anti-war demonstrations in 2003-4.

Whatever the truth, it certainly dwarfed the overwhelming majority of protests that have taken place in recent years.

The rancour that has been produced by the upcoming nominations for the expanded National Constitutional Committee has reopened the row between the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (CLPD) and Momentum.

The Centre Left Grassroots Alliance, which included both organisations in its negotiations, was unable to reach an agreed slate. Depending on who you believe, CLPD then released the details of their preferred slate, as agreed or without agreement.

More than a thousand political and campaigning groups have been targeted by undercover police operations over the years since 1968.

In the latest instalment of a slowly-accumulating mass of revelations, the Guardian on 15 October published a list, compiled by the Undercover Research Group, of 124 groups within which police agents were placed between 1970 and 2007.