Left groups and people

A new Labour left organisation is being launched from elements around Labour Campaigns Together.

Labour Transformed has put out a launch statement and plans a conference on 14 December in London. It’s not clear why it has been scheduled to clash with the Another Europe Is Possible conference.

Prime movers include James Meadway, formerly of Counterfire, and a former adviser to John McDonnell, and Seth Wheeler, formerly of Plan C.

The statement contains much to agree with on anti-capitalism, socialism, internationalism and the importance of democracy in our movement. It says, rightly:

“Whatever

In recent months, Bernie Sanders has become an enormously popular politician among Muslim Americans.

He was one of only two Democratic presidential candidates to address the Islamic Society of North America Convention in August, the largest annual gathering of Muslim Americans in the country. He is the first major presidential candidate to appoint a Muslim, Faiz Shakir, as his campaign manager. He was the first American politician to visit a mosque after the attacks on Muslims in New Zealand. Prominent Muslim Americans including Linda Sarsour, a leader of the Women’s March, and newly elected

According to most polls, Americans have had enough of Donald Trump. A majority wants him impeached. And most voters say they will vote against Trump in November 2020.

Despite those polls, many are terrified that Trump might somehow win re-election. For them, the candidate who deserves our support is the one most likely to beat him. Little else matters.

According to a summary of all recent polls on the RealClearPolitics website, Trump would lose badly to any of the top three Democratic candidates were elections held today. Biden would beat him, Warren would too and so would Sanders.

And yet

The 27 October election in the German federal state of Thuringia saw Die Linke (a merger of the post-Stalinist PDS and a breakaway from the SPD) emerge as the biggest party, with 31% of the votes.

The far right AfD came second with just over 23%, and the CDU (German Tories) third with just under 22%. The SPD (roughly the German Labour Party) came a poor fourth with just 8% of the vote.

The FDP (German Liberal Democrats) managed to just scrape past the 5% hurdle, which parties must achieve to win any seats. It passed the hurdle by just five votes.

Compared with the last federal state election,

The entrance of former Respect party leader Salma Yaqoob into the contest for the Labour candidacy for West Midlands mayor is causing a bitter row within Momentum and the Labour left as a whole throughout the region.

In principle, the idea of a female ethnic minority candidate is attractive. But Yaqoob’s record makes her a highly problematic prospective candidate.

There are many aspects of Yaqoob’s record that have caused concern, but the most obvious is her campaign, as an independent candidate, against Labour’s Naz Shah in Bradford West at the last general election in 2017.

Now, Shah –

26 October was called “Super Sunday” because of the number of Labour parliamentary selection meetings held on that day – nine, and in important seats.

The most positive development was undoubtedly the selection, in a fiercely fought contest, of Nadia Whittome in Nottingham East. Nadia’s campaign was distinctive in terms of her advocacy of policies far to the left of mainstream “Corbynism”; her strong opposition to Brexit; her commitment to “working-class representation”; and her pledge to take a worker’s wage and to always submit to open selections.

In a wider picture of limited shifts, from

In 2013, the Australian journalist Ginger Gorman became the subject of an online hate campaign.

In 2010, she had interviewed two gay men, seemingly an ordinary couple, about their adoption of a young boy. Three years later the men were convicted of child sexual exploitation; they had been involved in an international paedophile network.

Naturally Gorman was mortified that she had, however inadvertently, given these men a platform. But a few days after the conviction Gorman began to be inundated by tweets from ″conservatives″ saying she was a paedophile collaborator, and, equally horrifying to

On 29 October Labour for a Socialist Europe is meeting to discuss its plans, including plans to organise an internationalist-left profile within the Labour campaign in the general election likely to come soon.

A basic leaflet is being printed, and an L4SE video has been produced. Other materials being discussed include:

• short “position papers” or “explainers” on a range of issues, to be available on the website and printable in short runs or from pdfs for street stalls and hand-to-hand use: Green New Deal, public ownership, union rights, etc.
• posters
• stickers
• tote bags

Everything is

There is more to add to the crucial points Becky Crocker made about Eddie Dempsey in Solidarity 519.

The picture featured is Dempsey visiting Alexander Mozgovoy, an uber-nationalist, uber-misogynistic paramilitary leader in the pro-Russian militias during the war in eastern Ukraine. When Mozgovoy was killed a week after they met, Dempsey wrote a glowing obituary of his comrade, which I’ll quote below.

If you want to get a grip on Mozgovoy, this is what he declared about women in the territory he controlled as a warlord, and of course by implication more generally:

“If I see even just one girl

Graham Hellawell has died, aged 55.

Supporters and members of Workers’ Liberty may well remember Graham from when he took an active and leading part in the Campaign for Free Education in the mid-1990s.

As President of Huddersfield University Students’ Union, Graham helped to set up CfE. For a while the Campaign was a very large force inside the National Union of Students battling against the Blairites’ attempts to ditch free education policy.

Graham was also active in Unison, in health campaigns and in the fight against racism and fascism. In the 2001 General Election he stood as a Socialist