Solidarity 514, 14 August 2019

A first step against antisemitism

Dale Street reviews the Labour's Party's training materials on antisemitism. The Labour Party training materials on antisemitism first promised in April of last year have now been produced and circulated to party members. Potentially, they could help to start a meaningful process of political discussion and education. A leaflet entitled “No Place for Antisemitism” condemns conspiracy theories which portray “capitalism and imperialism as the product of plots by a small shadowy elite.” These are “just one step away from myths about Jewish bankers and a secret Jewish plot for world domination.”...

Social media, politics, and the "Schweitzer model"

The decade-and-a-bit since the 2008 crash has been a distinct period of capitalism in economic and in political terms. It has also been a distinct period in the technology of political communications. Twitter "took off" around 2007, Facebook "took off" around 2009, mass use of smartphones "took off" about the same time. For a few years now, more web browsing has been done via smartphones than via computers. Tablets and e-readers, once said to be the wave of the future, have lagged. Many young people today get their news of the world via social media, rather than via newspapers or TV news shows...

Against Thatcher's anti-union laws: campaign, don't snipe!

A reply to the article by Unite activist Andy Green attacking the AWL and the Free Our Unions campaign published in the Morning Star on 26 July. See also this reply from Free Our Unions. 1997 saw the launch of the Campaign for Free Trade Unions. It was an open, democratic, rank-and-file based campaign, aimed at mobilising labour movement pressure on the new Labour government to repeal the Thatcher anti-union laws. Members of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty were central to launching that campaign. As a report of the launch event from the time records , "the conference heard from...

Transforming the labour movement: a reply to our critics

• The printed paper carries an abridged version of this article. One of the strangest organisations on the British left is the Socialist Party of Great Britain (no relation to the similarly named Socialist Party of England and Wales). Founded in 1904, they are the oldest organisation on the British Left and yet unless you happened to walk past their shopfront on Clapham High Street, South London, you would not know they existed. Like their stuffy little shop, the SPGB is inert. Their only activity consists in preaching an abstract, millenarian version of socialism and pouring scorn on the...

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