Solidarity 607, 22 September 2021

Supporting gas is not green

Sacha Ismail’s report on the TUC congress ( Solidarity 606 ) misses a crucial point on climate change. “The most lively debate was on climate change... [m]uch of the debate focused on the motion’s support for nuclear energy. As some speakers pointed out, the much wider problem is that it advocated essentially not very much change at all.” The motion is not left wing, detailed, environmental or substantive. The reason to oppose it (rather than bemoan its inadequacies) is its support for gas, for gas-derived “blue hydrogen”, for carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) to help drive...

A win for teenagers' rights

The Court of Appeal have overruled the Bell v Tavistock judgement. This is good news for young trans people under 18. It means that they are no longer legally obliged to get permission from the court to receive puberty blockers. It is also good news for other young people whose ability to make choices about medical treatments rests on “Gillick competency”. “Gillick competency” is based on a legal case in 1985 in which Victoria Gillick was defeated in her attempt to rescind NHS guidance which allowed under 18s to access contraception without parental approval. The original Bell v Tavistock...

Confronting antisemitism on the left

The double meaning apparent in the title of Daniel Randall’s new book Confronting Antisemitism on the Left expresses its two important aims: to confront antisemitism which appears on the left while at the same time confronting antisemitism firmly from a left perspective. Grabbing the baton from Steve Cohen’s important 1984 analysis of left-wing antisemitism, That’s Funny, You Don’t Look Antisemitic , and running much further, Randall’s book is not only sharp in its arguments about the nature of antisemitic forms of leftist discourse, but it’s also very well grounded in the history of the...

A feminist speaks from inside Afghanistan

Demonstrations started in the first week of full Taliban rule, particularly in Herat in the west of Afghanistan and in Kabul and other major cities. In these cities at least women before the collapse of the old government had some basic rights, like having jobs and going to school and university.

Marx, the environment, and "metabolic rift"

See other articles in this debate here . For the last twenty years the idea of the “metabolic rift” has become a key component in reconstructing an approach to environmental crises based on the works of Marx. This has been critically discussed in the pages of Solidarity , particularly by Paul Hampton and Paul Vernadsky, who have suggested that these ideas are an important source for anyone seeking to understand how capitalism impacts on the environment but do not constitute a rounded theory. [1] Here, I take a more critical approach and suggest that the idea of the metabolic rift may be a dead...

Covid: the bother with boosters

The British government is acting as if it has opted for extra jabs as its first line against the probable new Covid surge in winter. Those, rather than social improvements (ventilation, workers’ control of workplace safety, full isolation pay for all, boosting the NHS and reversing privatisation, improved housing, improved social care) or mild restrictions (mandatory mask-wearing and work-from-home, limits on indoor crowding). While the government has spent billions on extra vaccines, and test-trace contracts of dubious efficacy, it still stonewalls on proper isolation pay for workers in...

Women's Fightback: Test case for Texas abortion ban

A San Antonio doctor who said he had performed an abortion in defiance of Texas’s new law has been sued, setting up a potential test case for the law. In an opinion piece in the Washington Post, “Why I violated Texas’s extreme abortion ban”, the doctor, Alan Braid, who has been performing abortions for more than 40 years, said that he performed one on 6 September for a woman beyond the state’s new limit. “I acted because I had a duty of care to this patient, as I do for all patients, and because she has a fundamental right to receive this care,” Dr. Braid wrote. “I fully understood that there...

Israel-Palestine at Labour conference

The conference agenda has several motions on Israel-Palestine, mostly elaborations on Labour and Palestine’s model motion . No likely composite will deserve support as improving Labour’s existing policy. Nor would the model motion circulated by the Labour right (Labour To Win), but no CLP has submitted that . • No motion adds to Labour’s “two states” policy what it mostly lacks — solidarity with forces on the ground fighting for that, such as the Jewish-Arab Standing Together movement in Israel, trade unions, or campaigns against checkpoints and house demolitions. Probably all the CLPs...

Against the Labour right's Israel-Palestine policy

Labour To Win – the joint right-wing faction formed by Progress and Labour First – proposed a “Two-State Solution” model motion for Labour Party conference 2021. No party affiliate or Constituency Labour Party has submitted it to the conference, but it may still be worth discussion. Workers’ Liberty supports the demand for a free and independent Palestine alongside Israel – “two states”. Nevertheless, LTW’s motion must be opposed by all supporters of Palestinian liberation. Any response to the situation in Israel-Palestine must start from a recognition that this is not a symmetrical conflict...

Diary of an engineer: The tests are OK, but the workers aren't

The company that processes the plant’s “Incinerator Bottom Ash” call to return three loads, and say they are quarantining two more. The logistics company who do the deliveries are not able to tip, and they tell their drivers to stop collecting from us. I ask the company if they’re able to separate the unburned waste from the ash and return it to us, at our expense — she says no. This means that the plant is now producing Incinerator Bottom Ash (IBA) continuously with nowhere to send it. The ash bay is very small, and it won’t take long before it’s full. The only way to stop producing ash is to...

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