Solidarity 608, 6 October 2021

John Archer: black pioneer of labour politics

Painting of John Archer which hangs in Liverpool Town Hall. It contains many important details about Archer. The paper is The Crisis , edited by W E B Du Bois “My election tonight marks a new era. You have made history tonight. For the first time in the history of the English nation, a man of colour has been elected as mayor of an English borough… That news will go forth to all the coloured nations of the world and they will look at Battersea, and say it is the greatest thing you have done” – John Archer, 1913 In January, Workers' Liberty published a pamphlet on Shapurji Saklatvala, the...

After Labour conference

Labour Party conference in Brighton, 25-29 September, was hailed by Labour’s right wing as a triumph on the strength of rule changes pushed through at short notice and of Keir Starmer’s speech. In between the rule changes (in the first days of conference) and Keir Starmer’s speech (at the end), conference was more lively. The speech got standing ovations, but leaders’ speeches pretty much always do. Even sceptical delegates know that the media is watching. And, as usual, many delegates had already gone home. Their places in the conference hall had been filled with preselected Starmer...

What Labour conference demanded

Despite Starmer’s success, with the help of the Unison machine , in getting his rule changes through, the conference consistently voted for left-wing policy. We must mobilise the labour movement in support of these policies, in the party, in workplaces and on the streets. Policies passed included a “Socialist Green New Deal” with: • full public ownership of energy • creating millions of well-paid, unionised green jobs with publicly-owned bodies • a just transition with a comprehensive retraining program and job guarantee on union rates for affected workers • expanded and publicly-owned...

"For a Socialist Green New Deal!"

This is Edinburgh Central CLP delegate Hannah Taylor’s speech for the left-wing Green New Deal motion the conference passed. "Capitalism is incapable of solving the problem it’s created. Left to their own devices bosses will continue to extract profits, exploit workers, lobby governments to halt change, and argue that our demands are radical, unreasonable, unworkable. "Do not believe corporations when they say little individual lifestyle changes are good enough. Even with a global lockdown, emissions in 2020 were only 7% less than in 2019. Only structural, systemic change can save workers here...

Starmer's attacks on Labour democracy

Rule changes were pushed through with minimal debate which claimed to be a necessary response to the EHRC report on antisemitism, but were actually a stitch-up of already undemocratic disciplinary processes . Elaine Bolton of the Campaign for Labour Democracy (CLPD) has summarised the other rule changes which the platform pushed through with the claim that they would “get the party election ready” for campaigning. In fact, she explains, the rule changes: Increased the proportion of MPs that a candidate needs to secure in order to get on the ballot in a leadership election from 10% to 20% of...

Interview with Billy Hayes: Time for socialism, time for PR

At Labour Party conference, a motion supporting proportional representation was defeated 42-58, with constituency votes heavily for but union votes heavily against. Billy Hayes is a member of the Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform (LCER) executive and former Communication Workers' Union general secretary. He spoke to us in a personal capacity; these views are his alone. A cut down version was published in the print version of Solidarity 608 with the headline "We need socialism, but democracy helps". The CLPs voted 80% for PR. What we've yet to do is convince the bulk of the unions. Only four...

Unison activists protest against stitch-up

From the Time for Real Change in Unison campaign We are angry and dismayed that Unison has voted for the Labour Party rule changes it did... particularly the increase to 20% of the threshold of MPs by which leadership candidates are nominated. The Unison vote was key to it passing. This vote contradicted formal Unison Labour Link policy set in 2018 to reduce the nominating threshold to 10%. The Unison Conference delegation had no mandate or rulebook right to overturn National Labour Link Committee policy in this area and has chosen to set a dangerous precedent. Unison also opposed the original...

The World Transformed: scratching the surface

A lot of radical things were said at this year’s The World Transformed festival. As one participant said, many speeches only scratched the surface. Clear political conclusions or concrete demands weren’t always drawn out. For example, at a panel on “Kill The Bill,” speakers said that we cannot support police reform and that we must instead “abolish the police” – all the while talking about the negative implications of the police bill. Occasional jibes were made at “white people talking about Trotsky or whatever, telling us how to do a revolution.” Nevertheless, TWT was an informal, accessible...

Workers' Liberty at Labour conference

At Labour Party conference 2021: • We sold almost £1,000 worth of our literature, including over 120 copies of our new booklet Corbynism: what went wrong? • Having drafted and pushed for motions, we argued in compositing meetings and spoke in the debates. • We helped Momentum Internationalists hold regular caucuses and produce five issues of a daily socialist conference bulletin . • We helped raise solidarity with Afghan refugees and with the Hazara people in Afghanistan, including through a demonstration outside conference and a fringe meeting; helped Free Our Unions; joined trans rights...

Pedantic, empty and false on "metabolic rift"

See other articles in this debate here . It is unfortunate that Matt Cooper chose the eve of international climate mobilisations for his belated foray into Marxist ecological politics ( Solidarity 607 , 22 September 2021). His musing is vacuous, error-strewn and offers no alternative. Worse, he disparagingly misrepresents the ecological Marxism that underpins the AWL’s climate politics. His essay serves only as an exercise in stale pedantry. Marx During the mid-1840s, as Marx and Engels developed their materialist conception of history, they were already engaged with ecological questions. They...

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