Solidarity 619, 12 January 2022

In February last year, at the peak of state violence against the Indian farmers’ struggle, I wrote in Solidarity that the “repression… could signal the Hindu-nationalist regime’s panic-stricken weakening and decline, or the onset of an even more consolidated authoritarianism”. With the farmers’ defeat of the Modi government, one of the most important popular victories against capitalism anywhere in years, chinks of light have opened up. Nonetheless both possibilities remain. Modi announced withdrawal of the three pro-corporate agricultural reform laws on 19 November. By the end of the month...

According to the Telegraph and the Daily Mail , Jeremy Corbyn’s inner circle is thinking of quitting the Labour Party and standing Corbyn as an independent in Islington North in the general election likely in 2023 or 2024. It looks like malicious “stirring “by those papers. The Corbynista blog Skwawkbox claims Labour right-wingers have been feeding those Tory papers. Though Skwawkbox is unreliable, that is plausible. An exit would be a foolish move by Corbyn. His feeble “Peace and Justice Project“ does not provide the groundwork for a new party. Corbyn might gain local support (he has a good...

In his influential book The Invention of Tradition , Eric Hobsbawm explained the process by which historians seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, attempting to establish continuity with a suitable historic past. Marxism is not exempt from the manufacture of tradition. In fact the battle of ideas is often fought around the legitimacy of decisions made by individuals and parties at crucial times in the past. Thus we openly proclaim our affinity with the methods, theories and practices of Marx and Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, Luxemburg and Gramsci, the foremost...

A year has passed since the assault on the US Capitol building by people intent on overthrowing the country’s elected government. The extent to which Donald Trump and his lieutenants were personally involved in orchestrating events on that day is yet to be determined. Initial attempts to whitewash Trump saying he was just acting “the showman” on 6 January and didn’t really want his supporters to storm the building have become less and less credible with the passage of time. We know that there was a “command centre” in the Willard International Hotel staffed by Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani and...

Nat Turner planning the rebellion In 1967, 136 years after Nat Turner led a slave rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia, the white US novelist William Styron published a book, The Confessions of Nat Turner . The book was written in the first person, Styron giving words to Turner and his story. Prior to the publication of Styron’s book the history of the Turner insurrection was not widely known. For several months Styron’s book received great reviews and grandiose praise. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1968. But within a few months universal acclaim had turned into a very...

When Anthony Walgate was found dead outside Stephen Port’s flat in June 2014, the police were quick to conclude it was a gay sex worker accidentally overdosing on GHB.

“Could train operator Jay Dawkey please come to the desk before next pick up?” The tannoy in the depot clicks off as I think about getting up. “If you are lucky you’ll be cancelled”. “I bet it isn’t, I bet it is your train is sitting in the depot or on the sidings, and if it is cancelled then why is it always your first half and not your second?” L, the manager, tells me: “Your train is probably cancelled”. “Probably? Or is it cancelled?” I ask. “Well it isn’t running, so unless it appears soon we’ll just keep you as a spare”. I head back via my locker as I now have five hours, maybe with no...

Ten Downing Street, when asked whether Tony Blair “deserves” the knighthood recently granted him, replied that it had no part in the decision. It belonged only to the Queen. Yet Keir Starmer eagerly smarmed for Blair: he had “vastly improved the country”. He didn’t even skirt the question in the obvious way, by pointing out that such medieval “honours” are always in due course given to former prime ministers, so merit has nothing to do with it. In a December interview Starmer was asked: is he a socialist? Even Tony Blair used to say he was a “democratic socialist”. Starmer evaded: “What does...

Along with Harry Belafonte and a few others, Sydney Poitier was a pioneer in Hollywood when African-Americans found it difficult to get serious roles and were often restricted to playing cardboard cut-out man-servants, pimps, villains and so on. Poitier was the first African-American to win the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Lilies of the Field (1963). Although probably he became a somewhat marginalised figure with the rise of militant political black activism in the late 60s and 70s, his central role in establishing a meaningful black presence in Hollywood should never be...