Solidarity 125, 24 January 2008

Like it or not, the SWP is the biggest group on the socialist left. Any attempt to unite will necessarily involve them, or at least substantial numbers of its activists. Nowhere is this more true than in the student movement, where the AWL has some experience of practical unity with the SWP. As well as having regular contact with a fair number of SWP activists on campuses, we know a number of their student organisers and have undertaken joint campaigns with them as a group. Between 1998 and 2002, for instance, a major surge of anti-fees activism helped us persuade them to work with us and our...

After winning 1.5 million votes in the April 2007 French presidential election, the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire launched a call for a new “anti-capitalist party” to bring together activists from across the spectrum of the far left in a joint organisation. This unity effort in some ways echoes the LCR’s previous efforts to turn to other parts of the left, for example in their support for former leading Communist Party member Pierre Juquin in the 1988 presidential election. At present it is unclear what exactly the LCR plans to do – bring together the revolutionary left, or just everyone to...

I must admit, I’m no Dylanologist, so I was not particularly upset by director Todd Haynes’ decision to merge Suze Rotolo and Sara Lownds into one character, nor the fact that I’m Not There is far from a biography of Dylan. However, while the film has an excellent score (unsurprisingly, it features lots of Bob Dylan tracks) and features some memorable performances from the six actors representing the singer-songwriter’s different personas, it feels like a simple homage rather than offering any particular insight. Central to the appeal of I’m Not There is its jigsaw-like composition. The film...

City of Vice, a new drama series about the Bow Street Runners, is now being shown on Channel 4 (Mondays, 9pm). Cathy Nugent interviews Clive Bradley, the writer of the most recent episode, which deals with molly houses — clubs where gay men and transwomen could meet each other. Where did the ideas for the series come from? The idea to base a series on Henry Fielding’s experiences as a magistrate came from the director and producer (Justin Hardy and Rob Percy) whom I worked with on Harlot’s Progress [about Hogarth, also made by Channel Four]. They asked me to write it and I wrote three of the...

Chris Rock at the Hammersmith Apollo. Chris Rock’s first tour to the UK was sold out within two hours despite minimal publicity; the Apollo was brimming and people had paid to stand up at the back of the theatre. Was the interest justified? Chris Rock has been billed as the funniest man alive. He was made (in)famous for his sketches “How not to get your ass kicked by the police” (uk.youtube.com/ watch?v=uj0mtxXEGE8), and his stand up joke on black people vs. niggaz. In truth, his trademark jarring yet endearing voice gives his commentary added humour, despite highly controversial and at times...

The Blues? It’s the mother of American music. That’s what it is – the source. — BB King Europeans involved in the slave trade stripped as much culture from their human cargo as possible but music was so deep rooted in the African men and women that it was impossible to tear it away from those who survived the horrific journey. In West Africa, where the slaves came from, every ceremony was celebrated with singing and dancing and the music went with them to work into the fields of North America. Initially the music took the form of Negro spirituals and field hollers. What came to be known as...

On 19 January Housmans bookshop in King’s Cross was packed with around fifty people coming to hear Loren Goldner speak on the recent history of the militant South Korean working class. Goldner, a left communist and a former Shachtmanite talked about modern labour movement activism in the face of rapid economic development, and the post World War Two era and the labour movement’s attitude to the Stalinist state in the North. The South Korean labour movement has long faced difficult circumstances. Immediately after the end of World War Two, with Japanese troops replaced with American occupiers...

This series: The Northern Ireland crisis of 1968-9 and the left Part 8 Contents of this article I: Events in Northern Ireland II: IS, April 1970 III: IS, September 1969 Next article in this series: Part 9: The debacle of demagogy, August 1969 Part 1: Why Northern Ireland Broke Down Part 2: The Irish Workers' Group, IS and the "Trotskyist Tendency" Part 3: Why Northern Ireland Split on Communal, Not Class, Lines Part 4: When militant sloganeering meant promoting communal war Part 5: When socialists looked to "Catholic Power" ; and Part 5 Section 2 Part 6: SWP (IS) and Northern Ireland in 1968-9...

The knives are out for Ken Livingstone. He is targetted by the main London paper, the Evening Standard. He is the subject of a sustained smear campaign — he’s a drunk, a secret “Trotskyite”. Some of his advisors run a careerist mafia, which for god knows what reason calls itself Socialist Action. We in Solidarity are no friends of Livingstone, but a lot of this is like the Tory candidate of whose election campaign this assault is meant to serve — ridiculous! Now Channel Four has done a hatchet job on the future Lord Ken of Newt Hall. But “The Court of Ken”, Martin Bright’s Dispatches film on...