Solidarity 162, 5 November 2009

Student struggles go global

Students all over Europe — and, indeed, the world — are planning a wave of high-level direct action as part of the Global Week of Action, called by the “International Students Movement”. This movement, while originating as the initiative of a small number of activists based in Germany, has used the internet and social networking sites to create an impressive worldwide network of contacts that have responded to its calls for international action for free education.

Occupations in Vienna

Since 22 October around two thousand students and university staff have been occupying several parts of the main university in Vienna, demanding an end to restrictive admissions practices, tuition fees, and the marketisation of education. Their action has swept across Austria, with seven universities now occupied around the country. Students and workers are fighting the Bologna process — a process of standardisation across the whole of European higher education, which seeks to reorganise the university sector as a selective, expensive, two-tier system. What began as a protest against the...

Berlusconi: some further questions

While Hugh Edwards’ article (Solidarity 161) gives a useful account of Berlusconi’s history, there are a few further points that should be made about the current state of Italian politics. Much of the current furore around Berlusconi, at least in the British press, has centred on the sex scandal. He has been criticised for an alleged affair with a much younger woman and over whether or not he paid for sex. But frankly, none of this is very relevant to our judgement of Berlusconi. At most we might observe that it could create problems for him with some of his more Catholic-minded right-wing...

Re-promoting secular democracy

On the weekend of 31 October, British Muslims for Secular Democracy organised a demonstration against the (cancelled) Islam4UK march in central London. Its vice-chair, Dr Shaaz Mahboob, spoke to Solidarity, about their aims and political views. British Muslims for Secular Democracy (BMSD) began in 2006. It was felt that the concept of democracy was being slowly eroded within the British Muslim community. More and more Muslims had the idea that politics is entirely about foreign policy — the Iraq war, Palestine and so on — and confidence in democratic forces and the governing principles of...

“The key is to struggle for equal rights for everyone.”

Nasrin Parvaz is a member of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran (Hekmatist), one of the organisations involved in the protest against March4Sharia and the EDL. She spoke to Solidarity. Q: Is the growth of Islamism within Britain’s Muslim communities a serious threat? NP: If the Islamists see no resistance, they'll promote themselves. Official government policy is essentially anti-integration; they prefer us to be separated into our own distinct “communities”. That's what's helping minorities like Islam4UK gain power. Government support for the religious establishment — for building mosques or...

Opposing Islamism and the EDL

On Saturday 31 October, “Islam4UK” — a hardline Islamist organisation descended from Al-Muhajiroun — was due to hold a demonstration through central London in which it would demand the unilateral imposition of religious Sharia law on the UK. The far-right English Defence League and the bourgeois-liberal British Muslims for Secular Democracy both planned counter-demonstrations. In opposition to the politics of both Islamic fundamentalism and English nationalism, Workers’ Liberty worked with Iraqi and Iranian socialists to organise another mobilisation, to put forward a positive programme of...

The real lesson of Cable Street

The SWP claims that in the earlier part of the 20th century, socialists “united with the Jewish community” to fight racism, and so their call to “unite with the Muslim community” today has good precedent. In fact, far from straightforwardly “uniting with” the Jewish community (as if it were a homogeneous bloc), revolutionaries – both from inside the community and outside – attempted to fight for socialist politics within it, and to split it along class lines. Before World War One, when anti-semitism was the biggest form of racism in Britain, and immigration controls such as the Aliens Act of...

Fascists target Glasgow

The Scottish Defence League (SDL), an offshoot of the English Defence League which has staged anti-Muslim demonstrations in several cities, plans an event in Glasgow on Saturday, 14 November. According to a report in the Scottish Sunday Mail, “a mob of English racists and neo-Nazis” will be “invading Scotland” that day. “Despite portraying themselves as Scots”, this “ragbag army of football hooligans, far-right activists and racist thugs” will travel to Scotland “from Birmingham, Luton, London and Carlisle.” “Most of the marchers will come from England,” claims the article, and their aim will...

Getting on to the doorsteps

South Yorkshire Stop the BNP was launched from a meeting of trade unionists, anti-fascists and residents of the city in July to mobilise working-class anti-fascism on the basis of “Real Problems, BNP Lies!” We have chosen Firth Park, in the north of the city, as a target area where we can support local people to oppose the BNP on a positive basis of working-class unity and action to deal with real problems. It is a council ward in which the BNP’s “paper candidate” last year, Michael Smith, won 19.5% of the vote coming second to Labour. It is in a newly-created parliamentary constituency...

English Defence League: Anger in Leeds

Mike and Dave report from the Leeds demonstration against the English Defence League on 31 October Even apart from the invitation of the Lib-Dem local councillor currently embattled in trying to force pay cuts on local bin workers, the speeches at the rally had problems. Being told repeatedly that Nazis are nasty does little to educate the movement. Most demonstrators seemed to have little time for such hollow talk, and there was a clear mood to directly confront the EDL. We were told by Weyman Bennett of Unite Against Fascism (UAF) that a march would take place to “reclaim City Square” (the...

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