Solidarity 185, 18 November 2010

James Connolly, the Irish socialist and trade union leader shot by the British in May 1916 for his part in the Easter Rising, was convinced, early in the last century, that capitalism simply could not develop fully in Ireland. From that assessment he argued that only a Workers’ Republic could really free Ireland from foreign domination. In any case, he didn’t want capitalism to develop — didn’t want the Irish bourgeoisie to climb on the backs of the working people of Ireland. He was wrong in thinking that capitalism could not develop fully in Ireland. The way Ireland’s financial crisis is...

Iain Duncan-Smith wants to drag British politics into a Dickensian dystopia where unemployment and poverty are seen as moral failings rather than social problems. In a recent interview he appeared to be describing the refusal of the unemployed to take up offers of work as “a sin”. But who exactly is this egregious scumbag who pronounces upon the moral fortitude of people who have faced hardships beyond his worst imagining? Duncan-Smith has personal wealth of over £1 million. That puts him towards the bottom of the Cabinet's rich-list (23 out of 29 Ministers are millionaires) but on a different...

Click here to download parts 1 to 5 as pdf . Or read online: 1. Why is socialism in disarray? part i and part ii 2. What Stalinism Did to Socialism 3. The survivors of Atlantis 4. The poverty of "anti-imperialism" and today's left 5. Build a Revolutionary Party? What is a Revolutionary Party? 6. Does socialism make sense in the 21st century? Socialism in disarray, part five Cultural inertia The precondition for the direct and indirect effect which Stalinism still has on the current would-be left is the fact that a culture, once established, has a tremendous power of inertia. A culture can be...

James Connolly, the Irish socialist and trade union leader shot by the British in May 1916 for his part in the Easter Rising, was convinced, early in the last century, that capitalism simply could not develop fully in Ireland. From that assessment he argued that only a Workers’ Republic could really free Ireland from foreign domination. In any case, he didn’t want capitalism to develop, go on developing — didn’t want the Irish bourgeoisie to saddle themselves more securely on the backs of the working people of Ireland. He was wrong in thinking that capitalism could not develop fully in Ireland...

On 10 November, 50,000 students marched in London against the government's plans to cut university teaching budgets by 75% and raise student fees to £9,000 a year, thus closing the doors to higher education for students from worse-off families. Trade unions are still dawdling, planning no national demonstration until 26 March. Union members should insist that their organisations follow the students' lead!

As well as taking Solidarity weekly, we have another big task in the coming weeks. The paper will be moving offices. The move is a practical necessity, but also an opportunity. With new technology, we can operate with smaller premises, and find a place more central, in better repair, and more accessible to our activists. That will be good. But it will cost a lot of money. We will have to pay a deposit, and rent in advance, on the new place. We will have to pay for refurbishments at the new offices. We will have to pay the costs of moving our equipment and our files. Moving to a smaller place...

Poplar Labour council's fight against another Tory/Liberal coalition government, in 1921, and the battle by the Labour council in the village of Clay Cross, Derbyshire, against Tory laws imposing council rent rises in the early 1970s, shows that councils can take on the government and win. Click here to read more, in the 1985 AWL pamphlet, "Illusions of Power: the local government left 1979-85 . And click here for the 1986 pamphlet, "Liverpool: what went wrong". In the early 1980s there was a bigger flurry of defiance by Labour councils. Sadly, every single one of them backed down in the end -...

According to US academic and Middle East expert Juan Cole, "Washington lost big" in the long negotiations over forming a new government in Iraq. Parliamentary elections on 7 March 2010 put Iyad Allawi's Iraqiyya marginally ahead of outgoing prime minister Nuri al-Maliki's State of Law party, but gave neither a majority. On 13 November the parliament finally convened, re-elected Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani as president, put a member of Iraqiyya in as Speaker of the parliament, and voted to call on Talabani to appoint Maliki prime minister. (Reports differ on whether Talabani has made the...

In the run-up to Solidarity going weekly at the start of 2011, AWL groups across the country have two big jobs. One is increasing and regularising public paper sales, on the streets or door-to-door. The other is making distribution of the paper speedier and more reliable. Both North East London and South London AWL branches now have routines of four public sales a week. North East London's public sale at Highbury Corner on Tuesdays now shifts up to 30 papers each week, and rarely fewer than 20. Lots of papers were sold on the student demonstration on 10 November. Sacha Ismail reports that the...

As of the end of October, Ireland's banks held about a quarter of the "liquidity" (short-term cash loans, against "collateral" of financial paper) issued by the European Central Bank for the whole continent. Ireland's total short-term cash drawings had risen from 89.5 billion euros at the end of July to 130 billion by the end of October. Those figures lie behind the flurry in mid-November, when the European Central Bank formally called on the Irish government to get a further long-term loan from the EU's European Financial Stability Fund, or from the IMF. As I write, the Irish government is...