Solidarity 201, 20 April 2011

Libya and the no-fly zone: precedents for socialists

The basic issue for socialists in confronting the Libyan situation is this: we wish Qaddafi to be defeated, but we are not indifferent to who defeats him. That is because who defeats Qaddafi involves how the regime is brought down and the consequences of that downfall. We are not in support of capitalist imperialism being the agent of that defeat, even though almost any conceivable regime that replaces Qaddafi would most likely be a “lesser evil” to this, one of the world’s most horrific police states. It follows that any alternative that imperialism would summarily impose on the Libyan people...

Bambery quits SWP

On 10 April, long-time leading member Chris Bambery resigned from the Socialist Workers Party, complaining about “factionalism”. Chris Bambery has been secretary of the SWP’s front anti-cuts campaign, Right to Work. On 12 April, 38 Scottish SWP members followed. Tom Unterrainer analyses the background. According to Chris Bambery there is a “cancer eating away” at the SWP’s “heart”. The name of this cancer is “factionalism”. This claim is repeated in a joint letter of resignation signed by a significant number of SWP members in Glasgow. Bambery claims that the “party has been afflicted by...

Keeping your head

Critics often accuse revolutionary socialists of being “out of touch with reality”. Usually, what they mean is something like “well to the left of Brendan Barber”. But let me offer a sobering thought to anybody who locates themselves in the Marxist political tradition: the claim isn’t always wrong, is it? Some of the more celebrated idiocies have passed into leftie folklore. There have been Trotskyist sects who believed that flying saucers were emissaries of Bolshevik civilisations on other planets, that the Second World War did not “really” end in 1945, that the USSR should have strengthened...

More interviews with Tunisian activists

Mounjia Hadfi is a women’s rights activist and Marxist based in Tunis. Under the dictatorship, and today, we see patriarchal attitudes every day. Part of that has to do with our culture here in Tunisia, even in spite of our legal victories such as the banning of polygamy in 1950 and laws guaranteeing the right to abortion and so on, which were passed in the 1970s as part of the population planning policy. But sexist mentalities and oppression persist. Many women have even internalised these attitudes! We must unveil all the forms of oppression and all the sexist attitudes which exist. We see...

A view of Bahrain

People in Bahrain are expecting the worst every moment. The military crackdown on protesters led by Saudi troops has unleashed an ugly racist face. Bahrain was always a liberal country and the ruling regime itself is a secular tribe. But as a tribe, it had a problem with equality and justice. Other citizens, not in tribes, found themselves lost as they were treated as second or third class citizens. The ruling regime has always monopolised the nation’s natural resources and wealth — citizens who founded Bahrain Petroleum Company (Bapco) and other companies found themselves deprived of their...

On the streets of Tunis

I arrived in Tunis just after the army had prevented a third Casbah sit-in, aimed at extracting fundamental democratic reforms from the third government, under the octogenarian Sebsi. The movement was in something of a lull, but there were tanks and razorwire all over the city centre, periodic clashes with the police, and new graffiti appearing every day: “Down with repression”; “The women of Tunisia are free”; “Down with Sebsi”; “Secularism”; “Free at last”. The revolutionary movement in Tunisia is still ongoing. Despite the fact that press freedom has not yet been fully won, the Tunisian...

Cliff and Libya

The SWP’s line on Libya contrasts with the arguments of its founder Tony Cliff. While outlining our principled opposition to the police as the arm of the capitalist state, he would say that, faced with a sizeable fascist mob, it would be unwise for a small band of socialists to shout “Police out!”

Swaziland: epitome of monarchy

King Mswati III of Swaziland and his entourage (he has 13 wives) are expected to be honoured guests at the Royal Wedding, and will stay in a hotel whose rooms cost over £400 a night. Back in Swaziland, demonstrations against the king’s autocratic rule by trade unionists and opposition activists have been broken up by police. The Kingdom of Swaziland is a landlocked largely-mountainous African state a little smaller than Wales, with a population of about a million people. A former British colony, it remains an absolute monarchy. Political parties have been banned since the suspension of the...

AV: spoil your ballot

I think I disagree with the action advocated in Solidarity 3-200 for the Alternative Vote referendum. While it would not be an appropriate or constructive view to take in an election I think we should advocate a spoiled ballot in the upcoming referendum. While I agree with the political reasoning, line and headline of the article (“No to AV, no to status quo”) I think a no vote also carries a risk akin to a yes vote being a barrier to more serious reform. If the no vote wins too convincingly those opposed to all reform will be able to say “The people had their say and rejected change when...

Ends and means

After the March 26 TUC demonstration, we began a discussion around tactics, politics and organisation with an “open letter to a direct-action activist”. In future issues of Solidarity we will feature further comment, from members of Workers’ Liberty and others, on the issues involved. The piece below is from an activist who blogs at The Great Unrest (www.thegreatunrest.net). The relationship between our political goals and the means we use to achieve them is fraught with difficulty. There’s good evidence of this in the recent debates about “direct action” and the “black bloc” (which has...

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