Solidarity 234, 15 February 2012

New Unionism in the 1880s

On Saturday 18 February, Workers’ Liberty will host “New Unionism: how workers can fight back”, a dayschool to discuss militant, class-struggle trade unionism, past and present, with a particular focus on the struggles that reshaped the British labour movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Cathy Nugent outlines some of the important features of historical “New Unionism”. Beginning in the late 1880s, a great unionising drive among unskilled and semi-skilled workers began. This period of “new unionism” lasted — with setbacks and shifts in character along the way — right up to the...

As we were saying: “Bloody Sunday”

On 30 January 1972, British Army soldiers in Derry, Northern Ireland fired on Catholics demonstrating for civil rights. They killed 14 men, seven of them teenagers, in the event that came to be known as Bloody Sunday. The Army maintained that they had been shot at, and an early government inquiry into the event, the Widgery Report, took their side. Not until 2010 did the Saville Inquiry find that those who had been killed were unarmed, calling the killings “unjustified and unjustifiable”. At the time, the Workers’ Fight newspaper, forerunner of Solidarity , produced the front page below and...

The snob theories about Shakespeare

Many years ago I read with riveted fascination a big book on the history of the “who wrote Shakespeare” controversy: Shakespeare’s Lives, by S. Schoenbaum. The controversy has more than a little interest for citizens of a socialist movement that has reduced itself to a sprawling archipelago of self-sealing, self-intoxicating, self-blinding sects. The dispute about “Who wrote Shakespeare?” has raged for well over 100 years now and rages still. Shakespeare wrote "Shakespeare", you say? Very little is known about William Shakespeare of Stratford upon Avon. What little is known about “the...

Emmerich’s "Anonymous" Shakespeare is witless tosh!

Though it markets itself as having something fresh and startling to say, Roland Emmerich’s Anonymous is only a crude sensationalist rendition of a century-old dispute: who was William Shakespeare, “really”? In this rendition an actor, Will Shakespeare, lends his name to Edward De Vere, Earl of Oxford. De Vere’s social standing forbids him to appear in public as an author of popular plays but he is the “real” author of what we know as “Shakespeare”. In this crude and vicious “alternative history” the actor Will Shakespeare is a dim-wit, blackmailing cockney fly-boy who murders at least two of...

Greek strikers unite with the streets

Last week started with a 24 hour strike on 7 February called by the two union federations GSEE and ADEDY, and ended with a 48-hour general strike on Friday-Saturday 10-11 February and the re-emergence of last summer’s “Indignant Citizens’” movement in the city square on Sunday 12th. Hundreds of thousands of people gathered outside the Greek parliament in Athens and in the squares of every Greek city to call for the overthrow of the Papademos coalition government and the cuts. The massive participation signalled the start of a political meeting-up and coordination between the ongoing strike...

Help the AWL to raise £20,000

Solidarity recently hired top fundraising firm Grasper, Spiv & Cringe Ltd. to take our fund drive to the next level. They’ve been working round the clock to target top bankers, city tradesmen, media magnates, property developers, landed aristocrats and high-ranking members of the clerical orders of all major world religions. Our thinking was simple; these people have lots of money, we need money, let’s ask them. Unfortunately, early indications are not good. It appears that members of these groups are rather reluctant to hand over very much of their hard-earned (or hard-inherited) cash to a...

Even clerical-fascists deserve a fair trial

Islamist cleric Abu Qatada has been placed under effective house arrest following his release from prison. He will wear a tag, be prevented from using mobile phones and the internet, and only be allowed outside during a one-hour period twice a day. He has spent six years in detention without charge, and the house arrest is the government’s fallback after its preferred option — deporting him to Jordan — fell through (because, reasonably, the courts decided he was at risk of torture in Jordan). Abu Qatada is a dangerous reactionary. But laws that allow individuals — however monstrous their views...

Down with Assad! For liberty and democracy in Syria!

The revolt in Syria began in March 2011, in the wake of the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. So far at least 8,000 people have died, largely from regime violence as peaceful protesters came out onto the streets to demand freedom. The pace of the killings is increasing as armed opposition grows, the rebellion spreads and the regime becomes more desperate. According to the the Local Coordination Committees opposition network, since 4 February almost 700 people have been killed, including more than 400 in Homs. Syria’s rulers are willing to do anything it takes to stay in power: destroying...

Stalin and the invasion of Georgia

In May 1920, the Bolshevik workers’ government in Russia signed a treaty with Georgia, which had been ruled by a Menshevik government since 1918, under which Russia recognised the independence of Georgia (formerly part of the Tsarist empire), and Georgia undertook not to give a base to anti-Bolshevik forces in the civil war then raging in Russia. In February 1921, Josef Stalin and friends, alleging Georgian breaches of the treaty (possibly real, but minor) and the need to support a (largely fictional) Bolshevik-led workers’ uprising in Georgia, engineered a Red Army invasion of Georgia. The...

Separate religion from politics

A High Court ruling has stated that councils have no statutory right to hold prayers at meetings. The case, brought by the National Secular Society, has resulted in outrage from Tory MPs, the Daily Mail, the Christian Institute and churches. They say this is discrimination against believers and an attempt to destroy Christianity. They claim it will lead to the end of prayers before Parliament, at remembrance services and that even the Coronation oath will have to be abolished. The Christian Institute also complains that the logic of this decision is that councils won’t even be allowed to sing...

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