Solidarity 275, 20 February 2013

Whitewashing the Islamists

Socialist Worker has avoided explicit support for the Islamist militias which ruled northern Mali from April 2012 until recently. But in its 9 February issue it sidled to the defence of what it sarcastically called “the dastardly Islamists”. “Media” accused the Islamists of destroying Timbuktu's unique holdings of ancient manuscripts. “But it was never true”. In fact, the Islamists torched the building where the manuscripts where kept, but most were saved because staff had hidden them elsewhere shortly before the militias seized Timbuktu last year. Socialist Worker takes the credit due to the...

Gramsci, crisis, struggle

Following “year one” of the Russian Revolution, Antonio Gramsci wrote a piece for the newspaper Il Grido del Popolo [1918] in which he argued that”‘just as a poem exists in the fantasy of the poet before it reaches the printed paper, the advent of social organisation exists in consciousness and will . . . What is demanded is the external, printed paper.” Here, in the crucible of revolutionary processes stretching across Europe, there was a striving towards a realisation and recognition of new organisational and political forms to achieve social transformation. The “Modern Prince”, as a...

Taking on the bosses' blacklist

A 2009 raid on the office of the “Consulting Association” revealed it had been compiling information on thousands of workers to help construction industry bosses keep their sites free of potential trade union organisers. As the scale of the blacklisting operation has become clearer, other sordid facts have emerged. The type of information contained in CA files is so detailed that it could only have come from state sources, suggesting state collusion in the blacklist. Recently, it emerged that right-wing officials of the construction union UCATT, and of Amicus (one of the unions that merged to...

Private security and the “labour spy”

The private security industry is expanding at an impressive pace. Estimated to be worth hundreds of billions of dollars, the industry includes vast corporations such as G4S, now the world’s third largest private sector employer, and with a global staff of 657,000. Companies like this may be familiar to British people from large-scale public events like the Olympic Games, but private security is also a profitable industry in war-torn regions like Iraq and Afghanistan, where governments and investors have found it convenient to browse the market to source their heavily armed men. Espionage, too...

Help us raise £15,000

A raffle at our 16 February dayschool “Their Europe and Ours” raised £110. Winners took home chocolates, books and gift vouchers. The school itself raised an extra £53 towards our fund appeal after covering costs. AWL North East London branch continues its series of monthly film showings and fundraisers on Sunday 24 February with a showing of Paris Is Burning to mark LGBTQ history month. The film explores the gay liberation movement in New York. Tickets are £8/£4 (waged/unwaged) and include food and drink. The showing takes place at 3.30pm at Menard Hall, Galway Street, London EC1V 3SW...

Clerical fascism?

Critics of Solidarity sometimes say that our description of Islamist political movements as “clerical fascism” is too simplistic, or too sweeping. A recent report from Tunisia ( Financial Times , 18 February) makes us think we are right after all. Ennahda, which currently leads a coalition government there with two smaller secular parties, is always described as “moderate” Islamist. It operates under constraint — in one of the world’s most secularised majority-Muslim countries, one where there is a strong trade-union movement and a sizeable left, and where the population is mobilised and...

Who decides Labour's policies?

According to Labour leader Ed Miliband, speaking on 14 February: “Over the last three decades or so, less than 15 pence of every additional pound Britain has made has gone to an entire half of the population... 24 pence in every pound has gone to the top 1 per cent of earners”. Inequality soared under the Tories, continued to increase under Blair and Brown, and is zooming under the coalition. The policies Ed Miliband proposed in that speech would come nowhere near reversing that trend. “We would tax houses worth over £2 million... We would... reintroduce a lower 10 pence starting rate of tax...

Wrong on “NIMBYS”

Contrary to Martin Thomas’ view ( Solidarity 274), Cumbria’s anti-nuclear lobby cannot simply be dismissed as parochial NIMBYs. Nuclear power, which generates harmful waste products that last for millenia, is one of the extreme examples of capitalism’s ecological blindness. If we had democratic control of the means of production then I doubt we would now be burdened with a large nuclear waste legacy. However, Martin Thomas is a practical man and would not appreciate these “what ifs”. As he says, the waste exists. Are we simply going to dump it on Mexico or Sweden? I believe the rational...

Slogans for Syria

Tom Unterrainer ( Solidarity 274, 13 February) thinks that there is a problem with the AWL National Committee’s recent resolution on Syria. In the past, he notes, a headline over an article in Solidarity called for Assad to go. The NC resolution failed to repeat that call, and Tom smells a rat. He writes that the resolution “implies Assad and his close political clique could play some role in a peaceful political resolution to the current conflict.” Let me go on record as saying I wish that Assad should “go”. Meaning, minimally, I hope the murdering bastard dies an unpleasant, early death...

Should we boycott Amazon?

Recently, I co-authored a book on online campaigning for trade unions and self-published it using a print-on-demand service called CreateSpace. CreateSpace is a subsidiary of Amazon, the giant online retailer, and any book you publish there is automatically available for sale on the Amazon websites. It was a great option as it cost nothing and allowed us to reach a very large global audience. When I announced this to LabourStart’s mailing lists, we got hundreds of people to buy copies of the book. But a small number, mainly from the UK, wrote in to say that they wouldn’t buy from Amazon. Most...

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