Solidarity 317, 19 March 2014

Central African Republic: French troops preside over slaughter

In the Central African Republic (CAR), French troops are presiding over the purging and slaughter of Muslims by Christian militias. French troops went into CAR in December last year, when the government collapsed. Then, around a thousand people had died and around a fifth of the population had fled their home. In March 2013, power had been seized by a rebel militia, the Seleka, which had its roots in the more-Muslim north of the country. The Seleka were well-equipped with Chinese and Iranian-made weaponry and experts guessed they were backed by Chad or Sudan. The Seleka overthrew unpopular...

Syria: talks stall, refugee count rises

UN figures confirm there are now 2.5 million Syrian refugees, spread across Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, Turkey, and Lebanon. A further 6.5 million Syrians have been displaced within Syria. A further estimated 140,000 people have been killed since the conflict began. Despite Russia’s involvement in Ukraine, their support for Assad remains firm, as does Iran’s, and deadlock continues in “Geneva II” talks. Support from the Gulf states for the majority Sunni Syrian rebels has in turn increased, with Saudi Arabia openly increasing its aid to the rebels. Whilst arms and logistical support continue, access...

Five richest own as much as poorest 12.6 million!

A recent Oxfam report reveals that just five of the UK’s richest families own as much wealth as the poorest 20% of the population — some 12.6 million people. In the last twenty years, the incomes of the top 0.1% have grown by around £24,000 a year. Over the same period of time, the bottom 90% have seen a real terms increase of only £147 a year — a tiny increase of £2.82 a week! This stagnation has taken place during a decade in which the cost of living has soared. “Since 2003 the majority of the British public (95%) have seen a 12% real terms drop in their disposable income after housing costs...

Budget = cuts

On 19 March, George Osborne will deliver another cuts budget. He has made clear that the Tories will continue slashing public spending, despite forecasts of economic recovery. The situation is looking extremely bleak for public services even without new announcements. Of the cuts in spending already proposed by the government, the Institute for Fiscal Studies reckons 65% of them are still to come. This at a time when key services like the NHS are creaking beneath the pressure of under-funding. Further cuts will have a disastrous impact on public services and the millions of working-class...

“Nordic model” planned for UK

An all-party parliamentary group on prostitution has recommended Britain follows the lead of countries such as Sweden and Norway, which make the purchase of sex illegal. Neither buying nor selling sex is illegal in the UK but soliciting, pimping, brothel-keeping and kerb-crawling are all criminal activities. The Nordic model, which also decriminalises sex work, rests on the argument that all prostitution is violence against women. The parliamentary group, following that line, says the current law “serves to normalise the purchase and stigmatise the sale of sexual services — and undermines...

Defend free debate on campuses!

The campaign now spreading in some parts of the student movement for the SWP to be banned from campuses should be opposed. We should defend freedom of political expression and debate on campuses. The form of “banning” varies: tipping over and physically destroying SWP stalls; insisting that SWP members either absent themselves from campaigns or agree to not have SWP materials on them; or banning the SWP from booking or using rooms in students’ unions. In whatever form it takes, the campaign to “ban” the SWP is not the way to challenge the SWP’s behaviour or combat their ideas; it is not the...

After Crimea, a third cold war?

The count from Crimea’s 16 March referendum was largely known in advance. Unknown still after the result, and dangerous, are its consequences. The most hopeful sign for socialists was a 50,000 strong demonstration in Moscow on 15 March saying “Putin, get out of Ukraine”, and opposing war. Our solidarity should be with the Ukrainian people, for its self-determination against Russia’s drive to dominate; and with Ukraine’s left, against the neo-liberal government in Kiev and the cuts it will push through on the IMF’s say-so. We should demand that US and EU governments cancel Ukraine’s foreign...

Avoiding the issues about male ritual circumcision

In Solidarity 315 I asked: “As socialists, feminists, and labour movement activists, what do we ‘independently’ think about the practice of ritual circumcision amongst male minors, and how does this relate to the Scandinavian debate and the political trends and forces involved?” At no point in his response ( Solidarity 316) does Eric Lee address this question. Eric suggests that I soften the blow of my article by reference to Scandinavia; he sarcastically notes, “Scandinavians, after all, are modern, progressive people”. What’s he getting at here — as against Jews and Muslims? Eric incorrectly...

“Third camp” or no camp?

Many responses from the left to the Ukraine crisis have ignored, sidestepped, or downplayed the right to self-determination of the Ukrainian people. Yet Ukraine is one of the longest-oppressed large nations in the world. In an article of 1939 where he raised Ukraine’s right to self-determination as an urgent question, Leon Trotsky wrote: “The Ukrainian question, which many governments and many ‘socialists’ and even ‘communists’ have tried to forget or to relegate to the deep strongbox of history, has once again been placed on the order of the day and this time with redoubled force”. The same...

Tony Benn, 1925-2014

(The author worked with Benn and others to set up the Rank and File Mobilising Committee, which for a while united most of the Labour Party left, at the start of the 1980s.) The first thing that should be said and remembered about Tony Benn, who died on Friday 14 March, is that for over four decades he backed, defended, and championed workers in conflict with their bosses or with the "boss of bosses", the government. That put him decidedly in our camp. The political ideas which he too often linked with those bedrock working-class battles detract from the great merit of Tony Benn, but do not...

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