Solidarity 492, 23 January 2019

Polls, votes, facts, and the Star

Opinion polls have earned themselves a pretty bad reputation — for obvious reasons — over the past three years or so. But the ESRC Party Members’ Project is no ordinary opinion poll: it’s part of an ongoing wider academic study. Its recent findings regarding Labour voters’ and members’ attitudes to Brexit correspond to the overwhelming evidence of the last Labour conference and the statistics regarding the Labour vote in the last general election. The study, part of the Party Members’ Project led by Professor Tim Bale of Queen Mary University of London, found that while Labour members still...

Bakhshi and Gholian jailed again

At 23:55 on Sunday 20 January, a large number of armed men in 15 SUV patrol cars descended on Esmail Bakhshi’s home and detained him. Bakhshi is a representative of the Haft Tappeh sugar­cane workers, in south­west Iran, who have recently been in dispute over unpaid wages and control of the sugar­cane complex. He was previously jailed on 18 November, and released on bail on 12 December. Also on 20 January Sepideh Gholian, a journalist and social activist jailed with the workers on 18 November and released on bail on 18 December, was re­arrested. Police came to her parental home to arrest her...

Left should unite to save NUS

The “Board” of the National Union of Students (NUS UK) voted on Wednesday 16 January to abolish the NUS Trans Campaign’s officer, committee and campaign budget. The Society and Citizenship Vice President post has also been abolished, alongside International Officer, LGBT Women’s Place, and all of the Nations’ Vice Presidents. NUS Liberation Officers have broken their silence over the democracy cuts and financial crisis to release a statement stating “The secrecy with which NUS has chosen to conduct the process of deciding which officer position is worthy of funding suggests that this is a...

Cross-class?

The “Final Say” meeting in Westminster on 14 January, co-hosted by the left-remain campaign Another Europe is Possible, the liberal remainers Best for Britain, Hope Not Hate, and the TSSA union, pitched as a discussion on how a new public vote on Brexit might be won, highlighted key questions for anti-Brexit left-wingers. It was welcome to see key Labour MPs from the party’s left – Marsha De Cordova, Clive Lewis and Lloyd Russell ­Moyle – publicly indicate their support for a new referendum in which Labour should campaign to “remain and reform”. Russell­ Moyle said that “there is no good...

On the streets against Brexit

Ralph Peters writes: On 16 January, 30 supporters of Another Europe Is Possible and Labour for a Socialist Europe took to the cold streets of Nottingham at rush hour to protest against Brexit. We called for a General Election and a referendum to stop Brexit. We met a number of activists that we hadn’t seen since the demobilisation of the local Momentum group, and spoke to dozens of new people keen to get involved, including many migrant workers. Everywhere we go we find new people wanting to get involved in the campaign against Brexit. We expect many new people at our next meeting with Alan...

Far right in Leeds

The far right organised a “Yellow Vest” pro-Brexit demo in Leeds on 19 January. Since it was also a RMT strike day on Northern Trains, a special effort was made by the Leeds labour movement to turn out for the city centre picket. In Manchester recently, fascists on a “yellow vest” demo abused and threatened a picket line. About 100 turned out to back the RMT: Labour people, various flavours of socialists, Momentum, Young Labour, and Leeds Anti Fascist Network. A couple of fascists turned up to jeer and film, but the main yellow vest group stayed clear. The far ­right protest was called by...

"No deal" Brexit and the Irish border

In response to Theresa May’s defeat in her EU Withdrawal Agreement in the House of Commons on 15 January, and the looming prospect of a “no deal” Brexit, Irish transport minister Shane Ross told reporters at a press conference that he “would anticipate that there would be checks” on lorries coming from Scotland to the Republic of Ireland via Northern Ireland. Afterwards, speaking “privately” to Foreign Minister Simon Coveney (so Ross thought, but his words were caught on microphone), he asked whether or not he should have revealed that fact. Coveney responded: “Yes, but we can’t get into where...

2018 set carbon records

The US government shutdown has meant that many leading agencies such as NASA and NOAA have yet to publish their climate analyses across the key global datasets for 2018. Despite that, Carbon Brief’s latest report shows that 2018 set a number of records. Record levels of greenhouse gas concentrations were reached for CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide. There are still serious net global emissions of all these gases, and they decline slowly: it takes several decades for CO2 concentrations to decline to 50% of an initial level, around seven years for methane, and the best part of a century for...

Sex and the City Goes to Holyrood

At first sight "Mary Queen of Scots", released in the UK on 18 January, appears to be another celluloid contribution to the cult of Mariolatry. Its trailer portrays Mary as an armour-clad warrior leading her troops into battle, a target of religious misogyny, a feisty heroine who faces down Queen Elizabeth, a victim of patriarchal politics, a champion of equal rights, and a fatal casualty of her own virtues. At times, it is true, the film builds up Mary into a kind of cult figure for twenty-first-century feminism, liberal values and gender-identity politics. But that is secondary, by far, to...

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