Youth

The Court of Appeal have overruled the Bell v Tavistock judgement. This is good news for young trans people under 18. It means that they are no longer legally obliged to get permission from the court to receive puberty blockers. It is also good news for other young people whose ability to make choices about medical treatments rests on “Gillick competency”. “Gillick competency” is based on a legal case in 1985 in which Victoria Gillick was defeated in her attempt to rescind NHS guidance which allowed under 18s to access contraception without parental approval. The original Bell v Tavistock...

What do we mean by socialism? More here The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a right-wing think tank, is mildly alarmed. It takes its new research indicating that young people are mostly sympathetic to socialism seriously, and urges supporters of capitalism not to dismiss it as “social media hype”, temporary “student radicalism” or a “passing fad which ended with Jeremy Corbyn’s resignation”. It calls its findings a “wake-up call” and a “challenge”. They are also, and even more, a challenge for socialists. The research commissioned by the IEA involved polling just under 2,000 people in the...

The Workers’ Liberty summer camp will be on 3-5 September, near Haslemere in Surrey. Tickets are £10 unwaged, £15 low-waged/student, £25 waged. Buy them on eventbrite here. A weekend of fires, partying, nature, good food and socialist education. In previous years we have run the camp in a farmhouse; this year, due to coronavirus, the camp will be fully outdoors, sleeping in tents only. We will have access to hot water, proper showers, and proper toilets. Covid Safety: We will be taking various measures to ensure that the camp is Covid safe. Please take a lateral flow or PCR test before...

Voting intention among 18-24 year olds, +/- since 2019 general election (YouGov, 9-10 June): Labour: 35% (-21) Green: 27% (+23) Conservative: 21% (-); Lib Dem: 12% (+1); SNP: 3% (-3); Reform UK: 1% (-) Other polls have also suggested sharply rising Green support among young people. The big shift is, surely, one result of Keir Starmer’s attempts to chase after mainly older voters (reckoned, rightly or quite often wrongly, to be tied to socially-conservative attitudes), by taking nationalistic and regressive positions, while having little to say about issues of economics and living standards...

Set up to back internationalist, class-struggle candidates in the current Young Labour elections (nominations close 27 September, ballot 19 October to 12 November), Young Labour Internationalists also aim to connect Young Labour activists with social movements and struggles. In particular, they plan to get young activists involved in the NHS workers’ fight, and in making solidarity with freedom struggles in other countries: Belarus, China, Montenegro, Poland... You can read their full platform

The left-wing tide in the Labour Party which carried Corbyn into the Leader’s Office in 2015 was driven by a surge in engagement in left-wing politics by young people. The elements of genuine socialism in Corbyn’s platform were a source of hope for many young people. That opened the possibility of building a real youth movement, and overcoming the Blairite stranglehold on Labour’s student wing and the sluggishness of a Young Labour that was prevented by bureaucracy and dwindling membership from developing real local roots. Unfortunately, five years on, that promise hasn’t been realised. While...

The great wave of street protests after the killing of George Floyd on 25 May still continues, but the pace looks like slowing. Activists will be thinking about how they can continue their efforts over the months and years needed to win and consolidate change. That this killing has generated so broad a protest must be partly because a pandemic which has hit the worst-off hardest everywhere, and a wave of job cuts which has done similar, especially in the USA, are in everyone's minds.

The Office of National Statistics compile statistics on the number of Hate Crimes reported each year. They have more than doubled since 2012 to 103,000 in 2018-19. Of those, nearly 79,000 were race hate crimes. Between April 2018 and March 2019 the police made 376,000 stop and searches In England and Wales, a rate of 7 per 1,000 people. The rate for white people, however was 4 per 1,000 and for Black people 38 per 1,000.