For equality, against bigotry

In the last year Workers’ Liberty has published material about both Shapurji Sakatvala and Dadabhai Naoroji – two opponents of British rule in India and, in their different ways, socialists elected to the UK Parliament a century ago (Naoroji was MP for Central Finsbury 1892-5 and Saklatvala MP for Battersea North 1922-3 and 1924-9). Saklatvala was very much part of the Marxist tradition and Naoroji part of our tradition in a broader sense. Naoroji was the first person from one of the British Empire’s subject peoples to be elected to Parliament; Saklatvala the third. The second was Mancherjee...

Second of a series of articles on the Tulsa Massacre of June 1921. Part one here and part three here. “The night of the massacre, I was awakened by my family. My parents and five siblings were there. I was told we had to leave and that was it. “I will never forget the violence of the white mob when we left our home. I still see black men being shot, black bodies lying in the street. I still smell smoke and see fire. I still see black businesses being burned. I still hear airplanes flying overhead. I hear the screams. I have lived through the massacre every day.” That was Viola Fletcher, 107...

A Labour Party leaflet distributed in Orford, Cheshire, for the 2021 local government election campaign promises that a Labour council would “deal with traveller incursions”. (Pictured below.) For many opportunist Labour politicians, calling for harsh crackdowns on travellers can be seen as an easy – and still-respectable – means of getting votes from bigoted constituents. In 2019, another Labour front-bencher, Toby Perkins, published election leaflets that said that “Travellers were extorting thousands of pounds for leaving illegal settlements,” and that he was “disgusted” by this. What is...

Republished from our school workers' blog Class Struggle On Wednesday 31 March, their last day of term, almost a thousand students at Pimlico Academy, the flagship school run by Future Academies, sat down in the playground and refused to go to lessons. The students were protesting a racist school uniform policy, which instructed students with afro hairstyles to cut their hair and students wearing hijabs to cover all of their hair; miserly and “humiliating” free school meal provision; the failure to support students that have been sexually assaulted at school; a whitewashed history curriculum...

On 23 February, the Malaysian government deported 1,086 people back to Myanmar. This was against the orders of the Malaysian High Court, which ruled on the same day that the Myanmar nationals should be allowed to stay temporarily. There are millions of exploited migrants in Malaysia, and over a hundred thousand Burmese refugees. The government announced plans to deport 1,200 people, including children. 114 people are unaccounted for by the government as they were not handed over to the Myanmar navy. Despite the Malaysian government’s claims that they would not deport any Rohingya or official...

In his first few hours as US President Joe Biden put the US on the path to re-joining the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organisation, stopped building the Mexico border wall, made mask-wearing mandatory on federal property, announced an end to the ban on trans people serving in the military, cancelled permits for the Keystone XL oil pipeline, strengthened the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programme, added gender-neutral pronoun options to the online White House contact form, and enacted a number of other measures that would gladden the heart of any liberal or leftist...

The Uyghurs, a majority-Muslim people who mostly live in East Turkestan, are facing persecution and genocide at the hands of the Chinese State. More than a million people are interned in camps, where torture, abuse and rape are reported to be taking place. China’s propaganda has stepped up following a series of news stories internationally about their treatment of the Uyghur population. State media recently released a series of short films subtitled in English, titled Embracing a New Life, featuring Uyghur women narrating, in Mandarin Chinese, their “empowering” experiences after “re-education...

Women have been at the forefront of resistance to India’s Hindu nationalist regime and women activists have been targeted for repression. In its most recent phase, Indian farmers’ protest movement against the Modi government’s neoliberal agricultural reforms has involved women in large numbers. Two high profile cases of repression against young women in the movement have dramatised the harsh repression against it. The Western media has given quite a bit of attention to Disha Ravi, a 21 year-old climate activist arrested on 13 February in connection with Greta Thunberg’s tweeting in support of...

This write-up follows a discussion in Workers ’ Liberty’s socialist feminist reading group. Usually held in South London, the monthly reading group has been held online during the pandemic. To get involved, write to: womensfightback@workersliberty.org Feminism, Interrupted is the second book from Lola Olufemi, co-author of A FLY Girls Guide to University. A cross-between an introductory text and manifesto, the book is a collection of ten essays covering topics from trans rights and islamophobic misogyny to food and art. The first chapter, “Know your history”, reflects on a rich history of...