Democracy, monarchy, republicanism

SWP: Forget elections! Radical action needed!

Despite the wall-to-wall Scottish media coverage of campaigning in the run-up to last Thursday’s Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election, some people on the doorstep nonetheless responded to canvassers with the question: “By-election? What by-election?” Perhaps their source of information (i.e. their source of an absence of information) was Socialist Worker , paper of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). Tucked away in a small article on page three of issue 2874 of the paper (27th September) were four short sentences mentioning that the by-election would be taking place and that “media reports”...

Iranian workers protests spread

On 27 September 17 workers employed by the Iranian company, the National Steel Group, were sentenced to prison and flogging. The trial took place in the southern city of Ahvaz. The workers were charged with, “disrupting public order by inciting disturbance and controversy” and their “crime” was to demand wage increases, and that the company implements the very basic protections provided by Iran’s employment law. The workers can avoid three-month prison terms if they pay fines of 2.5 million tomans (about £40). The fine will be difficult to pay as the working-class has been the main victim of...

America braced for Trump trials

Your honour, I have stated in this court that I am opposed to the form of our present government; that I am opposed to the social system in which we live; that I believe in the change of both but by perfectly peaceable and orderly means…. So spoke Eugene V Debs, Socialist Party candidate for the US presidency, on trial for sedition in 1918. Debs had campaigned against conscription in World War I, opposed as he was to the slaughter of millions of working people in what was an inter-imperialist war. He proudly pleaded guilty, was sentenced to ten years and launched his 1920 presidential campaign...

Fight for liberty!

Early on 6 May, before the day’s coronation procession, police arrested Graham Smith and other organisers of the republican protest planned around the procession, and confiscated their placards. The cops cited, so the BBC reports, “suspicion of affray, public order offences, breach of the peace and conspiracy to cause a public nuisance”. On 8 May the police told the organisers they would take “no further action”; the organisers are now talking to lawyers about suing the police. Republic is a “moderate” organisation. It discussed its protest plans with the police in advance, and gained approval...

The Morning Star changes tune on monarchy

Credit where it’s due: the Morning Star ’s coverage of the coronation has been pretty good and the 6-7 May edition carried an editorial (“The monarchy isn’t neutral and the coronation is not a harmless spectacle”) that in most respects wouldn’t be out of place in Solidarity . The same edition’s front page headline was “Not Our King”. That may seem uncontroversial for a publication controlled by the Communist Party of Britain. But some of us can remember what the paper had to say about virtually the same slogan back in September 2022: “while the motives — and, given arrests, the courage — of...

Labour moves against affiliating to Republic

The Guardian ( 5 May ) has highlighted a message from Labour officials to local Labour Parties that they must not affiliate to a slew of campaigns, including mild and respectable ones like the anti-monarchist group Republic. The instructions derive from a 2021 rule change which said that no local Labour Party could affiliate to campaigns not already endorsed by Labour's National Executive Committee. Effectively, it rules out local Labour Parties being more left-wing (or more right-wing, for that matter) in their formal campaigning affiliations than the Labour Party leadership. The cited...

No kings, no bosses!

One of Boris Johnson’s last gambits before being ousted as Tory leader and prime minister in summer 2022 was to ask the Queen to dissolve Parliament and call a new election. The move would stall the Tory rebellion, and force MPs to rally behind him for the election. The Queen, or the Queen’s advisers, had the sense to say no. But the monarch has the power to make such moves. In 1975, the Governor General of Australia, acting on behalf of the Queen, sacked the reforming Labor government there. It is doubtful now that the monarch has the authority to sack a government against the will of the...

Young people turn against the monarchy

A new poll from YouGov finds UK public opinion continuing to shift against the monarchy – despite a lack of political leadership, even on the left. The poll found 58% in favour keeping the monarchy against 26% for a republic – a definite shift from 62-22 only seven months ago. But among 18-24 year olds the poll found 38% wanted a republic, and only 32% to keep the monarchy (a lot of don’t knows). Seven months ago YouGov found 47% of young people for the monarchy, 33% against. Among all under-35s, monarchism is now ahead only 39-36. Whereas the new poll found 2019 Conservative voters supported...

Capitalism and the battles of democracy

“The first step in the revolution by the working class”, wrote Marx in the Communist Manifesto , “is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy”. Thus the 1888 English translation supervised by Engels. A literal translation of the 1848 German text would be something like: “the first step in the workers’ revolution is the elevation of the proletariat to the ruling class, the winning of democracy”. Hal Draper commented, fairly I think, that the 1848 text is “cryptic” as “a way of intentionally avoiding a definite statement” on whether democracy...

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