Left groups and people

"The Gvardeiska mine is not giving in!" - occupation over wages, conditions and management, 2020 • “A government of millionaires against billionaires”: Denys Pilash analyses Zelensky • Ukrainian trade unionists battle against Putin and for rights: interview with Ivanna Khrapko • Ukrainian socialists hold conference • Ukrainian feminists on the front line: interviews with Kateryna Kostrova, Yana Wolf and Katya Gritseva • “The right to resist”: global feminist anti-war manifesto • Women and Roma in the war • What socialists are doing in Ukraine: interview with Denys Pilash • Delegation to...

Michael Chessum met Martin Thomas from Solidarity on 15 October to talk about his new book on Corbynism, This Is Only The Beginning . Near the end of the book (p.210) it says: “Socialist was the movement’s prevailing adjective, but its immediate policy programme was… social democracy, and there was little or no collective discussion inside Corbynism about what a truly socialist or anti-capitalist programme might look like in the future”. Wasn’t that fundamental? And wasn’t the same lack also true of the “movements” of 2010-15 which the book describes as feeding into Corbynism? Corbynism was an...

Paul Le Blanc has been one of the most prolific revolutionary socialist authors in recent decades, publishing scores of books, articles and reviews, in large part devoted to the early twentieth century Marxist tradition. Le Blanc’s work has numerous virtues. He writes clean and readable prose, makes theoretical issues accessible, represents various points of view objectively, puts the historical material in context and explains its relevance to present-day activism. He is honest about his own mistakes and the evolution of his views. And Le Blanc takes an ecumenical approach, willing to engage...

On Saturday 17 September, two members of Workers’ Liberty (virtually) attended the national conference of the Ukrainian socialist organisation Sotsialny Rukh (Social Movement). The conference took place over one day, and was attended by politicians, supporters and labour movement activists from throughout the world. The conference served as a chance for Sotsialny Rukh to reflect on the work they’ve done since the outbreak of the war in February. Membership has grown. Though it is not a mass movement yet, the influence the group has had in terms of coordinating support for the Ukrainian working...

A debate was held on 2 July at Queen Mary University London on the Ukrainian war between Alex Callinicos and Gilbert Achcar, two communist writers, as part of the 2022 Marxism programme organised by the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP). To stop the Ukraine war and prevent weapons from being sent, as Alex said? or to send weapons to Ukraine because Russian imperialism would not give up war and occupation without weapons, as Gilbert said? After the debate, I told Gilbert that this situation was more complicated than the two slogans. It is possible to talk about the attitude of the communists and...

Many on the left have started pushing slogans like “Kick the Tories out”. And us too . The unions, we argue, must mobilise industrially, and also unite with the Labour rank and file to tie Labour to scrapping anti-union laws, taxing the rich, restoring public services and benefits, and public ownership (including of energy, to decarbonise). The Socialist had “Kick the Tories out” as its front-page headline on 18 June; Socialist Appeal had “Time to sweep them out!”; Socialist Worker had placards, “Kick the Tories out!”, and for months now has had headlines like “Finish him [Johnson] off”,...

It’s good that France’s neoliberal president Emmanuel Macron comes out of the 19 June second round of France’s National Assembly elections with only 246 seats out of 577, way short of a majority. And Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s electoral tactic has worked well. The Nupes alliance agreed just one candidate from among its four components — Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise, the Socialist Party, the Communist Party, and the Green EELV — in each constituency, and so reached the second-round run-off in 370-odd seats, far more than it would have done with four first-round candidates everywhere. It came out...

As Dale Street reports ( Solidarity 637 ), the debates on Ukraine at Lutte Ouvrière (LO) fete this year (27-29 May) were poor. Still, I think people in our Workers’ Liberty contingent had a good time. The Fete itself is impressive for bringing together many thousands of socialists and workers — working-class families from the region and groups of workmates brought by LO activists from all over France — in a fun event that mixes genuinely good food and entertainment with a really inspiring and educational international meeting of revolutionaries. Workers’ Liberty has described the world...

As a tactic, Jean-Luc Mélenchon's Nupes alliance of his La France Insoumise with the Socialist Party, the Communist Party, and the Greens (EELV), on a soft left platform, worked well in the first round of France's National Assembly election, on 12 June. In a low turnout (48%), Nupes got about the same vote (26%) as the Ensemble coalition of Emmanuel Macron, who was re-elected president with 59% on the second round on 24 April. Having one official Nupes candidate in each seat, rather than four different candidates from the four components, means that Nupes gets into the 19 June run-off votes in...

We wrote this in response to Transnational Social Strike's call for signatories to their statement , as an organisation that opposes Putin's war. TSS declined to publish it — or any replies — and the two signatories we contacted, Plan C and Angry Workers of the World, requesting they publish it instead, did not reply. We are, however, debating these organisations and others in Bristol on 25 June . We welcome further debate. On 24 February 2022, the same day that Transnational Social Strike published their statement , Russia invaded Ukraine. Putin’s military aggression has to the date of...