Religion & politics

Women's Fightback: Anti-choice MP becomes Women’s Minister

Maria Caulfield, a Tory MP who supported cutting the abortion time limit and voted against legalising abortion in Northern Ireland, has been named as the minister for women. Caulfield, the MP for Lewes, was previously a member of parliamentary “pro-life” group, stating that she wants to be a “voice for the unborn child”. In voting against buffer zones around abortion clinics she explained those accused of harassing women wishing to access abortion services may in fact be trying to “comfort” people. “For me, the definition of what’s harassment is open to interpretation. That’s my concern —...

Connolly and Partition: summary

Part of a series of articles on Connolly: workersliberty.org/connolly “Insofar as national peace is in any way possible in a capitalist society based on exploitation, profit making and strife it is attainable only under a consistently and thoroughly democratic republican system of government the constitution of which contains a fundamental law that prohibits any privileges whatsoever to any one nation and any encroachment whatsoever upon the rights of a national minority. This particularly calls for wide regional autonomy and fully democratic local government, with the boundaries of the self...

BJP out of the Labour Party!

The BJP announces Neeraj Patil (in black jacket) has joined it at a press conference in Karnataka, March 2014 There has been significant disquiet about left-wing candidates excluded from Labour Party parliamentary selections on absurd pretexts. Starmer’s leadership has grotesquely abused the notion of “due diligence” — disqualifying candidates because of bad past behaviour — to rule out even left-wingers who under the rules should automatically make the list because they have multiple union nominations. So far, the unions are making little fuss. But in Camberwell and Peckham (South London)...

How Tories won a huge swing in Leicester amidst Truss debacle

Despite the Tories crashing in the opinion polls, they’ve just won a council by-election on a huge swing – in Leicester. On 13 October, in North Evington ward, in Leicester East parliamentary constituency, the Tories took 49.6% of the vote – up 32.7% . Labour was down 49.8% to 22.5%; and the Greens up 20% to 25.8%. Turnout was exceptionally high for a council by-election - 44.9%. What’s going on? In an area dominated by people of Indian background, this dramatic result seems to stem both from a rise of the Hindu nationalist right and from pandering to it by Labour - who ran a Hindu right...

Why secularism matters

About the author: "Hein Htet Kyaw (Abu Bakr)" is a socialist hacktivist actively struggling against the state blasphemy laws and state censorship in Myanmar. He is a spokesperson for an atheist/humanist organisation called Burmese Atheists. He describes himself as a libertarian Marxist who sees Stalinism as oppressive and exploitative as capitalism, probably more. In almost every socialist publication of the 21st century, whenever the self-claimed socialists discuss the term "secularism", they like to discuss it by criticising the liberal left like Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and the new...

Collaboration between transphobic feminists and the far right — some facts

Transphobic feminist Julia Beck on the far-right Tucker Carlson's show To confront the current resurgence of transphobia requires that we acknowledge and understand the phenomenon of collaboration between many prominent transphobic feminists (who now often describe themselves euphemistically, and inaccurately, as 'gender critical' ['GC'] feminists) and the hard right. When Judith Butler wrote in The Guardian that 'GC' feminists were allying with the worst sorts of reactionaries ( 1 , 2 ), some left-wing activists were genuinely surprised or sceptical to hear such an accusation. This article is...

The Catholic leftist who fired anti-abortion protest

Above: John Cavanaugh-O'Keefe One aspect of the American anti-abortion movement that is seldom remarked upon is how its initial leaders came not from the evangelical right, but rather from the Catholic left. This is not to say that Catholic leftists pioneered American anti-abortionist politics in general. Rather, left-wing Catholic radicals in the 1970s spearheaded anti-abortionism as a modern, confrontational, street-level protest movement characterised by direct action. The key figure here is John O’Keefe. Born in 1950 to an Irish-American family who lived in Chevy Chase, Maryland, O’Keefe’s...

Connolly and the Protestant workers (1)

In March 1972, the London government abolished Protestant Unionist Home Rule in the Six Counties and substituted for it direct rule from Westminster.

Socialism and religion

Dorothy Day (1897-1980) founded a later strand of Catholic socialism, with the Catholic Worker movement in New York City from 1933 Perhaps upon no point are the doctrines of Socialism so much misunderstood, and so much misrepresented, as in their relation to Religion. When driven into a corner upon every other point at issue; when from the point of view of economics, of politics, or of morality, he is worsted in argument, this question of Religion invariably forms the final entrenchment of the enemy of Socialism — especially in Ireland. “But it is opposed to Religion,” constitutes the last...

The religiosity of Connolly and Larkin (2)

This is the title of a pamphlet by Patrick J. Cooney of Bridgeport, Conn., which we would like to see in the hands of all our readers, and especially those who are struggling towards the light out of the economic darkness of today.

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