Solidarity 412, 27 July 2016

Who the hell is Owen Smith?

Well, indeed, that’s the point. Many of the opponents of Jeremy Corbyn inside the Parliamentary Labour Party have long records of supporting anti-working-class Labour governments. These people are unelectable as Labour leader. Smith only became an MP in 2010 and so has not had time to get his hands conspicuously filthy on behalf of Brown or Blair. What we do know about Smith, however, is he is another pushy middle-class man on the make. From 2005-8 Smith made £80k per year working in a senior post for the drugs giant Pfizer. According to the Mail, “Mr Smith was head of government relations for...

The Labour Party struggle - dealing with abuse

There is no doubt that many on the Labour right are cynically inventing, exaggerating and manipulating stories of abuse within the party as part of their war against Corbyn and on members’ rights and democracy. The left must fight this. It must simultaneously be careful not to deny that people on the left can ever be guilty of abuse, or downplay the crucial, even decisive, importance of challenging sexism, homophobia and other forms of bigotry in the labour movement. Faced by shameful lying and cynicism, and the fact that numerous instances of abuse, sexism, etc, by right-wingers (including...

“Blue lives matter” used to smear Black Lives Matter movement

″Blue lives matter″ was the relentless message from America’s political leaders and the media establishment after the shootings in Dallas [7 July] that left five police officers dead. But that message is a bitter pill to those who recognize it is being used to sideline and silence a movement demanding justice for victims of police murder after two more killings of black men, captured on video, became international news. The renewed protests following the deaths of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Philando Castile in St. Paul, Minnesota (see Solidarity 411) — the largest national...

French Labour law fight falls foul of State of Emergency

The first phase of an intense four-month mobilisation against France’s Labour Law Bill came to a close when the Bill was adopted by the government, by means of the use, for the third time, of Article 49-3 of the French Constitution, which allows the forced passage through parliament of a Bill without the possibility to debate or amend it. The government has got its way, but at the price of a terrible piece of blackmail, on the social front as well as on the civil liberties front. Incapable of protecting the population from the attacks of Islamist terrorists, the government has been incapable...

Matthew Caygill 1955 — 2016

Workers’ Liberty is saddened to hear of the sudden death of Matthew Caygill, a Marxist historian, a left wing activist and trade unionist. Matthew started out his political life in the anti-Apartheid movement and through that ended up joining the Socialist Workers Party. Eventually he and others left the SWP over their “anti-imperialist turn” in the late 80s and early 90s which Caygill criticised as a move away from the anti-Stalinist left tradition that the IS/ SWP grew out of. Some of his criticisms chimed with ours, and he retained an interest in the anti-Stalinist critical Marxist...

Re-elect Corbyn - fight to transform the labour movement

The labour movement faces a dramatic choice. Either the Labour Party will be reclaimed by its right wing (covered by the soft left), the progress we have made over the last year in reviving a political labour movement will be halted and reversed, and there will be a purge of the left — or Jeremy Corbyn will be re-elected and big possibilities will open up for moving forward further and faster. The impressive left-wing mobilisation that has burgeoned since the coup against Corbyn began shows that we can win. But it is by no means certain that we will. We need to strain every muscle over the...

Davey Hopper, 1943-2016

Davey Hopper, General Secretary of the Durham Miners Association, died suddenly on 16 July. The defeat of the 1984-1985 miners’ strike destroyed communities, lives and set back the cause of working class struggle for a generation. No one knew that better then Hopper, and he with others devoted the next 30 years of his life to turning the Durham Miners’ Association into a force which fought back for the community and the wider movement. Hopper was a working miner and shop steward in the Durham coalfield at the start of the Miners strike. He rose to prominence as an advocate of militant...

Abolish the death penalty!

Saudi Arabia has executed 99 people during 2016, more than at the same point last year. Crimes punishable by beheading, stoning or firing squad in Saudi include blasphemy, drug offences, adultery, murder, and “false prophecy.” Excluding China – whose regime keeps the number of state killings a close secret – 90% of known executions during 2015 were carried out by Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Iran executes more people than any other state. Last year Iran killed nearly one thousand prisoners, many for drug-related convictions. Iran also executes juvenile prisoners. In the US 28 prisoners...

No arms to Saudi Arabia

Since March 2015 Saudi Arabia has been fighting a vicious bombing campaign and imposing a blockade of Yemen in defence of Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, who Saudi Arabia wants to retain Yemen’s Presidency. Hadi and the Saudis are backed by the West. British arms manufacturers have sold planes and bombs to the Saudis which are being used during the current campaign. The Campaign Against the Arms Trade is conducting a legal battle in the British courts attempting to stop weapons sales to Saudi Arabia. In July the High Court agreed to allow CAAT to take the government’s policy — to continue arming the...

Phillip Green: the face of capitalism

Senior MPs have savaged ex-BHS boss Sir Philip Green for running the high street chain into the ground while amassing “a fortune beyond the dreams of avarice.” A joint report published by the Commons business and work and pensions committees accuses Green of trying to blame anyone but himself for the firm’s problems, despite systematically taking huge sums out of its coffers while leaving BHS workers’ pension fund desperately short. MPs said Mr Green has a “moral duty” to make a “large financial contribution” to the 20,000 pensioners at risk of losing a big chunk of their payouts. The pension...

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