Solidarity 040, 6 November 2003

Above: Muayad (second figure to right of the speaker, in plain blue shirt) on a May Day protest, 2018 Muayad is a soft-spoken Iraqi who meets me in a busy railway station and insists that he pay for the coffee. When he recalls protests outside the offices of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Baghdad, it's hard to imagine. "American soldiers were holding their guns on their chests and pointing them at our heads. If things had got out of control, we could have been killed." But that's the strongest impression I get from talking to him. The media's version of Iraq is often all fanatics...

Alan Johnson reviews Marx For Our Times: Adventures and Misadventures of a Critique by Daniel Bensaid Read this review here . Sacha Ismail reviews Diego Garcia In Times of Globalisation Read this review here . Cathy Nugent reviews Reclaim the State, Experiments in Popular Democracy by Hilary Wainwright Read this review here . Paul Hampton reviews Change the World Without Taking Power - The Meaning of Revolution Today by John Holloway Read this review here .

By Vicki Morris Here we are, tens of thousands of us, in Paris. We had a more or less long journey to get here, and from some regions we had a dangerous journey. Some of us had trouble getting permission to enter Fortress Europe; life will be harder for some of us when we get back home because we came here. We paid good money to get in-those who paid three euros will count the cost the most. To get the most from the event, we will study the agendas and run around Paris and probably we will miss sleep. We will hear people we agree with and some that will make us very angry and some we simply...

Elia Kazan was a great film director. His films were usually on the side of progress and humanity, and, in that sense, he was a man of the left. But his reputation with people on the left, even with liberals, has been blemished by one overwhelming fact: at the height of the 'McCarthyite' anti-communist witch-hunt in the USA, he appeared before the investigating committee as a 'friendly witness' - that is, one who 'named names' of others who had been in or around the US Communist Party at the same time as himself. He did that to secure the possibility of continuing to work in Hollywood. The...

Martin Thomas attended the congress of the French Trotskyist group LCR (Revolutionary Communist League) in Paris on 31 October-2 November. This is his report. A working-class "emergency plan" against unemployment, insecurity and poverty will be at the centre of French revolutionary socialists' campaign for the Euro-elections in June 2004 and France's regional elections in March 2004. At its congress the LCR voted to approve a draft agreement for joint lists with the other main Marxist grouping in France, Lutte Ouvrière. The lists will declare that "by voting for us, you can elect men and women...

In 1986-7 Socialist Organiser, Solidarity's predecessor, carried a debate on "what is Zionism?", an issue recently discussed in this paper. In the last issue of Solidarity we reprinted some extracts from the 1986-7 debate. We print the rest here. A perverse definition Martin Thomas, Socialist Organiser 297, 8/01/87 Faced with rising anti-semitism in late 19th century Britain, Eleanor Marx used to declare at public meetings: "I am a Jewess". Strictly speaking she wasn't, but she wanted to confront the anti-semites head-on. The position of Sean Matgamna is in some ways similar. Faced with "anti...

Julius Jacobson - Julie to his many friends and comrades - founder and editor for more than 40 years of the American socialist journal New Politics, died on 8 March 2003. In the first of three articles Barry Finger appraises his life. The articles first appeared in the Summer 2003 edition of New Politics. It has been said that 25 years in the life of a small magazine is the equivalent of an individual attaining the age of one hundred. By that standard New Politics, for which Julie travailed to his last breath, has truly earned its place as one of the venerable mainstays of American radicalism...

It was "the largest left-wing demonstration the country has seen for years", according to the Israeli daily Haaretz. More than 100,000 people - the equivalent of over a million in Britain - rallied in Tel Aviv on 1 November. Formally, it was only a ceremony to mark the eighth anniversary of the killing of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin by a right-wing Israeli zealot, but "the the banners held up were all political and very specific: Leave the [Occupied] Territories - save the country; The Geneva Accord - New Hope, etc." (The Geneva Accord is a new two-states plan recently produced by...

Firefighters, postalworkers, Tube: Make it a Winter of Discontent! By Gerry Bates As Solidarity goes to press, more and more firefighters across the country are joining unofficial industrial action. This battle comes just after the postalworkers' victory, through unofficial strikes, against Royal Mail bosses' attempt to impose unilateral changes in work conditions. Meanwhile, London Underground workers are ballotting for industrial action on safety after the recent derailments on lines now contracted-out to private maintenance. In two depots they have already ballotted on action over...

The Guardian's coverage of the expulsion of George Galloway from the Labour Party on 22 October was not only pro-Galloway, but notably uncritical. It took Galloway as he chose to present himself - as a left-wing martyr to the anti-war cause. It only serves to underline one of the great and continuing mysteries in British politics right now: why does the left, in the broadest sense, including liberals like those who produce the Guardian, give almost uncritical support to Galloway? On the platform with Galloway at the rally at Friends Meeting House, London, on 29 October, to launch a new...