Solidarity 064, 6 January 2005

In October 1917 soviets — institutions of working class democratic self-organisation — led by the Bolsheviks took power in Russia. Lenin’s Bolshevik party did not believe that socialism could be created in underdeveloped Russia. The Bolsheviks thought that the Russian workers were but the advanced guard for the German and west-European workers. They expected revolution to erupt in Europe. Indeed it did, beginning with Germany in November 1918. Soviets appeared all over Europe. In 1919 Soviet regimes ruled for a few weeks in Bavaria and Hungary before being crushed by bourgeois forces. While...

Hardly a day goes by without news of research involving stem cells. It is also a subject of hot political debate: the Swiss recently voted 2 to 1 in favour of allowing it, while the US forbids the use of government money in some stem cell research. Proponents include medical scientists and supporters of people with conditions such as spinal injury (such as the late Christopher Reeve) and Alzheimer’s disease (such as the family of Ronald Reagan). Opponents range from the religious Right to some Green Parties (as in the Swiss referendum). To be precise, the political opposition is directed at...

When Derek Simpson was elected General Secretary of Amicus many thought it would lead to greater democracy in the union, and make the union more critical towards the Labour government. There was a rational basis for such a belief. The two unions (MSF and AEEU) which had merged to form Amicus had both been under the thumb of a right wing, authoritarian leadership — Roger Lyons in MSF, and Ken Jackson in the AEEU. Both leaders were confirmed Blairites. Simpson, on the other hand, was backed by the Engineering Gazette (the Broad left in the AEEU) and by Left Unity (the Broad Left in the MSF). In...

The demand for national liberation, for the right of self-determination of a people, is understood by socialists to be a demand for radical, consistent democracy. This at once separates us from those who, such as the Buchananite paleocons, place the inviolability of the national principle above all other considerations and who may consistently oppose imperial interventions on that basis. Yet, this demand on the part of socialists for the right to self-determination may even seem self-contradictory insofar as the final aim of socialism is an international political and economic order that...

Upcoming events: IRAQ, DEBT AND THE IMF. Thursday 13 January, 6.30pm. Golden Lion pub, King’s Cross Road, London. Organised by Iraqi Workers’ Solidarity Group. “Jubilee Iraq” speaker invited NO SWEAT STEERING COMMITTEE. Meets at 11.30am on Sunday 23 January at the University of London Union, Malet Street, London, room 2B. Nearest tube: Euston. All activists welcome. Meeting runs till 3pm. Campaigns to be discussed include: G8 summit, London No Sweat fashion show, Haiti appeal CHINESE NEW YEAR. Sunday 13 February, Chinatown, London. Leafleting for labour rights in China. Details: 07719 283132...

Television over the Christmas period? Well, it was the usual rubbish. Lists of the top 100 Christmas repeats.… Gone are even the Only Fools and Horses type specials. Let alone the Morecambe and Wise classics. (Well, they aren’t gone, of course, because they are… repeated. But, I mean, new programmes of that quality are gone.) One bright spot, however, was the Christmas special of “Shameless”. I enjoyed the hilarious happenings that resulted when the Gallaghers’ estate was quarantined by the army after family friends Kev and Lip sold a stolen lorryload of poisoned meat around the area in the...

Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean, is one of the biggest US military bases outside the USA. To clear space for it, the people of the islands were deported by the British government, the former colonial ruler. 2,000 people and their children were forcibly removed and abandoned on the dockside in Port Louis, on Mauritius main island. For 30 years the forcible removal of the Chagossians was kept “secret”, mainly through the use of the UK Official Secrets Act. In 2000, however, the Chagossians won a case in the UK courts for the right of return, only to lose another court case in 2003. At the...

Late last year union leaders of the public sector unions met to discuss the way forward on pension rights and provision. This meeting had been convened on the initiative of the civil service union PCS but was called under the auspices of the TUC. In the civil service, as with the rest of the public sector, the Government is proposing to raise the pension retirement age and is talking of ending the final salary scheme. The PCS is trying to build a common cross public sector union position, hence the meeting. In the jointly agreed statement following the meeting the TUC said, “The TUC will be...