Solidarity 084, 17 November 2005

Cynthia Baldry, 1949-1975

Exactly 30 years ago, on 19 November 1975 Cynthia Baldry died in Liverpool. She was a member of one of Solidarity/AWL’s forerunners, Workers’ Fight. Aged 26 at her death, she had suffered since the age of 19 from a rare and incurable disease which finally killed her, lupus erythematosus. Her political life spanned five years of gradual physical deterioration. Yet it was by any standards a life of intense activity and dedication to the cause of socialism and the groups she joined to fight in that cause — first the International Socialism group (now the SWP) and then Workers’ Fight. These were...

Clothes with no emperor?

By Martin Thomas About 30 people attended a conference on 12 November aiming to “relaunch the Socialist Alliance”. It showed, I fear, that the erosion and dissipation of the old Socialist Alliance minority is probably irreversible. Several of those at the conference are well-respected activists in various localities and campaigns. We can only sympathise with their wish to find a flexible framework to work together; but it doesn’t look to me as if anything viable has been “relaunched”. The Socialist Alliance started in the early 1990s as a small formation — some Socialist Party members, and a...

Throw out Sarkozy and Chirac!

By Olivier Delbeke, member of the editorial committee of La Lettre de Liaisons Several days before the riots, quite deliberately, the minister of the interior, Nicolas Sarkozy, called the youth of the suburbs “rabble” and said this “rabble” needed “industrial cleaning”. It is likely that the incident at Clichy was part of a deliberate plan to provoke clashes in order to justify a strong-arm response. What Sarkozy did not foresee was the ignition of a whole layer of youth, the most oppressed, the poorest, those to whom education promises the least. This ignition was largely spontaneous: the...

Building links of solidarity

From Débat Militant 80, 10 November 2005 Today the youth [in the riot-hit districts] usually see no chance of finding a job. They live in districts where unemployment is 40%, where the public services have been shut down, where there are no more social services, hardly any teachers, and almost no activity for the youth outside the stairwells of their blocks of flats. The youth, deprived of any hope of change, facing daily disdain, express their rebellions as best they can. The fact that they chose the wrong targets - burning their neighbours’ cars, schools, gyms, and nurseries - reveals the...

No to the state of emergency!

Statement signed by the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire and a number of left and left-leaning organisations. 8 November Faced with a revolt born of accumulated inequalities and discriminations in the suburbs and deprived areas, the government has just taken another step, one of extreme seriousness, in the ratcheting up of the security situation. Even in May 1968, when the situation was far more dramatic, no state of emergency was used by the public authorities. The proclamation of a state of emergency as their answer to a revolt with deep and well known causes can only be understood as...

Summary justice and deportations

By Joan Trevor After 20 days and still counting of urban unrest it is possible from London to draw only a partial balance sheet of what has happened in France and what might happen next. The riots that began in Clichy-sous-Bois as a response to the accidental deaths of two young men, Zyed Benna and Bouna Traore, in an electricity sub-station spread to other deprived suburbs in areas around and in Paris — and to many towns beyond. Even the right-wing president Jacques Chirac was forced to admit that the rioting has social causes: the social alienation of wide layers of young people...

Dancing with wolves

By Yves Coleman In the dialect of French big-city suburbs, to “dance with the wolves” is to provoke the cops, make them run and to escape without being arrested. Unfortunately, the reality is much less romantic. Around 1600 youth were arrested, half of them under 18, in the first 14 days of the riots from 27 October to 10 November. 180 have already received jail sentences. On 8 November the government invoked a 1955 law from France's colonial war in Algeria, which allows for cities to impose curfews and other emergency powers. On 9 November interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy said that all...

Newcastle Unison opposes pensions sell-out

By Ed Whitby, Newcastle City Council Unison THE following motion, opposing both the raising of the local government retirement age for a full pension to 65 and the creation of a two-tier workforce with different pension rights, was passed unanimously by Newcastle City Council Unison at the start of November. The branch agreed to send the motion to the union’s regional and national local government service groups and to circulate it around as many other local government branches as possible. A similar motion was passed by Islington Council Unison to be sent to the London local government...

African youth fight capitalism and dictatorship

By samm farai monro At the Southern African Social Forum (SASF) held in Harare Gardens between 13-15 October, 3000 radical souls came together to discuss their struggles. Since 2003 the Zimbabwean Social Forum has brought together social movements, progressive NGOs and freedom fighters for people’s forums, action plans and networks to fight poverty and oppression. So it was a natural choice that the ZSF should host the SASF especially since the Zimbabwean democratic struggle against nationalism, capitalism and the love of power is key to the rest of the region. The forum was a space for many...

Broad appeal or class militancy?

Cath Fletcher went along to the “Assembly on the Charter of Principles of Another Europe” in Florence on 12 November, a meeting of various groups and individuals involved in the European Social Forum, who are drawing up the said charter for presentation at the next ESF in Athens in May 2006. It was very different from the South African Social Forum! Most of the people in the room, as far as I could tell, were from one or other left-wing organisation. But with a few exceptions they did a very good job of pretending not to be. Of the British groups apart from me there were Workers’ Power...

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