Solidarity 156, 30 July 2009

Rape Crisis centres offer essential support and services to survivors of sexual abuse, yet around half of the 32 remaining centres could face closure or severe cutbacks due to lack of funding. Rape crisis centres form part of the growing voluntary sector which relies in part on charity funding and in part on a small pot of government money for voluntary sector organisations. These organisations often provide essential frontline services, from services such as Rape Crisis to Shelter. The whole setup amounts to a semi-privatisation of what was once public sector territory. Rape Crisis reports...

Poplar councillor rebels Edgar, Minnie and George Lansbury (Edgar was George's son, and married to Minnie, née Glassman) Janine Booth’s recently published book Guilty and Proud Of It! is a story about how a group of socialist Labour councillors in Poplar, East London, refused to bow to the “norms” of capitalist economics and politics, and stood up for the working-class people who voted them in. They went to prison rather than accepting inequitable taxes. Newly-enfranchised working-class voters elected Labour to run the Council in 1919. For the next two years, it improved life for Poplar...

About 60 socialists, activists and trade unionists attended a Tyneside Socialist Forum open meeting about left unity on 15 July. The timing of the meeting wasn't ideal, as most students had left for the summer, but still the organised left turned out (Socialist Workers Party, Revolutionary Communist Group, Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, Labour Representation Committee, as well as Green Party). Trade unions were also represented including PCS, Unison, and Unite. Although the Socialist Party could not attend No2EU was represented by the RMT Regional Organiser. The lead off by two older comrades...

With the votes counted, results declared and MEPs both new and old sworn in, the immediate concern of the comfortably salaried parliamentarians turns to the nitty-gritty of bourgeois politics: power. But in politics, as in everyday life, power — the question of who has it and what they do with it — is not an uncomplicated matter. Things are complicated further still by the convoluted procedures and mechanisms of the European Parliament. To gain access to important committees, the real powerhouses of Brussels and Strasbourg, and avoid containment in the basically meaningless hand-raising...

Over the last year I’ve been able to get back to political activity. I’ve been reading a lot of books and asking myself why people become revolutionaries and what keeps you being a revolutionary. To start off with, it’s quite obvious why. You look at the world around you and see the horrors of capitalism. You see how capitalism leads to recession and slumps which result in working-class people being thrown out of their jobs and out of their homes — not because it makes any logical sense about how society should produce things, but because the ruling class and the market says so. We see the...

Over the past decade or so, John Bellamy Foster has been one of the principal architects of the revival of Marxist ecology, arguing that the relationship between nature and human society is best conceptualised in terms of metabolism. Foster’s new book, The Ecological Revolution (2009) brings together many of his essays on the subject and together with his earlier book Marx’s Ecology (2000), makes a significant contribution to historical materialism. Metabolism (stoffwechsel) was widely used in Marx’s main published work, Capital volume I, and it can be found in successive drafts of his mature...

history and background In post-war Britain, before 1970, there were a number of short stay-in strikes, or “downers” in the car industry. One of the first occupations of any length occurred in Belfast in April 1958 when 6,000 shipyard workers staged a “24 hour stay-in strike” in protest against the sacking of over 1,000 workers. From the mid-60s to the mid-70s the occupation tactic became a European phenomenon, spreading through Belgium, Holland, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Britain and in Portugal, where the tactic was used in a wider struggle against the fascist regime. From around...

Workers Climate Action is a network of socialists, anarchists, environmentalists and trade unionists seeking to build a mass working-class response to climate change. We don’t believe that climate change can be averted by a bit of green consumerism, whether that is individuals buying organic veg or multinationals buying “carbon credits”. We respect, but see the inadequacy, of the direct action environmentalists, like Greenpeace — elitist bands of brave individuals pulling off media stunts. Climate change requires an urgent and appropriate response — we believe the working-class needs to stand...

The government’s UK Renewable Energy Strategy, published on 15 July along with its UK Low Carbon Transition Plan, makes a number of arguments for wind power. It stated: “Wind power is currently one of the most developed and cost-effective renewable electricity technologies. The UK has the largest potential wind energy resource in Europe. While offshore wind is more technologically challenging and more expensive than onshore wind, it has a larger potential due to a stronger and more consistent wind resource out to sea, leading to higher power outputs per turbine and more hours spent generating...

Ed Miliband’s statement on Vestas blames NIMBYism for the failure of Vestas. The NIMBYs in question are no doubt well-off people who can afford expensive lawyers. Certainly, there wasn’t this problem when the government evicted the East London working-class communities to make way for the deeply unpopular Olympics site. But fundamentally Miliband is saying that there is no market for onshore wind farms at the moment. The supporting documents to the White Paper suggest that Miliband might be contradicting his own policy. The Renewable Energy Strategy document states: “Our lead scenario suggests...