Solidarity 189, 19 January 2011

There’s not a clean, pleasant capitalism in one place –— glitzy, high-tech, full of good food and happy people — and a separable, unfortunate area of poverty, unemployment and misery. The whole system contains both. Capitalism’s scientists create fantastic drugs that are then denied to people who haven’t enough money to pay for them; amazing electronic gadgets are made by people paid pennies; shiny new products are produced, as rivers and skies are polluted and the planet heads for meltdown. Jammed up against the 3,200km US-Mexican border, on the Mexican side, is an area which appears to...

The King’s Speech is prominent in the shortlist for the 2011 Baftas (and other awards — lead actor Colin Firth has just won the Golden Globe award for best actor; it won a shelf of British Independent Film Awards; and it’s sure to get Oscar nominations). It is firmly in the tradition of British “heritage drama” — stories about the upper classes, set in the past, appealing in particular to American audiences. More particularly, it walks the path of other British films successful internationally both with critics and audiences about the royal family. Stephen Frears’ The Queen did well a few...

Martin Thomas opens a debate on the Alternative Vote referendum due on 5 May. The division among Labour MPs cuts across the usual left/right lines. On the left, Katy Clark, Kelvin Hopkins, and Ronnie Campbell, are against AV; John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn for. Tony Benn, no longer an MP, backs AV. Hard Labour right-wingers are also to be found on both sides. Ed Miliband is for AV. Unite and the GMB oppose AV. AV means that you vote not just for one candidate but also for second, third, fourth, etc. preferences. Preferences are transferred from losing candidates until some candidate, with...

Quora.com is now being hyped as the next big social media thing — a crowd-sourced version of wiki-answers, combining features of (and integrating with) twitter and Facebook. Someone asks a question to an online community, the members of the community provide a set of answers and then the community vote on which they believe to be the best answer. The winning answers might receive a financial reward. Apparently this technology managed to solve in a matter of weeks some problems that NASA scientists had been working on non-stop for years. But this could also drive out individuality, and tend...

SWP activists often say that anti-racist and anti-fascist demonstrations can’t be confrontational because we need actions that everyone feels comfortable attending, that families and children need to be able to demonstrate. I have even heard it argued that women need this kind of demonstration (as if women were like children!) The SWP counterpose “inclusive and non-elitist demonstrations” in order to dodge a discussion about the need to physically take on the fascists. During the Bradford anti-fascist demonstrations, I spoke to German comrades who told me about a tactic they said was common in...

On 11 January I attended a meeting in Luton about organising against the English Defence League mobilisation planned there on 5 February. Details of the counter-mobilisation are yet to be finalised. One young member of the Muslim Youth League reported that large numbers of Luton’s Muslim youth were planning slogans on the lines that Islamic fundamentalism is as bad as EDL extremism. True enough. But the young anti-Islamist Muslim was sharply slapped down by an SWPer who insisted that "we" shouldn’t mention any problems about Islamic fundamentalism.

For as long as workers have been fighting for their rights there have been key women organising other women and fighting alongside men. We begin a series on these inspirational women, often hidden from history. Mary MacArthur was a socialist and trade unionist. She had what Labour MP Margaret Bondfield described as “boundless energy and leadership of a high order’. Mary left Glasgow for London (at the age of 23) in 1903 to pursue political activity, leaving behind the man she loved and who wanted to marry her. Mary was active in the women’s suffrage movement, trade unions and the Independent...

Long-term members of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty will presumably be even more surprised to read me in these pages than I am to find myself helping to fill them. It’s fair to say that I have had my disagreements with you lot in the three decades since I came across the group formerly known as Socialist Organiser, after joining the Labour Party Young Socialists at the start of the Thatcher period. The first time I was mentioned by name in Socialist Organiser’s press, for instance, I had just taken a job as a journalist for rival Trotskyist newspaper Socialist Outlook . For whatever reason...

The government is abolishing the default retirement age (DRA), currently 65. They say this will end age discrimination in employment, where people can be forced to retire when they would prefer to and could go on working. On that score, this is a progressive measure. However, at the same time the government has announced other changes to retirement regulations and pensions that are regressive. The Pensions Bill proposes raising the state pension age to 66 by 2020; this is six years earlier than Labour planned. And the equalisation of pension age between women and men (forcing women to work...

On Sunday 16 January George Galloway launched his campaign to win a seat in the Scottish Parliament. He has not yet produced an election manifesto. Nor has he decided whether he will be standing as an individual or as part of a slate. Galloway said “he was not seeking to become an MSP because he needed the wages.” But according to an interview in the Scotsman Galloway finds even his current annual income of nearly £500,000 insufficient: he has staff to employ, he speaks for free on Palestine, and he has “a lot of ex-wives”. If elected, Galloway certainly won’t be a worker’s MP on a worker’s...