Solidarity 215, 7 September 2011

Lawrie Coombs applauds the work of Newcastle’s Side Gallery Operating in the shadow of Tyneside’s burgeoning official cultural quarter, Side Gallery operates as a radical space bereft of the level of financial support available to the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art or the Sage Gateshead music venue. As part of the Amber Collective it promotes independent, radical and quirky expositions of cinema and photography. Side Gallery has consistently sought to chronicle unheard voices and perspectives, highlighting working class struggles and experience. Since opening in 1977, Side Gallery has...

Paul Hampton reviews Tony Cliff: A Marxist for His Time by Ian Birchall (2011) Tony Cliff: “Si monumentum requiris, circumspice” “Si monumentum requiris, circumspice” [If you seek his memorial, look around you] — plaque on the grave of Christopher Wren, architect, in St. Paul’s Cathedral Ian Birchall was once derided for writing a loyalist history of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), tragically entitled The smallest mass party in the world. His new biography of the SWP’s founder and inspirer, Tony Cliff is equally farcical. Cliff was born Ygael Gluckstein in 1917. He grew up in the British...

Ten years ago this month al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four passenger planes in the USA. They flew two of them into the “Twin Towers” buildings of the World Trade Centre in New York, another into the Pentagon. A fourth plane crashed into a field after the passengers attempted to retake it. This AWL editorial, written two days after the attacks and before al-Qaeda had declared itself responsible, was our initial response. Click here for a full archive of AWL statements and articles from the time . To use civilian planes, full of people, to attack buildings full of civilians, mostly ordinary...

NATO intervention in Libya has now largely come to an end. The general laziness of NATO in prosecuting its campaign had frustrated a National Transitional Council (NTC) which had clamoured for support in terminating the Qaddafi regime. But at a decisive point it prevented the taking back of Benghazi and Misrata in a terrifically brutal fashion. This halting of genocide led to a greater amount of leverage for the rag-tag rebel militias and ultimately to the fall of Qaddafi. The rebellion would not have survived without that intervention. For those on the left who shrugged their shoulders at...

A year ago the Middle East and North Africa seemed a “stable” region: that is, most of the regimes had been in power for decades; and there had been very little in the way of mass popular opposition movements also for decades. There were mass strikes in Egypt and Tunisia in the 1970s; there was the Iranian revolution at the end of the ‘70s. But since then most opposition movements had been, or had been presumed to be, “radical” Islamist in character. It had become a platitude of Western punditry that Arabs — perhaps Muslims in general — lived under authoritarian regimes because they liked them...

A year ago, union members’ votes installed Ed Miliband as Labour leader, against the wishes of the Shadow Cabinet and the majority of Labour MPs. He told Labour Party conference that he would move on from “New Labour”, and that the invasion of Iraq had been wrong. The conference promised a thorough review of Labour’s undemocratic structures. All good. According to latest figures, 70,000 new members have now joined Labour since May 2010. It’s a small figure by historical standards, but big compared to the shrivelled membership roll (below 140,000) before May 2010. The big unions had shown...

It wasn’t the stars, or geology. It wasn’t ocean currents, or the weather. The world economy was brought crashing down in 2008 by the particular way we have allowed it to be organised. It was brought down by being organised around the priority of maximum competitive greed and gain of a small exploiting minority. Today the world economy stands on the brink of crashing again, or at best of a long period of depression. Two emergency measures could stop that: expropriate the banks and financial institutions, and reorganise them as a public banking, insurance, and pension service, oriented to...

By Maria Exall Earlier this year over half a million people responded to the TUC’s call to “March for the Alternative”. At TUC Congress on 12-14 September the organised labour movement has the opportunity to spell out what that alternative could be. The issue of pensions and further future co-ordinated industrial action by public sector unions is on the agenda. Other motions submitted call for resistance in varying degrees to the Coalition Government cuts in the different industrial sectors from health and social care to the arts. But one of the most important things I think the 2011 Congress...

Dave Osler says ( Solidarity 214) that the AWL has “adhered” to Shachtman’s position, i.e. that the Stalinist states were/are a form of class exploitation distinct from capitalism (“bureaucratic collectivism”). That’s not quite accurate. In fact our collective position, adopted in 1988, does not conclude exactly what the Stalinist states were/are. We agree that they were class societies, with ruling classes that the workers had to overthrow in a full political and social revolution. We agree that they not post-capitalist, but detours within the general epoch of capitalism. Of those in the AWL...

According to Labour Research magazine (September edition), the general union Unite has announced the launch of a community membership scheme. On offer is cut-price membership of 50p a week for students, the unemployed and single parents in a drive to organise in local communities as well as workplaces. This is a small, but very significant development. It will enable the unwaged to become active within the Unite union and the wider movement including trades union councils.