Solidarity 229, 11 January 2012

Christopher Hitchens, 1949-2011

In the 1940s, George Orwell wrote that “every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism, as I understand it.” Today, many right across the political spectrum like to pick and choose from Orwell according to taste, stressing either the democratic, socialist or anti-totalitarian aspect of his work at the expense of the whole — the resulting “legacy” depending very much upon the political persuasion of who is doing the accounting. Christopher Hitchens, the one-time darling of the left, in...

The Iron Lady: personal, not political

Don’t think for a second that this is a political film. It is not. The majority of the story is told in the present about an aged Margaret Thatcher, brilliantly played by Meryl Streep, descending into dementia. Isolated from her family by her previous single-mindedness and ambition, she is portrayed as a woman who cannot let go. This is expressed in her continued dialogue with her eight years dead husband Denis (a miscast Jim Broadbent), but it is life without power that she really cannot bear. This second dialogue, with her road to and time in power, is told in flashback. It would be possible...

Stop the War disgraces itself

The Stop the War campaign, led by Stalinists and former SWPers, is disgracing itself again. StW mobilised against the Western bombing which helped the Libyan opposition overthrow the deranged regime of Muammar Qaddafi. Now StW is campaigning against Western sanctions against Iran and Syria, quoting right-wing journalist Simon Jenkins to justify its stand. Jenkins says sanctions are “idiocy” and a step towards open war. In fact war on Syria looks unlikely; some sanctions may be bad, but why would socialists bother opposing sanctions such as travel bans and freezing the corruptly-gained fortunes...

Higgs ahoy!

The Higgs boson particle may have been discovered! But what is the Higgs and why was it predicted? For every field, a boson The current explanation of matter and space, the Standard Model, developed in the 1960s, is one of the most successful theories of all time (and space!). It explains all the approximately 200 elementary particles that exist and how they interact with each other. Some of these particles, the Z and W vector bosons, were predicted by the model and subsequently produced in CERN in the 1980s. Their masses were predicted with 99.99% accuracy using the modification developed by...

Arab Spring impacts on Palestinians

Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group which runs Gaza as a one-party religious state, has moved three quarters of its staff out of Syria. The Syrian regime has been the main external sponsor of Hamas and provides the group with a safe haven for key leaders. But Damascus is now in chaos, shaken by opposition protests. Hamas have now opened an office in Cairo where its political co-thinkers the Muslim Brotherhood are on the rise. Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas Prime Minister of Gaza, is on tour looking for regional political backing. He visited Tunisia on 5 January and has also been welcomed in...

Victor Serge and the question of Kronstadt

The question of Kronstadt defines much of the debate between anarchism and Marxism in the 20th century. On the one hand apologists for the Bolsheviks cheerlead the destruction of the naval garrison at Kronstadt retrospectively, whilst those in an anarchist tradition see it as the final nail in the coffin of soviet democracy and the consolidation of the dictatorial rule of the central committee of the Bolshevik party. Certainly anarchists such as Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman abandoned the October revolution and argued for the destruction of the newly instituted workers’ state. For nearly...

“New” pensions deal: same as the old deal

Public sector union committees, branches, and workplace groups should call emergency meetings to reject the sell-out on pensions outlined at the TUC public sector group meeting on 19 December. So far, only the PCS, Northern Irish public service union NIPSA and Unite (after initially signing up to a “Principles Document” with Unison, GMB and the Local Government Employers) have decisively rejected the deal. Unison’s Local Government Service Group Executive voted by 24-10 on 10 January to accept the deal. Its Higher Education SGE also voted to accept, and its Health SGE voted to consult (but not...

Defend Scottish Labour-union links!

Johann Lamont MSP has been elected leader of the Scottish Labour Party, winning 52% of the electoral college vote. Ken Macintosh MSP came second with 40% and Tom Harris MP a poor third with 8%. Lamont’s lacklustre platform said little about her record (as deputy leader of the Labour Group in Holyrood) and had only empty platitudes to offer about her proposals for the future of the party. Even so, Lamont ended up as the default “support-her-to-keep-even-worse-out” candidate of the left and the unions: Ken Macintosh is a right-wing “moderniser”, and Tom Harris an unashamed ultra-Blairite. Lamont...

Europe: cuts or democracy?

On 6 January, the elected but obscure European Parliament intervened into the discussions on the new treaty under discussion after the 9 December euro-summit to ask that it include a “roadmap” towards introducing the Parliament's favoured policy of eurobonds. Eurobonds would be a mechanism for eurozone states to borrow, in euros, with a guarantee of creditworthiness based on the whole EU's resources. The Parliament’s initiative was a proof that if there were even a quarter-democratic political system uniting the whole of Europe, the current course of trying to work through the economic crisis...

Nigerian workers rise up

Protests in Nigeria over the removal of the fuel subsidy have spread throughout the country with labour unions starting to make a strong presence on the streets. The Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) represents over 8 million workers and launched an indefinite general strike on Monday 9 January. An articulate movement has started to evolve on the streets of the main cities of Nigeria, yet police violence is already making the development of the movement very difficult. It is also yet to be seen whether traditional forms of workers’ organisation can complement the Federation of Informal Workers of...

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