Solidarity 243, 25 April 2012

Discontent in Irish Labour

The annual conference of the Irish Labour Party, (13-15 April) was the party’s first conference as a party of government in fifteen years, and the conference of a party founded exactly one hundred years ago by, among others, the two great heroes of Irish socialism; James Connolly and James Larkin. Some of us on the left, or even simply the cynical, wing of the party noted what an ignominious marker this really was, highlighting both how mundane the party’s accomplishments have been and how far it has drifted from the principles of its founders. Last February Labour achieved its best result...

The wearin’ of the green, the courtin’ of the Queen

Sinn Fein members on Belfast City Council will be supporting celebrations for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee due to take place in the city in June. Quoted in the local paper News Letter in February, Sinn Fein councillor Conor Maskey said: “We took this decision not just as an act of generosity but to show that we are conscious of how important the Jubilee is to the unionist community.” The anti-sectarian sentiment is indeed admirable and, as a bourgeois party entirely within the framework of “ordinary” bourgeois politics, why wouldn’t Sinn Fein support the celebrations? But naïve “socialists” who...

Blairite party-within-a-party is a structural obstacle to Labour's revival

In the face of defeat in Bradford, Ed Miliband has recognised that Labour needs “real, deep, genuine change” to reconnect with the five million voters lost under New Labour. At the same time, Labour right-wingers like Luke Akehurst express “disgust” that other Labour members can put aside loyalty to their party to express solidarity not only with the voters of Bradford West who rejected Labour but even with Respect leader Salma Yaqoob. They fail to recognise that what prevents others feeling the tribal loyalty they espouse is the very same barrier that is preventing Labour breaking through to...

Fighting the Tories: what next?

Bankers’ and bosses’ pay and bonuses, share prices, and profits have recovered nicely since the sudden crash of 2008-9. This semi-recovery for the bourgeoisie does not come with any economic recovery for the working class. Real wages are going down, and set to go down further. Unemployment is high and not falling. The Government plans even heavier cuts for the next few years than it has made in 2010-2. The economic picture globally (with a slowdown in China and high oil prices) and in Europe determines that the prospect is at best for a long period of economic depression, or possibly for fresh...

Hollande set to win French Presidency: fight to reverse Euro-cuts!

François Hollande — the Socialist Party [PS]’s candidate for French president — has made policy commitments with implications for the future of economic policy throughout the Eurozone and Europe more widely. They have helped him to do better than the PS candidates in 2002 and 2007 and to beat the incumbent, President Sarkozy, into second place in the first round of the 2012 election. Hollande wants to renegotiate the Fiscal Treaty decided by the EU in December and signed by all the EU states except the UK and the Czech Republic. The Treaty — which still requires ratification by 12 stattes to...

Blaming EU and Germany

We need to tackle those with economic power, but that is not the intention of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Left Front. At most its economists (some of them coming from the Socialist Party) adopt the language of the alternative-globalisation movement and denounce “financial” capitalism, “neo-liberal globalisation”, and stock-market speculation. It’s the same old story of imagining a fair capitalism, a benign alternative capitalism, a capitalism that will simultaneously exhaust fewer resources and submit to capital’s laws of reproduction, a kinder capitalism... It is a nationalist and protectionist...

Front de Gauche's programme

[ Solidarity 242 discussed] the impact the rise of the Front de gauche and Jean-Luc Melenchon’s electoral campaign has had on the French far-left. [Martin Thomas writes] “Look at what has happened to the previous (smaller) minority which quit the NPA in 2009, the Gauche Unitaire led by Christian Picquet. Picquet now chairs Mélenchon’s campaign staff. The GU are not intervening in the Mélenchon campaign to advance revolutionary socialist politics. The Mélenchon campaign has ‘intervened’ in and absorbed them.” This “has led to junking the ‘old’ programme, and replacing it by no programme at all...

Uses of religion

While it was good to read the interview with Andrew Copson of the British Humanist Association ( Solidarity 242), it was disappointing to see Ira Berkovic falling into the trap of a formulaic denunciation of Richard Dawkins’ supposed views on religion. Dawkins does not “conceive of religious belief as merely a stupid, wrong idea”. As he explains in The God Delusion, the ubiquity of religion strongly suggests that it either has survival value or, his preferred theory, it is linked to psychological propensities that have survival value. In other words, religious beliefs are a by-product of...

Mail revives its murky past

The Daily Mail, like the Tory Party, has been trying for years to rebrand itself on the issue of race. It professes to be at the very least liberal and tolerant and, in better moments, a champion of racial equality. Maverick editor Paul Dacre invested considerable energy in pursuing the murderers of Stephen Lawrence, in large part to demonstrate the Mail’s modern identity. Given the consistently right-wing attitudes promoted in the paper and its peculiar obsession with an outdated and mythical pre-1960s Britain of all-white, monarchy-respecting, nuclear families this is slightly odd. In part...

Help the AWL to raise £20,000

Would you like to build support for your dispute or campaign? Why not send a message to trade union and socialist activists by placing a May Day message in Solidarity ? Send a very short text (10-20 words) to us before Friday 28 April, and we will print it in the following week’s May Day issue. It costs £15 for a one-column advert and £30 for two columns. Please also send us an electronic copy of the logo or graphic you would like to use to: solidarity@workersliberty.org Other ways you can help * Taking out a monthly standing order. There is a form at www.workersliberty.org/resources and below...

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