Solidarity 284, 1 May 2013

How to make left unity

The political situation makes a strong case for left unity. The letter below has been sent to SWP, SP, Left Unity, ISN, ACI, Counterfire, Socialist Resistance, Workers' Power, and Weekly Worker. Click here to download as pdf. Hi comrades, We believe that the best way to get a good result from the current discussions about left unity would be to start talks for the establishment of a transitional organisation - a coalition of organisations and individuals, organised both nationally and in each locality, which worked together on advocating the main ideas of socialism, working-class struggle...

Vacuum on the left?

The idea of a vacuum or gap on the left, much mentioned in discussions about the “Left Unity” project recently launched by Andrew Burgin and Kate Hudson, has been current, on and off, since 1968. Then, it was used by IS, forerunner of the SWP, as rationale for the unity appeal which IS made that year. “The old Left has been scattered, and a minority sucked up into the new corporate state. A new Left has to be created out of the existing fragmentary and divided opposition... If our differences inhibit what we can do, the Left is likely to be permanently condemned to irrelevance”. IS proposed...

“Zap” the SWP?

The people who are effectively “no-platformed” now are people who cannot be around the SWP. [This letter is a polemic against our article “SWP: criticise, don’t ‘no platform’”, Solidarity 281, 10 April]. The no-platform policy is not a magic wand we can wave, even at fascists. Organisations and individuals must be held accountable, by everyone, everywhere, for everything. There is no difference between “politically confronting” someone and what people are doing when they shout them down (as on the Glasgow bedroom tax demonstration). This is different from wanting to no-platform the SWP for...

Killed by anti-choice bigotry

According to an inquest on Friday 26 April, “medical misadventure” caused the death of Indian dentist Savita Halappanavar. She died on 28 October 2012 after she was denied an emergency abortion in a Galway hospital. Savita Halappanavar was 17 weeks pregnant when she died. The inquest found that the specific cause of death was severe septic shock, e-coli in the bloodstream and a miscarriage. Her death caused an international outcry and shone the spotlight on Ireland’s notoriously strict abortion laws, when it emerged that she was told she could not have a termination “because Ireland is a...

Defend children's right to holidays!

In 1870, when the Elementary Education Act paved the way for universal state education in Britain, the population was 27.5 million. Over half of these people lived in industrial towns or cities. Over a quarter of them lived in London. Acts of Parliament had restricted work for children and new technology like the threshing machine had industrialised farming. Yet Michael Gove claims that the school day is based on a Britain of agricultural production, with holidays to allow children to help on the farm. Perhaps Gove thinks that working-class children in London used to rush home from school to...

Lords rubber stamp NHS privatisation

In a late-night session on 24 April, Lords voted through secondary legislation that will drive forward NHS privatisation. The “section 75 regulations” provide the detail on how the new Clinical Commissioning Groups will sell the NHS to the private sector. Health academic Lucy Reynolds explains: “The Health and Social Care Bill was passed in a form as if it were an aeroplane without any jet engines. The structure was there but [...] they couldn’t find the thing in it to accomplish the privatisation. The regulations provide the jet engines and will make that privatisation go ahead.” Prior to...

Cynical stitch-up in Italy

The swearing-in ceremony on Sunday 28 April of the Enrico Letta government was momentarily interrupted by the attempt of an armed individual to “make the politicians pay”. But nothing can overshadow the depth of defeat the coming to power of this government signals for Italy’s working people. Key ministries are taken by figures from Silvio Berlusconi’s PDL, or technocrats from the banking/financial world. The Democratic Party shares minor roles with people from Mario Monti’s tiny outfit, while humiliatingly accepting only token “progressives” thrown in as proof of the “modernism” of the...

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