Solidarity 470, 23 May 2018

Reinstate Fred Leplat!

Barnet Momentum chair Fred Leplat has been expelled from the Labour Party or rather had his “membership terminated” – for a typically garbled and unjustifiable mix of “reasons”. Fred came to the attention of the bureaucracy because he coordinated a letter signed by a range of Barnet members on Israel-Palestine and antisemitism. The context is widespread speculation that Labour failed to win the council elections in the borough due to antisemitism. No Workers’ Liberty member signed the letter. We wouldn’t have, given our disagreements with its political line. However, it was far from some of...

120 bpm: a window into the AIDS crisis

Based on some of the direct experience of its director Robin Campillo, 120 bpm is an affecting drama about ACT UP Paris. ACT UP was formed in 1987 in New York but chapters spread across the US and Europe based on a militant, direct action approach to the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. At the centre of this film is the relationship between two members — Sean, a founder member, HIV+, angry and militant and the new recruit Nathan, quieter, HIV- and new to the activist world. We see the Parisian group protest against Mitterrand’s government’s laissez-faire attitude to sex education and its role in a...

The myth of the “Testosterone Rex”

Even before I read Cordelia Fine’s 2010 book Delusions of Gender I believed gender to be a social construct. But as the parent of children of both sexes I thought I could see differences that meant something more than social contingencies. But Fine’s book explained and demonstrated how pervasive, subtle and insidious gender conditioning is; and, vitally, how it can be challenged and undermined. In her latest book, Testosterone Rex Fine turns her attention to the question of sex hormones with a focus on the titular beast testosterone. You know the story? From an evolutionist’s viewpoint the...

Lessons from 1974-9 for the next Labour government

Martin Thomas was an active socialist and trade unionist in 1974, when Britain elected a Labour government seen at the time as left-wing. He spoke to Solidarity. Q. Today people think of the 1945 Labour government as maybe left-wing, but not the Labour government of 1974-9. If we’re looking for experiences to learn from for the possibility of a Corbyn government in the next few years, surely that’s not one of them? A. Denis Healey, the Chancellor in that 1974 government, told the Labour conference in October 1973: “There are going to be howls of anguish from the rich”. He followed up a few...

Organise the anti-Brexit mood of young people

The Chairs of Labour Students and Young Labour, respectively Melantha Chittenden and Miriam Mirwitch, have issued a letter calling for a vote on Brexit policy at the 2018 Labour Party conference. The response from the Momentum-sponsored left majority on the Young Labour National Committee has been uproar, and an angry statement in response. Yet Brexit is overwhelmingly unpopular among Labour Party members, and among young people in the UK. Further, according to the National Centre for Social Research, opinion polls have shown that “remain in the EU” has enjoyed a steady lead over “leave the EU...

Expropriate the landowners!

The number of people sleeping rough in the UK is at a record high, after a 73 per cent rise in numbers over the last three years. According to the latest snapshot analysis by UK local councils, there were 4,751 people sleeping rough on a given night in the autumn of last year. That represents a 169% increase on 2010 figures. In the course of last year 8,108 slept rough in London, a 121% increase on 2010 figures. General homelessness has shot up. Just over 59,000 people were accepted as homeless by local councils in England last year. That figure is 19,000 higher than it was 2009-10. The vast...

What happened in the Lewisham East selection

The candidate backed by the Labour right, Janet Daby, has been selected as Labour’s Parliamentary candidate in the ultra-safe Labour seat of Lewisham East. Daby won with 288 votes, with left candidates Sakina Sheikh and Claudia Webbe getting 134 and 35 votes. The other right-winger shortlisted, Brenda Dacres, dropped out the day before the selection meeting. Is this a defeat for the Labour left? In a sense, obviously. But let’s unpack it a bit. There were widespread rumours that the party National Executive Committee would impose an all-left shortlist. Two things seem to have prevented that...

LETTER: Israel and settler-colonialism

More debate on the Right of Return here . I would like to take up just one issue – “settler colonialism” — in Ashok Kumar’s lightweight and hardly coherent “Response to critics” (Solidarity No. 469). If you criticise Israel as a settler colonialist state (let’s assume you think this position is correct), what exactly are you saying? Does this somehow make Israel uniquely bad? If settler colonialism is to be condemned then what about the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina (probably) and the French in Algeria, up to the war of independence in the 1960s or the polices of the Soviet...

For a workers' audit!

Two Parliamentary committees, both headed by right-wing Labour MPs (Frank Field and Rachel Reeves) have called the UK’s big four accountancy firms to be referred to competition authorities for potential break-up. Investigating the collapse of Carillion, which made its bosses millions from taking on outsourced contracts, the MPs found that the firms supposed to audit (check) the firm’s figures were a “cosy club incapable of providing the degree of independent challenge needed”. The government, regulators and Carillion board members had often acted “entirely in line with their own personal...

Lull but no peace

A lull in conflict in the Middle East looks likely. But it may be short-lived, or not happen at all. None of the underlying drivers of tension have eased. On the Gaza-Israel border, Israeli snipers killed 64 people on 14 May. That brings the total killed by snipers over weeks of protests, from which groups mostly of young men sally forth to throw stones and improvised firebombs, to over 110. Thousands have been injured. The protests were backed by Hamas, the Islamic clerical-fascist group which rules in Gaza, on the slogan of “right of return”, which Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh explicated as...

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