Solidarity 352, 4 February 2015

From Duncan Morrison’s previous letters, I can only guess at the omission which allegedly made Jon Lansman’s article ( Solidarity 343) “right-wing”. It was either (a) that it failed to say that we should back a Labour leader contest anyway; (b) that it failed to say that the push by Blairite MPs to oust Ed Miliband proved that nothing can be done in the Labour Party; or (c) that it failed to criticise Miliband sufficiently. Criticism (c) has some force, as I detailed earlier in this exchange. I covered criticism (a) in another previous response. On (b): no-one here disputes that things in the...

My first political memory is of the 1997 general election. I was nine and didn’t understand what was going on. My dad was a vocal Tory supporter and all I knew was there had been a competition and “our” side had lost. My early political education came from my parents and the Church of England. I still find it odd that I became a socialist! But I became aware of contradictions in the world views I was being inculcated with. The vicar put across a liberal “love and caring” interpretation of the Bible, but at home politics was more individualistic. My dad would often tell me and my brother...

On 27 January Argentina's president, Cristina Fernandez, announced that she would disband the country's intelligence agency, its equivalent of MI5 or the FBI. With Fernandez, the move may be just because the agency had helped a prosecutor who accused Fernandez of covering up the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people. She says she will set up a new agency. The idea is good, though. We all want someone to keep an eye out for people who give signs that they may bomb or shoot up community centres, shops, or newspaper offices. But that doesn't need to be...

More than 80 people attended the Solidarity with Kobane and Rojava dayschool in Nottingham on 31 January 2015. The event was organised by Nottingham Kurdish Solidarity Campaign and the Kurdish Society of Nottingham Trent University. Speakers included: Alan Semo, UK Representative of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the PKK’s Syrian sister party; Aysegul Erdogan, Roj Women and an Islington Labour councillor; Zaher Baher, Kurdish Anarchists Forum and Haringey Solidarity Group; Houzan Mahmoud, activist with the Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq; Chris Leslie MP (Nottingham East); and Derek...

With the stirring victory for Syriza and the subsequent 100,000-strong anti-austerity demonstration in Madrid, socialists might have hoped, for similar in Italy. It is, after all, second only to Greece in the parlous state of its public finances and the battering inflicted on its working people by pro-austerity governments. All the more so having witnessed the joyful “bella ciao” greeting of 500 or so of the Italian left present in Athens to greet Tsipras's victory. Alas, they would be disappointed. Just as these events were taking place, the leaders of Italy's left “progressive” forces...

Pressure from constituents, which had the potential to cause a rebellion in Tory and Lib Dem MPs, has forced the government to accept Labour's amendments on fracking last week. Protected areas, national parks and sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs) are now off limits to fracking, but it is unclear to those in power how big an area of land that will include. According to Greenpeace, only 3% of the 931 blocks of land licensed for fracking in the UK have no protected areas at all. A Greenpeace spokesperson said, “Unless ministers can explain why fracking is too risky for the South Downs...

Manchester University's Free Speech and Secular Society were prevented from displaying Charlie Hebdo at their stall during a societies fair on 27 January. Irony knows no limits. A representative of the group said they wanted to print copies of the cover following the massacre in order to show support for the murdered journalists right to free expression. They also stated that they did not necessarily agree with all the content of Charlie Hebdo, but wanted to defend the principle of freedom of publication. Manchester Students' Union censored the magazine on the grounds that the cover could be...