Speech notes

By Paul Hampton 1) The AWL Socialism is the self-emancipation of the working class Our conception of socialism is a thoroughgoing democracy – at work, in communities, self-rule by organisations The key issue = solidarity with workers fighting back against local, national and global capital - Help workers to help themselves - Solidarity not charity Concretely we support workers who take industrial action, such as strikes, sit-ins, factory occupations etc We support workers setting up their own factory committees, trade unions, political organisations – independent of the employers and...

Notes from a discussion at a North London AWL branch meeting, introduced by Jean Lane. What are the reasons for the growth in the movement for single-faith schools? Why do socialists oppose this? Sir Peter Vardy is a right-wing Christian fundamentalist, who is a millionaire through his car business. He runs the Vardy Foundation and its education arm, the Emmanuel Schools Foundation. He got together with a right-wing educationalist, and used the Tory view of school 'independence' to take over a state school. The New Labour government's policy allows a private sponsor such as Vardy to set up a...

by Janine Booth These notes are based on a speech I gave at the Workers' Liberty London Forum on Thursday 24 June. -------------- The fascist British National Party is fundamentally an anti-working-class, anti-democratic party: - It is also racist, anti-semitic, sexist and homophobic. - Everything that the BNP stands for is against the interests of working-class people and the labour movement. - It not only has a vile, right-wing ideology, fascism is distinguished from other right-wing groups by having - despite the BNP's current pretensions otherwise - thugs who are prepared to fight for it...

About 35 people attended the AWL London forum on "Capitalism, socialism and Islam" at University of London Union last night. The other speaker was Shahed Salim from Just Peace - a loose network of activists formed during the 2001 Afghan war to provide a "Muslim voice" within the Stop the War Coalition. Just Peace seems to concentrate its activism on international Muslim "hot spots" such as Iraq and Palestine, plus domestic offshoots of the war on terror such as attacks on civil liberties; but it also has an ambition to help develop a wider "Muslim voice in politics". Shahed stressed that the...

At our meeting on 3 March, Haringey & Hackney AWL branch discussed Islamism in Egypt . Clive Bradley gave a talk about the issue: this is a summary of what he said. Egypt is one of the birthplaces of modern Islamism - that is, of political movements based on Islam that take the form of a modern political party. In 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood was formed in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood began as a conservative social movement. It was concerned about the spread of 'Western culture' in Egypt: for example, it opposed increasing freedom for women. It also opposed British colonialism, but its...

At our meeting on 22 October, Haringey & Hackney AWL branch discussed the myth of Peron, and working-class politics in Argentina . This was the third in our series of meetings about 'the politics behind the shows' , following on from discussions on Vietnam ( Miss Saigon ) and the French revolution ( Les Miserables ). Paul Hampton gave a talk about the issue: this is a summary of what he said. Juan Peron is perhaps the most famous Argentinian (other than Diego Maradona!). Many people know of him through the musical and film, Evita . The reality, though, is that he was populist, nationalist and...

by Mickey Conn Origins The first Trotskyist groups had emerged in the mid-1920s as Communist Party members grew interested in Trotsky's work. With little contact between groups, and divisions on factional lines, various small groups grew and split. By 1937, there were three British Trotskyist groups: the small, Scottish Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), the Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL) and Militant. The RSL, opposed to entryism, included CLR James, while Militant, who were in favour of entry into the Labour Party included Ted Grant (later to head the post-war Militant Tendency), and...