For equality, against bigotry

Anti-fascism, anti-racism, fighting anti-semitism, lesbian/gay/bisexual rights, immigration and asylum, travellers, women's rights and feminism, ...

Paramaz and his comrades in Beyazıt Square

Original A photograph from Beyazıt Square. Once you have seen this photo, you will never forget it. Gallows lined up behind each other, bodies in white shirts swinging from the rope with white placards hung about their necks. What the black and white photograph doesn’t show are the lush green trees in the background, and the revolutionaries who met death with sang-froid, sacrificing their lives for the cause they believed in. The date was June 15 1915. The history of 1915 has a lot to teach those who study history: of pain, hunger, exile, and massacres, especially in these lands. April 24 1915...

About Lula's statements on Gaza

This article was first published in French by Arguments pour La Lutte Sociale (Arguments for Social Struggle), here . This translation is abridged and lightly edited. —— At the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Brazilian President Lula said: “What is happening in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian people has not happened at any other time in history. In fact, it has already happened: when Hitler decided to kill the Jews.” It’s important for left-wing activists who want to re-establish a genuine internationalism based on truth and not supporting any geopolitical camp, to give some arguments...

The Communist Women’s Movement – high point of first wave feminism

A century ago, an international communist women’s movement began to develop a perspective for women’s self-liberation that still resonates today. The record of those early struggles has been translated into English for the first time by Mike Taber and Daria Dyakonova, The Communist Women’s Movement, 1920-1922 (Brill 2023). The book provides a history of the greatest working class-based women’s movement to date, through the voices of the women involved and one that has great relevance for today’s socialist feminists. Communist Women’s Movement In 1917, the Russian working class took power led...

Labour, democracy, and Rosebank

Activists from Workers' Liberty and supporters of Solidarity will be at Labour Party conference and women's conference, 7-11 October in Liverpool. We'll be there to help the efforts of Free Our Unions, the Labour Campaign for Free Movement, the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign, India Labour Solidarity, and other campaigns; to sell literature, seek discussions and contacts. There will be demonstrations for the NHS and for abortion rights on Saturday, for free education on Sunday. And agitation for a block on new North Sea oil and gas fields, following the Tories' decision to "max out" licences in...

Jina Mahsa Amini, one year on

September marks one year since the murder of Jina Mahsa Amini, a young Iranian-Kurdish woman who was killed in detention following her arrest for allegedly violating Iran ’s compulsory hijab law. Her murder sparked the most significant protests against the Iranian regime since the 1980s and the strength of the uprising prompted the Iranian regime to take the notorious morality police off the streets. CRACKDOWN It has been confirmed that more than twenty thousand people have been arrested and hundreds killed in the subsequent crackdown, with the real number expected to be much higher. Sentences...

Protest to stop the atrocities in Manipur!

In mid-July the viral spread of a video showing two women being paraded naked and sexually assaulted, prior to being gang-raped, in the eastern Indian state of Manipur caused a surge in awareness of the horrific situation there. We should work to increase it further, and try to engage the British labour movement and left. • For a very informative interview with an Indian human rights activist who has just visited Manipur, see here • For a detailed background briefing, see here • For short video interviews on the situation in Manipur see here and here • For how you can protest, see here The...

Why the Tories just surged in Leicester

Background: • Behind Labour's purge of Leicester councillors • Hindu nationalism, communalism and the left • How the Tories won huge swing in Leicester amidst Truss debacle Over most of the country the recent local elections saw big net gains for Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens, and disastrous losses for the Tories. The picture in Leicester was very different, however. In 2019 Peter Soulsby, Labour’s candidate for City Mayor, won with just over 60% of the vote and Labour took 53 out of 54 seats on the council, with the sole remaining seat going to the Lib Dems. This time Peter Soulsby was...

Behind Labour's purge of Leicester councillors

Early in the new year the national Labour Party announced that it was going to take selection of Labour candidates for May’s city council elections in Leicester out of the hands of local members and pass it to an NEC sub-committee. Being disenfranchised in this way understandably provoked a lot of anger amongst members and the move also left many sitting councillors concerned about its implications for them personally. There was a lot of speculation about the agenda behind this intervention, with many on the left concerned that it was a further step in the leadership’s campaign to purge...

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