Solidarity 529, 18 December 2019

On 30 November Neurodivergent Labour held its founding Annual General Meeting, after about three years of preliminary work of developing the organisation and writing the manifesto. The conference was well attended considering that we were in the middle of an election, with about 45 people present. The political make up seemed generally left wing, and the motions passed on work and education were left wing. John McDonnell had been billed to attend, but sent a message pledging to “take the [neurodivergency] manifesto into government”. The organisation could probably do with a few more young...

Labour Party general secretary Jennie Formby has written to the National Executive Committee proposing the process of electing a new leader and deputy leader should begin on 7 January and conclude by the end of March. Under new rules agreed since the last leadership election, to get on the ballot paper candidates need nominations from 10% of MPs (21) plus either 5% of constituency parties (33) or 5% of affiliated organisations by conference voting strength, two of which must be trade unions. Since the Parliamentary Labour Party is still much more right-wing than the party membership, that may...

“Labour has lost the working class” Over the years, but particularly in the Brexit era, older people have swung to the right and younger people to the left. In 1983 18-24 year olds backed Thatcher over Labour by 9 points, while over-65s backed Labour by 6. This time 18-24s backed Labour 57-19, while over-65s backed the Tories 62-18! Among women voters aged 18-24, only 15% went Tory. Older people are more and more over-represented in areas where Labour lost the bulk of its seats, and young people more and more under-represented. And older people are much more likely to turn out and vote. What...

Another Europe Is Possible held its conference on 14 December, with about 100 present at any one time. AEIP was set up as a left pro-Remain group in the run-up to the 2016 referendum, and Workers’ Liberty supported it then. It organised “Left Blocs”, for example, on the big October 2018 and March, July, and October 2019 anti-Brexit marches. Previously operating as a sort of NGO, AEIP became a membership organisation and held a founding conference in December 2018. AEIP is officially “cross-party”, but the Green Party presence at this second conference seemed smaller than in 2018. AEIP decided...

I want to start with a bit of a disclaimer. I first became deeply interested in the topic of crime and policing in response to a wave of gang violence that was plaguing the area of North West London I call home. I say this to illustrate that there are instances where gangs are the culprit. It isn’t my intention to delegitimise or trivialise those situations. However, in the words of an unnamed senior Met officer talking to Amnesty International: “Gangs are, for the most part, a complete red herring… fixation with the term is unhelpful at every level.” That hasn’t stopped all major police...

Picture: Syrian refugees on the Serb-Hungary border The Berlin Wall came down on 9 November 1989. For those of us old enough to vaguely remember when it was erected (1961 – I was 11) it was an amazing to see “Ossis” (Easterners) and “Wessis” (Westerners) clambering over the Wall, knocking chunks out of it and dancing in the street. This hideous structure, this monument to everything that was vile about Stalinism and its subjugation of the people of Central and Eastern Europe, disintegrated on our TV screens, although it was well into 1990 before the whole monstrosity was finally demolished...

Reading Richard Shield’s letter (Solidarity 527, bit.ly/rs-hom), I have no doubt that taking his homeopathic remedy really is helping him. Taking such remedies can lead to a measurable, and clinically significant change in someone’s symptoms — symptoms like vomiting, symptoms like intractable pain that has not responded to morphine. And unlike morphine these remedies have no side effects at all. Everything that we experience in our brains is connected to our bodies. Our brains thin at the base of the skull and are continuous with the thick spinal cord that runs down our spine and spreads its...

Sadia Hameed is a spokesperson for the Council of ex-Muslims in Britain , and a director of Gloucestershire Sisters, a women's organisation working in minority communities, particularly around tackling harmful traditional practices. She was interviewed by Sacha Ismail for Solidarity . See here for wider debate in Solidarity on the ban of the hijab in schools . We need to question the idea of multiculturalism. Diversity of culture is a great thing, but harmful ideas and practices need to be challenged and criticised. Multiculturalism should be about taking the wonderful parts of all cultures...

See here for the original article which Paul Vernadsky is responding to. See Misha Zubrowski's reply to the article below, here. The article ‘A workers’ answer to climate change’ ( Solidarity 522, 23 October bit.ly/mz-cc-19) contains a flawed formulation, which would disorientate socialist climate politics if it were accepted. The sentence reads: “Crucially, phasing out almost all animal products (with the added benefit of reducing the needless extreme suffering of billions of sentient beings)”. The demand to “phase out almost all animal products” is incoherent: • “Almost all animal products”...

The article below is a response to one written by Paul Vernadsky, linked . See here for the original article which Paul Vernadsky is responding to. The insights from Paul Vernadsky’s discussion piece point towards an expansion of what we say on transitioning away from animal-based food production, not a deletion. The piece also, I think, makes some spurious assertions or arguments. A general argument and detailed backup from scientific literature demonstrate — contrary to Paul’s unsubstantiated assertion to the contrary — that an aim of “phasing out of almost all animal products” is based on...