Solidarity 604, 1 September 2021

A new surge of Covid cases is probable in the coming months. It is likely to be blamed on schools reopening. Research worldwide suggests that will be secondary. (Children get Covid less severely than adults and transmit less). Other drivers are certain: people returning from holidays; more indoor time; university students crowding into halls of residence and bars; erosion of voluntary Covid precautions; waning of immunity from early-2021 infections or vaccinations. Israel mass-vaccinated before Europe and has had an earlier new surge. Ran Balicer, Israel’s lead Covid expert, reckons that the...

As a result of the absurd threat to expel Bakers’ Union President Ian Hodson from the party, the union is holding a recall conference , with the implication that it could disaffiliate. More broadly, since Keir Starmer’s election, there has been increasingly vocal left-wing advocacy for trade unions to disaffiliate or at least weaken their links, cut funding or similar. Understandable as that may be given the leadership’s behaviour, and well-intentioned in many cases, it is not an effective left-wing position. It is a distraction from the struggle. Far from having exhausted the possibilities...

Richard Price from Labour Briefing Co-op reviews Corbynism: what went wrong?

The rebellions which became known as the “Arab Spring” began in Tunisia in December 2010, quickly spreading to Algeria, Egypt and other states. Mass movements demanding freedom and democracy took to the streets.

Reflections in a jaundiced eye: the history of British Trotskyism to 1944 as summarised by the Communist Party of Great Britain.