Solidarity 060, 21 October 2004

Making refusal an option to win peace

Adam Maor and Matan Kaminer were among five young Israelis sentenced to two years in jail for refusing to serve in the Israeli army in the Occupied Territories — and possible further jail time if they continued to refuse. An international campaign — as part of which Solidarity and Workers’ Liberty members in London picketed the Israeli Embassy regularly for a period of months — won early release for the five, on 15 September, and then, on 20 September, exemption for them from all further army service. Adam and Matan were in London for the European Social Forum, and are now touring England to...

Don’t despair of a just solution

On 15 October the Israeli army began to wind up its latest incursion into Gaza — 16 days of military assaults against the Hamas militias who use home-made, but often lethal, rockets. The operation has killed around 100 Palestinians including civilians and some children. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon says he wants Israel to withdraw from the Gaza Strip by the end of 2005. The government will dismantle the homes of 8,000 settlers. In order to do that the Israeli army must improve “security”. That has involved demolishing many hundreds of Palestinian homes near the Gaza borders. The...

Debate & discussion: The meaning of multiculturalism

Of course it is good if schools teach children about a wide variety of cultures. But, contrary to Vicki Morris’s “defence of multiculturalism”, that is not what multiculturalism is about. Multiculturalism means organising the population by “cultures”, each individual being supposed to belong to a “culture” to which is stuck a religion and usually a country or region of origin. It is the opposite of developing a broad, internationalist, global culture. Canada, which Vicki cites as a model of multiculturalism which “doesn't sound half bad”, has a system where religious courts (Jewish, Catholic...

No Sweat at the ESF

By Mark Osborn On 15 October, at the same time as the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions leader, Subhi al Mashadani was being shouted down at Alexandra Palace, Conway Hall was packed for a benefit night with comedians Mark Thomas and Simon Munnery, to raise money for the Basra Unemployed Workers’ Centre, linked to the Union of the Unemployed of Iraq. The UUI’s view is that: “The ‘resistance’ of the ethnocentric and Islamist groups is reactionary… ‘Occupation’ and ‘resistance’ are two poles of the same reactionary camp… The real basis for struggle against the USA’s new world order is the workers...

Debate & discussion: “Good” and “bad” genocides

The media’s exclusive focus on the crisis on Sudan is no accident. When it’s an “Arab” militia involved it’s a bad genocide, when it’s puppet governments doing the genocide for the benefit of western corporations, no-one gets to know about it. Since 1997 the population of the Kalahari region of Botswana have been forcefully removed from their homes by the government and the remaining people have had their water supplies turned off. The eviction sites are known as “Places of Death”, alcoholism and AIDS is rife. As soon as the evictions had taken place the area was carved up for diamond...

Irish Republicans part 6: Republicanism and the left

By Thomas Carolan In our survey of the history of Irish Republicanism we have reached the point beyond which the story is that of the emergence of the Provisional IRA/Sinn Fein in the last month of the 1960s and the first month of the 1970s — of the Catholic revolt in Northern Ireland which preceded that emergence and gave the Provisional IRA a mass base of support and sustenance for a war that would last 23 years (1971-94) and end with something like a deferred victory for the Provisional IRA. No physical-force Republican formation had had such a base since the years of the Civil War, or, at...

The Stalin-made “Trotskyist left”

In The Climate of Treason Andrew Boyle recounts a conversation which took place amongst a group of young communists in the summer of 1933, in Cambridge. Some of them would become the famous traitors who would be exposed in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, after having served the USSR as double agents within the British secret services for decades. Kim Philby had just come back from Germany, and he reported to his friends on what he had seen. There, at the beginning of the year, Hitler had been allowed to come to power peacefully. The powerful German Communist Party (KPD) could rely on four million...

Ramadan’s Islam

Rhodri Evans reviews To be a European Muslim , by Tariq Ramadan. (The Islamic Foundation, Leicester.) If you read this book by Tariq Ramadan, the Swiss Muslim professor top-billed at the European Social Forum, from a certain angle, it is easy to convince yourself that he is a progressive thinker. He rejects the idea of the ultra-Islamist Hizb ut Tahrir that Europe is an “abode of war” for Muslims, somewhere they can live only at war with the society around them. On the contrary, he emphasises that Muslims in Europe have more freedom of religious practice than in many avowedly Muslim countries...

Royal blockbuster

Dan Nichols reviews The Monarchy , Channel Four David Starkey’s history of kings and queens of the British Isles has been built up as a TV “event”. The story will unfold over the a four year period. Wow! It’s certainly an ambitious piece of programming — but will Monarchy tell us anything that we don’t already know about this assorted bunch of tyrants, cowards and neurotics? The first episode outlines how the Anglo-Saxons built the first nation state in Europe before and during their struggle with the Vikings. The first Saxon “kings” were in fact more like warrior chiefs who emerged as leaders...

South Africa, China, the USA

Paul Hampton reviews Frank Glass: the Restless Revolutionary by Baruch Hirson (Porcupine Press) Frank Glass was a pioneer Trotskyist of the 1920s and 30s. But his life and work has been largely forgotten, written out of history by the Stalinists and ignored even by genuine Marxists. Baruch Hirson (who died earlir this year) provides a critical and inspiring account of Glass’s politics. But also tragic, because while Glass helped bring Trotskyism into being he also presided over its metamorphosis into “orthodox Trotskyism” after Trotsky’s death. Frank Glass was born in Britain on 25 March 1901...

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.