Solidarity 142, 20 November 2008

Students and Alitalia workers unite

On 15 and 16 November 3,000 delegates, representing 200,000 students from all over Italy, who the day before had taken part in the massive university teachers’ / researchers’ demonstration in Rome, gathered for a “national assembly” at la Sapienza University. They met to debate and agree a manifesto/constitution incorporating a series of demands and proposals opposing the draconian education reform which will mean comprehensive and ruthless cut back in all sectors of the Italian educational system, the encroachment of capitalist business into the higher education system, and a massive...

The German Revolution, November 1918

First part of a two-part article. Part 2 here The German Social Democratic Party (SPD) had been founded in 1875. After a period of illegality it began to expand dramatically in the opening years of the twentieth century and by 1914 it numbered a million members and was the largest political party in the world. Its share of the vote in elections and its number of seats in the Reichstag (German parliament) likewise steadily increased. In 1898 it won 27% of the votes (56 seats), in 1903 31% of the votes (81 seats) and, in 1912, 34% of the votes (110 seats). On the eve of the First World War the...

Mama Africa: singing the truth

The life of the South African singer Miriam Makeba, known as “Mama Africa” who, died of a heart attack aged 76 in November. Perhaps more than any other musician, Makeba popularised South African music around the world and became widely identified with the struggle against apartheid. Born in Johannesburg and singing from an early age, Makeba first became well known in the early 50s when she teamed up with the popular close harmony singers, the Manhattan Brothers. This was a time of Black cultural resurgence in the ghettos of Johannesburg and Cape Town. Makeba became prominent in this, recording...

Dubya

Having spent his career documenting American post-Second World war history it was perhaps inevitable that Oliver Stone would want to make a film about George (Dubya) Bush. But the film feels more like a duty than a pleasure — work undertaken to “make the record”, to get printed on celluloid a representation of this at once ridiculous and very dangerously powerful man. Well, how to tell the story without going over very old ground, without being yet another satire on Bush’s gaffes and Texan folksiness? Stone deals with the problem sensibly and competently by opting for a mix of psychological...

The Pen/Sword Prophecy

The Pen/Sword Prophecy In about twenty seconds, the future of rap music beckons And you'll be wondering whether the world's changed since you played this record. Who can know for sure? But you might be at the start of this The artist leading modern-day slave revolts like Spartacus. A heartless world is hardest to exist in, I keep spitting Like cowboys with tobacco when the bar-room door gets kicked in. Keep listening, and you might just hear a rhythm That tells your whole life-story like a posthumous inscription. Big schisms between exploiters and exploited class Cannot simply be dismissed, so...

Climate change as a class issue

The Workers’ Climate Action gathering on 15-16 November was the first meeting of the campaign since the summer’s Climate Camp and an opportunity to take stock of where we are almost a year since activists first started talking about the project. The network has continued to grow with more and more people across the radical environmental movement wanting to approach climate change as a class issue and with trade union activists getting to grips with what it might mean to work for a “just transition”. The Saturday of the event was for education and debate. Rose briefed activists on the reality...

Students to march in Feb 2009

Several student unions, together with the National Union of Students Women’s and LGBT campaigns, have called for a national demonstration for free education for 25 February 2009. Already, Bradford, Sussex, UEA and, on indicative votes, UCL, Edinburgh and Aston have backed the mobilisation. More SUs look set to come on board in the coming weeks and, with the two of the main left factions in the student movement (ENS and the SWP-initiated “Another Education Is Possible”) also supporting the initiative, the mobilisation for the action is gaining real momentum. Discussions around it are also...

Two other “workers’ plans”

In the first two articles of this series, we looked at how, after the Russian revolution, the Communist International developed the concept of “transitional demands”. Many socialists in the international movement before the First World War had instead operated with a combination of “minimum programme” (minimal demands, enough for now and for the foreseeable future) and “maximum programme” (the goal of socialism, put off indefinitely). Transitional demands meant, as the Third Congress of the Communist International put it in 1921: “...the struggle for the concrete needs of the proletariat, for...

Campaign for free, publicly owned transport

On the 11 December Greater Manchester will vote on a package of government funding for transport that is dependent on the introduction of congestion charging over a wide area of 80 square miles around the centre of Manchester. To win, there needs to be a majority for the proposals in seven of the 10 GM boroughs. This may be helped by the fact that the referendum question does not mention the charge. The £3.7 billion funding consists of a £1.5 billion grant and a £1.2 billion loan, which is intended to be repaid by means of the congestion charge. The rush hour charge could cost a motorist up to...

Moshe Machover on Israel-Palestine. Two states - or no hope for either nation?

In two previous articles , I have responded to Moshe Machover's polemic against my discussion piece from July, "What If Israel Bombs Iran?". There remains to consider Moshe Machover's proposed solution to the Arab-Jewish conflict, his programme. I have in the articles noted such strange things in Moshe Machover's polemic as his description of the USA as "humanity's worst enemy" and his nod - to put it its weakest - towards the notion of a manipulative Zionist conspiracy operating in the background of 20th century history and controlling events. No less strange is his programme for solving the...

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