Solidarity 171, 16 April 2010

Holocaust denial in the Middle East

Andy McKay reviews From Empathy to Denial: Arab Responses to the Holocaust by Meir Litvak and Esther Webman. This is good reading for anyone wishing to understand the current situation in the Middle East. It explains the centrality of “Holocaust denial” to Islamist and much other Arab political discourse, putting it into both its correct historical context and the wider context of the often incomprehensible politics of the most volatile region in the world. Throughout the rest of the world “historians” like David Irving, Robert Faurisson and Fred Leuchter are discredited and viewed as little...

A memoir for a generation

This book is neither biography nor autobiography. It is not a book about Robert Mapplethorpe, it is not a book about Patti Smith. Unlike Suze Rotollo’s A Freewheelin’ Time: a memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties , it is not the chronicle of a specific time in a specific place. Instead, this is the transformation of Smith’s emotional experience of her relationship with visual artist Mapplethorpe into an object that communicates those emotions directly to the reader. Rather than having structured chapters, Just Kids moves in waves of mood, determined by the state of Smith’s relationship to...

Camberwell and Peckham: housing, jobs and pay on people's minds in election

I met Paul while I was canvassing, and this is what he told me: “Even if you can’t beat the Labour machine in this constituency, well done for standing." “It is a good job someone is raising these ideas. Socialist ideas are the only real alternative to capitalist ideas, the only real ideas that can create a better, more secure world for the majority of people. Labour have forgotten the working class even at election time. I hope people vote for you to make it known that they support the big ideas even if you can’t beat Labour this time round. Good luck.” And then at our public meeting on the...

The left and the labour movement in the General Election

How should the working-class left respond to the general election and the cuts that are likely to follow, whichever party wins? Solidarity spoke to a range of activists (all in a personal capacity) from across the left. What “efficiency savings” really mean Christine Hulme is vice-chair of the PCS Department of Work and Pensions South-East Region, and secretary of Slough constituency Labour Party. There is a lot of talk now about “efficiency savings” in the civil service. It’s not new. That has been part of the spending reviews for many years. The difference between Tories and Labour at this...

Inequality in Britain

About 50 per cent of the population identify as “working class”. Despite the term ‘working class’ vanishing completely from the official language of the Labour Party, the proportion claiming this now-unspoken identity has been fairly stable since the 1950s. To be working class is to be at one pole of a pair. The other pole is the capitalist class. There are many middling groups, but the two main poles are clear. Most of us sell our labour-power to capital (or try to), and receive in exchange a more-or-less “living wage”. At the other pole is a small group of bosses and elite officials who live...

Gaza: Islamisation continues

The creeping Islamisation of Gaza continues. Hamas’ latest bans include Valentine’s Day parties and male hairdressers in female salons. The BBC interviewed one of the “five or six” male hairdressers in the Gaza Strip who are affected by the ban. Jokingly Adnan Barakat suggested he might be forced to move to more liberal areas, “like Somalia or Afghanistan.” Another male hairdresser was driven out of business by bomb attacks. Hatem al-Ghoul said, “They came twice in the middle of the night and blew up my salon with small bombs, once in 2007 and once in 2008.” Al-Ghoul is not sure who attacked...

Egypt's workers rise

Mohamed El Baradei’s return to Egypt on 19 February was marked by mass demonstrations in defiance of laws restricting political demonstrations. El Baradei, former head of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Authority, remains an undeclared candidate in Egypt’s 2011 presidential election. Without a party, or a clear programme, but with 220,000 Facebook supporters, he has alarmed the unpopular regime. After meeting with opposition party leaders and Muslim Brotherhood members, El Baradei announced the establishment of the National Association for Change to fight for “constitutional...

Immigration: countering the myths and lies

They say: Britain is “full up”. We say: Can a country of 250,000 square kilometres become full up in the same way that a train carriage becomes full up? No. Even if the UK’s population doubles we’ll all still “find a seat”. If everyone in the world moved to, say, Watford, or Exeter, tomorrow, there would be an absolute shortage of housing and jobs. Such an overwhelming population inflow is inconceivable. But the right objects to quite small movements of people. The Daily Mail voices the “concerns” of councillors in Peterborough about an influx of migrant workers from Eastern Europe. The Daily...

Developing the political alternative in Barking

An anti-fascist rally called by rail workers union RMT in Barking brought together around 100 labour movement activists and local workers, despite the theatre where the rally was initially supposed to be held cancelling the event following suspected threats of fascist violence. Gathering in the courtyard outside the theatre, activists heard speeches from RMT officers and other local labour movement people, including a former shop steward from the Ford plant in Dagenham. The speeches focused very much on the need to confront the BNP on a social and political — rather than just moral — basis and...

How is the BNP doing?

On 1 April Mark Collett, former British National Party publicity chief and one-time loyal follower of party leader Nick Griffin, was arrested and charged with making threats to kill Griffin and James Dowson, a shadowy figure with links to Loyalist terror groups who juggles fundraising for British fascism with running a virulent anti-abortion campaign in Northern Ireland. Why would Collett, whose political skin — metaphorical and literal — has been saved by Griffin on more than one occasion, make such threats? Why, in the midst of a full-tilt bid for parliamentary seats and the control of...

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