Solidarity 191, 2 February 2011

Irish election is most important since 1932

The 26 counties general election on 25 February is the most important election the state has had since 1932, when De Valera and the Catholic nationalists — Fianna Fail — formed their first government (with non-participating Labour Party support). Irish politics is in the melting pot. The main governing party, Fianna Fail, has a new leader, Micháel Martin. It has not got much else. The rats are deserting the sinking ship. No fewer than 30 — out of a total of 72 — Fianna Fail TDs are not contesting seats. Some of them, such as Neal Blaney in Donegal, are scions of old Fianna Fail local dynasties...

NHS reform: GP choice or market madness?

The BMA has been in the vanguard of opposing the Health and Social Care Bill now being debated in Parliament, but it is not a consistent or coherent opponent. For instance, Dr Hamish Meldrum of the BMA qualified his criticism with this statement: “The BMA supports greater involvement of clinicians in planning services”. Meldrum was expressing the BMA’s long-standing grievance that GPs are sidelined from decision-making processes in the NHS. But Meldrum should remember that these powers were stripped from medics as part of the privatisation process where clinically-trained managers were...

Will Murdoch be saved?

Rupert Murdoch’s News International group has long been the bane of the left. The Sun and News of the World (NoTW) have routinely attacked trade unions, demonised the left and championed Thatcher and then New Labour. There is great pleasure to be had, therefore, in seeing it struggle to kill off the poisonous scandal which has developed around phone-hacking at the NoTW. It started in 2005, when the Royal Family began to suspect that salacious stories about them could only have been the result of phone hacking. An investigation led to the conviction of the paper’s royal reporter (Clive Goodman)...

Tunisia: the defeat of fear

Two Tunisian activists spoke on 26 January to a French libertarian-left group, the Collectif Lieux Communs. We've translated sections of the interview about grass-roots organisation in Tunisia, about the role of the UGTT trade union, about the army, and about the Islamists. These are longer extracts than in the printed paper . The fear and depression which dominate the whole world today have been spectacularly defeated all over the place in Tunisia.... At the start, in the two or three days after the fall of the regime, what everyone talked about was corruption and about the political parties...

"Moderation" is reckless

The unspoken assumption by union and Labour Party leaders, that the Tory/ Lib-Dem cuts are inevitable and can only be alleviated by negotiating voluntary redundancies and used as grist for electoral agitation, is being proved reckless. Evidence is mounting that the cuts will bring not only their obvious immediate damage, but also some degree or another of "double-dip" downturn in the whole economy. The crisis of September 2008 came from overaccumulation of debt. An intricate network in which one capitalist borrowed from another, who borrowed from yet another, and then yet another, with...

From Mehmet Ali to Mubarak

Egypt is the largest country in the Arab world. Cairo, with over 18 million people, is one of the world's biggest cities, a centre of great riches and ballooning poverty. About one and a half million people in Cairo are estimated to have other people's roofs as their homes. About one million use the old Mameluke graveyard as home, making dwellings out of the tombs. Other graveyards, particularly abandoned Jewish cemeteries, are considered as "better" shantytowns, compared to the outlying ones, because they are more central and they provide materials for comparatively solid dwellings. Egypt was...

How revolution can be confiscated by counter-revolution

Is it good sense, or "Islamophobia", to warn against the danger of the great uprisings in the Arab world being confiscated by fascist-like Islamist movements? Against the "Third Camp" socialists who said in the 1950s and 60s that revolutionary Stalinism, in China or in Indochina, was a reactionary and not a progressive alternative to the established order, other leftists jeered that they were enthusiasts for revolution in theory, but never in practice. It was an easy jibe, but glib. What are the facts? In the modern capitalist world, do mass plebeian upheavals - based on working and poor...

Cuts fight. Where? On the ground. When? Now.

According to the Morning Star , a meeting of all TUC unions on 28 January "united to beat Con-Dem axemen" and "thrashed out plans" for action. Bob Crow, general secretary of the rail union RMT, one of the TUC's most militant unions, declared that the meeting sent a "clear message" to the government. Sadly, it's not true. The union leaders reaffirmed the TUC's 26 March demonstration against cuts - but that was already fixed - and beyond that resolved only not to rule out coordinated strikes as a "last resort". The meeting may even have worked against industrial action, by pressing all union...

Egypt in revolt

At the time of writing Hosni Mubarak, president of Egypt since 1981, is still clinging to power. For sure, he won’t last long. Thousands of people are still in the streets of Egypt’s cities – as well as Cairo, huge protests have taken place in Alexandria, Suez and other cities – despite curfews, and despite a death toll of around 100 people. (Some reports put the numbers higher). Million strong marches are planned for Cairo and Alexandria on Tuesday. The army is still in the streets, but has yet either to turn on the demonstrators – although there are reports of machine gun fire to disperse...

Jade Baker - a socialist feminist for NUS Women's Officer

At this year's National Union of Students Women's Conference (15-17 March, venue tbc), Workers' Liberty member Jade Baker will be standing for NUS Women's Officer. To see her first manifesto, download the attachment below (the text of which is printed below the picture). If you would like to support her campaign; if you have any questions; or if you want this manifesto in alternative formats - email jade4womensofficer@gmail.com Campaign website: jade4womensofficer.wordpress.com JADE BAKER – socialist feminist for NUS National Women’s Officer I’m standing for Women’s Officer as an anti-cuts...

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