Solidarity 211, 8 July 2011

The pensions demo on 30 June was exciting enough, but I felt an extra thrill at the start in Lincoln’s Inn Fields when I spotted Peter Taaffe. There he was, the General Secretary of the Socialist Party! The "legendary Peter Taaffe", as his friend and disciple Derek Hatton said of him in his memoirs. Peter Taaffe, the main man responsible for the great victory of the Liverpool labour movement over Thatcher and the Tories in 1985. ( The one associated with the name of Derek Hatton and the image of a fleet of council-hired taxis dashing around Liverpool to deliver notices to council workers...

Eviction notices have been served to 51 traveller families on the Dale Farm site in Essex, sparking a call for activists to help defend their homes. Basildon Council has served the notices which give them until the end of August to leave Dale Farm, which was first occupied in 2001. Travellers at the site, thought to be the largest "illegal" encampment in Europe and home to around 400 people, have offered to leave peacefully if alternative plots are provided for them. The cost of enforcing the eviction has been put at more than £10 million, with finance coming from the Home Office, Essex Police...