Solidarity 212, 20 July 2011

Save jobs at Bombardier!

Workers will rally in Derby on 23 July to protest the loss of 1,400 jobs at the Bombardier train manufacturing plant. The losses come as a result of the government’s decision on 16 June to award the £1.5 billion contract for new carriages for the Thameslink rail line to German manufacturer Siemens. After the rejection of their rival bid, Canadian-owned Bombardier announced on 5 July that it would cut 1,400 jobs (446 permanent and 983 temporary) from the current workforce of 3,000 at its Derby site, where rail rolling stock has been built under various ownerships for 171 years. The Government...

From the boy who lived to the man who died

Daisy Thomas reviews the final Harry Potter film “The Deathly Hallows — Part 2” As I joined countless others at midnight in packed cinemas for the final instalment of Harry Potter, excitement was in the air. After all, this would be the last time there’d be a midnight screening of Harry Potter, the last time people could dress up like the characters, and the last time there’d be a new Harry Potter movie. The acting was very well done and, as always, the special effects were brilliant. The idea that Thestrals didn’t actually exist, or that flying motorbikes defied gravity, was not important...

Tommy Sheridan: not the only sinner

Peter Burton reviews Downfall by Alan McCombes Alan McCombes describes Tommy Sheridan as his “closest political companion for 20 years”. He met Sheridan as a young recruit to Militant (forerunner of the Socialist Party) in the mid-1980s, and worked with him in the poll tax agitation in Scotland (1989-90) which made Sheridan famous. With the majority of Militant/SP, McCombes and Sheridan quit the Labour Party in the early 1990s, setting up Scottish Militant Labour in 1992, the Scottish Socialist Alliance in 1996, and the Scottish Socialist Party in 1998. McCombes and Sheridan split from Peter...

What is the socialist alternative to the "free press" that produced Murdoch?

The News of the World has abused its powers, but fundamentally we have a free press, don’t we? No. In Britain – as opposed to say Cuba or Saudi Arabia – the media is largely free from dictatorial state control. This is worth having, and was won by the organised working class over many decades of struggle. It means there is some diversity of opinion even in the mainstream press, and also that we can publish newspapers like Solidarity . We should defend that. But it is freedom of the press primarily for the very rich, for individuals and corporations rich own enough to media resources like TV...

Lenin on press freedom, November 1917

Draft decree on the press, November 1917 For the bourgeoisie, freedom of the press meant freedom for the rich to publish and for the capitalists to control the newspapers, a practice which in all countries, including even the freest, produced a corrupt press. For the workers’ and peasants’ government, freedom of the press means liberation of the press from capitalist oppression, and public ownership of paper mills and printing presses; equal right for public groups of a certain size (say, numbering 10,000) to a fair share of newsprint stocks and a corresponding quantity of printers’ labour...

Two hundred at Ideas for Freedom 2011

Further reports, notes, transcripts etc will be posted here shortly. For pictures of the event, click here . (RMT and AWL activist Becky Crocker opens Ideas for Freedom by relating the themes of Eisenstein's Strike to the class struggle now. Chair: Daniel Lemberger Cooper) Ideas for Freedom, Workers' Liberty's annual "summerschool" of socialist discussion and debate, was attended by just over 200 people. We opened with a Friday night showing of Sergei Eisenstein's Strike , followed by presentations from young strikers from the NUT and RMT and a discussion of how the film's themes relate to the...

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