Solidarity 236, 29 February 2012

And on the seventh day...

Sunday 26 February was, according to the producers of the biggest-selling paper in Britain, the day “a new Sun rises” and the beginning of “a new era for Britain’s No 1 paper”. It was the day the Sun appeared on a Sunday for the first time in its history. A grandiose editorial promised a fresh start. In fact the most noticeable thing about the latest Murdoch project was how predictably similar it was to the daily rag produced under the same title. If we expected a thinly-disguised News of the World, the paper shut down under the pressure of revelations about its role in the phone-hacking...

Faith in the class struggle

I’ve always been a bit uncomfortable with the expression “faith in the working class”, largely on account of the unavoidable connotation of belief without proof. Yet the phrase does figure relatively frequently in far left discourse, and surely there have been times in recent decades when some degree of faith has probably been indispensable. Marxists start from the idea that the proletariat has the capacity to remake society. This is the central concept of socialism from below, from which pretty much everything else flows, including the rejection of Stalinism and social democracy alike. Yet we...

Greece: threat from the right

On 17 February left-wingers and radicals in Greece were shocked by video clips of a visit by activists of the Greek neo-Nazi group Xrisi Aygi (Golden Dawn) to the workers at Greek Steel in Athens who have been on strike since 31 October. The neo-Nazis were given the microphone to declare their “support” for the workers (four months late, and after Xrisi Aygi people in Volos, where Greek Steel’s other factory is located, have actively supported the employer). The president of the union, Giorgios Sifonios, welcomed the Xrisi Aygi representatives, stating that “All Greece is supporting Greek...

G4S to run police station

Security firm G4S has been given a contract to design, build and run a police station. Lincolnshire Police agreed the deal in a bid to save £20 million in what is thought to be the largest move of its kind in Britain. The 540 civilian workers at the force — two-thirds — will be transferred to the private company in April. The £200 million deal over ten years will see G4S run IT, human resources and finance. G4S is the biggest global security company in the world with a £1 billion turnover in the UK, showing its interests clearly lie in big business and profit, not acting to protect the...

Cops won't be able to evict ideas

As of Tuesday morning, 28 February, "Occupy London" protesters were gathering at the movement's last remaining site, Finsbury Square, to talk about next steps. At about 4am, cops, given the go-ahead by St Paul's Cathedral authorities, cleared away campers around the cathedral, giving them just five minutes to retrieve their belongings. The same morning, cops also evicted people at the "Bank of Ideas" linked to the Occupy movement, which in recent weeks has been at the disused Moorfields School, at the corner of Bunhill Row and Featherstone St in central London. As of 8am, dozen of police were...

Iran: No to war and sanctions! No to the Islamic Republic!

Last week, the UN watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Iran was not co-operating in talks over the potential military aspects of its nuclear programme. Iran has recently stepped up uranium enrichment at its nuclear plants. This has led to further words of alarm and threat by western politicians. We print a statement by the International Alliance in Support of Workers in Iran, a campaign set up by Iranian socialists. The International Alliance in Support of Workers in Iran (IASWI) strongly condemns militaristic policies of capitalism. IASWI is a part of the anti-capitalist...

Report of Unite Against Fascism conference 2012

The workshop on discrimination and violence against Europe’s Roma communities which I attended on the afternoon of Unite Against Fascism conference (25 February) was excellent – informative, alarming and a call to action. No doubt there were other useful parts of and aspects to the event. But as a conference it was not so much a failure as a farce. It gives me no pleasure to write such a report - I think we should be seriously alarmed. Turn out So bored was I during some of the eight speakers who addressed us for almost two hours in the opening plenary that I counted the number of people in...

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