Solidarity 364, 13 May 2015

Triumph and disillusion: Vietnam 1975

Just over forty years ago, on 30 April 1975, the Vietnam war ended. The Stalinist National Liberation Front swept into Saigon, and the US Embassy was hurriedly evacuated by helicopter from its roof. Two and a half weeks earlier, on 12 April 1975, the Cambodian Stalinists had triumphed, seizing the capital, Phnom Penh. For the previous ten years or more, big demonstrations against the US war in Vietnam had been a major route by which tens of thousands of young people came into revolutionary socialist politics. The demonstrators not only denounced the corruption and authoritarianism of the...

Austerity, the unions' failure and the rise of UKIP

The context for the rise of UKIP was set by two things: their sustained electoral intervention over two decades, and the failure of the labour movement to fight austerity. UKIP was founded in 1993; the first general election it stood in was 1997, when it got 0.3 per cent. In 2001 it got 1.5 per cent; in 2005 2.2 pc; in 2010 3.1 per cent. It also used European elections and local elections to build up its profile and base of support. Perhaps because opposition to the EU is one of its central focuses, it has done better in European election: as far back as 1999 it got 7 per cent; by 2009, 16.6...

Nottingham conference to discuss fightback

On Monday 11 May, a packed meeting of Beeston North Labour Party branch in Broxtowe constituency, Nottingham, voted to initiate a broad local labour movement conference to discuss the way forward for the movement after the Tories' election victory. The meeting debated the resolution for well over an hour, but in the end there was only one vote against. The motion is going forward to Broxtowe CLP on 28 May, but the branch agreed to move forward in contacting other labour movement organisations immediately. The motion focuses on five areas: organising a fightback and demanding Labour Party...

Nationalise the top 200 monopolies to save climate

“Nationalise the top 200 monopolies” was for decades the robotic answer to every political question parroted by the Militant newspaper, which spawned the latter-day Socialist Party and Socialist Appeal. The slogan was mechanically repeated by the “Millies”, fetishising nationalisation and sometimes juxtaposed to the equally important idea of workers’ control. It had an eerie association with the bureaucratic state ownership of the Stalinist states. And it was often coupled with a reformist conception of socialism introduced through an Enabling Act in the Westminster parliament, evading the...

We need to rebuild from the bottom up

Did I “become” a socialist? I suppose I must have done. Even those of us who in a different time and place might have been dubbed “red diaper babies,” born to socialist parents, must at some point make a conscious series of decisions, which lead us to join the world’s greatest, and most consistently defeated, political movement. Like many people of my age, Palestine and Iraq were the motivating factors in my early political involvement. I remember marches in solidarity with the Second Intifada in Sheffield. I even remember when there were local Stop the War groups. I had imbibed somehow from...

The cause of labour is still the hope of the world: what the working-class movement can do to regroup

1) Fight Over the five years of the coalition government, the labour movement failed to mount any consistent fight (either industrially or politically) against it. Had it done so, and had it forced the Labour Party to respond to that fight, we might be looking at a different election result. See also: Regroup and fight back! The capitulations of the last five years have to give way to a new spirit of belligerence. With many in the Tory party committed to pursuing new restrictions on unions' ability to organise and take action , the government may be about to go to war on our movement . We have...

Where now for Scottish Labour?

Winning just one seat in Scotland, the Scottish Labour Party was annihilated as an electoral force, and possibly as any kind of political force, on May 7th. On being elected Scottish Labour leader last December, Jim Murphy said: “I am confident we will hold all the Westminster seats we have.” In January he criticised the SNP for being “sluggish, lethargic and off the pace.” He was “surprised by their lack of energy, by their lack of response, or belated response, to a lot of the things we’ve been doing. I’m just astonished by how quickly they’ve run out of ideas.” By February of this year...

Tories re-elected. Regroup and fight back!

The Tories have won a 12-seat majority in the 7 May 2015 general election. We face a government which has promised to continue and increase cuts, and to bring in new anti-union laws which will effectively ban large, multi-workplace public sector strikes. See also: The cause of labour is still the hope of the world Yet the small upturn of an industrial fightback which has already begun as the economic slump eases off (for some, at least), and unemployment recedes a bit (from 8.3% in November 2011 to 5.5% today) will continue. The Tories have only 36.9% of the votes cast, almost the same number...

Bob Carnegie tour of England, May 2015

Bob Carnegie, who has been at the heart of every major workers' struggle in Brisbane, Australia, for more than three decades, is coming to the UK to talk about his experiences and lessons for organising workers. Read more at the tour blog . This is a provisional itinerary. 12th - Lambeth (South London) public meeting 13th - FBU conference (with Dave Smith) 14th - 10am Blacklist court case, 7pm RMT Central Line East branch meeting (Open to RMT members and friends) 15th - Bristol, with Dave Smith at UWE 16th - London at Bishopsgate Institute with Dave Smith - 1.45-2.30. 18th - Liverpool public...

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