Solidarity 425, 9 December 2016

The result of the Richmond Park by-election has encouraged more calls for Labour to enter a “Progressive Alliance” to oppose “hard Brexit” and the resurgent populist right. Memories must be short, as only last year the Lib Dems were an integral part of a government attacking migrants, the disabled and the poor. It’s not just an alliance with the Lib Dems that should be opposed. The idea of a “progressive alliance” per se should be also opposed. Labour for all its faults is a mass working-class party. A party that is both structurally and organically part of the broader labour movement. The...

2016 marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the political tendency which is now the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty. Over the years, this tendency has broken much new ground in socialist ideas, and rediscovered lost histories of the Marxist, Trotskyist tradition, especially that of the “other” American Trotskyists — the group of comrades around Max Shachtman and Hal Draper. Much of this “Third Camp” literature is available on our website. From Trotskyists newspapers of the 1940s and 50s, to older Marxist classics, to discussion articles on feminism, important national questions, religion...

The fight to repeal Ireland’s anti-abortion law, the 8th amendment, has been gathering steam, with trade union leaders gathering in Dublin to start a labour movement campaign. In 1983, the powerful anti-abortion lobby, working with the Catholic Church, forced the government to hold a referendum on abortion, giving foetuses the right to life. The minority government, led by Fine Gael, has convened a Citizens’ Assembly which will discuss the 8th amendment, among a limited range of other issues including referenda and “super referenda”, over six months. The Anti-Austerity Alliance-People Before...

The Standing Rock, Cheyenne River and Yankton Sioux peoples continue their direct action against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). On the evening of 4 December, the US Army Corps of Engineers rejected the easement needed for the completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline. This significant development means that, at least for the time being, the pipeline work must cease and alternative routes must be explored. The Army Corps will now undertake an environmental impact statement, to find a more suitable route for the pipeline. As the news came in of the easement’s rejection, there were jubilant...

The election of Paul Nuttall as leader of UKIP with the promise to lead his party to a vote share of between 26% and 30% and more than 10 parliamentary seats at the 2020 general election, has provoked dubious reaction from outspoken right-wing Labour MPs. Right-wing Labour MP Stephen Kinnock used a column in the Financial Times to call for Labour to back an implicitly more racist approach to immigration. He said that although immigration may not affect working-class living standards, it is perceived to be negative to many working-class voters. Labour needs to put forward a clear plan for...

Internet troll Joshua Bonehill-Paine has been found guilty of racially aggravated harassment for publishing a series of anti-semitic blog posts about Labour MP Luciana Berger. Bonehill-Paine published the posts in October 2014 after a fellow far-right activist Garron Helm was sent to prison for tweeting a picture of Berger with a Star of David on her forehead with the hashtag ″Hitler was right″. Bonehill-Paine posted that the ″number of Jewish Labour MPs was a problem″ as well as calling Berger ″an evil money-grabber″ with ″a deep-rooted hatred of men″. The posts were part of the ″Filthy Jew...

Pharmaceutical company Pfizer has been fined a record £84.2 million for overcharging the NHS for drugs. Pfizer had increased the price it charged the NHS for an anti-epilepsy drug by 2,600%! Though shocking, this is likely to be the tip of the iceberg. Even without irregular price hikes and “unfair prices″ pharmaceutical companies regularly make many millions of pounds by patenting their drugs so cheaper versions cannot be made in competition. Life saving and preventative medicine, or even just medicines to make our lives easier, are routinely overpriced and out of the price-range of many who...

The Programme for International Student Assessments (PISA) rankings were published on 6 December. These put UK schools in the 20s among the 72 countries surveyed. Socialists don′t put great store by the PISA ratings, which measure different nations academic achievements by testing 15 and 16 year olds in maths, science and reading. However, the UK’s poor results do demonstrate that, even by their own standards, the Tories model for education is failing. Whilst not perfect, Finland provides a model that is more effective according to PISA and, more importantly, is less harmful to children. In...

After many long months the American elections are finally over. In France the presidential campaigns have started to ramp up. Marine Le Pen from the far right is trying to position herself as the candidate for the working class. François Fillon is representing the far right of France’s conservative Les Republicans (LR), after resoundingly defeating Alain Juppe and Nicolas Sarkozy in a primary. The current “socialist” president, François Hollande, will not be running. The French Communist Party has decided by a very narrow margin to support Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of a party he created,...

After almost a year of campaigning, voting, a second ballot, and a delayed re-run of the second ballot, the Austrian presidential elections finally came to an end on 4 December. With a relatively narrow lead of just 53.8 per cent, the Green Party candidate Alexander Van der Bellen was able to defeat the far-right Freedom Party’s Norbert Hofer. This is good, but it is in no way a victory for the left. While the neoliberal economist Van der Bellen was, not unlike Hillary Clinton, supported by a broad coalition reaching from the chairman of the conservative People’s Party and several high-ranking...