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Is the BBC worth saving?

19 March, 202019 March, 2020Admin

At the end of January, the British Broadcasting Corporation announced the latest redundancies in its drive to ‘save’ £800 million between 2016 and 2022, following reductions to its licence fee income. Fresh lay-offs in news will exceed 500 as the division works towards its allotted £80 million share of the cuts. Michelle Stanistreet, general secretary of the National Union of Journalists, called it “part of an existential threat to the BBC”.

The need to defend these jobs is not in question. Trade unions organising in the BBC must urgently discuss with members and propose industrial action to stop the cuts. But what of the institution itself? What is the real role of the Beeb – and the media under capitalism?

Global Warning: Preparing for Glasgow’s COP26 jamboree

19 March, 202019 March, 2020Admin

The United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP26, is to take place in Glasgow in November. This conference is seen by climate scientists and activists as critical to cutting carbon emissions and increasing investment in green renewable energy. These measures are essential if there is to be any chance of reversing catastrophic global warming.

But already it has blown up in political controversy. Former Tory energy minister Claire O’Neill, appointed to lead the summit, was sacked by Boris Johnson for questioning his commitment to tackling the climate crisis. She was punished for stating that the UK was way off target in cutting carbon emissions to zero by 2050.

Rebuilding fighting trade unionism

19 March, 202019 March, 2020Admin

PETER TAAFFE reviews an important contribution by Britain’s most prominent trade union leader to the vital task of building a new generation of conscious class fighters for union rights and socialism.

Why You Should be a Trade Unionist
By Len McCluskey
Published by Verso, 2020, £7-99

It says everything about the current weakened state of the trade unions in Britain and worldwide that Len McCluskey in this powerful book argues effectively for workers today to join a trade union and use their collective power to carry through further victories. It is in part a history of working class endurance and tenacity, and also his own experience in fighting for trade unions. This was achieved through the many battles of the British working class in the never-ending struggles against capitalism for democratic and trade union rights.

He is the most prominent and influential left trade union leader in Britain today. It is a fascinating and instructive account of his own trade union and political journey in Liverpool and later as national leader of Britain’s biggest, and strongly militant, union Unite.

Socialists debate identity politics

19 March, 202019 March, 2020Admin

The relationship between fighting women’s oppression, identity politics, and the struggle for socialism is a feature of many debates in the workers’ movement internationally. Mistakes made on this question by the Irish Socialist Party were central to the division that took place in the Committee for a Workers’ International in 2019. In the wake of the Irish general election HANNAH SELL draws up a balance sheet.

In 2019 a major debate took place in the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI), the international organisation to which the Socialist Party is affiliated. The debate resulted in a split in the CWI with some of its former supporters moving in a rightward opportunist direction.

One of the main triggers for the debate was the mistaken approach of the leadership of the Irish Socialist Party (then the CWI’s affiliate in Ireland) towards the fight against women’s oppression, and its relationship to the struggle for socialism. The debate on these issues has important lessons for the workers’ movement internationally, particularly in this period where identity, rather than class, is frequently put forward as the central divide in society by individuals and forces who claim to be on the left.

Women and the early Labour Party

19 March, 202019 March, 2020Admin

The critical role played by women activists in the formation and development of Britain’s labour and trade union movement is often overlooked. CHRISTINE THOMAS reviews a recent book that aims to redress the balance.

The Women in the Room: Labour’s forgotten history
By Nan Sloane
Published by IB Tauris, 2018, £20

Labour’s general election defeat raises questions about the future of Corbynism and by what means a genuine workers’ party might take shape in the future in Britain. In that context, The Women in the Room is an interesting read. It is fundamentally a brief history of the foundation of the Labour Party and its early years (up to the end of the first world war), but with a difference: making visible the participation of women. In weaving together the three main strands of trade unionism, political representation and women’s suffrage, it shows that identity politics is by no means a modern phenomenon and intense debates over the relationship between class and identity were being waged from the very beginning of Labour’s history.

The rise and fall of council housing

19 March, 202019 March, 2020Admin

Municipal Dreams: The Rise and Fall of Council Housing
By John Boughton
Published by Verso, 2019, £9-99
Reviewed by Niall Mulholland

From 1945 to 1981, over five million council homes were built in Britain. This is celebrated by John Boughton in Municipal Dreams: The Rise and Fall of Council Housing. “Historically, councils have made an enormous contribution to meeting our housing needs and in doing so, they have transformed the lives of many millions for the better. Not every home was a ‘Buckingham Palace’ to its new residents, though many were, but to nearly all those who lived in them council housing provided a decent and secure home”.

The age of electoral volatility

19 March, 202019 March, 2020Admin

Electoral Shocks: the volatile voter in a turbulent world
By Edward Fieldhouse, Jane Green et al
Published by Oxford University Press, 2019, £25
Reviewed by Clive Heemskerk

December’s general election outcome produced a flurry of capitalist media commentary hailing a new era of prolonged Tory rule and the possibly terminal demise of the Labour Party.

The Blairite Guardian journalist Jonathan Freedland was just one among many when he wrote of “Labour’s worst election performance since the 1930s… that broke new records for failure” (14 December), in order to feed the narrative – promoted in the immediate aftermath of the result by Tony Blair himself – that, unless ‘Corbynism was ditched’, Labour would be finished.

Editorial: After The Defeat

6 February, 20206 February, 2020Admin

The decisive majority for Boris Johnson in December’s general election represents a turning point in Britain, all the consequences of which have yet to fully work themselves out. The British capitalist class still looks upon 2020 with trepidation. For them 2019 was a nightmare – with economic stagnation, a deadlocked and unpopular parliament, the risk of a chaotic Brexit, and above all the fear of the consequences of a Corbyn-led government. The fact that the Supreme Court intervened directly in politics – against a Tory prime minister – was a clear indication of the pitch of the crisis. The serious strategists of capitalism are now hoping that the election outcome will provide their class with some temporary stability or at least a breathing space. But even if this momentarily appears to be so, none of the underlying problems have been resolved and new crises will be posed in short order, which the capitalist class will not be able to trust Johnson to reliably deal with in their best interests.

Is the time right for a new Scottish workers’ party?

6 February, 20206 February, 2020Admin

Labour’s vote fell further in Scotland, proportionately, than in England and Wales in December’s general election. What conclusions should be drawn for how working class political representation will be secured now, asks Socialist Party Scotland’s PHILIP STOTT?

December 2019 saw Scottish Labour suffer the worst general election result in its 119-year history. Once again the party has been reduced to a solitary Westminster MP. What makes the outcome more catastrophic for Labour than even four years ago was the loss of a further 196,000 votes even compared to the near wipe-out of 2015 – an election which was widely thought to be the very worst it could possibly get. Scottish Labour’s vote fell to 511,838 (18.6%) in December from 707,147 (24.3%) in 2015.

Following in the wake of the previous year’s independence referendum, the collapse of Labour support in working class areas in 2015 was dramatically illustrated by the loss of 40 of their 41 MPs elected in 2010. Open collaboration with the Tories and the capitalist establishment in the anti-independence ‘Better Together’ campaign had sealed the fate of the Blairite-dominated Scottish Labour Party. Its then leader Jim Murphy boldly declared in the wake of the evisceration that saw the SNP secure 56 of the 59 available MPs: “The Scottish Labour Party has been around for more than a century. A hundred years from tonight we will still be around”. Murphy hastily resigned after a short-lived six months as Scottish leader and is now a well-paid advisor to the Tony Blair Institute.

Rebuilding the left in the PCS

6 February, 20206 February, 2020Admin

On December 12, the same day as the general election, the result of the general secretary election for the PCS civil service union was also announced. Mark Serwotka, in office since 2000, was re-elected with 16,420 votes. However, Socialist Party member Marion Lloyd, standing for the first time in a national officer’s election, was second, receiving an impressive 9,278 votes, 30% of the poll. Bev Laidlaw from the Independent Left came third with 5,059.

This was a crucial election in the battle to ensure PCS is maintained as a fighting, left trade union. The votes for Marion now provide a platform to build a new vibrant socialist left within the union, ready for the challenges set by a Boris Johnson majority Tory government. This will be next fought out in the national executive committee (NEC) and group executive elections that will take place this spring.