Author: Admin

The Vietnam war revisited

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Fifty years ago this month US imperialism suffered its final ignominious defeat in Vietnam with the fall of its puppet regime in the south. It was a different era then with global, and domestic politics too, shaped by the system clash between Stalinism and the capitalist West. But, argues CHRISTINE THOMAS, Vietnam still has lessons for today’s world of multi-polar geopolitics and a revival of mass struggles.

The ‘Fall of Saigon’ on 30 April 1975 marked the final chapter in a decades-long fight of the Vietnamese people for national liberation. A courageous struggle by a predominantly peasant movement in a poverty-stricken country defeated first French imperialism and then the US – the richest and most powerful nation on the planet, armed to the teeth with the latest hi-tech bombs and military weaponry. With the capture of the south Vietnamese capital Saigon by the North Vietnamese forces, and the chaotic exodus of the remaining Americans on military helicopters, the country was finally united and the Vietnamese able to determine their own future, free from imperialist intervention.

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Misreading Labour’s election victory

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Taken As Red: How Labour Won Big and the Tories Crashed the Party

By Anushka Asthana

Published by Harper North, 2024, £22

Reviewed by Helen Pattison

Taken as Red was published in September 2024, chronicling the run up to the general election in July 2024, and the election itself. It gives readers the view of the deputy political editor of ITV, Anushka Asthana, a former journalist at The Guardian newspaper, as she watched it unfold from behind the scenes.

Perhaps the most revealing thing about this book is how it, unintentionally, exposes the incredibly rapid pace of events in British politics today. Just six months after its release and the book feels extremely out of date. It is brimming with enthusiasm for the “most seismic election in a generation”, which it puts down partly to the Tories’ destruction of their own party, and Starmer’s ‘bold fight’ to win power.

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A dark period in English history

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James and John: A True Story of Prejudice and Murder

By Chris Bryant

Published by Bloomsbury, 2024, £10

Reviewed by Michael Johnson

On the 27 November 1835, the last two men executed for homosexuality in England, James Pratt and John Smith, were hanged. Their crime was described as “against the order of nature… abominable… to the great displeasure of Almighty God, to the great scandal of all human kind”.

The charge, buggery, was indeed felt to be so shocking to the public that it could not even be written down in newspaper, instead styled as “b-gg-ry”. What it actually involved for James and John was meeting privately behind a locked door and being spied on through a window and key hole.

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Capturing the power of protest

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Resistance: How protest shaped Britain and photography shaped protest

Steve McQueen

Turner Contemporary, Margate

22 February to 1 June 2025

Reviewed by Jim Horton

In this excellent exhibition, Steve McQueen presents a stunning collection of over 200 photographs, documenting a history of protests over a turbulent one hundred-year period. Resistance, the culmination of a four-year research project, explores how photography recorded key moments of social and political change, acted as a catalyst for action, and actively shaped how we remember past events. Its central message is that resistance can achieve results, while, as Steve McQueen says, protest remains “especially urgent in today’s political climate”.

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Marxism and women’s liberation

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This month’s Socialism Today is a special issue to commemorate International Women’s Day (IWD), which takes place on 8 March. Socialist Party national committee member BEA GARDNER gives an overview of the articles which have been included in this issue and explains their relevance to the struggle against women’s oppression today.

This year, 2025, marks 115 years since the idea of an international ‘women’s day’ was first endorsed by the International Socialist Women’s Conference, meeting as part of the World Congress of the Second International – an organisation embracing socialist parties and trade unions including the early Labour Party, but also the formally Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party.

On the agenda was how to strengthen the relationships between different sections of the international involved in agitation and campaigning among working women, a programme of demands to improve conditions for mothers and their young children, and how socialists should relate to the women’s suffrage movement.

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In defence of socialist feminism

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As the age of austerity arising from the great crash of 2007-2008 entered its second decade, a new movement of women struggling against their oppression took shape. But mistaken ideas on how oppression can be ended resurfaced too. The ideas of socialist feminism were more relevant than ever, argued CHRISTINE THOMAS, in the December-January 2018/19 edition of Socialism Today, No.224.

Feminism is back. All over the globe women have been taking to the streets and speaking out about gender oppression. Mass protests against violence against women have erupted in response to horrific rapes and murders of women in India and Argentina. On 14 November, more than 1.5 million students answered the strike call of the Sindicato de Estudiantes and Libres y Combativas, the socialist feminist platform of SE and Izquierda Revolucionaria (CWI) against sexism in schools and in the legal system of the Spanish state. In Ireland, Poland and Argentina women have organised to defeat new and existing reactionary constraints on their reproductive rights, challenging the stranglehold of the Catholic church over social issues.

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A tale of two feminisms – the fight against women’s oppression today

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In the March 2022 edition of Socialism Today, issue No.256, CHRISTINE THOMAS reviewed two books by authors coming from different feminist perspectives and asked: what strategy is needed in the struggle to end violence against women, sexism and oppression today?

Daring to Hope, by Sheila Rowbotham

Published by Verso, 2021, £20

Feminism for Women: The Real Route to Liberation, by Julie Bindel

Published by Constable, 2021, £16.99

One effect of the Covid pandemic has been to shine a spotlight on gender inequality in capitalist society and on violence towards women in particular, one of the most extreme manifestations of women’s oppression today. Unfortunately, it is one that many women will face at some time in their lives. One in four will experience domestic abuse and one in seven will be raped. On average, two women a week are killed by a current or ex-partner. Most women don’t feel safe from violence, abuse or sexual harassment whether at home, at work or in public spaces, including on social media. A staggering 97% of women report that they have experienced sexual harassment. It is therefore no surprise that violence against women has been the catalyst for a whole number of movements recently; in Britain most notably following the murder of Sarah Everard in South London in 2021.

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Different identities, common struggle

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In the search for a way to fight against discrimination and oppression, asserting identity can be an important first step towards the development of socialist consciousness. If it leads on to an understanding of the class nature of capitalist society and the need for united, mass struggle, argues HANNAH SELL, in a shortened version of an article first published in Socialism Today No.192, October 2015.

Over recent years there has been a growth in support for what can broadly be described as ‘identity politics’ among many mainly young people who are rightly angry about and radicalised by, their experience of sexism, racism, homophobia, prejudice against disabled people and other forms of oppression. In one sense, asserting the importance of their identity is an inevitable part of the political awakening of many members of oppressed groups within society. Recognising that you are oppressed, and that you can fight against your oppression through a common struggle with others who share the same oppression, is a vital first step.

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The life and struggle of Alexandra Kollantai

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In a 2003 article CHRISTINE THOMAS looked back at the life and ideas of the Russian revolutionary, Alexandra Kollantai, a pioneer of the struggle for socialism and women’s liberation. The second part, focusing on the post-1917 period, was published in Socialism Today, issue No.73, March 2003. The complete article has only been available online until now.

Alexandra Kollantai is probably the best-known woman among Russian revolutionaries, the first woman elected as a full member of the Bolshevik central committee and the first female commissar (minister) elected after the October 1917 revolution.

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