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In November 2020 Socialism Today published an article, The Battle for Unite, (Issue No.243) in anticipation of the union’s 2021 general secretary election campaign. We quoted the BBC’s Iain Watson who said, “the result of that contest will determine whether the union works closely with Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership, or is willing to be openly critical”.

The biennial Unite policy conference held this July kicked off a year of leadership elections in Unite. This October will see nominations open for the lay member executive council (EC), with voting starting in January; and later in 2026, members will vote for the general secretary position.

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THEO SHARIEFF gives a round-up of discussions on political representation at this year’s union conferences and the approach of delegates to their union’s relationship with Starmer’s Labour.

The joint announcement in July by Independent Alliance MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana of their intention to establish a new political party in Britain to “take on the rich and powerful” amassed support from over 700,000 in the space of days.

Their announcement came just three days after over 1,000 trade union members met to discuss how the fight for a political voice for the trade union movement could be advanced in light of Labour’s continued attacks on the working class. Initiated by Socialist Party member and former MP Dave Nellist, the meeting was attended and addressed by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, the first such meeting since Zarah Sultana had made a public statement resigning from the Labour Party.

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CHRISTINE THOMAS argues that the experience of the development of the early Labour Party, in particular its federal structure of representative democracy, is a useful contribution to current discussions on the formation of a new party in Britain.

The announcement by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana on 24 July that they would be launching a new party, following the decision by delegates at Unite conference to review the union’s relationship with Labour, has placed the question of working-class political representation firmly on the agenda in Britain. In just three days, 500,000 people had added their names to an email list for a new party, while one opinion poll placed a new Corbyn-led party neck and neck with Labour. These developments, at a time when the new party is still only in the concept stage, are a clear indication of the potential that exists for channelling the anger that has exploded against Labour’s pro-austerity, pro-war, pro-big business policies after only one year in office.

Debates are already under way about what kind of new party is needed and how it should be organised. For 30 years the Socialist Party (and its forerunners) has virtually alone argued and campaigned for a new mass workers’ party – with the exception of the brief ‘accident’ of Corbyn becoming leader of the Labour Party from 2015-2019. At that time, had Corbyn taken decisive action to oust the Blairites plotting against him in parliament, local government and the party apparatus, Labour itself potentially could have been transformed into a workers’ party.

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France Insoumise is the main left organisation in France, with 70 MPs and nearly half a million members. LEILA MESSAOUDI of Gauche Révolutionnaire (CWI France) explains its programme, class orientation and method of organisation.

Since Emmanuel Macron came to power as French president in 2017, France Insoumise (FI – France Unbowed) is the only political force resisting the offensive by the capitalist parties and their representatives on a wide scale. It is opposed to racism, to police violence, and to war. This is in a context where the rest of the ‘left’ and the leadership of the trade union movement is holding back, forming a kind of ‘national unity’ in the face of political and economic crises. FI also denounces the ills of this capitalist system, especially the economic and environmental problems.

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Seventy years ago on 26 June 1955 around three thousand people assembled in a field in Kliptown, just outside Johannesburg. They were gathered to debate what the alternative should be to the apartheid system of institutionalised racial segregation, which had been inaugurated following the victory of the National Party in the whites only South African election of 1948.

This was the Congress of the People, organised by the African National Congress (ANC), the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) and others. Delegates had been elected from across the country, travelling by train, bus or on foot to, in the words of the prominent black academic ZK Matthews, ‘draw up a Freedom Charter for the democratic South Africa of the future’.

The following article by WEIZMANN HAMILTON of the Marxist Workers Party, the South African section of the CWI, explains how the working-class masses viewed the aspirations for a new society contained in the Charter: a challenge to capitalism itself, not just its then structural form of apartheid.

But the ambiguity of the Charter’s wording, not accidentally omitting a commitment to socialism, provided sufficient camouflage for the aspirant capitalist interests within the liberation movement to assert their own interpretation. With the consequence that when the racist regime was eventually overthrown a new class apartheid emerged under the ANC’s banner, with South Africa today now the most unequal country in the world.

This article has been abridged from a fuller version, available at https://marxistworkersparty.org.za

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Come Together: Trades Councils 1920-1950

By Michael Bor and Jethro Bor

Published by The Book Guild Limited, 2024, £13.99

Reviewed by Kevin Parslow

Trades councils are local federations of trade union branches and bodies which organise and struggle for the workers in their area, usually a local government district. This book is, in the words of its authors, “a celebration of the activities and politics of trades council members and their contribution to British society, 1920 to 1950”.

There are interesting chapters towards the end on the struggle against mass unemployment, on the role of women in the workforce and how they joined trade unions to defend their interests, often being ignored by the male leaders of the movement. Trade union history is (relatively briefly) brought up to date, with comments from trades council activists (including the president of Southampton Trades Council and Socialist Party member Sue Atkins).

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The first issue of Socialism Today was published exactly thirty years ago this month. Last year, to recognise the passing of our founding editor LYNN WALSH, we reprinted the statement of intent we carried in that September 1995 No.1 edition, outlining the key themes to be developed in the new magazine (see Socialism Today No.283). For this edition, to mark our thirty years, we reprint another article by Lynn – slightly abridged – written for the hundredth edition published in 2006, re-stating the ideological tasks that are still so relevant today.

How many times have bourgeois leaders ‘finally’ exorcised the spectre of Marxism? In January, fifteen years after the ‘collapse of communism’ and the ‘triumph of capitalism’, the European Parliament adopted a resolution condemning “the crimes of totalitarian communist regimes”. (The Guardian, 26 January 2006) This was proposed by the right-wing Swedish MEP, Göran Lindblad, who called for an international conference on the issue, as well as the revision of school textbooks throughout Europe to portray communism as the totalitarian twin of fascism.

This ideological offensive was not a genuine attempt to clarify the character of the former Stalinist regimes of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. It is yet another attempt to use the record of Stalinism to discredit genuine communism and socialism.

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