Socialism Today – Page 16 – Socialist Party magazine

How not to combat right-wing populism

1 October, 2024Admin

Another England: How to Reclaim Our National Story

By Caroline Lucas

Published by Hutchinson Heinemann, 2024, £22

Reviewed by Martin Powell-Davies

After a summer when the far-right have managed to mobilise alienated youth and workers across many towns and cities in England, a book that sets out with the intention to “reclaim ‘Englishness’ from the Right” could be worth a read.

That’s what Caroline Lucas, who recently stood down as the Green Party’s first MP, has tried to do in her book, Another England – How to Reclaim Our National Story. Sadly, however, her rambling discussion, largely based on English literature, doesn’t offer much to the urgent debate about how best to undercut the far-right by offering a working-class, socialist, alternative.

The first lightning flashes – and what to do

2 September, 2024Admin

One month after Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour party was ‘swept to power’ by a paltry 20% of the electorate – the lowest support base of any government since the introduction of universal male suffrage in 1918 – violent protests and riots, instigated by far-right groups, broke out across the country. For those trapped in asylum-seekers’ hostels or mosques under brutal attack from gangs of rioters, the experience was terrifying. More generally, many Black, Asian and Muslim people feel that their safety is increasingly under threat. Tell Mama, a monitoring group tracking Islamophobic hate crimes, reported a five-fold increase in threats to Muslims compared to the same time last year.

Uni funding crisis: prepare for struggle

2 September, 20242 September, 2024Admin

The risk of universities going bankrupt made it onto Keir Starmer’s pre-election ‘shitlist’ of major early challenges facing a Labour government.

Will Starmer’s Labour government raise tuition fees? Will it be the first to let a university go bankrupt on its watch?

The hydrogen gold rush

2 September, 2024Admin

In early 2024, an unpublished report from the US Geological Survey (USGS) found that there is as much as five trillion tonnes of natural hydrogen underground. A fraction of those five trillion tonnes would be enough to supply all global energy needs for the foreseeable future, claimed USGS researcher Geoffery Ellis reporting to the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Denver earlier this year.

Boy troubles

2 September, 2024Admin

Growing alienation from the ideas and institutions that have historically underpinned capitalist social and economic relations is affecting all strata of society – including young men. CHRISTINE THOMAS looks at changing gender norms and an alleged ‘crisis of masculinity’.

Recently there has been a proliferation of articles, books, reports and surveys looking at boys and young men: the problems they face and their ‘backsliding’ attitudes towards girls, women and feminism. Some of these exaggerate, distort or take a one-sided view of findings in order to promote a ‘gender war’ narrative or argue that feminism has ‘gone too far’. Others are more balanced and nuanced. Catherine Carr’s Radio Four documentary, About the Boys, is in the latter category – a series of interviews with teenage boys from different backgrounds and geographical areas, speaking frankly about the difficulties of being a boy in today’s world.

Changing attitudes through struggle

2 September, 2024Admin

It has been 40 years since the national miners’ strike of 1984-1985 – the biggest industrial dispute in post-war Britain. This strike had a huge and lasting effect on the trade union movement. And, as HEATHER RAWLING explains, it also changed social attitudes to oppressed groups in society in significant ways.

The miners’ strike became a long, bitter industrial dispute. It drew in large layers of the working class, including women, Black and Asian workers, and members of the LGBT community. They gave their time, solidarity, and money to keep the strike going.

Iran rising: Women, Life, Freedom

2 September, 2024Admin

BEA GARDNER reviews a recent book discussing the positive lessons – and missed opportunities – of the 2022-23 uprising in Iran that coalesced around the banner of Women, Life, Freedom.

What Iranians Want: Women, Life, Freedom

By Arash Azizi

Published by Oneworld, 2024, £14.99

What Iranians Want: Women, Life, Freedom is described as the first major book on the 2022-23 uprising in Iran. Protests were sparked in September 2022 after the murder of Masha Amini, a 21-year-old woman from a Kurdish background, who was brutally beaten by the ‘moral security’ division of the Iranian police, dying from her injuries. She had been arrested in Tehran for the “inappropriate wearing of the headscarf”. Thousands came to her funeral, with slogans including “death to the dictator”, and the epitaph on her gravestone was “your name will become a symbol”.

A shameful history

2 September, 2024Admin

The Undesirables: the law that locked away a generation

By Sarah Wise

Published by Oneworld Publications, 2024, £22

Reviewed by Leah Byatt

The social care sector should play a valuable and essential role in society, ensuring disadvantaged layers of our communities can access the resources and support they need for a secure, healthy, and meaningful existence. But it is a sector that is vastly underfunded under the capitalist system, leading to exploitation of workers and service users alike.

The Undesirables shines a light on a shameful history. Highlighting key developments over the past hundred years, it helps contextualise how we’ve reached the stage we have with the social care sector today.

Wrong about Labour? A letter and a reply

2 September, 2024Admin

In reviewing my book, Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay: A Short History of the Anti-Poll Tax Struggle (Thinkwell Books), you presented a comprehensive look at the Tories’ poll tax and our historic victory against it (Socialism Today No.278, June 2024). However, I disagree that I “mistakenly leave open the possibility of resuscitating Starmer’s Labour Party”.

A new era begins

11 July, 2024Admin

Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party has been swept into power – by 20.1% of the electorate, the lowest share for any incoming government since the first ever election fought under universal (male) suffrage in 1918. In the main, not even the 9.7 million who went out and voted Labour did so for positive reasons. A YouGov poll asked Labour voters what their primary motivation was. By far the largest group, 48% of the total, did so to ‘get rid of the Tories’. By contrast only 5% said that they did so because they agreed with Labour’s policies.

This is in stark contrast to the 2017 general election, when – with Jeremy Corbyn as leader – Labour’s anti-austerity manifesto was the central reason for the surge in Labour’s vote to 12.88 million. This was 3.5 million more than the previous election in 2015, the biggest increase in a single election since 1945. Even in 2019, now falsely written into history as ‘the worst election result since 1935’, Corbyn won 10.27 million votes, half a million more than Starmer achieved from an electorate that has grown by over a million since 2019.