Socialism Today – Page 2 – Socialist Party magazine

Lessons from fighting the BNP in the 1990s

2 December, 2025Admin

In November Socialist Party members Lois Austin and Hannah Sell appeared before the SpyCops inquiry. In answering the Met Police ‘justifications’ for their undercover policing, important issues about how to fight the far-right were contested. HANNAH SELL writes.

In 2015 the then Tory home secretary, Theresa May, set up the Undercover Policing Inquiry, known as the SpyCops Inquiry, to investigate the activities of the Metropolitan Police’s Special Demonstration Squad, which ran from 1968 to 2008 and which had sent undercover officers into around 1,000 different organisations, all but a handful of them on the left. It took almost six years before the Inquiry began, and four years later it is still rumbling on.

Clearly its eventual conclusion will condemn some of the worst ‘excesses’ of the undercover officers. These include that a number of them had sexual relationships, including fathering children, while they were undercover, and that officers spied on the family of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence and other bereaved families.

The revival of Die Linke

2 December, 2025Admin

TOM HOFFMAN of Sol (CWI Germany), explains why Die Linke (the Left party) has undergone an unexpected electoral and membership growth recently, and what this could mean for the future development of working-class struggle in Germany.

The past year has been one of the most turbulent in the history of Die Linke. Roughly twelve months ago, the party seemed on the verge of falling into political insignificance. Before the turn of the year, Die Linke was still well below the five percent threshold required to enter the Bundestag (German federal parliament) in polls for the federal election. At that time, no one would have bet that Die Linke would be where it is today: with a strengthened parliamentary faction in the Bundestag and a membership that has doubled to 120,000.

China’s revolutionary tragedy

2 December, 2025Admin

OSCAR PARRY explains why, despite the courage and determination of the masses, the revolution in China that began one hundred years ago this year ended in defeat.

The Chinese revolution of 1925-27 represented one of the most gigantic movements in human history. The multi-millioned Chinese masses, led by the Chinese working class, battered at the foundations of Chinese and imperialist landlordism and capitalism in their quest for liberation and a new society.

A Marxist approach to war and peace

2 December, 2025Admin

BERKAY KARTAV reviews a new collection of Leon Trotsky’s writings on imperialist war, half of which are translated into English for the first time.

Against Imperialist War: Writings 1914-1916

By Leon Trotsky

Published by Mentmore Press, 2024, £14.99

“If Europe wants to avoid war, Europe must get ready for war”. These were the words of Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, when addressing the cadets of the Royal Danish Military Academy earlier this year. They highlight the dramatic shifts taking place in today’s capitalist world, marked by increased geopolitical rivalry, polarisation, conflicts, volatility and uncertainty.

The horrific wars in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Congo and elsewhere, are graphic illustrations of the rotten nature of capitalism – a chaotic, conflict-ridden system. Capitalism must be overthrown so that, in the words of the Turkish socialist poet Nazim Hikmet, “the children of this world can live and grow and laugh and play”.

Blueprints vs building a real movement

2 December, 2025Admin

Your Party: Grasping the Enormity of the Moment

By Roger Hallam

Published by Hard Rain Books, 2025, £8.99

Reviewed by Iain Dalton

Even before Your Party was founded, sections of its potential leadership looked high and low for any other basis for a new party than the traditions of the workers’ movement. This includes the horizontalist methods of new left formations from Europe – such as Podemos and La France Insoumise – with online editing tools provided by Yanis Varoufakis’ DiEM25.

But another major source is from some of the recent climate movements, particularly those associated with Roger Hallam, founder of Extinction Rebellion, who has set out his thoughts on the way forward for Your Party in this booklet.

History of trade union struggle deserves better

2 December, 20252 December, 2025Admin

Combining Efforts: 200 Years Of Trade Union History

Exhibition showing at the London School of Economics until 31 January 2026

Reviewed by Jim Horton

A free exhibition dedicated solely to the history of British trade unionism is a rarity. This alone entitles this exhibition to be recommended to activists. With more than one in five workers holding membership, trade unions remain a vital part of working-class life. Yet the history of our movement is either not taught in schools, or taught superficially.

This means many people are unaware of the role of trade unions in achieving better pay and conditions in the workplace, including shorter working hours, annual leave, sick pay and improved health and safety. Outside of the workplace, it was the trade union movement which played a leading role in achieving the right to protest and the extension of the franchise to the male working class in the nineteenth century.

Your Party and the left

3 November, 20253 November, 2025Admin

HANNAH SELL explains how a misunderstanding of Marxism is shaping the mistaken approaches of most parties on the left towards the basis on which the newly formed Your Party should be organised.

The declaration for a new party announced by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana began with a bang, with 800,000 signing up in support. Since then, of course, public divisions at the top have dampened some of the initial enthusiasm. However, the party’s foundation is under way. It is at an early stage of development, and its future course is uncertain, but it is, nonetheless, potentially an important step towards a mass workers’ party with a socialist programme.

Socialist Party members are participating in the new party arguing for the approach we think is needed. Often those disagreeing most firmly with us are also members of organisations that consider themselves Marxists. This article looks at some of their arguments to try and help clarify the tasks facing Your Party.

Labour’s continuity Tory housing policies

3 November, 2025Admin

Videos of a Labour Party conference fringe meeting showed the latest housing secretary Steve Reed arriving to loud music, wearing a red Trump-style hat with the slogan ‘Build baby build’. Once he got the microphone working, he tried a call and response with the red hat-wearing audience – ‘Build, Baby, Build’, ‘What’s this country gonna do?’

The social media response was derisive. One of the more polite comments was ‘Muppets new film trailer released’. Most workers coping with the housing crisis will not have been following the conference in detail, but there is no reason to think their response would have been more positive if they had tuned in.

Global Warning: Can China save COP30?

3 November, 20252 February, 2026Admin

The latest UN conference on global warming is scheduled to open in Brazil in mid-November. Known as COP30, it is the first such summit since Donald Trump became US President in January this year.

His first act on entering the White House in 2017 was to sign an executive order withdrawing America from the flagship 2015 UN Paris Agreement on climate change. This was despite the Paris accord being entirely voluntary with no sanctions at all to enforce its provisions. A wholesale retreat by the other main powers on green policies followed and Trump’s shadow has hung over the preparations for COP30.

Not a model for workers’ politics

3 November, 2025Admin

A new book by the French left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon has been hailed for providing a strategy for new radical parties to achieve a citizens’ revolution to end the rule of the capitalist oligarchy. TONY SAUNOIS, secretary of the Committee for a Workers International (CWI), argues that, unfortunately, it doesn’t.

Now, the People! Revolution in the Twenty-First Century

By Jean-Luc Mélenchon

Published by Verso Books, 2025, £12.99

France has plunged into one of its most serious political and social crises since the founding of the Fifth Republic by Charles De Gaulle, established in 1958 after a ‘soft’ coup had installed the former military leader as President. In true Bonapartist fashion, this republic concentrated powers in the hands of the Presidency at the cost of the National Assembly.

The current turmoil is a product of the underlying crisis of French imperialism and capitalism, a central component being the erosion of the social base of all the traditional parties in France – both the left and the right. Macron, in the last two years of his second term, has seen his support base crumble. Recent polls put his standing at no more than 17% and some as low as 7%. This institutional crisis of the Fifth Republic is reflected in the departure of five prime ministers within two years. In the most recent saga Sebastien Lecornu resigned a few days after his appointment only to be reinstated the following Friday. Macron had fatally called elections to the National Assembly in an attempt to firm up his support following the 2024 European parliament elections. It was a miscalculation which backfired spectacularly. The new National Assembly was hopelessly split three ways.