& Workers’ Liberty

SolFor siociadl ownershaip of the branks aind intdustry y No 497 26 February 2019 50p/£1 Labour goes for new public vote

All out on 23 March See page 12

After the Umunna split Sean Matgamna writes an open letter to Jeremy Corbyn, page 9; Editorial on the Umunna split and after, page 5 See pages 5 & 9 LABOUR: New school climate protest 15 March Alan Simpson discusses what we can BOn MondayA 25 FebruaryC the LabouKr Party leade rshipR came out E• By reMdoubling the callA for a speciaIl conNference in wh! ich the learn from the 15 February school walk- for a new public vote on Brexit. Labour Party sorts itself out. outs Shadow Brexit minister Keir Starmer and shadow foreign secretary On Monday 25th “a Labour spokesman”, presumably from the Emily Thornberry have said they would vote Remain in that refer - Leader’s Office, was telling Reuters that “a referendum giving a See page 7 endum. choice between May’s deal and Remain would not be acceptable”. This is a great victory for the anti-Brexit left. We should clinch it: The Skwawkbox blog, known as an unofficial feed from the • By mobilising on the streets to add pressure on Parliament. Leader’s Office, branded the story that Labour was backing a second Labour should sponsor a big bloc on the 23 March “People’s Vote” Brexit referendum as “‘mainstream’ fake news”. Labour for a demonstration. Labour for a Socialist Europe, the anti-Brexit left Labour members have to guard against backsliding, and against group in Labour, has already started organising for that. the referendum call being reduced to a “designed-to-fail” parliamen - Socialist Europe • By making it clear that Labour will vote Remain in that new pub - tary gesture. lic vote. Brexit is in crisis. We can stop it. National conference 9 March 11.30am-5.30pm Camden School for Girls, London, NW5 2DB. Call a Special Labour Conference! labourforasocialisteurope.org 2 NEWS More online at www.workersliberty.org

Solidarity in other formats

To be sent an e-reader version of Solidarity, email awl@work - ersliberty.org. This may be helpful for dyslexic readers. E-readers en - able you to choose the font, type size, and line-spacing you prefer, in a completely uncluttered lay - Hatton’s no- glory days out. We now have volunteers to By Gerry Bates Hatton, once so influential, was produce an audio version of the disqualified as a councillor and dis - paper, at least experimentally. Derek Hatton used to be famous. credited politically. He and other Links to the audio version on In the mid-1980s he was the Militant councillors were expelled SoundCloud will be on chief figure in Liverpool’s Labour from the Labour Party, and scarcely www.workersliberty.org/audio. council, embattled against the tried to oppose the expulsion ex - Please give feedback so that Tories. cept through the courts. we can find out whether these Formally deputy leader of the Hatton had always presented efforts are worthwhile, and, if council, he was able to be the main himself as a wide boy, a chancer, they are, improve them. public figure because he was pro - with more of posturing and ma - moted by the Militant group (fore - chine politics about him than so - runner of the Socialist Party), cialist reasoning. Militant, having which then had decisive influence allowed Hatton to disgrace them, in the Liverpool labour movement. now saw him move away. His record was shameful. After a He became a media figure, a series of show mobilisations, the radio talk-show host. In 2008 he Liverpool council dialled down told the Daily Telegraph (3 October): Netanyahu woos far right “I’m now involved in property in their campaign. At a crucial point Cyprus... It’s hard to put an exact By Willie Sneyd his ten-year term of office. gaining ground. in the miners’ strike, the council left Netanyahu has been under in - The main rival to Netanyahu is the miners in the lurch. Hatton did figure on my annual income be - cause it goes up and down. It’s cer - Israeli prime minister Benyamin vestigation on multiple charges of the newly formed Blue and White a deal with the Tories to postpone corruption since 2016. In December party, differing mainly by being its financial crisis to the next year. tainly in the comfortable six figure Netanyahu has persuaded two bracket though... far-right racist parties to merge 2018 Israel’s State Prosecutor rec - more secularist. Shamelessly, Hatton recounted ommended he be brought to court. It has said that if it wins the 4 later how a Tory MP had told him “My days in politics were a very in returning for offering them long time ago and I lost interest in government posts if he wins the As yet the Attorney General in Ne - April election, it will make no fresh exactly what the game was. “We tanyahu’s administration is block - start. It will seek a coalition with had to tell Patrick [Jenkin, the Tory it after I was expelled from the city Israeli general election due on 4 council... I moved on”. April. ing that, but that protection will Netanyahu’s party Likud, on the government minister] to give you disappear if Netanyahu loses the assumption that Netanyahu him - the money. At this stage we want Now aged 71, he has been read - One of the two parties is Jewish mitted to the Labour Party and Power, a scarcely-concealed contin - election. self will then be out of the game. Scargill [the miners’ union leader]. Netanyahu draws strength from Blue and White stresses that He’s our priority. But we’ll come then quickly suspended when uation of the Kahane movement someone found a loose-mouthed which has been banned in Israel the big shift to the right in Israeli whatever the parliamentary arith - for you later”. politics since the more-or-less com - metic, the party will not combine And the Tories did. After the antisemitic tweet by him from 2012. since 1988 as terrorist and racist. Whether Labour members It advocates expelling Palestini - plete breakdown over 2001-7 of with Israel’s Arab parties to form a miners were defeated in early 1985, talks for peace with the Palestini - government or to block Netanyahu Liverpool retreated. Notoriously it should be suspended for one-off ca - ans and Israeli Arabs who refuse to sual social media effusions is ques - swear “loyalty”, and an expanded ans. from forming his own coalition. issued redundancy notices to all its According to Dahlia in +972 Israel’s shift to the right mirrors workers, as a supposed “tactical tionable. Jewish state taking in the whole Whether Hatton’s readmission magazine, about 45% of Scheindlin - the rise of the once-marginal manoeuvre”. It borrowed money West Bank. will bring any benefit to the voters self-define as right wing, Hamas in Palestinian politics. from Swiss banks at high interest Netanyahu’s move is designed to Labour Party is no question at roughly one-quarter as centrists, Elements for new politics which rates and yet made cuts. get the far right into the Knesset all: it won’t. (parliament) by bringing the and 20% as left wing. could win a democratic two-states merged group above the 3.25% Among Jewish voters, about 55% settlement between Israel and the threshold for gaining seats which say they are right wing and only Palestinians exist in movements neither of the two separate parties 15% left. like Standing Together in Israel, but could reach. In the first decades of Israel, the as yet are electorally marginal. A crisis: but who will fix it? The growth of those elements It has brought condemnation Israeli Labour Party dominated politics and led every government. depends on the bringing-closer even from the American Israel Pub - ests”, and specific political barriers. Now it is a demoralised rump. of a settlement allowing justice lic Affairs Committee, a US lobby The report favourably quotes En - The slightly-left social demo - for the Palestinians, and vice group which has previously gone gels: cratic Meretz survives, but is not versa. along with Netanyahu throughout “In relation to nature, as to soci - By Mike Zubrowski ety, the present mode of production is predominantly concerned only The Institute for Public Policy about the first, tangible success; Research (IPPR), a broadly and then surprise is expressed that Essex J Soc ban blocked “Blairite” think-tank, has pub - the more remote effects of actions lished a report, This is a crisis directed to this end turn out to be By Simon Nelson societies requiring a ballot majority or religious identity.” (bit.ly/ippr-c). of quite a different, mainly even of is unusual and wrong. On top of Dr Maaruf Ali, an Essex aca - It considers not just global warm - quite an opposite, character” ( Di - More than 200 students at Essex that, sections of the left have a his - demic who has now been sus - ing, but other severe and rapid en - alectics of Nature ). University voted against the for - tory of an “anti-Zionist” politics pended, vocally opposed the vironmental changes. Climate However, the report has no talk mation of a Jewish Society. It’s which refused to allow Jewish stu - establishment of the JSoc. He has change will affect poorer and more of overthrowing capitalism, and the first organised attempt to dent societies to form unless they previously shared antisemitic and oppressed people most, on a na - not much in the way of detailed stop or ban a Jewish Society on explicitly opposed Israel. It was an Holocaust-denying material on so - tional and international scale. It has piecemeal measures. IPPR a British campus for decades. antisemitic campaign which Social - cial media. been driven by the richest. promises more detail next year. A rise in antisemitic incidents There has been no explanation ist Organiser (Solidarity’s predeces - The report advocates “just” and But really the report is another on university campuses and the from any group of “activists” or sor) vigorously opposed, especially “sustainable” societies, and prepa - admonition that *something seri - ongoing crisis around anti - students as to why there was a vote around the banning of the Jewish ration for the impacts of climate ous must be done urgently*, with - semitism among the left show against the society. The university Society at Sunderland Poly in 1985 change. Often reducing emissions out specifics about what and by why a more vigorous educational responded to outcry about the vote (bit.ly/su-poly). also means improved quality of whom. campaign about the specifics of by short-cutting the usual proce - The public statement from the life, for example reduced consump - It does allude to “younger gen - modern and particularly left an - dure under which all new societies Student Union says “We are also re - tion of red meat or increased public erations” as an agent of change. tisemitism is necessary now have to be approved by student viewing the way that societies are transport. Ultimately, though, the working more than ever. ballot. To that date, some 64% of ratified at Essex going forward, to IPPR sees the inadequate re - class organising for the revolu - votes had been in favour of allow - ensure that all students have a safe sponse so far by governments to tionary overthrow of capitalism ing the new society. and welcoming environment to • Workers’ Liberty pamphlet, Left climate change as due to the com - is the only way we can bring The whole procedure of student meet with those of a shared experi - Antisemitism and How to Fight It: plexity of the issue, “vested inter - about just and sustainable soci - ence and to celebrate their cultural bit.ly/l-as eties. Workers’ Liberty @workersliberty NEWS 3 Macron, Salvini, and the left

head of a far-right coalition across bit.ly/rome-st). By Joan Trevor Europe aiming to “save the real Eu - Spain’s El País newspaper said On 7 February, France recalled rope” in the upcoming European the diplomatic spat pits the “liberal its ambassador from Italy, the Parliamentary elections. Others in and democratic values of the EU first time this had happened the coalition include Poland’s Law founders” (Macron) against “au - since Italy’s fascist leader Benito and Justice party, Hungary’s Fidesz thoritarianism” and “insurrection” Mussolini declared war in 1940. party, and the Alternative for Ger - (Di Maio). The recall was the latest act in a many. There are real differences be - growing row between French Pres - He also seeks to disrupt the tween the two sides: Macron repre - ident Emmanuel Macron and France-Germany partnership that sents the more integrationist Italy’s coalition government, forms the heart of the EU. That ex - tendencies of big European capital, formed of the populist Five Star plains a lot of the Italians’ readiness while Salvini’s and Di Maio’s gov - Movement and the far-right Na - to stir things with Macron. It plays ernment is more Eurosceptic and tional League. to their crowd. nationalistic. But both are pro-cap - Macron had criticised the coali - The row is less useful to Macron, ital and anti-worker. tion for promoting the “leprosy” of whose domestic approval ratings Socialists should support Euro - nationalism, and Italy’s new policy are rock-bottom. pean integration, but seek to assert of turning away migrant boats Italy’s other deputy prime minis - working-class interests within it from its shores. The Italian govern - ter, Luigi di Maio of the Five Star and to use integration to build ment accuses Macron of hypocrisy Movement, recently accused unity between European workers. Outsourced workers protest together for returning migrants in France to France of creating poverty in Africa That approach that can stop the and thus fuelling mass migration big business interests eroding pop - Outsourced workers from four trade unions united for a day of ac - Italy, and, with the rest of the EU, tion on Tuesday 26 February. Members of the IWGB at University failing to help Italy deal with the from the continent to Europe. On 5 ular support for lower borders, and February he met in Paris with the prevent the far-right and national - of London, UVW at the Ministry of Justice, and PCS at the Depart - migrant crisis. ment for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy all struck to de - In January Italian Deputy Prime gilets jaunes (yellow vests) move - ists benefiting from the growing ment that has been causing Macron dissatisfaction with the EU. mand better pay and conditions, and direct employment. RMT Minister Matteo Salvini posted on London Transport Regional Council, which organises outsourced Facebook that: “In France they so much trouble, and boasted that Against Macron and Salvini we “the winds of change had now must build a workers’ voice! workers on London Underground, also supported the demonstra - have a bad government and a bad tion. president of the Republic”. He told crossed the Alps”. It was this act In the European Parliamentary people not to vote for Macron’s En which prompted France to recall its elections, 23-26 May, 751 MEPs will as to avoid Euro-elections in the Marche party. Salvini posted a ambassador. be elected to represent the 27 mem - and piecemeal. Even where they UK. photo of himself with far-right Na - Neither side in this row deserves ber states, not including the UK. will be strongest, in France, Surveys currently suggest the tional Rally (former National Front) support. It’s right to point out If Brexit is postponed, the UK there will probably be two rival far-right will not win a majority in leader Marine Le Pen, captioned Macron’s hypocrisy, but the Italian could take part in the elections. Ac - revolutionary socialist lists, from the European Parliament but will “Matteo + Marine, Macron’s worst government for its part represents cording to shadow Foreign Secre - the NPA and from Lutte Ouvrière: increase their influence. nightmare!” an immediate threat to minority tary Emily Thornberry, however, bit.ly/npa-lo Sadly, working-class socialist Salvini is positioning himself as ethnic communities, migrants and that is unlikely: a postponement, or the labour movement (see postponements, will be so arranged candidatures will be scattered Venezuela: four dead in border clashes

violent clashes erupted at the bor - ian crisis? Nevertheless, the situa - security forces in the Gran Sabana der as opposition-supporting tion in Venezuela remains bleak. region near the Brazilian border. protestors attempted to breach the That same Friday, indigenous The tribe retaliated by seizing government blockades and bring in Pemon woman Zoraida Rodriguez the local airport, which acts as a the supplies. Venezuelan security died from her bullet wounds after gateway to Angel Falls, before forces responded with rubber bul - her tribe clashed with Venezuelan being violently dispersed. lets and tear gas. One such crowd dispersal in the town of Santa Elena de Uairé left at least four dead and 18 injured. Al - though, so far, Guaidó has largely failed to draw the Venezuelan top brass from Maduro, there have been rank-and-file defections in the National Guard. At least 60 border guards are reported to have de - serted and crossed into Colombia. In a somewhat surreal turn of events, rival solidarity concerts were held on Friday 22 February on bian officials say this was deliberate opposite sides of the Venezuela- By Eduardo Tovar incineration. Colombia border. In Colombia, Juan Guaidó declared himself Venezuelan troops have block - Richard Branson hosted president of Venezuela on 23 aded the borders with Colombia “Venezuela Aid Live” to raise $100 and Brazil to keep out lorries carry - million in funds for food and The deadline for super-earlybird the event. The 22-23 June weekend January, disputing the position tickets for Ideas for Freedom agenda will include presentations with the incumbent president ing food and medical supplies. medicine. Maduro has denounced these aid The concert featured notable 2019, the Workers’ Liberty sum - and debates on issues around Nicolas Maduro. mer school, passed on 24 Brexit, antisemitism, climate A month later, Guaidó continues shipments as a pretext for a foreign Latin American artists including invasion. “Despacito ” singer Luis Fonsi. Defy - February. change, 1919, 1989, and more. to ask other states to consider “all We’ve sold a lot more tickets There’ll be a walking tour on options” for removing Maduro. We oppose any military interven - ing travel restrictions, Guaidó tion in Venezuela, or economic made a surprise appearance to four months in advance of the Thursday 20 June and an evening Events on 23 February ramped up event than we have at this stage in debate on Friday 21 June. the risk of invasion, by the USA or sanctions that will inevitably hit the speak to attendees and reporters. poorest Venezuelans hardest. At Meanwhile, in Venezuela, Maduro previous years. Let’s hope the pat - Venue: Camden School for a consortium of states. tern continues! Girls, Sandall Road, London On the 23rd, eight lorries carry - the same time, we continue to sup - supporters held a “Hands Off port efforts to build an indepen - Venezuela” concert, broadcast on “Advanced” earlybird tickets NW5 2DB. Free creche. ing aid attempted to cross the bor - are now available until 21 April: Overnight accommodation will der from Colombia. Three lorries dent, class-struggle left that can state TV. provide an alternative to the Chav - An island-owning billionaire like £30 waged, £17 low-waged and also be available free. reportedly made it into Venezuela, students, £7 unwaged. only for two to catch fire. Colom - ista mainstream. Branson hosting a private Over the course of 23 February, fundraiser for a major humanitar - Prices will increase in steps until • www.workersliberty.org/ideas 4 COMMENT Email your letters to [email protected] The importance of text Honda: don’t mention Brexit! I am dyslexic, and a slower reader than many. At points I have struggled with atten - from the prime minister, Shinzo Abe, down tion span or felt daunted by the prospect of – have been presing for a soft Brexit ever reading a long text in a limited time. There since the referendum, initially privately but are techniques that can help many people to recently more openly.” Janine′s article on “Neurodiversity, capi - Honda’s decision in Swindon is part of a talism, and socialism” in Solidarity 494 improve their reading speed. Taking breaks and reading in short intervals can help atten - pattern. Nissan is scaling back its plans for was interesting and informative. I agree By Jim Denham Sunderland; Toyota seems likely to leave with most of what she advocates. tion span. Perseverence, recognition of the impor - Rumours that Honda was about to an - Burnaston; the same with BMW in Cowley; However, I′d like to query her implication tance of reading, and confidence in the use - nounce the closure of its Swindon plant, Brexiteer Dyson has opted to build his new that “text-heavy” newspapers are no longer fulness of trying, can help. with a loss of 3,500 jobs (up to 10,000, in - electric car in Singapore; Jaguar Land Rover very important, and that alternative media I read and write significantly more than cluding the supply chain), began circu - is cutting 4,500 jobs. (videos, meetings) can replace them. many of my non-dyslexic friends. In com - lating on Monday 18 February. The next One of the UK’s few enduring industrial Those other media can′t replace in-depth pensating for my ″disorganisation″, I have day it was all over the front pages of the policies over the past three decades has reading. Videos can and should play a useful put a lot of effort into organisational tech - serious bourgeois press. been to attract and maintain investment in supplementary role, and meetings are of British motor manufacturing from Japan niques, and end up in some ways _more or - Strangely, though, Britain’s self-styled so - course vital. and Germany. From the time of the ganised_ than many people who might cialist daily, with close links to the trade Text allows for in-depth studying of topics Thatcher’s administration in the 1980s, ″naturally″ find it easier. unions, the Morning Star , didn’t put the in a way that is often much more difficult or Honda, and then Nissan and Toyota, were Supporting and encouraging, where possi - news on its front page. impossible in other formats. Text-based ma - coaxed into making Britain their base for ex - ble, people to work on reading is an emanci - Tuesday’s Morning Star (19 February) car - terial also has an advantage in its ability to porting within the EU. patory approach. We should aim to make ried one short piece, tucked away on an in - be distributed hand-to-hand. The generally Tata’s investment of £5 billion into the re - audio recordings and other versions of our side page and quoting the local Tory MP lower barriers to the production and distri - vitalisation of Jaguar Land Rover’s network own texts and of many Marxist classics. But Justin Tomlinson saying the closure decision bution of leaflets, newspapers, and pam - of UK factories, engineering and design stu - for the foreseeable future, a large proportion is “based on global trends and not Brexit, as phlets make text a more democratic medium dios, mainly in the West Midlands, built up of the extremely extensive body of socialist all European production will consolidate in than video. a British workforce of 40,000, levels of auto - and other thought will remain in text format. Japan in 2021.” Being dyslexic or neurodivergent can make motive employment not seen since the hey - Where possible, we should seek not to be The piece also quoted Unite national au - some things more difficult. Not attempting days of Dagenham and Longbridge. simply ″gatekeepers″, providing individuals tomotive officer Des Quinn, but not his or encouraging people to attempt those more The first new car plants in a generation with access to certain content. We should comment, carried in most of the bourgeois difficult things is sometimes not the best re - were built: Jaguar Land Rover’s engine fa - seek to empower them to be able to freely en - press, that the car industry had “been sponse. cility in Wolverhampton, and a supercar fac - gage in the body of thought as a whole. brought low by the chaotic Brexit uncer - Sometimes adaptations we as a group can tory in Woking for McLaren. For some individuals this is not possi - tainty.” do can make activities easier, for example by The British automotive sector employs ble, or not possible as a first step. We The next day the Morning Star carried an - making it easier to read it with a tinted back - nearly one million people and produced 1.7 should aim to support them as far as pos - other not particularly prominent piece on an ground or particular fonts. We can support million cars last year, of which almost 60 per sible. inside page, mainly about a (supposed) each other in using aides and developing cent were exported to the continent. campaign by Unite to save the plant. techniques for reading and writing. Tinted Now investment in the UK automotive Mike Zubrowski, Bristol The report noted that “Honda did not overlays, reading guides and ergonomic sector has halved in the past six months, mention Brexit as a reason to close the pens can all be fashioned or aquired quite compared with the same period a year ago. plant.” easily. Investment in Britain has now fallen for It doesn’t seem to have occurred to the four quarters as firms are delaying, can - Morning Star that the company may have celling or switching investment, with been deliberately polite, not mentioning Japanese companies including Nissan, Sony, Brexit for fear of antagonising future British Panasonic and Hitachi leading the way. car buyers and the government. Of course, socialists do not take our cue Only last summer, though, Honda No vote for Sanders! from what businesses want. We are inde - warned that post-Brexit border checks could pendent. We are never yea-sayers. Neither clog up its supply chain (“unprecedented The justification for voting for the Labour ing a left-wing leadership, no matter the are we nay-sayers who can economise on impact”, said the company’s European Vice- Party has always existed: its trade-union class make-up of the party or its program. If thinking for ourselves by always saying no President Ian Howells). Some 75 per cent of links, mechanisms of accountability Bernie Sanders wins the presidential nomi - when bosses say yes. The British labour parts for Honda’s cars are imported from (however eroded), and the particular his - nation for the US Democrats (as he has just movement made its start in politics with the the EU and assembly lines rely on these tory of the UK (with no mass socialist or announced his intention to do), many of Chartist movement, which organised along - parts arriving hours or even minutes before communist party), giving Labour a work - those people will argue it is suddenly war - side the bourgeois Anti Corn Law League they are needed. ing-class base of activists and voters. ranted to vote for the Democrats. against trade barriers on corn, but with its We anti-Brexit people should note that That remained true even under the suc - These people have drawn the wrong con - own independent slant. Honda is also ceasing production in Turkey, cessively right-wing leaderships of Wilson, clusions about how revolutionaries should Economic disruption, workplace closures, which has a customs union with the Euro - Kinnock and Blair. It was always a workers’ relate to fundamentally different types of shortages, huge queues at ports, higher pean Union (though Turkey-EU border pro - party of some kind. Of the most degraded parties. The most pressing political task for prices, are as bad for the working class now cedures are still laborious). And the EU has kind to be sure, but the fact remains: it is a the American working class remains the as they were in the days of the Corn Laws. just struck a trade deal with Japan that will bourgeois workers’ party. building of an independent workers’ party, The reaction of the hardline-Brexiteers of allow Honda to make its cars at home and No such justification exists for the US not sowing illusions in the left wing of the the Tory right is shameless. “Nothing to do ship them to the EU tariff-free. Democrats. Its only link to the unions is the US ruling class. with Brexit whatsoever,” say the ERG and I still maintain the same logic applies But even the Guardian’s pro-Brexit Eco - demand for money. Leave Means Leave. nomics Editor Larry Elliott has had to admit It is unsurprising that people who joined to the French presidency, and calling for Essentially, the Morning Star takes the that “while Honda’s decision is not simply Labour because of Corbyn drew the conclu - a vote for Macron was deeply mistaken. same view but doesn’t have the nerve to about Brexit, uncertainty about Brexit sion that the only thing that matters is elect - come out with it. KM, South London played its part. Japanese policymakers — Ilhan Omar: the main thing in our statement was missed Thanks to Barry Finger for citing the ism has a bipartisan eyes-wide-open policy tivism. will only intensify as the USA enters our un - statement “Defend Ilhan Omar and of partnership with the Israeli state in the in - AIPAC is a profoundly poisonous influ - bearably long electoral season. Rashida Tlaib” by the Solidarity (US) [no terests of its global empire. (Please read Jeff ence in American politics, even though it is The left needs to be vigilant about anti - relation] steering committee in your 20 Halper’s book, War Against the People. Israel, not ultimately decisive in the formulation of semitism and all manner of retrograde ex - February ( Solidarity 496 ) issue. the Palestinians and Global Pacification , Pluto imperialist policy. pressions, but we need to be clear about Our statement is posted at https://solidar - Press, 2015, on this absolutely central point.) The existence of actual antisemitism in US “keeping the main thing the main thing,” ity-us.org and I encourage comrades to read I’m sure that Barry Finger is in agreement life is undeniable, but quite small in compar - as a popular saying has it. it – including Barry, who apparently missed on this issue. Surprisingly for a US observer, ison to the Islamophobia and anti-Arab vili - one of the main points. however, he dismisses the real, vicious and fication that AIPAC and the rest of the Zionist David Finkel We pointed out that Rep. Omar was mis - intimidating impact of AIPAC, and other lobby, above all the huge Christian Zionist Solidarity-U.S. taken a few years back when she tweeted that Zionist lobby outfits like Campus Watch and movement here, feeds on. That’s why we em - Israel had “hypnotized” US and world polit - Canary Mission, on US political discourse phasise that the attacks on Ilhan Omar and ical leaders. Quite the contrary, US imperial - and in terrorising Palestine solidarity ac - Rashida Tlaib are not a one-off thing. They Workers’ Liberty @workersliberty WHAT WE SAY 5 £11,518 so far, Labour after the Umunna split £3,482 to go After a week when nine Labour MPs split Momentum’s Jon Lansman spoke out use - away, citing Labour incompetence on op - fully on the need to tackle a “widespread” £508 for the fund appeal this week, posing Tory Brexit and/or a scourge of an - problem of antisemitism in the Party. £500 of it in a special donation de - tisemitism in the Party, Jeremy Corbyn On the fringes, Chris Williamson MP, at a signed to free up one of our people has committed Labour to call for a second Momentum rally in Sheffield, said the oppo - to work next month on organising for referendum on Brexit, with “Remain” as site, claiming that Labour’s response to the the Deliveroo dispute and fixing an option, against May’s deal. anti-semitism row had been too apologetic. glitches on our website while doing That’s good news for those of us who op - The mix of responses is explained by a lack fewer hours of casual work. pose Brexit and support recognition of of coherence in the Corbyn camp. Corbyn’s Labour Party policy and the views of the ma - office has been sealed off by his Stalinist ad - jority of Labour members and voters. visors – Seamus Milne and Andrew Murray The shift may force a rethink among some — in order to better control most of the day- Remain-supporting Labour activists who to-day policy decisions and “spins” without turned to supporting Brexit, not wishing to much reference to other “leading lights” ex - which in its present form, oddly, calls for Par - rock the Corbyn boat. cept a few chosen ones like Unite union liament to support May’s withdrawal agree - What does the commitment mean? leader Len McCluskey. ment but make its implementation That’s the sort of thing our fund drive First and foremost it is a late response to Unfortunately, therefore, Corbyn’s declara - conditional on a referendum – later. Maybe is for. Our regular income from regular the threat of splits in Labour, an attempt to tion of support for a second referendum is at the next “Meaningful Vote”, not until 12 contributions and sales just about cov - ward off further splits. Since the formation of not a commitment to a full-throttle campaign March. ers baseline operations — rent and util - the “Independent Group” (which plans to be - for that. Rather it fits into the principle-free, Some commentators have said the effect of ities for our office, print and dispatch come a party “gradually”), there have been flexible strategy which Stalinist intellectuals Labour support for a referendum may be to costs for Solidarity, stipends for those of rumours of further Labour and Tory defec - like Milne et al prefer, push Tory Hard Brexiteers into supporting our office staff who are paid. Principled socialists should want Labour to May’s deal – a lesser evil for some than ex - tions. Talk of twenty or more from Labour. To send organisers to do meetings On Sunday 24 February, Deputy Leader clearly and unambiguously oppose Brexit tending Article 50, which is also being cur - Tom Watson, announced the formation of a and not to “triangulate”, in order to concede rently pushed for. and activities round the country, to new faction for Labour MPs, those from its to institutional threats from Labour’s right In truth, because the Labour Party has “run print leaflets, to cover upfront costs of “social democratic tradition” as he put it. His wing. We want support for a campaign for a down the clock” on backing its conference extra publications, we need your fund meaning was clear. This faction will organise second referendum as part of our opposition policy for a second referendum. As the pro - contributions. MPs inside Labour. It also threatens to take to Brexit, because it is a right-wing and re - posal will not be debated in Parliament for In the last week we’ve found a possi - the same group outside Labour, if Corbyn gressive set of changes, pointing towards another two weeks, there is a big question ble channel to a video editor who may does not respond adequately. even less social regulation, more inequality, mark over whether Labour will meaningfully be up for working at a cheap rate on the campaign for a second referendum at all. To underline the threat, Watson presented and the buttressing of nationalist political an - technical editing needed in order to get Yet, if it does not, it will face further frac - Corbyn with a dossier itemising some 50 swers to the problems of capitalism. online some of the video footage we Instead Labour’s second referendum sup - tures and splits which will cost Labour ulti - claims of antisemitism inside Labour, saying have stacked up. Corbyn must take personal responsibility for port will become part of a sequence of Parlia - mately at the polls. It is down to Labour activists who oppose We’ve had a suggestion that we pro - these cases. Having the party leader rather mentary events, which will look something duce “autocollants”(10.5 x 16 cm stick - like this. Brexit on principled grounds to build the than the regular committees deal with the ers) for use on the 15 March school cases would be completely irregular and un - On 27 February, Labour will focus on mov - campaign, and the openings for us to do that student climate strike. democratic, but such are the demagogic ing a Parliamentary amendment for its own have now been much increased. methods of Tom Watson. version of a Brexit deal (with a customs Come to the Labour for a Socialist Eu - To be able to take up options like Responses to the split from within the Cor - union). The amendment is certain to be de - rope Conference on 9 March. Join the that, we need your contributions. byn camp were mixed. John McDonnell feated. campaign and others on the “No Brexit, talked about the “need to listen”. Emily Labour will then support moves for a sec - for a Socialist Europe” bloc on the Peo - • www.workersliberty.org/donate Thornberry (at a rally in Soubry’s con - ond referendum – via, for example, a modi - ple’s Vote march on 23 March. • www.workersliberty.org/books stituency of Broxtowe) talked (not unreason - fied version of an amendment from by ably) about “traitors”. Labour MPs Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson, • http://labourforasocialisteurope.org

Arguing for a The real Otto Rühle’s society based history of the abridged on human 1917 version of solidarity, revolution, of Capital, putting social the Stalinist aside current ownership of counter- factual material, industry and revolution, illustrations, banks, and and of the polemics, is a political, lessons good lead-in for economic learned. the full book. and social 131 pages , £6 democracy. 374 pages, £12 plus postage 182 pages. plus postage £5 + post.

A socialist approach Defending within the the new Bolsheviks “wave” of and their feminism. relevance today. 102 pages, 312 pages, £5 plus £10 plus 40 pages, £4 + post 408 pages, £12 + post postage The Two Trotskyisms £20 ; Fate of the Russian Revolution £8 ; postage Miners’ strike £9 ; Democracy, direct action... £5 ; In an era of wars and revolutions £9 ; Anarchism £5 ; Can Socialism Make Order from www.workersliberty.org/books. Add £2 per book for postage, or 50p for 1919 book. Iif you buy three or Sense £12 ; Gramsci in Context £6 ; How Solidarity... £6 . All more books, post is free, and the third and subsequent books are half-price. Pay at www.workersliberty.org/payment plus postage. More online at www.workersliberty.org Workers’ Liberty @workersliberty Bolshevism, the civil war, and after themselves and create a permanent set of in - of reaction? Belatedly, Lenin in his time and Trotsky stitutions capable of frustrating the organised We don’t have to look to Shachtman to un - later began to rethink and pull back from the initiative and autonomy of the revolutionary derstand the revolutionary dilemmas at play. brink of the abyss. class itself. The great Menshevik theoretician and critical Space is too limited to detail Lenin’s final A passing familiarity with the pre-1917 supporter of the revolution, Julian Martov, misgivings or Trotsky’s voyage from his New Barry Finger reviews In Defence of writings of the Bolsheviks and Trotsky indi - laid it out for us with disarming honesty. Course advocacy of a revived inner party Bolshevism cates their full accordance with that tradition. Our Party’s influence began to drop uncontrol - democracy to his later championship of a They conceived of socialist power, along with lably, with no little contribution from the Seiten - full-throated multi-party soviet democracy. Mass socialist parties, trade unions, Marx, as rising from the bottom up; a perma - sprünge (defection) of our comrades in Siberia, Suffice it to say, in Shachtman’s words: workers councils and organs of struggle nent empowering of the mass majority polit - on the Volga, in the Caucasus, the Crimea, and so One-party government, which is anything but are places for debate, discussion, deliber - ically marginalised under capitalism. on, which enabled the Bolsheviks to represent us abnormal in all countries at all times, and was ation and opposition, where, ideally, ev - They assumed, as did all socialists, revolu - as allies of the Allies, of Kolchak, and so forth. Il - just as normal and unexceptional in Russia, was erything is openly evaluated. tionary or reformist, not only the desirability legal agitation is infinitely more difficult under a transformed to mean: Only one party can enjoy Their functionality requires constituencies and indispensability, but also and more im - regime like the Bolshevik, which after all had its legal existence in the country. free to transmit their will to the administra - portantly the centrality of democracy, at least roots in the masses, than under tsarism. … To this, Stalinism succeeded in adding: Only tors of power, not only within these organi - in abstract principle, for socialism. Insofar as we nevertheless did act, we ran into one faction can enjoy legal existence in the party . sations themselves but also to the broader the lamentable situation in which any party finds The extension of full democratic rights…to all institutions and arenas in which they partic - REFORMISTS AGAINST DEMOCRACY itself during an intense civil war if it propounds parties, without exception, would have strength - ipate. We also know that the abstract commit - ‘moderate ideas’ … We had a sympathetic audi - ened the country and reinvigorated the Soviets The organisation is where members safe - ment of socialists to the advancement of ence but it always turned out to be more rightist themselves. guard themselves by providing for the recall democracy was abrogated, violated and than we. It should now be clear that without the presence of those who fail to adequately represent the betrayed again and again in the concrete Following a healthy instinct all those who feel of other political organisations capable of freely de - aspirations of their base; who fail, that is, to by reformist socialists who repeatedly crushed by Bolshevism gladly supported us as the bating (debating, not shooting at) the proposals translate majoritarian rank and file under - sacrificed revolution for order, even when boldest fighters against it. But they… took in only presented to the Soviets by the Bolshevik party, standing of social conflict into appropriate such order led to the chaos of war, by al - what they needed — only the critical exposure of the Soviets would rapidly and inevitably deterio - legal and organisational terms. lying themselves with the established Bolshevism. rate to the position of a superfluous duplicate of At least, that, to a large extent, was the Bol - centers of capitalist power. So long as we branded Bolshevism, we were ap - the ruling party, at first only consulted by the lat - shevik viewpoint, the perspective of Lenin in What then of revolutionary socialism? plauded; as soon as we went on to say that a ter, then disregarded by it, and finally discarded State and Revolution . It was how Bukharin and How did the Bolshevik party, unique in the changed regime was needed to fight Denikin suc - altogether for the direct rule of the party alone (the Preobrazhensky explained the Program of annals of working class politics, that led a cessfully… to eliminate speculation and facilitate bureaucracy of the party at that!). the Communist Party in 1919. It is in part broad uprising of workers, peasants and sol - the victory of the international proletariat, our au - In this process, the decay of democracy within why socialists believe a workers’ democracy, diers — a revolution of the majority of the dience turned cold or even hostile. We did not the Bolshevik party and the decay of Soviet democ - where all the in-built class obstacles that Russian people — and that mobilised these have our own masses of the proletariat and revo - racy went hand in hand, each having the same thwart the will of the people under capital - self-empowered masses against fourteen in - lutionary intelligentsia. deleterious effect upon the other until both were ism have been removed — and which there - vading armies, transform itself in less than a That is, we only had their own decimated suppressed completely, and along with them, all fore actively encourages rather than decade into an all-powerful monolithic cadres. The new, younger elements, who have the achievements of the revolution itself.... suppresses the full flourishing of politics — party-state that swallowed the revolution? come to politics only now, are either irresistibly (P)roletarian democracy cannot exist for long is infinitely more conducive to attaining and How did the party that spirited the soviets drawn into the Communist camp…- or despite it is confined to one faction or one party, even it securing a democracy more representative, and breathed vigour into the trade unions their proletarian origin, into the camp of reaction, be the revolutionary party, that it must be shared protective of minority opinions, and opera - and the Red Army transform itself into the which rejects, along with Bolshevism, all social - equally by all other working-class and even — tional than any previous form of democracy. vehicle for the imposition of the will of a nar - ism… under favourable circumstances — bourgeois par - The socialist class dictatorship — a work - row party bureaucracy over the people? How And there we have it. For what Martov ties and groups, for without it the proletarian ers’ democracy — exercises the organised co - did it create a new class society based on col - concedes about Menshevism is equally appli - party and the proletarian democracy both die and ercive force of the revolutionary state against lectivised property? cable to the full gamut of democratic, anar - with them die the prospects for socialism. the property-holding minority only insofar as Those are the framework questions that chist and socialist opponents of the the latter attempts to resist the social revolu - Max Shachtman addressed in his polemical revolution. The war-consumed Bolsheviks CRITICAL DEFENCE tion. The form and extent of its coercive mea - broadside against Ernie Erber, a leading mil - did not disqualify and exclude other socialist If we are to defend Bolshevism – and de - sures are conditioned by the strength and itant, educator and activist within the Trot - parties; they disqualified, isolated and ejected fend we must — we cannot do it as idola - effectiveness of that resistance. skyist movement associated with the themselves. tors. That is the lesson of Shachtman’s Within that space, the revolution aims to Workers Party, who — upon his departure — polemic. There was a dynamic context secure the greatest possible degree of self- called into question how the movement came COUNTERREVOLUTION that drove the greatest revolutionary tac - government and the least possible scope for to understand and evaluate that revolution. They disgraced themselves in the manner ticians since Spartacus to lead the slaves the emergence of a distinct civil or military Had Erber offered new insights? A more that other reformist socialists had so re - of capitalism from the depths of slaughter bureaucracy. The revolutionary class anchors comprehensive revolutionary perspective cently done and will have done again in and oppression to the heights of a new its rule by ever-expanding the space for based on previously untilled ground? Or — the post war aftermath, by aligning them - order, a briefly lived experiment prior to peaceful ideological combat and propaganda as Shachtman averred — was he merely selves with the forces of the status quo the civil war among the freest and most within the new order. repackaging in Marxist phraseology all the under the bad-faith banner of the “de - democratic in history. So runs a sketch of the revolutionary social - old social-democratic, reformist shibboleths fence of democracy.” If they expected to And there was also a reactive context of be - ist tradition. of the enemies of the Russian Revolution and reap a working-class whirlwind, they trayal from within and from without by the To continue and expand, coercive mea - of socialist revolution as an engine of democ - found, to their utter disappointment and paladins of reformist socialism that sought a sures, unavoidable at a certain stage of the racy itself? exasperation, only an audience for coun - reconciliation with capitalism on better revolution, must be implemented in a self- The larger question for Shachtman was terrevolution. terms. In the end, “the Russian workers lost dissolving manner, before they consolidate this. If democracy – the empowering of the But when the exigencies of war dissipated, power, because the workers of the other masses as masters of their own fate — will a battle-hardened, embittered and resentful countries failed to take power.” That is, the not be advanced by reformist politics and Bolshevik party would not tolerate the return Stalinist counterrevolution has to be ex - cannot be advanced by revolutionary meth - of yesterday’s armed putschists back into the plained first and foremost by socio-economic ods, is socialism itself doomed to failure in - soviet fold. Lenin, Trotsky, Radek, Bukharin events. dicting itself as a utopian project? and Kamenev famously penned ad hoc justi - The Bolsheviks themselves – Lenin, What case did Erber offer against the Bol - fications, unthinkable in content prior to the Trotsky, Bukharin — nevertheless “took sheviks? That it dispersed a counter-revolu - civil war, of a permanently unaccountable the theoretical lead,” in Hal Draper’s tionary Constituent Assembly? That it dictatorial power wielded by the one and words, “in gutting socialism of its organic enrootment in the mass of the people” £12 including UK outlawed parties and political organisations true revolutionary party. Their writings postage that took up arms against the revolution? began to incrementally upturn and violate paving the “juridical” framework for the www. workersliberty. That it put down political rebellions, such as every democratic norm and tradition that counter-revolution in class power. org/idob Kronstadt, that were sustained by the forces had long nourished and inspired them. FEATURE 6-7

Climate: the kids are coming By Alan Simpson yourself when Labour and the Conservatives by the scruff of the neck, dumped the Gold decarbonisation, decentralisation and went head-to- head over the climate emer - Standard (ruling out austerity politics) and democratisation — holds the key to taking Occasionally, just occasionally, there are gency. When did it dominate Prime Ministers turned huge sectors of industry into produc - the public with them. But around the Lead - weeks full of silver linings. The one that Question Time? When did it even figure? No ing completely different goods. ers, delay and dither hold greater sway. saw Britain’s first nationwide schools “cli - wonder the kids are losing patience. Like Roosevelt, today’s Green New Dealers Shadow Ministers, wanting to push more mate” strikes was definitely one of them. It has been left to Extinction Rebellion, and are offering unlimited reconstruction finance. radical change, have found their ideas buried When Greta Thunberg began her lone cli - now school children, to lead the way. But this time round, what AOC and the Jus - in corridor caution. References to a climate mate protest outside the Swedish Parliament Dozens of local authorities are trying to do tice Democrats team insist is that everything emergency get discouraged. Radical disen - last August she was not to know that, within their bit — passing local “Climate Emer - must be “Green”. gagement from fossil fuels never quite makes 6 months there would be 70,000 pupils a gency” resolutions, despite lacking lack the At its core, their campaign begins not by the shift from long term promises to short week, across 270 towns and cities worldwide, powers to follow them through. arguing about the voting age, but about how term guarantees. who would be joining her. Their message was If localities have any sense they will start you get rid of crap politicians? Justice Maybe Rebecca Long-Bailey’s launch of simple: “Wake up! There’s a climate emer - to bring the kids into the conversation. Ac - Democrats have been targeting the most con - Labour’s “Green Transformation” conversa - gency.” knowledging a “Climate Emergency” is the servative (corporately compliant) Democrats, tion will change all that. Maybe it will open If you had followed the week’s debates in starting point. and planning to replace them; actively pro - up the spaces that student “climate strikers” Britain’s Parliament you wouldn’t have Don’t expect young people to arrive with moting more radical voices who know how are calling for. Maybe it will push “system guessed. the answers. It is enough that they bring the little time climate physics actually gives us. change” to the front of the political agenda. Politicians had been given plenty of notice questions. It is what follows that will turn ev - Some Democrat incumbents are trying to At the moment, the jury is still out. that pupils would be walking out of lessons, erything upside down. reposition themselves as GND supporters. Long before last year’s Labour conference, demanding recognition of the looming cli - As things stand, no political party has But acceptance comes with a price. No one Shadow Minister Alan Whitehead came up mate crisis. But barely a mention of the cli - grasped the scale of what this involves. receiving support from fossil fuel industries, with a brilliant idea. Why not produce a book mate protests emerged within Westminster. commodity speculators, or environmentally on “Local Energy” to map out options for It didn’t seem to matter whether Rome (or Eco-cide not class-divides destructive industries gets to join the GND. radical change? Independent contributors California, or South Australia) was burning, Rosa Luxemburg predicted that in this Corporate donations must be returned, spon - were invited to outline plans of how Labour century we would face a choice between Brexit continued to fill the parliamentary cor - sorships declined. No one is going to avoid might race into this space. It was to form a socialism and barbarism. Even she didn’t the climate crisis without breaking their de - backcloth to Jeremy Corbyn’s “400,000 Green ridors: 52% of voters have become “a binding see that it would be eco-cide rather than obligation”, whereas 98% of climate scientists pendency on its causes. jobs” conference speech. class divides that would drive the choice. Cutting carbon emissions by 50% within a In the event, the book was ready but the remain a matter of opinion. Capitalism has been consuming itself decade requires upheavals, including imme - politics was not. Caught up in corridor con - No wonder the kids are saying politicians (and us) to death. diate shifts in public subsidies from dirty to fusions between old-style nationalisation and are unfit to lead ... because we aren’t. And as Growth theories — based around ever ex - clean, and throwing support into “smart” radical decentralisation, the book was left to Thunberg bravely told world leaders: “When panding production, consumption and waste systems that consume less rather than more. tread water. adults behave like children, children must — will run out of species, soil, minerals, air We must cut our carbon footprint of con - After adding a “balancing” chapter on na - step up and behave like adults”. and space to support them. Student placards sumption. tionalisation, the book is ready to run again. What is both humbling and inspiring is calling for “system change, not climate Throw-away cultures, from clothing to The trouble is that those wedded to yester - that this generation grasps that, in a crisis, it change” nail the issue in one. plastics, must themselves be thrown away. day’s economics would still prefer Labour to is the fundamentals that matter, not the de - What the kids grasp — and most of the Left Localised food and product markets will take avoid addressing the system change that our tails. As I stepped out of my daughter’s sec - still don’t — is that the “system change” precedence over globalised ones. We must kids (and the planet) demand. ondary school with her that morning, I needed involves a race into “circular eco - tax-favour repair, reuse and recycling over In existential terms, this is not a negoti - realised that those joining her will still be in nomics”. It is the only route into radical CO2 primary production; constructing markets ation, it is a choice. Labour will have to their 20’s when the first “12 year” milestone cuts, environmental security and a more in - that put back into eco-systems far more than embrace wholesale change or miss the of climate physics is reached. This will be clusive politics. last opportunity to do so. Thunberg didn’t they take out. when the shit hits the fan. Out of the conversations driven by our mince her words in telling politicians they We don’t (yet) have to panic but we do If we haven’t cut current global CO2 emis - children will step tomorrow’s Giants; those were “shitting on her future”. If Labour have to disrupt and transform. This is what sions in half by then, all bets are off for what who will abandon a current politics that lives ducks this one we should not complain young people are shouting into our ears. It is follows. This is the climate emergency that in thrall of growth delusions, carbon inten - when our kids denounce us in similar what the Green New Deal is trying to turn terms. our kids are challenging us, first to acknowl - sive production, and limitless consumption. from a negative to a positive. edge and then to act upon. For it is today’s politics that sucks. At its core, tomorrow’s Green New Deal • Alan Simpson was Labour MP for Notting - On current form, by the end of that decade, Just before the students took to the streets, will have to break the corporate grip on ham South from 1992 to 2010, and is now an Davos will have built a Trump wall around I had a delicious sample of what tomorrow’s global economics. This is the space in which adviser on environmental policy to John Mc - itself, COP meetings will still be copping out, alternatives might involve. Staff from the of - locality, democracy and accountability will Donnell and the British parliament will still be debat - fice of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) were meet climate security. And it is here that ing Brexit. What passes for politics has be - in the UK to share some of the lessons of how Labour faces its most difficult dilemmas. come completely disconnected from the their Green New Deal (GND) is shaking The next international climate Labour’s Leaders — Jeremy Corbyn, John climate emergency. A moment that calls out American politics to its core. It is anything school walk-out is set for 15 McDonnell and Rebecca Long-Bailey — for systems change is lucky to get more than but incrementalist. grasp how little time we have. Those sur - March. Expect to see walk-outs loose change. The “Deal” builds upon the original Roo - rounding them may not. The Labour Leader - in a couple of dozen countries, Look back across the last year and ask sevelt plan which grabbed the US economy ship know that their “3 Ds” — and many places across the UK 8 FEATURE More online at www.workersliberty.org Richard Wright and Stalinism

him when he became argumentative or op - By Dan Katz Richard positional. Wright says he had not read Trot - Wright Richard Wright, the American author of sky, and his writing is notable for what he the novels Native Son and Black Boy , was doesn′t discuss — the Nazis coming to power born on a plantation in Roxie, near in Germany, the mass strikes in the US, the Natchez, Mississippi in 1908. He died of a terror in the USSR or the Spanish civil war. heart attack in Paris, in 1960, aged 52. He seems to have had little interest in these For a while, especially in the early 1940s, issues. Wright’s overwhelming concern was he was an enormously prominent and impor - US racism. tant left-wing author. Native Son was a In 1937 Wright was the Harlem correspon - ground-breaking book with a young Black dent for the Party′s Daily Worker newspaper, hoodlum, Bigger Thomas, as its anti-hero. producing scores of articles about the area It was criticised by some activists at the where the CP had nearly 1,000 members. At time for not presenting a positive view of this time Wright became good friends with Black people. Indeed, Native Son is a gru - the African-American writer Ralph Ellison, elling read. Wright wanted to present later the author of the very important novel 25% lived in cities. The average life ex - Invisible Man (1952). Ellison was probably, at Thomas, who murders two women, as a pectancy of a Black man was 34 years, and young man almost entirely imprisoned by his this time, also a CP member, like very many women 38 years. In most of the Southern of Wright′s friends and acquaintances. brutal environment. states spending on white school students was Black Boy , however, is also interesting and Following the third of Stalin’s Moscow at least twice that spent on Black children. Show Trials in March 1938, after which the 21 easier, detailing Wright′s own personal battle Richard Wright had lived in the South until against hunger, backwardness and Jim Crow defendants, including Christian Rakovsky 1927 when he escaped to the Black area of and Nikolai Bukarin — all accused of fantas - terror in towns along the Mississippi. Black Chicago, the South Side. Wright’s education Boy is an exploration of the limits placed on tical nonsense — were executed, one hun - in segregated schools had been interrupted, dred US authors, including Wright, A CP presidential poster from the early ‘30s, African-Americans by the extraordinarily vi - and then curtailed at the age of 16; he had cious regime in the American South in the published an Open Letter defending Stalin when they prioritised fighting racism. That had only four years full of schooling. His and the Show Trial. changed in 1941. first decades of the twentieth century. Black home life had been dominated by extreme Boy must have been shocking to whites, re - In August 1939 the USSR signed a pact poverty and his puritanically religious and two part article; I Tried to be a Communist , vealing the level of hatred many Black people with Nazi Germany. Stalin and Hitler then narrow-minded extended family. printed in Atlantic Monthly . felt for them; the book was banned in Missis - overran and split Poland. Later, in Novem - Wright described the move from the rural Black Boy was originally called American sippi. ber, the Soviet Union attacked Finland. The South to Chicago as the most difficult step of Hunger and was written in seven months, Wright’s grandparents were all born into events caused mass resignations from the his life; the buildings were towering and the being completed at the end of 1943. The first slavery and were freed during the US Civil Communist Party. Wright, however, de - traffic and noise were alarming. He and his 300 pages, called Southern Nigh t, became War. Both his grandfathers ended the war nounced those who were “jumping off the disabled mother had joined the Great Migra - Black Boy ; the final 150 pages, titled The Hor - fighting for the Union, against the Confeder - Communist train”. In an interview in the tion of millions of Black Americans who ror and the Glory , dealt with the racism Wright acy. Wright’s father, Nathan, abandoned the Sunday Worker in February 1940 Wright de - moved from the South to the northern indus - experienced in Chicago, and included a de - family, leaving them in destitution, when scribed the Nazi-Soviet pact as “a great step trial towns between the First and Second nunciation of the Communist Party. Richard was six years old. Wright only met toward peace.” World Wars. Although some overt signs of Wright agreed to remove the final long sec - his father again when he travelled back Richard Wright’s breakthrough took place discrimination had gone – there were no tion on Chicago in order to be accepted again through Natchez on his way from Mexico to in early 1940 when Native Son was promoted signs in Chicago telling “White” and by the Book-of-the-Month Club. According to New York in June 1940. by the Book-of-the-Month Club, a vast mail “Coloured” rail travellers which ticket win - Wright’s biographer, Hazel Rowley, the orig - Nathan Wright and his brothers were order business based in New York. 170,000 dows and carriages to use – there were still inal ending to Southern Night was: “This was sharecroppers in the heart of the segregated copies were printed and within a few days staggering degrees of discrimination. the terror from which I fled,” and the editors lynch-law Southern states. Nathan Wright, the book was reprinted. After three weeks exerted pressure on Wright to acknowledge barely literate, had attempted to move to the 215,000 copies had been sold and the novel the positive actions of white liberals and to city, but had failed and reverted to what he COMMUNIST PARTY WRITERS was still selling at the rate of 2000 copies per In Chicago Richard Wright found his way end on a more positive note. knew, scratching a living from the land. The day. Wright became the first best-selling to the John Reed Club, a Communist Wright did all he could to resist this pres - condition of Black people in Natchez dis - Black American writer. Party front for writers and artists where sure, writing, “I do not think the Negroes will mayed Richard Wright – they were among for the first time he met white people who be treated any better in this country until the most downtrodden, poorest, badly edu - BETRAYAL OF BLACK AMERICANS were anti-racist. Manipulated by the Com - whites themselves realise that there is some - cated and unhealthiest people in the US. Wright broke from the Communist Party munists (by then Stalinists), he became thing dead wrong with the American way of In 1910, two years after Wright’s birth, the because of the betrayal of Black Ameri - the Club′s leader. life.” US census revealed that there were 9,828,000 cans when the Stalinists turned to support Black Boy became a Book-of-the-Month Black people in the US, 10.7% of the total Richard Wright′s relationship with the the US war after Hitler′s attack on the Club best seller in March 1945. It sold twice population. 89% lived in the South and only Communist Party is — apparently — de - USSR in June 1941 and the Nazi declara - scribed in a twenty page essay which is con - tion of war against the US in December as well as Native Son and by the end of the tained in the book The God That Failed (1950). 1941. year half a million copies were sold. The book This essay was, in fact, originally part of Black The Communist Party dropped its agita - was published in Europe and won awards in Boy , edited out before publication. tion against racism and segregation, and France where Wright, and his white, Jewish, This text suggests Wright joined the Amer - Wright did not want to fight “for democracy” ex-Communist wife Ellen and first child ican CP in 1933 and left in 1936. In fact Wright as part of a Jim Crow, segregated army. moved in 1946. From 1946 Wright would only finally broke with the CP in 1942, and At various times Wright received notices spend most of his time in France. He lived publicly left later than that. calling him up to the army. He worked hard there so that the continual grind of US racism A measure of the degeneracy of the Com - to prevent himself being drafted, even calling did not dominate his life. munist Party′s politics is described by Wright on support from the President’s wife, Eleanor Black Boy made so much money that in The God That Failed : a man called Young Roosevelt. At one point, in 1944, he wrote to Wright and his family were able to live on the had joined the John Reed Club and had the Brooklyn Draft Board, “The segregated proceeds for years. He took $6000 per year quickly begun to help run it. Young then units and quarters for Negroes in the armed from the Black Boy account and still had launched a vitriolic campaign against an - forces violate my instincts and feelings to the $25,000 left in 1951. other member, badly disrupting the Club. It degree that I feel that to serve in our armed Wright never again produced a book as turned out that Young had escaped from a forces is to fight in defence of such a system good as either Native So n or Black Boy , but mental hospital where he was undergoing and to give my approval to it. And it is to those two novels helped to break Black writ - treatment. make known my emphatic rejection to that ers into the US mainstream. As he says in Wright commented, ″What kind of club did that I make this statement.” Black Boy (about the US critic H L Mencken we run that a lunatic could step in and help The FBI, who had been watching Wright, whom he first read, secretly, in Mississippi), run it? Were we all so mad that we could not noted that he had broken with the Commu - “This man was fighting, fighting with words. detect a madman when we saw one?″ nist Party because it was insufficiently mili - He was using words as weapons… maybe, Wright also reports on the political trial of tant on the question of Black rights. He perhaps, I could use them as a weapon.” an insufficiently-loyal Black activist – a mini- remained on their Security Index. Wright And that is what Richard Wright did. He Show Trial — at a CP meeting; demagogic ac - broke openly with the Party in 1945 with a used words as weapons against white US cusations of Trotskyism were levelled against racism. Workers’ Liberty @workersliberty FEATURE 9 Labour’s antisemitism crisis: an open letter to Jeremy Corbyn Some of them were involved in the 1970s and 80s in campaigning in the National Union of Students and on campuses against the right of Jewish student societies to exist. We have recently seen a new case of that, the Dear comrade Corbyn, first for decades, at Essex University (see page 2). How has the crisis that grips the new, new There is, of course, an “objective” basis for Labour Party on antisemitism come all this in the festering Middle East conflict. about? How has it come to be the major There is an element of supporting the Pales - scandal it is now? tinians, championing their rights which Israel Yes, the charge of antisemitism is now a often tramples on, smothered in it, some - weapon of the Tories, the Labour right, and where. the media against the Labour Party. The But the activists of “left” antisemitism go question that matters, though, is: are they way beyond that necessary support for the right about it? Right about the essentials, not Palestinians. this or that incident or extrapolation? Milk gone sour then “thickens” and If the charge is true, than it overshadows changes its consistency. The long-existing ab - everything else. Antisemitism is not just a lit - solute-anti-Zionist antisemitism dominant on tle political blemish. It poisons and warps the pseudo-revolutionary left has, on entry to and rots the mind, the integrity, the spirit and the new, new Labour Party, on contact with gressed. In June 2018 a writer in the Morning This “right of return” implies, and is meant the humanity of everything it touches. it, thickened into something more virulent Star proclaimed: “No amount of protesta - to imply, the displacement of the Jews of Is - It puts those who let themselves be fouled and poisonous. tions about the symptoms of rising anti- rael. By what standards do the descendants by it in the same political and moral sphere There is joy and satisfaction in self-righ - semitism or anti-Israel sentiment in Britain of the people who lived in that territory — in however small a role — with those who teous hatred, a nasty mix of aggression and and elsewhere will end the problem until its decades ago have the right to do that. perpetrated the greatest crime of the 20th self-love. “Zionist”-baiting can become an root cause — Israel’s criminal behaviour — is There is no possible answer other than that century. agreeable activity. Antisemites are always dealt with”.. they have the right genes. They are genetic It is true, I believe, that the eight Labour perverted moralists. An outcry led the Morning Star to formally descendants of the refugees of 1948 or after. MPs who have left the party over anti - One measure of the absolute-anti-Zionist retract that too explicit and candid statement The self-righteous absolute anti-Zionist semitism and the Party’s refusal to be firmly antisemites is that they know that the Arab of what, self-righteously, they really believe. hysteria, denouncing the very existence of Is - anti-Brexit are, in general politics, all Blair- and Islamic states’ anti-Israel propaganda in - Your record shows that you are a man who rael as “racist”, blunder onto the territory of Brownites. volves wholesale dissemination of old Nazi has a principled commitment to a general so - pure race-theory! Some of the most virulent Nobody who watched and listened to Lu - antisemitism, unrecycled and recycled, but cialism, and is freed of the occupational haz - “anti-Zionists” would translate this also into ciana Berger’s speech explaining why she left they are not troubled by it and do not treat it ard of MPs, careerism, venal self-serving, and religious terms: Islam has precedence over the Labour Party will doubt the sincerity of as what it is: a mirror in which to look at political scoundrelism in general. Judaism. her account of the antisemitism that has themselves. But you, comrade Corbyn, have to my They also, though I don’t want to stretch driven her and the others, or most of them, knowledge never drawn a political line be - what I am saying here, implicitly have a out of the Party. TWO STATES tween your present self and the antisemitism- “racist” definition of those whom they want The alarm that has gripped the Jewish The absolute anti-Zionists typically do not fomenting publication for which you wrote a to see conquered and disarmed. community about antisemitism in the Labour support the Palestine Liberation Organi - regular column until elected Labour Party Blaming only Israel for the plight of the Party and the prospect of a government led sation policy (since 1988) for a two-states leader. Palestinian descendants of refugees is also by you and your close collaborators is real. It settlement, an independent Palestinian I was agreeably surprised, after your 2015 prejudiced nonsense. The Palestinians who is what it seems to be, and not just a political state side-by-side with Israel. election as Labour Party leader, when some - fled or were driven out in 1948 did so during posture to damage the Labour Party. They are adamantly for a one-state solu - one told me you were for a two-states settle - a war in which Arab states, most still British- There is a long tradition in much of the tion, for an Arab and Islamic state incorpo - ment. I had seen you sharing platforms at dominated, some still with British officers in Jewish community of support and involve - rating the population of 1948-67 Israel, or gatherings with virulent absolute anti-Zion - important positions in the invading armies, ment with the Labour Party. To the leaders of those of the population whom it does not kill ists such as George Galloway. attacked the territory allocated to the Jews by the Jewish community, and many Jews, in - or drive out in conquering them. Many who pay lip-service to “two states” the United Nations 1947 partition plan. The cluding Jewish members or recent ex-mem - The absolute anti-Zionists have not noticed combine it with absolute anti-Zionist com - Egyptian forces, at least, moved under the bers of the Labour Party, the “left” in the that the one-state solution actually on offer is mentaries that imply not “two states” but the slogan, “Drive the Jews into the sea”. Party, or some of it, must appear as possible one now favoured by some of the Israeli right rejection of any sort of Israel. You? future anti-Jewish pogromists, as has much — a Jewish-Hebrew state ruling all pre-1948 Comrade Corbyn, a two-states program for of the would-be “revolutionary” left for a REFUGEES Palestine, with a great Arab minority and for the Middle East cuts against the prevailing long time now. About 750,000 Arabs were refugees at the certain a long future of bitter conflict. absolute anti-Zionism, and against the de - I am not jumping on anyone’s bandwagon end. Perhaps 600,000 Jews were driven The absolute anti-Zionists typically sup - monisation of the living “Zionists” in Israel. in saying this. Solidarity and its predecessor out of Arab states, their property confis - port and advocate Arab and Islamic war on The absolute anti-Zionists are racists. That Socialist Organiser — in which you wrote fre - cated, then or in the next decades. Israel. With placards, banners, slogans, and is a word that has lost much of its meaning quently in Socialist Organiser ’s early years — Israel absorbed those Jews. In 1945, 12 or platform speakers, this alleged left has and become the equivalent of a swear-word, have campaigned against antisemitism on 13 million Germans were driven out of areas turned “peace” demonstrations into demon - expressing detestation and moral repug - the left for four decades and more. We have of Eastern Europe where German communi - strations for war on Israel by the Arab and Is - nance. It serves to obliterate all distinctions published pamphlets about it and recently ties had lived for hundred of years, into an lamic states. and gradations. dealt with it in books. economically ruined and starving Germany They have taken over the historical demon - Here it is precise, literal. The absolute anti- Where has the crisis come from? From five which nevertheless absorbed them. Perhaps isation of Zionism created and spread by the Zionists are “gene-ists”. They have a political decades of political and moral ferment on the half a million died of hardship or were mur - Stalinist movement in Stalin’s last four or five theory based on genetics. ostensibly “Trotskyist” left in which absolute dered during that process. years, up to 1953. That is where all the non - Their chief demand is a “right of return”, hostility to Israel, to *any* Israel, has slowly That many Arab refugees remained sense, in Lenni Brenner’s books for instance, meaning an organised movement to pre-1967 built up in the political atmosphere like poi - refugees for decades was the result of delib - about Zionist-Nazi affinity and alliance come Israel of six million people designated as sonous smog. erate policy by Arab governments not to let from. Palestinian refugees. During the Blair-Brown epoch, that “revo - them assimilate, become a general part of the For some, such as your close comrades in Only a small fraction of those six million lutionary” left was excluded and self-ex - population, or even work. In Jordan (1970) arms of the Morning Star , this is natural are refugees. The rest are descendants of cluded from the Labour Party. The “Corbyn and Lebanon (1983), Arabs massacred Pales - enough. Called the Daily Worker in that pe - refugees. surge” that recreated a mass membership al - tinian Arab refugees. riod, it spread the absolute-anti-Zionist anti - Yet the six million descendants of refugees most overnight pulled into the new, new It is on gross historical misrepresentations semitic poison spewing out from Russia and are deemed to have a right to displace six and Labour Party a lot of people educated on the such as on this question that much of the hys - Russia’s satellites, where antisemitic show a half million Jews in the territory where their Middle East question in the kitsch left. With teria against Israel which is now a major fac - trials were held in Hungary and Czechoslo - parents, grandparents, and maybe great- them they brought their political baggage, tor in the life of the Labour Party was built vakia. grandparents have lived and built an ad - and a trolling and bullying culture. On a cer - over decades. Current conflicts are seen in In the mid-50s the Communist Party went vanced society that has little in common now tain level, the Corbyn surge was also an anti - the distorting light of this absolute anti-Zion - through a period of self-criticism. They shed with the rudimentary Israeli or Palestinian semitic purge. ist pseudo-history. those attitudes for a long time. They have re - society of seven decades ago. More online at www.workersliberty.org Workers’ Liberty @workersliberty

Where we continued from page 9 the 1940s fleeing for the lives (and Encoded versions of that policy The Labour Party is the party of pitilessly refused entry to Palestine — via “right of return” for example the broad labour movement, and The core and root of the main during the war and for three years — should not be tolerated in the therefore the concern of everyone stand contemporary antisemitism is there after by the British overlords, under labour movement. who wishes the party well. The ab - in the falsified history and in the pressure of the Arab world). Probably there is very wide ac - solute anti-Zionist “left” are carri - conclusion it leads to — that Israel What is needed in the Labour ceptance that Holocaust deniers ers of a lethal poison in the labour Today one class, the working is an illegitimate nation, that its Party is a drive to educate the party should not be in the Labour Party. movement. class, lives by selling its labour state has no right to exist, and that and politically beat down the ideo - Among the absolute anti-Zionists For the same reason, people power to another, the capitalist Arab and Islamic states that want logues of an absolute anti-Zionism there is a direct descendant of that should not leave the Labour Party class, which owns the means of to put it out of existence should be that becomes barely distinguish - — Holocaust mitigation, the idea over antisemitism, and those who production. supported. able from antisemitism. That is that the Holocaust happened but it have left in disgust at antisemitism The capitalists’ control over the Israel now acts from a position of what a responsible leadership should be treated as if it is of no should rejoin. economy and their relentless drive strength vis-a-vis the Palestinians. should do. consequence in history, especially Fight the antisemites, don’t to increase their wealth causes There is a lot to criticise and con - The Morning Star which incites for understanding how Israel came abandon the party to them. poverty, unemployment, the blight - demn in Israeli policy towards the the antisemites (and in a moment of into existence. ing of lives by overwork, imperial - Palestinians — centrally, Israel’s de soon-retracted candour justified On one level, a middle-aged Sean Matgamna ism, the destruction of the facto opposition to a Palestinian antisemitism as a proper response woman saying that there have been environment and much else. state alongside Israel. to what Israel does) is in theory for many “Holocausts” might just be a Against the accumulated wealth But at root there is a conflict of two states, but shares and propa - piece of heroic ignorance or the re - and power of the capitalists, the right against right here, to which gandises for all the judgements that sult of an epochally thick skin. In working class must unite to strug - the solution should be not the de - leads the raucous antisemites in the fact, even if it comes from a misdi - gle against capitalist power in the struction of Israel but “equalising party to deny Israel the right to rected urge to side with the Pales - workplace and in wider society. up” by way of the Palestinians get - exist. So, it appears, do you. tinians, it is part of Holocaust The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty ting their own state. Here the question is a variant of mitigation. wants socialist revolution: collec - The Jewish nation that won inde - an old one: who is to educate the But things like that do not lend tive ownership of industry and ser - pendence in 1948 was built up educators. themselves to political warfare vices, workers’ control, and a around Jews indigenous to the As well as an educational drive measures. Specific criticisms of Is - democracy much fuller than the area. There was already a Jewish in the party on this question — rael become lethal and should be present system, with elected rep - majority in Jerusalem before the which includes a candid discussion impermissible only when they are resentatives recallable at any time migration of Jews from Europe in of the politics of the leadership — used (as they too often are) to jus - and an end to bureaucrats’ and the 20th century. The Jewish popu - the party should declare advocacy tify the conclusion that therefore Is - managers’ privileges. lation was augmented by refugees of the destruction of Israel, by Arab rael should not exist and that “we” from Polish antisemitism in the or Islamic states or whomever, in - should side with Arab and Islamic We fight for trade unions and the bit.ly/ 20th century; by refugees from compatible with membership of the states that try to put it out of exis - Labour Party to break with “social l-as partnership” with the bosses and Nazism in the 1930s; and by Jews in Labour Party. tence. to militantly assert working-class interests.

In workplaces, trade unions, and Labour organisations; among students; in local campaigns; on the left and in wider political alliances we stand for: • Independent working-class representation in politics. • A workers’ government, based on and accountable to the labour movement. • A workers’ charter of trade union rights — to organise, to strike, to picket effectively, and to take solidarity action. • Taxation of the rich to fund decent public services, homes, education and jobs for all. • A workers’ movement that fights all forms of oppression. Full equality for women, and social provision to free women from domestic labour. For reproductive justice: free abortion on demand; the right to choose when and whether to have children. Full equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Black and white workers’ unity against racism. • Open borders. • Global solidarity against Labour revolt in Birmingham global capital — workers everywhere have more in common with each other than utive to investigate their conduct of A letter signed by 23 Labour over the council’s anti-union with their capitalist or Stalinist By Jim Denham the council leaders’ continuing dis - councillors asked the leadership to stance. rulers. Back bench Labour councillors putes with Unite and Unison. drop legal action against Unite and More than 300 refuse workers • Democracy at every level of in Birmingham have condemned Striking refuse workers (mem - to end the 15-month dispute with picketed at four depot sites on 19 society, from the smallest their own leaders in a letter de - bers of Unite) are facing legal action the care workers. February in what Unite’s Howard workplace or community to global manding that the council leaders by the Labour authority while Uni - The Birmingham council leader - Beckett described as “a last resort” social organisation. “step back” from confrontation son home care workers are also in ship claims Unite’s action is illegal after six weeks of talks collapsed. • Equal rights for all nations, with two unions. dispute over cuts in hours and pay. and plans to go to the High Court, They struck on 22 February against imperialists and predators The protesting councillors in - The last straw for many Labour using the Tory anti-union legisla - against payments that were made big and small. clude several senior figures such as councillors came in December tion to stop the strike. to members of the GMB who did • Maximum left unity in action, former council leader Albert Bore. when the Unison home care work - The Labour group’s chief whip, not take part in the 2017 strike. and openness in debate. It is clear that the present The letter adds to pressure on ers tried to deliver a card to Ward councillor Kerry Jenkins, has re - council leadership has no idea of present council leader Ian Ward and were locked out of the Council signed, saying she “cannot, in good If you agree with us, please how collective bargaining works, and his deputy Brigid Jones. Three House. The unedifying spectacle of conscience, whip for policies and take some copies of Solidarity no understanding of basic trade days previously the Regional low-paid women trade unionists decisions that are anti-trade-union to sell — and join us! unionism and no grasp of Labour Party Board voted over - being kept out of the Council’s HQ policies, and I will not support Labour’s links with the trade whelmingly in favour of a motion was the final straw for many them”. Labour’s bins chief Majid union movement. calling for Labour’s National Exec - Labour councillors. Mahmood had aleady resigned REPORTS 10-11 Officials are never wrong?

Shamefully, the United Left na - hand, fits the bill. By Ann Field tional leadership has given PULS a At a national level the United “We, the lay members of PULS, free run from the outset. No matter Left has also been laying the stand in solidarity with our left how many decisions of PULS flew groundwork for The Succession. officers and organisers. We in the face of United Left requests, At the moment a candidate needs know they will always do the decisions and policies, members of 50 branch nominations to make it right thing.” the United Left leadership were al - onto the ballot paper in a General So says a recent open letter re - ways on hand to excuse their ac - Secretary election. cently from “Progressive United tions. But a model rule-change motion Left Scotland” (PULS), a faction in In mid-February a Great Re-Uni - being circulated by the United Left Unite the Union launched in 2016 fication Meeting between PULS for this year’s Unite Rules Confer - Three top motions for NEU because of the supposed demise of and the ULS was to have taken ence proposes that a candidate will place, brokered by the United Left need 5% of the total number of ing and representing support the existing United Left Scotland By David Pendletone workers. It seeks to commit the (ULS). leadership. PULS and the ULS both Unite branches – amounting to agreed to the meeting. ULS sug - around a hundred. Of the 18 sections into which union to gaining negotiating PULS purports to be an organisa - rights for support workers and to tion committed to a lay-member- gested that Unite full-timers should Another model rule-change mo - the agenda for the conference not have a vote at the meeting. tion proposes that where work - of the National Education Union recruit support staff. led trade union. But if the The second commits the union bureaucrats are always right, who A decision on that was to have places have a branch of their own, (NEU) is divided into, three have been taken at a meeting of the they can submit either a workplace motions written by Workers’ to a vocal and active campaign to needs the rank-and-file? abolish all the anti-union laws, in - Although signed off by the PULS United Left National Co-ordina - nomination (like any other work - Liberty members prioritised at tors’ Committee. The mere fact that place where Unite is recognised) or the top. cluding by pressure on the Labour chair, the letter is in the chararacter - leadership. istic style of Mark Lyon, who set up the ULS suggestion was to be dis - a workplace-branch nomination Those three motions signpost cussed was seized on by PULS as a (like any other Unite branch), but the direction we want for the The third demands a ballot of PULS. Lyon is a Unite full-timer. 36 primary school members to organ - of the 39 Unite full-timers in Scot - pretext for pulling out of the Great not both. union. Re-Unification Meeting. Both these proposed rule The conference, the first one for ise a boycott of all high-stakes land are members of PULS, plus all summative testing in primary employees of Unite’s Organising changes are aimed at keeping rank- the newly-merged NEU, in in Liv - and-file candidates off the ballot erpool on 14-18 April. NEU, or - schools. To end that testing would Department in Scotland. SINCE 2016 have a huge positive effect on the The PULS letter marked the lat - paper. In the 2017 election, for ex - ganising 450,000 workers in PULS’s main effort has been fo - curriculum, work-loads, and the cussed on ousting ULS activists est and, hopefully, final chapter ample, Ian Allinson was able to schools, is now the fourth largest scrape onto the ballot paper with trade union in the UK. way schools treat children. from their positions on Unite’s con - in the saga which has been un - We will be continuing the fight just over 50 nominations. The first of our three prioritised stitutional committees, shutting derway since the summer of up to, in, and after the confer - That wasn’t meant to happen. motions is for the union organis - down branches in which ULS ac - 2016. ence in Liverpool. tivists are based, and barring them But that is unlikely to be the And the proposed rule changes will from holding office. case. make sure that it won’t happen Its campaigning record reached a The creation and existence of again. General Secretary elections nadir with last year’s Glasgow City PULS is inseparable from the ques - will end up as a “choice” between Council equal pay strike. Unite tion of The Succession – building a different bureaucrats, with the size Deliveroo anger grows members were not balloted to take machine to deliver the vote for the and effectiveness of their machine part in the strike. And there was no bureaucratic-”left” candidate in the counting for more than their poli - compensate the courier for injuries Unite presence on the biggest next Unite General Secretary elec - tics and election platform. This is the exact opposite of By Zack, Bristol Courier and pay lost. women’s protest in Glasgow since tion. what a real rank-and-file cam - However, the amount they offer the Rent Strike of 1915. The ULS was too off-message to On Saturday 23 February, while paign should be advocating. Per - is seriously insufficient, and the The role of “rank-and-file” mem - be relied upon to turn out the vote working as a Deliveroo meal haps PULS and the national rider will be not be paid by Deliv - bers of PULS is effectively that of for McCluskey’s choice of heir courier, I came across the scene leadership of the United Left are eroo for the time they are out of ac - nodding dogs. Its nominal office- (probably Assistant General Secre - of an appaling crash between not that far apart after all? tion, losing money, and possibly bearers are little better than glove tary Steve Turner). A bloc under the one of my colleagues and a car, feeling forced to start working puppets for the bureaucracy. thumb of full-timers, on the other a few minutes after it had hap - pened. again before medically advisable. The Deliveroo courier′s motor - The very high cost of a new or se - bike looked pretty smashed up, riously repaired scooter adds an and the rider was lying at least five additional burden to someone re - metres further down the road, pos - covering from a horrific ordeal. Guards’ jobs: nail down the deal! sibly with broken legs and a head The struggle for better pay from injury. Deliveroo continues, locally and There were many people help - nationally, following the five strikes ing, and the ambulance arrived we′ve had in Bristol in recent From Off The Rails was discovered that they had mis - drivers being expected at certain soon, so I didn′t stick around long months, and some in other cities. In takenly failed to check the wording times to check CCTV screens show - and don′t know the eventual out - Bristol we′re doing a serious organ - The breakthrough in the big rail - of the agreement. Although over - ing feeds from inside the train — come. I think everyone probably ising drive, aiming to recruit large workers’ dispute to save train time rates increased for longer- something that a driver has abso - lived. numbers to the IWGB union, and guards’ jobs is a cause for cele - serving drivers, for newly qualified lutely no reason to do when oper - The crash really brought home better ″map″ the situation with bration, but some caution must drivers they were actually lower ating a service that is also staffed by how vulnerable we, as couriers, can couriers in Bristol. also be exercised. under the new agreement than they a guard. be . It brought back my anger with We′re planning another large meeting in a couple of weeks, No formal settlement has yet had been the last time there was a Commendably, the Aslef Execu - Deliveroo, even stronger. bringing more couriers into plan - been reached, and the train drivers’ rest-day working agreement in tive Committee refused to accept I can′t comment on whose, if any - ning the next series of strikes. In the Aslef did sell out RMT members as place. that agreement — presumably be - one′s, ″fault″ the crash was. How - meantime we will be discussing well as its own members in the big Despite promising to rectify their cause they realised that the Com - ever, I know that Deliveroo′s pay other protests, producing more bul - driver-only operation (DOO) dis - mistake, they have allowed rest pany Council reps have gone rogue structure, and low pay in general, letins, meeting the mayor about pute with GTR Southern in day working to continue for six and are now willing to do more or pushes us towards dangerous rid - motorcycle parking bays, and 2016/17. months under this shoddy agree - less anything the employer wants ing. more. Aslef reps on the Northern Com - ment, and recently recommended a them to do in return for the vaguest Deliveroo bosses earn much Nationally, couriers are getting pany Council have been acting to further three-month extension. promises of future improvements more than us, with stable incomes, more organised in many places, aid the company in pushing for - It recently emerged that these to drivers’ salaries or terms and and don′t face many of the risks with strikes planned sooner in ward its DOO agenda. reps have negotiated extra release conditions. that they daily push us into. some. In June last year, they deliber - from driving duty for themselves So there is a clear and present Many other risks are transferred The IWGB union is supporting ately bailed the company out from (but not local level reps), so that danger to this hard-won victory. to us besides the risk of road acci - and in dialogue with couriers in having the franchise confiscated by even if a meeting they were due to RMT must not allow secret talks be - dents. I don’t think that motorcy - many of these places, and taking agreeing to sanction voluntary attend is cancelled, they are still tween Aslef and the company. clist is going to be riding for weeks They should fight to bring Aslef steps to increase national co-or - overtime for drivers, in return for a given extra “staff side” time. or longer — and his scooter looked into joint talks. dination. £1,000 cash payment to each driver. They recently recommended the likely written off. Under pressure, • Support our strike fund: They were roundly lambasted by union accept a training agreement Deliveroo offer free rider insurance, bit.ly/deloo-s their members soon after, when it for new rolling stock that includes which is good, and should partially SolidaFor a workers’ giovertnment y No 497 27 February 2019 50p/£1 Stop the Immigration Bill! Day of action 1 March

The Tories’ Brexit Immigration Bill is set to exclude workers from the EU unless they have a job in advance at over £30,000, or come for a specific job only for twelve months. In the second case, workers will be banned from reapplying until another year has passed. In other words, obstacles will be L4SE meets on 9 March Labour bloc for 23 March built to those migrant workers settling, integrating, and organ - Saturday 23 March will be the next big demonstration for a new Labour for a Socialist Europe, the left anti-Brexit campaign within ising in the labour movement. public vote and against Brexit. the Labour Party, has called a conference for 9 March. This Brexit Bill is an anti-mi - The Labour Party’s switch to back a new referendum should make The importance and the potential impact of the conference has been grant charter, and a cheap- the demonstration bigger. raised by Labour on 25 February coming out for a new public vote. labour, union-busting charter. The switch guarantees nothing. With the Tories and rebel Labour MPs An opening plenary, with speakers including Julie Ward MEP and Despite all the conflicts over opposing the new public vote, it will not pass. Only pressure on the someone from Spoons Workers Against Brexit, will review and debate the Brexit deal, there is almost no streets will tip the balance. the position then, three days before Theresa May’s promised date for a Tory revolt over this Immigration Labour for a Socialist Europe, with others, is organising a socialist new vote on her formula. Bill. And, last time it came to Par - labour-movement bloc on the demonstration. The assembly point will Workshops will cover trade unions and Brexit; left coordination across liament, on 28 January, the probably be in Old Park Lane, close to the main assembly in Park Lane, Europe; building local groups; free movement and migrants’ rights; and Labour front bench advocated London, but distinct enough to make the bloc visible and accessible. more. abstaining on the Bill, until at the Book your transport, bring your banners! last minute labour-movement A final plenary will debate motions and elect a new committee. labourforasocialisteurope.org protest pushed it into voting Facebook page: bit.ly/l4se-23 against. 11:30 to 5:30, Camden School for Girls, Sandall Road, London NW5 2DB. The Bill comes back to Par - liament on 7 March. The Labour Campaign for Free Movement, with others, is or - ganising a Day of Action Student left will meet 2-3 March against the Bill on Friday 1 March. Workshops will include President Higher Education There will be a session with na - By Maisie Sanders • how to organise student- • universities and mental health, tional committee elections, and Some of the times and places worker solidarity campaigns, led led by Loughborough University plenty of time for planning and de - for action: The Student Left Network’s first national conference will take by University of the Arts London activist group “Campus Care not cision-making over the weekend. Justice for Workers’ campaign Campus Cops”. The conference will debate • Windrush Sq, Brixton, south place on 2-3 March at Sheffield Hallam University. • Brexit and freedom of move - The conference will discussing motions on anti-Brexit cam - London, at 6pm. paigning, getting involved in the Left wing students from cam - ment with Student Left Network’s how to fight the cuts to liberation • Bonn Square, Oxford, at 2pm school strikes for climate, puses across the country are get - NUS Presidential candidate Justine campaigns and the anti-demo - •Richard Hoggart Building, against antisemitism at the Uni - ting together to decide how we can Canady and Nottingham student cratic reforms in the National Goldsmiths University, London versity of Essex, and linking up link up and spread our campaigns, and Labour activist Nadia Whit - Union of Students (NUS), what a SE14 6NW, ar 5:30pm (organised with UCU to join the “Free Our where we should take the student tome radical, fighting and democratic by Lewisham Deptford CLP) Unions” campaign initiated by movement next, share experiences • International Students’ rights NUS would look like, and how we • Birmingham city centre, at 3pm the Clarion and Lambeth Uni - and skills and debate political with Manish Khatri, International can build a movement to break the Up-to-date details at: son. bit.ly/SLN19. ideas. Students’ Officer for NUS Scotland bureaucracy of NUS and student • bit.ly/1mar-ac and left candidate for NUS Vice unions.

Contact us Subscribe to Solidarity To: ...... (your bank) ...... (address) Account name ...... (your name) 020 7394 8923 Trial sub (6 issues) £7 o Six months (22 issues) £22 waged o, £11 unwaged o Account number ...... Sort code ...... solidarity@ One year (44 issues) £44 waged , £22 unwaged o o Please make payments as follows to the debit of my account: workersliberty.org European rate: 6 months €30 One year €55 o o Payee: Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, account no. 20047674 at the Unity Trust Write to us: 20E Tower Bank, 9 Brindley Place, Birmingham, B1 2HB (60-83-01) Workshops, Riley Road, Subscribe online at www.workersliberty.org/sub Amount: £...... London, SE1 3DG Or send your name, address and postcode with payment to AWL, 20e Tower To be paid on the ...... day of ...... (month) 20.... (year) and thereafter Solidarity editorial: Simon Nelson, Workshops, Riley Road, London SE1 3DG monthly until this order is cancelled by me in writing. Cathy Nugent, Martin Thomas, Or subscribe with a standing order: £5 a month to subscribe to Solidarity or This order cancels any previous orders to the same payee. and Mike Zubrowski pay us more to make an ongoing contribution to our work Date ...... Signature ...... Printed by Trinity Mirror