Bob Goupillot’s article on progress in E&L 2 was illuminating. The nature of the communist society of the future is not a matter of crystal ball gazing but, for materialists, should be a matter of some urgency. It will not develop organically if we just let it grow but is there to be determined and…
No nationalist road to socialism in Scotland
Phil Sharpe (Movement for a Socialist Future) reviews Imagine by Tommy Sheridan and Alan McCombes (Rebel Inc. Edinburgh, £7.99) This article first appeared in Socialist Future magazine This book, by Scottish Socialist Party leaders Tommy Sheridan and Alan McCombes, argues for a nationalist road to socialism. As thousands of Scottish workers face the sack as…
Bookshop Libel Fund
A two-day High Court case was the culmination of an action brought nearly two years ago against Housmans Bookshop in London by a right wing anti-gay litigant who had been referred to as a plagiarist in one sentence in a 136-page pamphlet stocked in the shop. He chose to only sue the shop, not the…
You are the weakest link! SSP Special Conference, the Left and No to the Euro Campaign
Allan Armstrong (RCN), mover of the active boycott motion assesses the SSP Special Conference How the debate was handled The SSP SC on June 22nd, voted by a 4-1 margin to campaign for a no vote when Tony Blair finally decides to set the date for the Euro referendum. An extended morning session was given…
A Healthy Constitution?
Duncan Rowan, the SSP’s North East Organiser, raises concerns at the outcome of the SSP’s Special Conference on the party’s constitution Conferences, special or otherwise, have always struck me as slightly pointless affairs. All that passion, preparation and rhetoric spent upon an audience, 90% of whom arrived that morning knowing exactly how they were going…
Oceans Apart
by Jim Aitken Do not call me Ishmael or anything quite as grand but call me instead a radge or a schemie or a scaff a bam, a ned, yob or chav extend the vocabulary and label me as other poke fun at my accent and clothes blame me for all that goes missing for…
Equal partners in the struggle
Catriona Grant explains why the fight for liberation must include the struggle against our emotional internalisation of constraints and beliefs Linda Gibson’s article in the first Emancipation and Liberation enthralled me. She was able to eloquently express many of my thoughts and feelings. It has often perplexed and confused me why Marxists are meant to…
Juvenilization, the family, and the capitalist state
Kathy Perlo argues that young people must be genuinely valued by society, and should neither be used as scapegoats, nor defined as non-citizens. To accustom children (those below puberty) to subordination beyond the natural needs of care and protection, they must be defined as non-citizens; to prepare young people (those above puberty but still requiring…
British Nationalism and the rise of Fascism
While the Anti Nazi League concentrates its effort on fighting German Nazis, fascism has very British roots. In a shortened version of an article he wrote while in the Republican Workers’ Tendency, Chris Ford shows the link between loyalism and fascism. Chris is currently on the Editorial Board of Hobgoblin. The British roots of fascism…
Northern Ireland – Is the peace process under threat? No, but the working class is!
Reprinted from Class Struggle Jul/Aug 2002 (bi-monthly – Workers’ Fight – Britain) In Mid-May, almost exactly one year after the Catholic Holy Cross girls’ school in North Belfast’s Ardoyne was singled out as a target by UDA–UFF gangs, the mostly Catholic Short Strand area, in East Belfast, came under attack from the UVF. This time,…