Notes on the News By Gwydion M. Williams Disgusted With Capitalism, Terrified of Socialism Burning Bridges With China Ukraine – Arming the Useful Idiots “Let The World Suffer, Unless India and China Stay Low” Pay Less, Care Less Snippets A False Meritocracy Life, Liberty and the Avoidance of Happiness Communist Subversion in the 1950s Chinese … Continue reading Notes on the News
Kazakhstan Our Caucasus expert Pat Walsh (https://drpatwalsh.com) writes: The situation in Kazakhstan I have been trying to read Russian and Azerbaijani accounts of what’s going on in Kazakhstan and it’s not consistent. What I have noticed most is the attempts to shoehorn the issues into the authors’ existing disposition. For instance, I have read that it … Continue reading Kazakhstan
Russia’s Grand Strategy — Parliament Notes Bernard Jenkin initiated this debate on ‘Russia’s Grand Strategy, 6th January 2022. MPs on all sides were unanimous that Putin’s Russia is the enemy and a danger to the West and the UK in particular, Labour MPs being particularly vociferous. The Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy lambasted the government for not spending enough on … Continue reading Edward Leigh on Russia
From Socialism to Popular Capitalism: ‘the revolution where everyone is a winner’. The destruction of both British industry and council housing was a deliberate policy to get away from what Thatcher and Heseltine saw as socialism, the excessive influence of the state on the economy. They saw this as their crowning achievement. Extracts from: Where there’s a Will, … Continue reading Heseltine on Privatisation
Julian Assange in his own words, Book Review by Helen Mercer And A Ray of Hope: Julian Assange Given Leave to Appeal https://wiseupaction.info/2021/12/20/julian-assange-in-his-own-words-book-review-by-helen-mercer/ With the recent judgement handed down by the High Court judges supporting the US appeal in the case of Julian Assange we have truly entered an Alice in Wonderland world. Logic, not … Continue reading Julian Assange in His Own Words
Victory for the App Drivers & Couriers Union “James Farrar, general secretary of the App Drivers & Couriers Union (ADCU), said: "Rather than fix its broken business model, Uber was determined to double down on misclassification at the cost of worker rights, passenger safety and the avoidance of VAT. "Our victory will now make misclassification … Continue reading Minicab Union Victory
Policing Bill: picketing in the crosshairs Read Lord Hendy’s article in the Morning Star, followed by his intervention in the House of Lords on the same subject. There you will also find the opinion of Lord Paddick, former senior police officer, that what the police need is not more laws but more suitably trained officers. The intervention … Continue reading The Right to Picket
Editorial The party which wins the next general election will be the party which presents to the electorate, in the clearest and most convincing way, a view of the role of the state in the society. No one knows what the position of the Labour Party is on the role and size of the state. Keir … Continue reading Sunak’s Agenda is Labour’s Opportunity
What am I going to do next? Part 11 Dave Gardner In part 8 of this series I looked at mass university education in Britain and concluded that it had some significant harmful side effects. This was not a whinge along the lines of ‘more means worse’, a snobbish slogan attributed to the novelist Kingsley … Continue reading University or bust Part 2
by John Martin This is written from an Irish perspective but opens up the discussion for Britain too. If socialism is defined by how its political representatives act, then its elements can be described quite clearly. In the Irish context socialists tend to distrust the State. All actions by the State are suspect. The State … Continue reading What is socialism?
“WITHDRAWAL OF WHIP FROM JEREMY CORBYN: 1st ANNIVERSARY” Diary of an ex-Corbyn foot soldier (December, 2021) A year ago, 19 November, 2021, the Chief Whip is reported as writing to Jeremy Corbyn, suspending him from the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) for 3 months pending investigation into whether he had broken the PLP Code of Conduct. The … Continue reading Jeremy Corbyn banished as Labour MP—one year on
Sahra Wagenknecht’s ‘The Self-Righteous’. Labour Affairs is pleased to publish below our own English translation of the Foreword to Sahra Wagenknecht’s ‘The Self-Righteous’, published in Germany earlier this year (Die Selbstgerechten: Mein Gegenprogramm – für Gemeinsinn und Zusammenhalt. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2021). The book has had a significant impact in Germany where Wagenknecht is … Continue reading Sahra Wagenknecht—The Self-Righteous
IT'S TIME FOR TRANSFORMATIVE SOCIALIST ECONOMICS: AN OCCASIONAL SHORT READING AND VIEWING GUIDE Michael Murray (1) The problem stated: "The Labour Party believes that a Labour government can only spend what it has levied in taxation, or borrowed from the private sector. But it also wants to be a party of low taxation and low national … Continue reading Transformative Socialist Economics
THE MELANCHOLIA OF CLASS BY CYNTHIA CRUZ I REPEATER BOOKS £10.99The tyranny of the middle-class worldview CHRIS MOSS (Morning Star Monday November 22 2021) recommends a perceptive analysis of the dichotomy between working-class identity and its repudiation by contemporary society. Aspiration, assimilation, alienation and class are knottily intertwined in con- temporary Western societies. Success is deemed to … Continue reading The Melancholia of Class
By Gwydion M. Williams Canada Drowns, Business Hesitates Government: It’s Not a Bad Habit China: the New Civilisation that the Soviet Union Failed To Be Snippets OLIMBY Covid: Survival of the Worst China’s Sputnik Moment? Unhappy Rich People Did Modern Humans Invent Cold-Blooded Murder? Canada Drowns, Business Hesitates “Atmospheric rivers are typically several thousand kilometers … Continue reading Notes on the News
Irresistible Things —This Month in Parliament This article joins together two others in this issue, on the one hand the editorial and the question ‘how will you pay for it’, and on the other hand the series on ‘What shall I do next?’ on youth employment. It refers to the 2021 Lords Youth Unemployment Committee … Continue reading Irresistible Things
This Month in Parliament 2 Questions in Parliament, 24th November 2021 Matthew Pennycook (Lab) Q7. The Government’s integrated review has concluded that the Chinese state poses a systemic challenge to our national security, and the Prime Minister has made it clear that when it comes to China, we must remain vigilant about our critical national infrastructure. … Continue reading The Government and China
By Michal Lerner To win the next general election, Labour must give bold answers to the question ‘How will you pay for it?’. Let us therefore imagine an interview between an interviewer (I) and a member of the Shadow Cabinet (L) and suggest how the dreaded question should be dealt with in the context of … Continue reading How to pay for it. The case of Universal Credit
Labour Affairs 