When confronted with a familiar problem, the wise either resort to the sure solution or, remembering past follies, try to muster an imaginative and novel way out of their bind. Sadly the current government hasn’t displayed such dexterity in fashioning responses to our economic crisis, rather it responds to familiar problems with failed solutions,...
Articles
Can you spare enough for a round?
The Hope not Hate campaign are asking for support for their next Day of Action on Saturday 19 March. Their recent Fear and HOPE report highlighted that economic insecurity was a key driver in support for right wing parties. As a response the HOPE not hate campaign is organising a day of action on...
Save our NHS
The drastic NHS reforms being pushed through parliament may do long-term damage to a much-loved institution. It isn’t too late to make your voice heard. Sign the petition: http://saveournhs.com/# About the bill The government’s proposed Health and Social Care BIll represents the most radical change to the NHS is its 60 year history. The...
Labour Must Support the TUC’s Demonstration
DAVID CONNOLLY calls for Ed Miliband to join the protest masses at the TUC’s march next month. Great Ayton is a small, pleasant middle class village just south of Middlesbrough where four weeks ago 600 people crammed into the village hall to protest against the closure of the local library. Another 100 or so couldn’t...
Big Society ‘fantasy’ turns into ‘nightmare’
The Big Society was a short-term fantasy that turned into an enduring nightmare for thousands of charities, Unite, the largest union in the country, said this week. Unite, which has 60,000 members in the Not for Profit sector, said that David Cameron’s pipedream should be investigated immediately by the Commons Public Administration Select Committee....
Compass: a wider view or loss of focus?
The left of centre think tank, Compass, is currently consulting and balloting its members on proposals to become more ‘pluralistic’ by allowing full voting membership to members of political parties other than Labour. It would be easy to regard this debate as relevant only to Compass itself, and those with an unhealthy interest in...
Turkey’s prudish PM
JAMES BRYAN wonders how the Turkish government’s humourless approach to public art fits with its supposed commitment to secularism. Though his pronouncements insist that Turkey’s Kemalist secularism remains undiluted, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan can’t seem to shake off innuendos about his past and that of his party. He and the Justice and Development...
Egypt: Will anyone stand up for democratic socialism?
JAMES BRYAN asks why it took so long for the Socialist International to expel Mubarak’s party. When faced with adversity we often find out who our real friends are. Despite being deserted by his own people, Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak can for now put his trust in the police and the top-tier of the...
The State of the State
The role and nature of the state has become a central feature of British political argument – should it be an ‘EasyJet state’ or a ‘John Lewis state’? Should the state give way for the arrival of the ‘big society’, or forms of mutualism or associationalism? In the context of deficit reduction and austerity...
Roma’s last stand
Roma Marquez Santo, the POUM veteran who unveiled a plaque to the ILP’s Spanish Civil War volunteers in Salford in May 2009, died in Barcelona on Wednesday 29 December 2010. CHRIS HALL recalls his life and the events that shaped it. Roma Marquez Santo born in Barcelona on 6 November 1916 into a political family...
A tribute to Roma
Roma Marquez Santo, the POUM veteran who unveiled a plaque to the ILP’s Spanish Civil War volunteers in Salford in May 2009, died in Barcelona on Wednesday 29 December. HARRY OWEN pays tribute to the man who fought fascism in Spain in the 1930s yet could still hold audiences charmed and spellbound with tales of...
Labour ‘Supporters’ To Get The Vote?
A report in ‘The Independent’ (28 December 2010) says that the Labour Party has written to the Committee on Standards in Public Life arguing for a cap of £500 on donations to political parties. According to the paper, ‘Mr Miliband is ready to gamble on Labour attracting thousands of small donations from individual supporters...