JOE BESWICK of the London Renters Union talks to the Morning Star’s new Left on Record programme
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Anti-communism v the unions, neo-anarchism v mass movements
ZOLTAN ZIGEDY reflects on the lessons from two books looking at the US labour movement and the recent history of spontaneous mass uprisings – and finds two pernicious ideologies working against the interests of the people
10 - AFL-CIO_Headquarters_by_Matthew_Bisanz
The unnecessarily violent police intervention at a Quaker place of worship is a PR disaster and will only serve to deepen the chasm between them and the public. SYMON HILL reports
ANDREW MURRAY wonders whether recent opinion polling and a fresh local authority by-election result in Ilford are an indication that the time is ripe for the left to make inroads
Due to the actions of this government, the challenges facing those with disabilities, such as spinal cord injuries, are nigh on insurmountable, argus RUTH HUNT
General secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions GAWAIN LITTLE calls for support and participation in the national partnership organised to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 1926 general strike
After brutal police crackdowns on pensioners and the forced approval of secret IMF deals, trade unions are finally responding to grassroots pressure and fighting back against savage neoliberal reforms, reports BERT SCHOUWENBURG
Bizarrely, Trump’s latest attacks now include the National Zoo, but his real and racist agenda is to strip everything black from the country’s cultural institutions, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
VINCENT BEVINS’ work If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution, and Jeff Schuhrke’s Blue Collar Empire: The Untold Story of US Labor’s Global Anticommunist Crusade (reviewed in the Star at www.bit.ly/blueMS) were maybe the two most important books that I read this past year.
I have read many good books, many well-written books, many timely books, but these were arguably the two most important books.
They are important because they attempt to tackle questions that are neglected or only superficially discussed on the political left. They are most important because they surface popular assumptions that are among the greatest obstacles to the success of any authentically left project: spontaneity as an organisational philosophy and anti-communism as political orthodoxy.
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