Wellred Books at www.wellred.marxist.com are pleased
to announce that we have a limited stock of Ted Grant’s book ‘The Unbroken
Thread’ in stock and available to buy. Both Hardback (£11.95) and Paperback
(£6.95) editions are available.
The Indian Hindustan Times published an interview with Lal Khan in its
Sunday edition of 21st October. In this newspaper, which claims to be
the largest in the world with a circulation of 35 million, Lal Khan
openly defends the ideas of socialist revolution.
The British media has been giving enormous coverage to the manoeuvres of Benazir Bhutto, leader of the Pakistan People’s Party and former Prime Minister, in seeking to negotiate a return to Pakistan from her comfortable exile in London. In this extract from a wider analysis (see Whither Pakistan on Marxist.com ), Lal Khan, leading figure of the Marxist tendency, The Struggle, explains what is going on.
After the Crimea conference, the British Communist Party leaders came
out with a position advocating a National unity government with the
Tories for the post-war period. This policy of class collaboration was
denounced by Ted Grant, who wrote in 1945
that, "to support Churchill is to support monopoly capitalism. To
support the capitalists, the interests of the working class must be
betrayed. It has taken the advanced British workers the experience of
50 years to realise that the Liberal and Tory Parties are parties of
capitalism."
In the period of intense and bitter struggles described in Part 1, the
massacre at Peterloo in August 1819 was just the most extreme example.
Arthur Thistlewood was able to gather around him a mixed collection of
other individuals equally impatient to bring matters to a head and have
it out with the country’s political leaders. They believed that violent
direct action was the answer.
Comrade Phil Lloyd has died in Swansea at the age of 74. He joined the
tendency led by Ted Grant back in the 1950s. He was a pioneer of the Marxist
tendency and played a key role in its development. Alan Woods was one of the
youth that that Phil Lloyd helped to recruit and educate. Here Alan remembers
the man and fighter.
Israeli
vice-premier Haim Ramon has suggested ceding Arab neighbourhoods to a future
Palestinian state. This has divided the Israeli political establishment… obviously.
But what it reflects is the pressure on the Zionist ruling elite to make at
least some verbal concessions in an attempt to stabilise the situation.
Over two days in early October the Cambridge branch of Socialist Appeal
managed to sign up over 150 people at the Cambridge University
Fresher’s Fair for the Hands Off Venezuela campaign. Many
had already heard of the campaign and were keen to find out more,
whilst many wanted to know more about Latin American politics in
general.
The environmental statistics have been pouring in, and the prognosis
for the planet looks dire: global warming is accelerating, leaving
environmental destruction in its wake. Already we are witnessing some
of its devastating consequences and there are trends
which, if allowed to proceed unchecked, will culminate in humans
huddled around the two poles in search of respite from the heat.
On
Monday the eighth of October the Edinburgh University Hands Off Venezuela
society showed Hands Off Venezuela’s new film No Volveran. The film was well generally well received by those that attended. After the film show
there was a brief discussion on issues such as the new constitution and workers
control.
Those who do not learn from the mistakes of history are
doomed to repeat them. For this reason, socialists take the study of the past
struggles of working people very seriously. In 1820 six men, convicted of treason, were publicly hanged
and then beheaded outside Newgate Prison in the City of London. The crime of
which they had been convicted was plotting to assassinate the entire Cabinet as
it sat enjoying a working dinner. This attempt at a violent coup d’etat is now
largely forgotten, tucked away as a footnote in the history books. It deserves
to be better known.
On the 26th September Norwich comrades helped promote the University of East Anglia Socialist Society at the Freshers Fair. The day was a big success, a lot of hard work and preparation was put into the days efforts. For another year socialist ideas at UEA looks set to gain a wide audience among students and young people.