Britain
"The Tommie Smith/John Carlos 'black power' salute of 1968 – two medal winners overturning the symbolism, refusing to let their individual excellence serve the forces that degraded them and their people."
For more discussion of issues surrounding sport and politics, click HERE. For more on the Olympics, click HERE.
By Mike Marqusee, London
August 4, 2012 -- Mike Marqusee.com, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with permission -- I enjoyed my afternoon at the Olympics, sitting in my public lottery assigned £50 seat at the ExCel, with a fine view of the men’s boxing. And I enjoyed it not least because I was finally able to watch the sport itself without the surrounding hype, the layers of commentary. For a moment there was only that pleasure special to sport: the spontaneity of a story being fashioned in front of your own eyes, once and once only (despite digital repeats), robustly itself and not pretending to be anything else.
Britain: Coalition government parties battered in local elections
Respect's Alyas Karmani defeated the Labour Party leader o
One million climate jobs now! The video
May 4, 2012 -- Links international Journal of Socialist Renewal -- The Campaign Against Climate Change Trade Union Group is organising a Climate Jobs Caravan in England and Scotland in May 2012.
Based on the Million Climate Jobs report, produced with the assistance of Public and Commercial Services Union, the University and College Union, the Communication Workers Union and the Transport Salaried Staffs' Association, the caravan will highlight how creating climate jobs can help tackle the twin crises of the ecomony and climate change.
This inspiring video sets out the caravan’s message. The full 33-minute version, along with eight other videos about the struggle for justice, can be purchased on a DVD from Reel News.
Britain: The space to the left of the Labour Party just got huge
By Socialist Resistance (Britain)
Britain: A simple proposal for a new anti-capitalist left
By Simon Hardy
April 15, 2012 -- Posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with the author's permission, in the interests of left discussion in the wake of George Galloway's success in Bradford West -- I along with a number of other members of Workers Power in Britain, Austria and the Czech Republic have resigned from the organisation. The global capitalist crisis has posed tremendous questions for the radical left about how to go forward. We have increasingly drawn the conclusion that the historical legacy of the post-war left, in particular the Leninist-Trotskyist left, needs to be subjected to far-reaching critique and re-evaluation in light of the contemporary challenges.
The organised left is dogged by sectarianism and opportunism. There are quite literally hundreds of competing orthodoxies, with each sect promoting and defending its own, typically very narrow, conception of revolutionary theory and practice without subjecting their ideas to the critical re-evaluation which we believe is necessary if Marxism is to reach out to far wider layers.
Britain: Why I resigned from the Green Party of England and Wales
Joseph Healy.
By Joseph Healy
April 2012 -- Red Pepper -- I joined the Green Party 10 years ago as I believed that it had something new and radical to say in British politics. I was also a founder member of Green Left, which was formed in 2006, and I helped draft the Headcorn Declaration, the group’s mission statement. One of my aims in doing so was to ensure that there was a radical left faction in the party constantly pushing it in a progressive direction -- and providing a counterbalance to those in the party for whom pragmatism and "lifestyle environmentalism" were the driving forces.
Britain: The challenge of George Galloway’s ‘Bradford Spring’
George Galloway campaigns in Bradford West.
Mike Marqusee on Occupy in 2012: 'Mass action has returned'
Occupy the London Stock Exchange.
Scotland's left on independence referendum: For an 'anti-austerity yes vote'
Statements on the Scottish independence referendum by the Scottish Socialist Youth, the International Socialist Group (Scotland) and the Scottish Greens.
By Andy Bowden
January 10, 2012 -- Scottish Socialist Youth -- After almost a year since the Scottish National Party’s landslide victory we have a date – autumn 2014 for the most important referendum in Scottish history, on whether or not we stay in a union [the United Kingom] dominated by the right wing, a state that invaded Iraq, imposes nuclear weapons on the Clyde, destroyed Scotland’s industrial base, or whether we become an independent nation with the power to fundamentally change Scotland for the better and which reflects the left of centre political terrain instead of being dominated by the Tory home counties.