Editorial

A supporter of the Morning Star/CPB, under the pseudonym ‘Michael Ford’, has written the most substantial rebuttal of the proposal to found a new Left Party – “Left Unity’s Modest Flutter”, posted on the LU site. Here Phil Hearse examines Ford’s arguments. Weighing in at more than 9000 words Ford’s article assesses almost every conceivable […] Read more »

Mark Perryman explores what Andy Murray and the Lions tell us about sport’s impact on national identity “ The imagined community of millions seems more real as a team of eleven named people” Eric Hobsbawm Eric Hobsbawm’s acute observation concerning the impact of sport on national identity has been carted out so often that it […] Read more »

I learned a lot in our last Left Unity meeting in Wandsworth, reports Micheline Mason. I learned about the Workers’ Party of Ireland from Paul; I learned about growing up under a military dictatorship in Ethiopia from Gelila, and from her I also learned how some Christians think about the term ‘left’ (i.e. on the […] Read more »

Sophie Katz extends her first commentary on the situation in Egypt. It is often a mistake to comment from afar but the British media is so appalling and the Internet so full of trash it is difficult to hear genuine voices from the Egyptian left in these crucial hours. But great events pile on great […] Read more »

It is a puzzle for everybody with revolutionary and democratic instincts what to think about the Egyptian coup, says Sophie Katz. It is not of course a problem for Britain’s popular ‘commentariat’ who trumpet their clichés about everybody else’s failure to abide by the rule of law and shamefully remind their readers of the horrors […] Read more »

Sophie Katz looks at past attempts in setting up left of Labour alternatives and considers what the left in Britain should do today. The first time that the issue of replacing the LP with another mass party came up as a strategy (actually the first time the main thesis of the British Road to Socialism […] Read more »

The latest GDP release from the Office for National Statistics was accompanied by a set of revisions to previous data. These now show that the downturn was more severe than had previously been estimated and that the British economy is even further away from recovery, says economist Michael Burke. Previously, ONS data had shown that […] Read more »

  The recent decision of the Greek Prime Minister, Samaras, to close down the public television and radio stations, caused a large mobilization and resulted in a crisis of the governmental coalition, reports Stavros Panagiotidis. Since that day, representatives of trade unions, student unions, workers federations, party leaders, MPs, members of all left parties and […] Read more »

  A historical uprising has resulted in new practices, potentially very fruitful for closer investigation for progressives in both Europe and the Middle East, says Ekim Caglar.  Finally the progressives had the power to shake the hegemony and be in the centre of Turkish politics for a while. It all started with the trees in […] Read more »

The Finnish Left Alliance held its party congress during June 8-9 in Tampere, Finland, reports Ruurik Holm. The congress approved a visionary and programmatic paper Red-Green Future, which outlines the central features of a red-green society and describes what kind of measures need to be taken for achieving it. For example, economic growth is not […] Read more »