WILLIAM BROWN sifts through the remains of an e-commerce party that never was, and warns that the ill-winds of an economic downturn could soon be blowing across the Atlantic. Maybe it was the end-of-the-century party mood, or a kind of millennium bug which affected economic forecasters, but the 1990s were awash with optimistic economic...
Gone but not forgotten
JEAN WOOD reports on the plight of Kosovan refugees sent back from Leeds to their own country and a very uncertain future. Just over a year ago, Serbian forces – intent on cleansing their region of Albanian people – drove thousands from their homes. Many of the luckier ones, who escaped the shootings, rapes...
Underground manoeuvres
ANN BLACK sees the forces of conservatism flourishing behind the closed doors of the National Policy Forum. Five years ago I attended my first conference. I haggled over benefits and human rights in compositing meetings, on equal footing with union grandees and delegates from constituencies across the country. Because of that participation, those contacts,...
Towering success
The east end of London used to be one the BNP’s electoral targets. MATTHEW BROWN reports on how the policies and priorities of one local borough has improved community relations. Juneha Chowdhury is nearing the end of her first year as a newly qualified teacher. It hasn’t been easy but, at 27, she’s finally...
Defective permanent revolutionary
MIKE WADSWORTH reviews the autobiography of SWP founder Tony Cliff. Tony Cliff’s autobiography was published shortly after his death last year. It is written in an almost conversational manner and shows that, as Paul Foot writes in the introduction, “Tony Cliff was not a humble man and his account (which he started only because...
“Mavis Grimett is out”: The rise of fascism in the north
BEN TURLEY looks at some of the social and political roots of the BNP’s success in northern and midlands towns, and offers some suggestions for how they should be tackled in the future. The local council election results on 1 May 2003 confirmed the BNP as a significant electoral force in some northern and...
An activist’s life
MIKE WADSWORTH reviews the recent biography of lifetime communist Edmund Frow, written by his wife. Ruth Frow points out that this biography of Eddie Frow is largely anecdotal and is not the detached recital of a life that would have been produced by a biographer less closely involved with the subject. In this regard...
Racisms, multiculturalisms and fascisms
BARRY WINTER argues for more plural ways of thinking, if we are to meet the challenges posed by racism and the far right. The title of this article, ‘Racisms, Multiculturalisms and Fascisms’, may at first, appear perverse. But it is not meant to be. The reason for adding an ‘s’ to the three terms,...
New Labour, new Democrats?
GARY KENT wonders about a little discussed aspect of Blair’s international intentions. We should know by now that Tony Blair often claims to be bold but is as sly as a fox. He has the habit of smuggling important policy shifts past unsuspecting Labour Party members. It’s not so much “say what you mean...
Hobbes, socialism and human nature
MARTIN JENKINS re-examines the work of Thomas Hobbes to counter the popular prejudice that humans are naturally competitive and aggressive isolationists. Will human nature act as an impediment to socialistic political change? Are we naturally greedy or selfish in seeking to gratify our desires and needs? Thinking people on the ‘left’ maintain that human...
A fig leaf for privatisation
PATRICK GRAY argues that the Co-operative Party has been fooled into supporting foundation hospitals. I fear that cooperators will come to regret that the Co-operative Party has been fooled into lending respectability to the government’s wrong-headed plans for foundation hospitals. The will o’ the wisp promise of community control is completely meaningless. Mutuality may...
Traitor or whistle blower?
GARY KENT reviews Liz Davies’ recent book on the politics inside new Labour. Liz Davies is an embittered traitor spilling the beans on party business. Or she has done us all a service by blowing the whistle on new Labour’s “twists, turns, machinations and doublespeak” and the “paranoia and pointlessness” of the party’s ruling...