Reading the Left Press so you don't have to

I thought I'd start off with something different this week with a quick look at the Worker, published by the Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) one of the few remaining organisations that originated in the "Maoist" tradition and was founded by Reg Birch a leading trade unionist in the sixties after a break with the official CPGB.

Unlike their rivals and frankly many of the more well known left publications their journal is remarkably jargon free and has a more professional "feel" than many other publications. It only comes out bi-monthly.

Being fairly "nationalist" in it's outlook the CPB(M-L) are anti-EU and their editorial leads on the subject of Brexit:

Now is a time of unprecedented popular involvement in politics, a true democratic renaissance. We the people voted to leave, but our vote is being frustrated.

Across Britain there is a palpable sense of anger at the attempts to betray the referendum result of 2016. Anger at the ultra-Remainers who creep to Brussels to urge no compromise as the best way of thwarting independence. Anger at the undemocratic “People’s Vote” charade – we had a proper people’s vote in 2016. Anger at the government’s supine contortions.

But anger is not enough. If the vote to leave was a form of revolution, then we are witnessing an attempted counter-revolution. Like the professional elites and entitled students of Chile in 1973, they take to the streets to deny democracy. Like the Jacobites, they see their only hope in intervention from abroad.

Not sure I agree there. The country is divided but the Brexiteers are very determined and we will leave though as an internationalist I think it's a reactionary move comrades, but I'm not getting involved in any spats over bloody Brexit. Sick of hearing about it, as are most people I would imagine.

There was one quite interesting article on Romania which bemoaned (excerpts):

Romania has become a country populated mainly by the old and by children. Working-age adults are thin on the ground, except in August and around Christmas, when they come home for a visit.....

Since Romania became part of the EU in 2007, 3.7 million Romanians have left to work abroad (though they are still counted officially as part of the population). To put that number in perspective, in 2007 the working age population amounted to 14 million, so around a quarter of the country’s workers have gone....

And it came swiftly. One of the most acute areas of labour shortage is in medicine. For all the talk of an NHS crisis when Britain leaves the EU, the real crisis is in countries such as Romania. Between 2011 and November 2013 fully a third of Romania’s hospital doctors left the country.



On Saturday there is an "anti-racism" march organised by various strands of the left. Socialist worker tells us that:

Capitalism produces racism and uses it to keep us divided and distracted from the real relations in society.

However racism exists in all societies no matter what form of production and class relations are. It's not as if the left is exempt from racism despite the current outbreak of anti-Semitism on the left for which the SWP is among those who must share the blame. 

So many of the marchers on Saturday will include racists, those who hold anti-Semitic views developed through so-called anti-Zionism which denies the Jews a right of national self determination and has led many on the left to both ignore and promote anti-Semitism through racist memes and tweets.

Remember comrades your slogan "From the river to the sea" is calling for genocide so don't kid me that you are "anti-racists".  Never Again means fighting the likes of the SWP, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and the anti-West Stop the War Campaign. They are the racist mob that concern me!

Had a quick look at another bi-monthly publication, this time Peace News for non-violent revolution. Whilst there's fat chance of a revolution being peaceful there was some life in this publication in allowing debate over trans rights which I think has not happened in any other publication as far as I am aware though the Morning Star did publish a letter from various trade union leaders requesting an open debate.

First off though is a letter from a previous issue in which Les May writes:

If free speech means anything it means having the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

Increasingly we have people trying to grab the moral high ground by claiming that something they read or hear, and do not like, is racist, anti-semitic, Islamophobic, misogynistic, transphobic, homophobic, patriarchal or in the latest catch all phrase, ‘hate speech’, and should not be said.

These terms have become the first response of people who seem to think they have the right never to be offended, but are seemingly unwilling to engage in any kind of debate which might challenge their perceptions.

and concludes:

A society is diverse if its people are tolerant enough to accept that others have a right to hold and express different views. Free debate is an expression of that diversity and tolerance. A society where some groups expect their views to be privileged, and the rest of us to sing from their hymn sheet or not sing at all, lacks both diversity and tolerance.

with that in mind I was interested to read a letter the latest edition from Catherine Bann  :

The other main argument used to explain how trans people can literally be the opposite sex is that ‘sex is a spectrum’, referencing intersex conditions. Many intersex people are very upset that their difficult medical conditions are being appropriated to justify a radical trans ideology. The vast majority of intersex people are either male or female, with some reproductive problems associated with chromosomal abnormalities. They generally do not identify as trans and the idea that they are a third, fourth... sex, and not truly male or female is offensive to them.....

Trans rights must be protected, but not this unscientific over-reach. Trans women are trans women, and what is wrong with that? In the words of one transsexual woman, who is part of a growing movement of transsexuals and transvestites who oppose the current transgender ideology, ‘male born trans people need to be proud of who we are, not try to subsume women. Women are members of the female sex. People born male just aren’t and never can be. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Accepting it is the road to mental well-being. Chasing mirages isn’t.’

Pity we have to wait two months for a reply from from the trans-Stalinists.