Posted by Dominic Curran

Young Labour should not be blocked from international events

0205cToday young centre-left activists from all over the world will gather for the International Union of Socialist Youth (IUSY) summer camp in Malta for a week of debate, discussion and socialising with comrades from all different walks of life.

However Young Labour will be not be attending the occasion as party staff have once more decided to meddle in the youth section’s affairs and block the National Committee from sending a delegation.

The Labour Party is one of the major centre-left parties in Europe yet Young Labour has been conspicuously absent from international events and had an underwhelming presence in both the Young European Socialists (YES) and IUSY. Recently there has been a push to get the youth wing more involved internationally but this has been met by resistance from Party staff who attempted to block a delegation being sent to the 2013 YES summer camp in Turkey. Continue reading →

Busting the myths of the WW1 apologists

tiThis summer will mark the outbreak of the First World War and, although comment has gone quiet since the beginning of this year, the usual apologist discourse for the waging of this war will doubtlessly soon recommence. Such accounts are however part of a revisionist attempt to construct a myth of a ‘just war’ to justify present western military adventures.

From the right we hear that the war was justified to keep save Europe from an expansionist undemocratic Germany. This ignores the fact that we are dealing with a time before the vast majority of European states were nowhere near to being what could be classed as democracies, including both Germany and Britain. Both sides held other nations under colonial oppression so there was no moral superiority of either side. Continue reading →

The housing bubble shows this “recovery” is fatally short-sighted

Amid the arguments that the UK is headed towards a new housing bubble, it seems clear that the so called recovery is simply a “return to normalcy”, with none of the lessons from the crash being learned and dooming us to make the same mistakes.

At the time of the crash, the bailouts themselves seemed to be as much about letting the banks carry on with their damaging behaviour unencumbered as saving the country from economic catastrophe. In a reversal of the old demand “nationalisation without compensation” the government simply gave the banks money to cover their bad debts whilst not using its shares to influence the governance of the banks and direct it towards investment to aid the recovery. Continue reading →

Of course Labour needs to be “tough”, but not to our own

Some time ago I wrote about the way that the right had hijacked the notion of “aspiration” as an individualist notion of personal accumulation and ambition, when it was the left that really stood for true aspiration of people towards a better shared society and that contesting this space must be a fundamental to One Nation Labour if it is to mean anything new. Another piece of rhetoric that the right have claimed is with regards to being “tough”, and the left desperately needs to reclaim it. Continue reading →

Eywitness to the Bolivarian Revolution: Report back from a delegation to Venezuela

The first thing that strikes you as you drive into Caracas is how the skyline is punctuated by tall blocks of government housing missions often bearing the signature of Hugo Chavez painted on their side: a testament to the social progress and investment in human need in Venezuela.

On our fifth day we went to observe the new city of Cuidad Caribia, built on the order of Chavez himself in the mountains surrounding Caracas to alleviate housing shortages and overcrowding. As a “socialist city” it is built in the image of the Bolivarian revolution, with housing given to its inhabitants, a community medical centre and schools and nurseries equipped with computers. All of these services are provided by the government to the citizens of Cuidad Caribia completely free of charge, transforming peoples’ lives. Continue reading →