International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

In Tunisia, Amina remains in prison. The young Femen, who had posed bare-breasted on social networks, was arrested in possession of a teargas bomb, leading to her trial. On Thursday May 30, 2013, new and more serious charges were notified to her, notably that of association with malefactors. Passions run high around her case, with notably the demonstration of three European Femen arrested on Wednesday May 29 before the Tunis court after stripping off their clothes. They also risk a prison sentence. Tunisian feminist organisations have not denounced Femen, even if they do not share its methods, as Ahlem Belhadj, president of the Association tunisienne des femmes démocrates (ATFD – Tunisian Association of Democratic Women) explains [Olivier Rogez].

The spontaneous movement that started in Istanbul has taken on an unprecedented dimension in the history of the country and now touches sixty-seven of the eighty-five major cities in Turkey.

Mass demonstrations and harsh governmental crackdowns are not new in Turkish political history, however, although the current demonstrations in Istanbul and throughout Turkey were initiated by socialists, there is no doubt that we are experiencing something strikingly different this time, displayed by not only the visible lack of political experience of a significant number of the demonstrators but also the sheer number and incredible resiliency of the demonstrators in the face of massive and injurious tear gas assaults of the police. What is the cause of this massive social explosion in a country where there is no sign of economic crisis, and where the government was elected in 2011 with 50% of the votes?

Tom Gagné explains how small protests to stop the demolition of a park in Istanbul snowballed into a challenge to the government and its machinery of repression.

On the 1st of June demonstrations against the Troika are taking place around Europe on the call originally of the movement in Portugal “Lixe a Troika” (usually translated as “Screw the Troika”) under the slogan "People United against the Troika" and movements in the Spanish state against the imposition of the harsh austerity programmes by which the Troika pretends to solve the problem of the Eurozone crisis.

Phil Hearse made this submission to the April 2013 Socialist Resistance conference. The position it sets out was accepted by the organisation.

Left unity is the motherhood-and-apple-pie of socialists. The unspoken (and sometimes spoken) assumption is that if only the left could crack the unity problem – the Rubik’s Cube of political intervention – then anything is possible, up to and including the relevance that has long eluded most of the left for many years.

Having followed with sympathy the emergence of Left Unity and the possibility of a new party of the Left being launched, I read with interest the two-part article by an anonymous figure, who may or may not be called Michael Ford, which may or may not be a pseudonym. I’m sure we’ll find out. For the purposes of this article, I will refer to him as Ford. In any case, whoever wrote it, the aim of the article is clearly to try and discredit the perspective of building a new party to the left of Labour and validate that of working with/within the Labour Party to drive it to the left. There will undoubtedly be many replies to Ford from people who are directly involved in politics in Britain, which I am not at present. However, an important part of Ford’s argument is to try and demonstrate that the political forces to the left of social democracy in Europe don’t amount to much, either politically or in terms of their support. In doing so, frankly, he paints a picture which has little relation to reality. This is what I want to take up.