Theory & History

It doesn't have to be like this.

In Northern Ireland, the Provisional IRA was a central force from the 1970s onwards in what is euphemistically known as ‘The Troubles’.

A statement 'our movement must be a safe place for women' by two UNISON activists, Marsha-Jane Thompson and Cath Elliot, has been posted online and has received the support of trade union activists, including leading figures.

“To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace”, Gaius Cornelius Tacitus (ca 56-117 ca), Roman historian.

After decades and more of courageous and determined campaigning by sections of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community, same-sex civil partnership and marriage are being won in one Western European country after another. It lends legitimacy to the natural optimism that acceptance of gay sexuality is on an exponential upward curve.

The Nobel Peace Prize was last year awarded to the European Union for its role in “transforming most of Europe from a continent of war to a continent of peace”. European Council president, Herman Van Rompuy, extravagantly claimed that the EU is the “biggest peace-making institution ever created”. War and peace, however, are decided not by the success or failure of ‘peace-making institutions’, but by deep social forces at work within capitalism, as the history of the second world war shows. socialistparty.net reviews a recent study of that conflict.

The vile gang-rape of a 23 year old student in Delhi, India and her resultant death in December 2012 has brought the social scourge of rape into sharp focus. Horrifically, this particular case was in no way out of the ordinary in its nature or severity. What made it exceptional was the explosive response to the travesty – the “rage against rape” that brought masses of women as well as of men opposed to the huge prevalence of rape and sexual violence perpetrated in the main against women and children, onto the streets in outrage.

Fifty years ago, in 1962, the 'Algerian war', one of the longest and bloodiest anti-colonial conflicts, ended with the victory of the Algerian fighters against French imperialism.

Leon Trotsky’s life and ideas still provoke interest and controversy, 72 years after his assassination. The Socialist Party and the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) bases itself on the ideas of Trotsky as well as those of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin and fellow leaders of the Russian Revolution. Here socialistparty.net reviews a new biography; "Leon Trotsky: A Revolutionary’s Life", by Joshua Rubenstein, published by Yale University Press.