Counterfire relaunch on International Women’s Day
The relaunch of the website Counterfire – on International Women’s Day – marks the reentry into politics of the group who found themselves increasingly at odds with the reconstituted leadership of the SWP and thus either resigned or found themselves expelled. You wouldn’t know it. Breaking with the disreputable conventions of political schism the site thankfully throws no new or direct light on the disputes and disagreements that led to its renaissance. Instead it is an engaged exercise in committed journalism that deserves a wide audience.
Centrepiece is the launch of A 21st century Feminist Manifesto by Lindsey German and Nina Power with video clips, a text and a link to their piece in the Guardian Comment is Free http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/08/international-womens-day-manifesto
It sets the tone with a refreshingly direct use of language and a concern with the concrete and the real and, picking up on themes shared with the Charter for Women, asserts the centrality of class in understanding this vital question.
A nicely subversive 1922 piece on the United Front by Trotsky (in his more orthodox period) is buried deeper in the site but should give scriptural authority to the efforts of recovering trotskyites (and state caps) to grapple with the real and the new.
The site wears its ideological clothes lightly but running throughout is a serious and worthwhile attempt to develop a theory and practice that draws creatively on the positive experiences of mass campaigning and united political activity that underlies their break with the SWP.
Thus Chris Nineham, in his critical review of recent work by Peter Thomas, asserts the continuity between Lenin and Gramsci.
He says: “…Gramsci’s stress on hegemony and the political was not a retreat from revolution but the opposite, an insistence that syndicalism – exclusive obsession with trade union struggle – will always be accommodated within the system.”
“…only by being immersed in the struggles of working people can Marxism avoid becoming frozen in to ‘an absolute and eternal truth’, but only if the accumulated theoretical insights of the past direct the present can struggle ultimately succeed.”
And this is what they say about themselves:
Counterfire was launched today with a plethora of reports and essays focusing on the crisis in capitalism, imperialism and war and popular culture.
The website is being launched on International Women’s Day with a 60 strong team including an investigations team, an industrial unit, arts reviews and peer reviewed publications.
Lindsey German, author of Material Girls, Women, Sex and Work and convenor of Stop the War said: “We live in a world of growing conflict, crisis and inequality and Counterfire is a much needed new voice calling for fundamental change.”
Adrian Cousins, editor of the new site, said: “Counterfire includes snappy news articles alongside expert analysis of the most important issues today with original design, photography and video. There is a blog aggregate so those interested in the movements know where to come.”
John Rees, broadcaster and author, said: “The journalism and analysis on Counterfire will provide a welcome alternative to the discredited and failing policies of the political elite.”
Elly Badcock, women’s officer at SOAS and women’s editor, said: “It’s fantastic that on the 100th International Women’s Day this powerful new site which uses the latest technology is providing a platform for the new feminism of the 21st Century.”
The site features daily news from the movements including articles on protests, petitions and campaigns alongside theory analysing the economy, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and campaigns against the BNP and the English Defence League.
The site is available at counterfire.org with news being fed through twitter at www.twitter.com/counterfire with a video feed at youtube.com/counterfire. Articles on the site can be reproduced with permission and attribution.
Launch articles on the site include:
Report from Joe Glenton’s court martial, from the organiser of the Stop the War protest
An examination of Gramsci’s relevance today
[...] of which was the launch of the new, improved Counterfire website. Feedback so far has been (almost) universally excellent, and site visits seriously in excess of what I (at least) anticipated. It’s too [...]
Delay, delay, delay « faithful to the line
March 11, 2010 at 2:06 pm