Feature

The People’s Vote march in London on Saturday 20 October, which, whatever the exact numbers, was one of the largest protests since the start of the new millennium, marked a strange fusion of social forces. On the one hand, many of the speakers at the march, along with those bankrolling the publicity and transport, were firmly part of the establishment.

In any assessment of the Labour Party conference it’s useful to look beyond the headlines, particularly since some of them were quite remarkable.

After Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s closing speech to conference George Osborne’s London Evening Standard ran a front page featuring a caricature of Corbyn wearing a communist hat and carrying a volume of Marx, alongside the headline, “Corbyn: United, We Will Never be Defeated”.

In terms of the situation in Chemnitz, it’s not just the AfD but other forces as well that have been involved on the far-right. What is the relationship between the AfD, the streets forces and the mainstream in terms of the growth there and what happened?

At the end of February 2018 the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC) proposed that the limit of two consecutive terms in office for the state president and vice-president be removed from the country’s constitution. The National People’s Congress, China’s parliament, rubber-stamped the change almost unanimously a few days later. The chief beneficiary of the change is Xi Jinping — state president, CPC leader and head of the armed forces.

The trial has been running for some time against the Nazi organisation Golden Dawn (GD). What are the outcomes so far and how much longer will the trial go on?

It started on 15 April 2015. It will probably last another year. There are three main cases: the murder of the musician Pavlos Fyssas in September 2013, the violent attack on Egyptian fishermen at their home when they were sleeping, and the attack on trade unionists of the Communist Party in Perama.

Writing nearly 150 years ago Karl Marx noted that it was a “precondition for the emancipation of the English working class” that Ireland be freed from British rule as “a nation that enslaves another forges its own chains”. In other words, it was crucial that British workers break from the ideology of their own ruling class and support Irish independence if they were to achieve their own emancipation.

Theresa May’s attempt to resolve the issue of British capitalism’s future relations with its biggest trading partner, the EU, plunged the government into crisis in mid-July.

It was only a few months ago that professor John Curtice’s blunt summary of the council elections captured a spectacularly low ebb in the fortunes of Ukip: “It was a night in which big swings were rare — apart from a collapse in the Ukip vote.”

Judith Orr

Kamasi Washington refuses to label his music as jazz or any other genre, and with good reason — this LA born saxophonist’s compositions defy pigeonholing.

After his stunning debut, triple album The Epic, followed by an EP, comes double CD Heaven and Earth (a third CD is hidden in the cover).

Darker in places than The Epic, the album gives expression to the anger and protest against racism seen on the streets of the US. But Heaven and Earth is nevertheless uplifting.

Frida Kahlo’s image has become a pop cult touchstone. With the crown of flowers, monobrow, dark eyes and the sometimes-omitted moustache, this disabled bisexual Mexican communist’s image is eclipsing Che Guevara’s as the in-the-know poster child for rebellion with a zeitgeist feminist update.