Jack Jones’s political commitment blossomed at an early age. Working in the docks of Liverpool alongside his father, he became active in the union. He was still a schoolboy when he decided to join the Labour Party and at 25 he was elected to the council. By Angeles Rodenas
Until recent years very few people knew of his involvement, including his own son. Alun decided to remain silent after being called a "liar" and accused of "Communist propaganda" by a fascist supporter at a meeting in Wales about the bombings of Guernica and Barcelona.
September 1923King Alfonso XIII scraps parliamentary monarchy, installs a military dictatorship under General Miguel Primo de Rivera.January 1930Faced with rising opposition, Primo de Rivera is replaced.April 1931The left wins local elections. The king flees Spain. Crowds enthusiastically proclaim the new Republic.October 1934Right wing government takes office. Armed miners rise and create the Asturian Commune.
Could you tell us something about why Barcelona has a distinctive culture within Spain?
Jack Cummins Like many others I went to fight in Spain. In July 1936 I was 14 years old and unemployed. I had left school—or rather an orphanage—the previous Easter, had my first job and lost it after joining in my first industrial dispute.
During the 1930s, a series of debates and confrontations emerged among a number of key Marxist intellectuals of the period. These debates raised fundamental questions about the relationship between politics and art and the role played by culture within a capitalist society.
In less than five days last week, US equipped Israeli war planes wrecked the infrastructure of Lebanon’s society - with Lebanese civilian deaths running at over ten times the number of civilian deaths in Israel.
The Group of Eight (G8) industrialised nations will rarely have looked less capable of solving the world’s problems than at their summit in St Petersburg, Russia, this weekend.
"Seeming to care about Africa was last year’s business, this year we don’t have to pretend and we’re getting back to our usual concerns." If the G8 leaders were honest, that would be their assessment of this year’s agenda.
Many people today are interested in a revolutionary alternative to capitalism. But they often worry that socialism is associated with the brutality of Stalinism, a system which dominated Russia and Eastern Europe for much of the 20th century and that was no better than Western capitalism.
This year’s Marxism festival, held in central London from 6-10 July and hosted by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), was by common consent one of the largest and most vibrant for many years. Some 4,100 activists – including 1,700 students and school students – gathered to discuss and debate a huge range of political issues. Many of those there had been active in the wider movements against war and neo-liberalism, but were attending Marxism for the first time. Below we print a selection of their voices
if art reflects life," wrote the playwright Bertolt Brecht, "it does so with special mirrors." Here Brecht is complicating the traditional adage, "All art is a mirror to life."
