Young communists in China

by New Worker correspondent

An NCP comrade joined a delegation of young cadres from communist parties in Europe and North America on a study tour of People’s China in May. Samuel Swale from NCP East Anglia took part in the forums and discussions during the two-week tour that included a meeting with Jin Xin,  the vice-minister of the International Department of the Communist Party of China.
 Jin Xin looked at the possibilities and responsibilities of young communists who are organising under the conditions of Western capitalism and imperialism. He said that the world is in the process of change and the global winds are blowing in the direction away from capitalism.
“Socialism has already transcended the low ebb of the collapse of the Soviet Union. The world is in the process of change and the global winds are blowing in the direction away from capitalism. This is the moment that communist parties in the West should consider carefully, to find out how they can seize the opportunity. You, the generation of younger communists, with your admirable courage and fervour, are at the forefront of this change. The future of the world rests on your shoulders” Jin said.
The vice-minister spoke about the problem of imperialism and war-mongering carried out by the United States and Israel. He also noted the growing concern for Latin American countries, with the Venezuelan and Cuban people in particular experiencing direct military aggression and threats coming from the United States. Jin Xin noted that Cuba finds itself in a dangerous geographical position, being so close to the United States, and so far away from China. Regardless, China is committed to helping the Cuban comrades with all available means. He also celebrated the close solidarity, cooperation and growing ideological dialogue and ties between the “five golden flowers of socialism” – that is China, Vietnam, Laos, Cuba and the DPR Korea.
Jin also discussed the state of Marxism in the West, noting that there are some disagreements and splits, in terms of how Marxism is understood and applied. He criticised the dogmatic approach of some parties, which disregard national conditions, and automatically assume that certain aspects, such as the existence and development of the private sector, are a “betrayal” of Marxism.
China has made great strides not only in modernisation and development, but also in terms of creating a prosperous and safe society. China is one of the safest places in the world, where people can walk alone at night without any fear, or where they can leave their belongings unattended. This is not the case in most other countries.
Jin Xin said the rise in the acceptance and support of communist parties and ideas around the world, with the youth in particular showed a high affinity for socialism, more so than in the decades earlier. This, he said, is the single spark that can start a prairie fire.
The youth movements and parties participating in the delegation along with the NCP were the CPB’s YCL of Britain, the League of Communist Youth of Belarus and AKEL’s United Democratic Youth movement of Cyprus together with the youth movements of the communist parties of Czechia, Denmark, Finland, Germany. Hungary, Italy, Luxemburg, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain and Switzerland as well as the CPUSA and the Communist Party of Canada.

• Report from Canada

Let the good times roll…

The race for the Labour leadership has begun. Not officially. No leadership challenge has been formally made. No election under rules has been set. And Sir Keir Starmer is still at the helm. But no one doubts that his days are numbered as Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham set out their stalls in preparation for the contest to come which will give one of them the keys to Number Ten.
Streeting is a Blairite who has nothing to offer working people apart from more of the same rubbish they got from Starmer. He wisely plays down the fact that he was a protégé of the disgraced Peter Mandelson while Andy Burnham plays up demands for social justice to fend off the Greens and woo back the Labour vote on the streets that until recently had traditionally backed Labour. The self-proclaimed “left” on the Labour back-benches – the sort who support the Socialist Campaign Group and other Bennite campaigns – is backing Burnham, largely to keep Streeting out. John McDonnell, a one-time ally of Jeremy Corbyn, says that the former Labour leader should be able to rejoin the party if Burnham becomes leader. But this has been ruled out by the Burnham camp.
But everything hinges on Burnham winning the Makerfield seat. If he fails – and the Faragists are going to put up a strong challenge – then all bets are off for both Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting.

Back in Brussels…

...all eyes are on the battle for Labour’s top job. Whoever gets it it’s a win-win for the Common Market. Streeting is opening calling for a return to the European Union. Burnham says nothing now that could play into Farage’s hand but only last year he told his supporters that “I want to rejoin the EU. I hope it happens in my lifetime…”. Whoever wins a second referendum looks inevitable. Rejoining the EU is now back on the agenda, and the Remainers are winning the argument given the pathetic leaders of the Brexit camp these days.
The Tories had a golden opportunity after Brexit to build an independent British economy freed from the fetters of the European Union. Johnson, Truss and Sunak squandered it in pursuit of the impossible dream of a free trade agreement with the United States – that was never on the cards in Washington. 
Lexit, the left case for leaving the European Union, never got off the ground. The public face of the Brexiteers is now that of Nigel Farage, Kemi Badenoch and the followers of Tommy Robinson that we see draped in Union Jacks at the anti-immigration rallies of the lunatic fringe.
But one only has to look at what’s happening in Europe today to see that rejoining the European Union will not solve the problems of working people. Communists need to make the case for staying out of the EU, trading freely with everyone throughout the world and building an independent economy needed to restore our public services in the 21st century. 

The cruel Atlantic trade

by Ben Soton

The Great Resistance – The 400-Year to end Slavery in The Americas by Carrie Gibson, Basic Books, New York 2026, 640 pp, Hbk £30 Pbk £20

The 16th Century saw the opening up of the Americas and the establishment of transatlantic trade routes.  The trade in sugar, cotton and tobacco was central to the development of capitalism and with it the industrial revolution; central to this process was the trade in human capital across the Atlantic ocean.
In this book Carrie Gibson gives a detailed account of resistance to this evil institution. 
She pieces together a myriad of small texts and in so constructs the four-hundred-year history of slavery in the Americas. It begins in the late 1400s and ends in 1888 with the abolition of slavery in Brazil. 
The transatlantic slave trade was initiated by Spain and Portugal and later involved Britain, France and to a lesser extent the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden.  Resistance took many forms, including suicide, while rebellions took place almost as soon as the slave-trade began.  Resistance also took the form of guerilla warfare. Slave revolts took place wherever slavery existed and were more widespread than many of us may have previously been aware.
The book goes into considerable detail as to how the major events of late 18th century contributed to the ending of slavery.  The American War of Independence saw both sides offering to free slaves prepared to join their fight. The French Revolution, with its emphasis of ‘The Rights of Man’, influenced the successful revolt in Haiti – the first state to abolish slavery in the Caribbean. It was not the actions of well-meaning white folk but the result of the actions of slaves themselves that ended slavery; a theme that the author stresses throughout the book.  
Gibson downplays the role of Royal Navy’s West African Squadron in ending the slave trade in 1807.  Gibson points out that most of the captives liberated were not returned to Africa but ended up in the Americas as indentured labourers.  She also points out that the African Squadron was more of a means of extending Britain’s imperial interests in Africa than actually helping Africans.  On a more surprising note the author is highly critical of Simon Bolivar, a hero of the Latin American left, whose attitude to people of colour was at best ambiguous.   
The 19th century saw the gradual abolition of slavery across the Americas. It did not result in an age of prosperity for the former enslaved people; after all it was their former owners who received compensation. The freed slaves still suffered from the ravages of colonialism, segregation and racism. Problems that are for the most part unresolved. The book stands as a testimony to those who fought against the evil institution of slavery.    

1926 – a year to remember

by Andy Brooks

May 1926 – when the unions tried, but sadly failed, to halt the employers’ offensive against the miners. The fledgling British communist party, founded a few years earlier in 1920, did its best to rally the workers during the general strike that was called off by the defeatists and gravy-trainers in the big unions on surrender terms that set back the labour movement in Britain for many years to come.
On the 100th anniversary of the General Strike the NCP is republishing Stalin’s comments on this momentous event in the history of British trade unionism. The new pamphlet includes a brief historical review of the strike written in 2006 by Ken Ruddock, a leading member of the New Communist Party who sadly passed away in 2020, together with Stalin’s report delivered at a meeting of railway workers in Tiflis on 8th June 1926. 
Another tribute, this time from the Socialist History Society includes a reprint of Ernie Trory’s long out-of-print Brighton and the General Strike and other articles on great strike.
It’s called Remembering the Battle of Lewes Road and it’s edited and introduced by Christian Høgsbjerg for the Brighton & Hove trades council.
The booklet contains two pamphlets. One by Ernie Trory, the famous NCP Brighton communist and unemployed workers’ leader, and another by Andy Durr of the Brighton Trades Council that were first published in the 1970s. Above all, it is an affirmation of the support which the working class of Brighton gave to the miners in their dispute with the coal owners and the Conservative government, and an homage to the 22 men who were imprisoned from two to six months for their attempt to prevent the tram sheds at Lewes Road being opened for strike-breaking purposes on 11th May 1926. Both pamphlets draw from the personal experiences of those involved, and the pamphlet finishes with Ernie Trory's rewriting of the song Sussex by the Sea, written in the idiom of the strikers. This is a must for anyone interested in the history of the labour movement on the South Coast.
The General Strike of 1926 pamphlet can be ordered from the Lit Dept at the NCP for £4:00 including postage. Remembering the Battle of Lewes Road is an illustrated booklet which can be obtained for just £6:00 from the Strike Map online store at: https://organiseandstrike.sumupstore.com/ 

Now the fun begins...

The knives are out. The back-stabbers are at play as the struggle begins anew in the corridors of power within the Labour Party for the key to Number Ten. Sir Keir Starmer says that the United Kingdom faces going down 'a very dark path' as he pledges to fight on as Prime Minister. And former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, a one-time ally of Jeremy Corbyn, says Wes Streeting is planning a stealth coup to move against Starmer to avoid a leadership contest which could include Labour’s “King of the North”, Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham.
The solid vote for the Scottish and Welsh nationalists in last week’s elections in Scotland and Wales along with the spectacular rise of Reform in the council votes in England spells doom for Keir Starmer and the ageing Blairite crew that has brought Labour to the brink of electoral collapse in recent years.
The results – the collapse of the Labour and Tory vote across the country, sweeping gains for the Faragists and more modest but significant gains for the Greens and the Liberal-Democrats came as no surprise to the pundits who long ago read the writing on the wall when the Labour leader purged the Corbynistas and drove hundreds of thousands out of Labour’s ranks soon after Starmer became leader in 2020. The likes of Peter Mandelson believed the working class would put up with this and more as they “had nowhere else to go”. They said Labour’s loveless landslide victory, largely due to the Faragist intervention that split the Tory vote, was a vote of confidence in their particular brand of class collaboration which revolved around following what they believed was the dominant trend within the British ruling class; crawling to the Americans and the Americans; upholding the old Tory austerity programme and carrying on with the stealth privatisation of the health service.
Many of them clearly believed this rubbish even though reality was staring them in the face as hundreds of thousands took to the streets every month to demonstrate against Israeli aggression and hundreds of thousands more abandoned Labour at the ballot box. Starmer clearly still believes in the old lies – trying to block the Blairites chosen successor and clinging to power when it’s obvious the game’s up.
But just getting rid of Starmer will not revive Labour’s fortunes. Labour needs to accept the inevitability of independence for Scotland and Wales and the re-unification of Ireland. It needs go beyond the parameters of political debate set by the bourgeoisie that revolve around law and order, immigration and the European Union and campaign to win the demands of the union movement that the Labour Party was set up for in the first place back in the early 1900s.
 A genuine return to a working class agenda and a commitment to restore the welfare state and the public sector that existed until the Tory come-back in 1979 could win back the traditional Labour vote. That may be a call to far for the Burnham and Rayner camp but it has to be made – inside or outside the Labour Party.

  

   

The spirit of May Day

May Day is workers’ day. But its origins go back to the  rituals of hallowed antiquity. Long before the emergence of trade unions, May Day was a spring festival dedicated to the spirits that people thought controlled the destinies of humanity. Houses were decorated with green branches. Peasants danced and picked a "May King and Queen", believing this would magically bring about a  good harvest and prosperity. 
Nowadays it’s a time to remember past struggles and achievements and look forward to the bright red future still to come. From the big parades in the people’s democracies to the rallies in Europe and throughout the Global South, May Day is celebrated to honour the generations that have gone before us and to look to the future with confidence and determination. 
We recall the fight for the eight-hour day and the strikes in the United States on May Day 1886 that ended in the murder of six strikers by the police in Chicago, and the deaths of seven police the next day when a bomb exploded during a protest in the city’s Haymarket Square. Eight union leaders were arrested on trumped-up charges and four were later hanged.
In 1889 the First International, the International Working Men’s Association, declared May Day an international working-class holiday to commemorate the Haymarket Martyrs, and the Red Flag, representing the blood of working class martyrs – the martyred dead of Labour’s anthem – was adopted as the international symbol of working people.
Lenin’s May Day was a call to action. He said “May Day is coming, the day when the workers of all lands celebrate Their awakening to a class-conscious life, their solidarity in the struggle against all coercion and oppression of man by man, the struggle to free the toiling millions from hunger, poverty, and humiliation. Two worlds stand facing each other in this great struggle: the world of capital and the world of labour, the world of exploitation and slavery and the world of brotherhood and freedom.
“On one side stand the handful of rich blood-suckers. They have seized the factories and mills, the tools and machinery, have turned millions of acres of land and mountains of money into their private property. They have made the government and the army their servants, faithful watchdogs of the wealth they have amassed.
“On the other side stand the millions of the disinherited. They are forced to beg the moneybags for permission to work for them. By their labour they create all wealth; yet all their lives long they have to struggle for a crust of bread, beg for work as for charity, sap their strength and health by back-breaking toil, and starve in hovels in the villages or in the cellars and garrets of the big cities.
“But now these disinherited toilers have declared war on the moneybags and exploiters. The workers of all lands are fighting to free labour from wage slavery, from poverty and want. They are fighting for a system of society where the wealth created by the common labour will go to benefit, not a handful of rich men, but all those who work. They want to make the land and the factories, mills, and machines the common property of all toilers. They want to do away with the division into rich and poor, want the fruits of labour to go to the labourers themselves, and all the achievements of the human mind, all improvements in ways of working, to improve the lot of the man who works, and not serve as a means of oppressing him”. Let us all follow in Lenin’s footsteps to build a better tomorrow for the generations to come.

Russian communists' front-line report

 

by New Worker correspondent

NCP members held on online meeting with five comrades from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) on Saturday. The main Russian communists speaker for the CPRF was Donbas communist leader Boris Litvinov, who gave the following assessment of the current situation in Donetsk and the Ukraine.
“There is martial law in the Ukrainian controlled parts of Donetsk, so all activities are currently banned. Ukraine’s forces are suffering 1,000-1,500 casualties daily. There are fewer and fewer actual Ukrainians on the front line, and more and more foreign mercenaries from around the world, many from Latin America, in addition to the people seized on the streets in Ukraine. As a result, a growing number of soldiers on the Ukrainian side prefer to surrender at the first opportunity, rather than die” Litvinov said.
“In most areas near the front line less than five per cent of the normal population remains when the Russian and Donbas forces arrive. The Ukrainian military is forcibly removing civilians, including women and children, from towns and villages near the front line they still control. For example in Avdeyivka, only 800 remained from the original population of 32,000”.
When the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was established in 1922 – the first time Ukraine ever existed as a separate territory – the heavily industrialised Donbas, a completely Russian speaking area, was included in the new Ukrainian republic, so Russian has historically been the main language in the region for the past 104 years. But it was outlawed by the Ukrainian fascists.
Litvinov pointed out that “when the Russian forces arrived in Kurakovo there were still 30 children in the town, and their first action was to set up a school for them. Under Ukrainian rule they were brought up to speak only Ukrainian, and couldn't speak any Russian.
“Now NATO is using the territory of the Baltic States to launch attacks on industrial and energy plants in Northern Russia. These attacks are aimed at provoking Russia to strike back at those states leading to an extremely dangerous escalation of the war.
“According to the Russian Federation Ukraine is using drones made in France, Britain and Germany, or built from parts sent to Ukraine, which are being used to target industrial plants all over Russia, just as the USA and Israel are attacking plants all over Iran, and Iran has hit facilities in the Gulf countries.
Refuting Western claims that Russia deliberately targets civilians Litvinov said “the Russian military only ever strikes targets related to military production. Residential buildings or areas are never targeted, and the Russian forces issue warnings to civilians to leave areas they are planning to strike”.
It’s the Ukrainian fascists who target innocent civilians Litvinov said “On Lenin's birthday, 22nd April, from the early morning, Ukrainian forces struck the areas around monuments with missiles and drones, as they knew that local people would be laying flowers there, and several people were injured. But in spite of these attacks, members of the CPRF and trade unionists still managed to lay flowers at the monuments.
“This war would have ended long ago without the massive support Ukraine has received from Western states. We believe that if the USSR had still existed, all these problems, and the war, could have been avoided in other ways. Members of the CPRF are united in the eventual goals of ending all wars, and to defeat imperialism”.

Starmer must go!

Starmer may not be in the Trump league but nobody believes a word he says these days. He says he knew nothing about Peter Mandelson’s security status. He claims the Foreign Office didn’t tell him that the grandee had failed the vetting process. Starmer clearly thinks everybody is as stupid as himself. 
Many thought that Ramsay MacDonald and Tony Blair were the worst but Starmer has proved them wrong. MacDonald presided over the meteoric rise of Labour after the First World War and led the first Labour government in history back in 1924. He ended up splitting the movement and serving the ruling class he once claimed to oppose during the turmoil that followed the Wall Street crash of 1929 that plunged the world into a slump that only ended with the outbreak of the Second World War. MacDonald admitted that all he could do was administer capitalism. But he still talked about “socialism” – albeit in the never-never land of the far distant future.  
Blair, on the other hand, never talked about socialism at all and what he achieved is far outweighed by his role in the imperialist onslaught against Iraq and his support for Zionism that continues to this day. Nevertheless he did preside over the negotiations that ended the conflict in northern Ireland and his administration and that of the Gordon Brown government that followed did pass some constitutional reforms and make some minor concessions to the union movement.
Starmer, on the other hand, has achieved nothing. All Starmer can brag about is a purge of the Corbynistas that drove hundreds of thousands out of the Labour Party.
Starmer surrounds himself with people lesser than himself – like the ageing Blairites who pandered to his vanity to return to the money tree of Westminster politics. They said Starmer’s stand – just another variant of Tory austerity – was the key to Labour’s loveless victory in the 2024 general election. But in reality Labour’s landslide was due to the Faragist intervention that gravely split the Tory vote across the entire country. Now with the Greens and Faragists snapping at their heels Labour is heading for disaster at the Scottish, Welsh and regional polls in May. 
Angela Rayner and Andy Burnham wait in the wings to pick up the pieces when Starmer inevitably falls on his sword. Their time will come but at the end of the day their outlook differs little from the right-wing Labour milieu they came from in the first place. They talk about workers’ rights and pay lip-service to union bureaucrats. That’s as far as it goes – and as far as it will ever go as long as the careerists and time-servers remain in charge. 
Dumping Starmer won’t make much of a difference. But any Labour recovery can only begin when he goes – together with the Blairites and the other bureaucrats that surround him. That fight begins amongst the rank-and-file of the labour movement. That’s where the struggle for socialism must begin anew. It starts now...

Reminisces on Professor Vijay Singh

 

by Theo Russell

 
Comrade Vijay Singh had a close and friendly relationship with the New Communist Party for over 45 years. 
Vijay became a friend of the NCPB when our former general secretary Eric Trevett, visited India in conjunction with a visit to Kabul to meet leaders of the Afghan Saur Revolution. During that visit Eric struck up a lasting connection with Vijay. In those days Vijay spent much more time in London than in recent years, and he frequently spoke at NCPB social and political events. He was always extremely courteous and easy to get on with, and completely lacking in self-importance. Such modesty stands out even more in India, where self-importance, especially amongst men and especially among political men, is not uncommon.
Vijay spent much of his early life in London where his father was a senior diplomat at the Indian High Commission. We will always respect him for choosing to return and to live in India for most of his life in order to teach and to further the cause of socialism, rather than enjoying a comfortable middle-class life in the UK, perhaps as an academic, an option which would have been easily available to him.
Vijay Singh was for many years a highly respected and popular professor at Delhi University. He also made connections and organisational links with socialist and communist parties and trade unions throughout South Asia. As is well known, his daughter Atishi Marlena went on to become a cabinet minister and then Chief Minister of the Delhi administration in 2023-25, where she put many of Vijay's principles into practice, representing the Aam Admi (Common Man) Party.  In the past 20 years or so Aam Admi has attempted to return to the traditions of the left-socialist wing of the Congress Party in the 1950s and 1960s. 
I met Vijay many many times in London, in Delhi (I have a family connection in India), and in Moscow, which he used to visit regularly to carry out research at the Institute of Marxism-Leninism's library. This research was mainly focussed on the Stalin period and Stalin's relations with communist and workers’ parties and socialist governments from around the world. That research revealed many extremely useful examples of Stalin's advice and guidance to foreign parties, including the old Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB).
The relationship between communist parties and the Labour Party has been intensely debated in Britain since Lenin's day, and still is at the present time. Vijay discovered and made public a large amount of extremely valuable historical documents. From our viewpoint the most important dealt with the roles of Stalin and Nikita Krushchev, and Stalin’s discussions with CPGB leader Harry Pollitt on the British Road to Socialism, the “parliamentary road” and the role of the Labour Party which was the basis of the CPGB's electoral policy and its ultimate decline and dissolution.
But Vijay will probably be mostly remembered for creating the journal Revolutionary Democracy (RD), which has continued publication for many decades. RD became an important forum for parties and individuals around the world to debate the issues of the day, and published many detailed historical and economic articles. It was distributed internationally and widely respected as an academic journal around the world. At the same time it was a unique avenue for Indian socialists, communists and academics to publish material and engage in debates. The NCP reviewed almost every edition of RD, and organised its sale in Britain by post and in leftist bookshops. But RD was more than a discussion magazine, Vijay used it to bring comrades together to educate and develop them as journalists.
Vijay was a controversial and sometimes dogmatic figure. Over the years the NCP had significant political differences with him over the divisions in the world communist movement following the collapse of the USSR and the people’s democracies of eastern Europe – and, above all, over the role of the Communist Party of China and the reforms that followed the end of the Mao era and the stand of the Russian communists in the wake of the counter-revolution that led to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Vijay opposed the Russian intervention in Ukraine. And he distorted the role of Korean communist leader Kim Il Sung, who led the Korean people in the fight to defeat Japanese colonialism and US-led imperialism to build a modern socialist republic in the northern part of the Korean peninsula. But those differences did not affect our friendship or our great respect for him.
 I personally shared many cultural interests with Vijay, especially relating to Indian and Soviet art and cinema, and music from around the world. He even developed friendly contacts with the Institute of Russian Realist Art, and arranged free entry for me when I was in Moscow.
Vijay was extremely well known and widely respected in India. During the Covid pandemic, despite having significant health problems himself, he used his influence and contacts to assist comrades from many different organisations, including those he had political differences with, in getting access to hospital treatment which was under huge pressure at the time.
In recent years Vijay was unable to travel to London, where he still had close family members, but we spoke regularly by phone. I can't forget that on every occasion he never failed to ask after other NCP comrades by name.
Vijay Singh will be deeply missed by members of the NCP as a friend and comrade, and by his many admirers on every continent. His legacy and contribution will be remembered far into the future, above all in India. 

A lull in Lebanon

Everyone will welcome the ceasefire in Lebanon – not least the people of the south who have bourne the brunt of the Israeli incursion that has cost countless lives of innocent Lebanese civilians and wreaked havoc on the villages and towns of the borderland. How long it will last is, of course, another matter.
The fact that the temporary truce was imposed by the United States shows who ultimately calls the shots in Tel Aviv. And the fact that Donald Trump had to do it to get the Iranians back to the negotiating table shows that the Americans have lost the initiative in this war that they started.
Trump gave them his best shots starting with a treacherous surprise attack followed by the assassination of the Islamic Republic’s leaders in a terror bombing “shock and awe” campaign that the Americans and their lackeys thought would force the Iranians to beg for mercy in a matter of days. But the Iranians gave as good as they got laying waste to America’s ring of bases across the Middle East and giving the Israelis a taste of their own medicine with wave after wave of missile attacks that has left much of Tel Aviv in ruins.
Trump open talked of regime change à la Libya and Iraq. Netanyahu bragged about a future “Greater Israel” that the Zionists believe will stretch from the Nile to the Euphrates. Both conjured up armies of traitors and quislings that they imagined would take to the streets of Tehran to do their bidding and welcome the imperialists with open arms.
But none of this happened. The Iranians stood firm and so did their Arab allies in Yemen, Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon – the axis of resistance that refuses to submit to the Americans, the Israelis or and their feudal Arab lackeys.
The Iranians throttled the Big Oil corporations when they closed the Persian Gulf. They watched US imperialism’s allies wash their hands on the American-Israeli offensive in Iran. They ignored Trump’s empty threats of annihilation and they’ve laid down their own terms for ending the conflict – terms that China, Russia and most of the Global South have endorsed as the basis for ending the conflict.
But in Europe the leading members of the European Union have openly refused to join in Trump’s crusade. In Britain the Starmer government sits on the fence, distancing itself from Washington over Iran while still supplying arms to the Zionist entity and allowing the American air-force to use some of the RAF’s bases in operations against the Islamic Republic.
These are volatile times.The old order is being challenged – and not just in the Middle East.
On the street the masses have broken the bourgeois consensus that rarely goes beyond endless “debates” on immigration and the European Union, mealy-mouthed reforms and Atlanticism. The issues of war and peace, imperialism or socialism are, once again, back on the agenda...

One step forward…

 While victory celebrations in Tehran may be premature the sombre faces in the corridors of power in Washington and Tel Aviv tell another story – one of hubris, humiliation and defeat.
Last week Donald Trump ranted and raged against the Iranians. They were going to be wiped out if they didn’t end their blockade of the Persian Gulf and hand over their nuclear plants and oil industry to the Americans. A few days later he’s agreeing to a Pakistani-brokered cease-fire that pivots on the Islamic Republic’s ten point terms for ending the war.
In Washington the blame game has begun. Trump’s friends say their leader was misled by the Zionists and the fools that surround him in the White House. They’re  already pointing the finger at Pete Hegseth, his useless minister of war, and the Israeli premier, Benjamin Netanyahu. Other insiders, mindful of their political futures in the post-Trump world, are telling tales to the mainstream media of a senile old man in the White House whose delusions of grandeur have plunged the capitalist world into a crisis not seen since the height of the Cold War.
No-one can believe a word the US president says. Donald Trump is an incorrigible liar. His agreements are not worth the paper they’re written on. Nevertheless Trump’s minions, led by Vice-President JD Vance, are now in Pakistan for talks with the Iranians. 
The ceasefire, a two-week truce to pave the way for negotiations, is on a knife-edge. The Israelis, who were not party to the secret American parleys with Pakistan, are out to sabotage the peace talks. They’ve stepped up their offensive in southern Lebanon claiming they’re not bound by the terms of the truce the Americans signed up for. The Lebanese resistance and their north Yemeni allies have hit back with a volleys of missiles and drones. 
In Israel they’ve been taught no end of a lesson – getting a taste of their own medicine that has left their capital in ruins and forced hundreds of thousands of Israelis to flee to safety in  Europe and the United States. And needless to say the Strait of Hormuz remains closed to imperialist shipping. 
On the diplomatic front the European powers are rapidly distancing themselves from the United States. France joins Russia and China in blocking an American manoeuvre on the UN Security Council designed to endorse “international” action against Iran in the Persian Gulf while Starmer poses as non-interventionist to curry favour with his old friends in Brussels.
American and Israeli air-power has failed to crush Iran. The Islamic Republic, on the other hand, has destroyed all the American bases on the Arabian peninsula. US troops have been forced to flee to hotels. Others have been evacuated back to the United States.  America’s much-vaunted nuclear aircraft-carriers retreat under fire. Their commando raids are beaten back. The myth of American invincibility has been shattered. The dream of a “new world order” is over.

The view from the Kremlin

Andrei Kelin, the Russian ambassador in London  was interviewed by RIA Novosti, the Russian international news agency, last week

Recently, the UK authorities announced their intention to seize civilian vessels carrying Russian oil. Meanwhile, the United States is easing sanctions on Russian oil amid rising prices. Is London’s plan doomed to failure without US backing? What is London counting on by threatening Russian vessels when it cannot even fulfil its NATO obligations?

The intention to seize civilian vessels linked to our country in British territorial waters, announced by the UK Prime Minister, constitutes yet another deeply hostile move against Russia.
Attempts to cloak acts of piracy in a semblance of legality do not withstand scrutiny. These actions are based on unilateral sanctions that contravene international law. They also grossly violate the letter and the spirit of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
When London claims it is not interested in escalation, this is untrue. In fact, it confirms the UK’s desire to aggravate an already tense situation in maritime security and international trade. This escalation extends to the highly sensitive maritime area of the English Channel, through which more than five hundred vessels – both civilian and military – pass daily. To embark on an exercise involving the use of force there would be not only irresponsible, but also extremely dangerous.
The Labour government’s aim is to inflict as much damage as possible on Russia. This has long been its standard policy. However, attempting to seize a single Russian tanker out of the many allegedly attributed to Russia will do nothing to stabilise sentiment in oil markets. Many will suffer as a result, including end consumers.
Does London have the strength and recklessness to go for it? Probably. It would be wrong to assume that the British can do nothing without the United States. The question is what price London would have to pay for such an attempt. It could be very high indeed.

What might Russia’s response be to military action by London against its vessels, should Britain decide to take such a step?

Any attempt by the UK to seize vessels associated with Russia is regarded as unacceptable and inadmissible. Such a decision will not go unanswered. Appropriate measures are being developed. Let this come as a surprise to the British.
To protect our interests and ensure freedom of navigation, we may employ all available legal, political and other instruments – including asymmetrical ones, and not necessarily in the vicinity of British territorial waters.
In any case, London would do well to carefully consider the consequences of such a step, including how to deal with an unlawfully seized vessel and its cargo, given the inevitable legal action by the shipowner and the substantial associated costs.
The UK Defence Secretary, John Healey, continues to claim that he can see an “invisible hand of Russia” in the conflict with Iran. What role does London itself play in the escalation? How likely is it that the UK is facilitating the deployment of Ukrainian air defence specialists to the Middle East to counter Iranian drones?
The conflict in the Middle East has once again exposed London’s cynicism. The British government pretends not to notice who started the conflict and who committed aggression. It criticises Iran for its retaliatory strikes, acting as though Iran had attacked first. At the same time, it turns a blind eye to war crimes against the Iranian civil population, including the killing of children.
It is often claimed that the UK stands aside from the conflict, providing only minimal “defensive” support to its allies and advocating a diplomatic settlement. But who are they trying to fool? Perhaps only the naïve British public. Allowing the Americans to use British bases to bomb Iran and deploying military aircraft to the region amounts to direct involvement, no matter how much Keir Starmer may try to spin it otherwise. I believe the Iranian leadership has duly taken note of this. In fact, the tragic events in Iran and across the region are, in part, the result of London’s policy, which has aligned itself with anti-Iranian “hawks” in Washington and contributed to the collapse of the JCPOA [when Iran agreed in 2015 to limit its nuclear research programme in return for the lifting of much of the Western sanctions regime]. 
It is now crucial for the UK to set as many countries as possible against Iran. Attempts to foist Ukrainian air defence services to Gulf states as protection against Iranian drones follow the same logic. However, according to reports, there is little demand for these services in the region.

Dark tales from Scotland

by Ben Soton

Silent Bones by Val McDermid, Sphere (Little Brown Book Group) London. Hbk: 2025, 448pp, rrp £22.00. Pbk: 2026; rrp £10.99.

This is  Val McDermid’s latest Karen Pirie crime thriller. Two others, The Darker Domain and The Distant Echo, have already been adapted for television. This, the eighth  featuring DCI Karen Pirie and her team who make up Edinburgh’s Historic Cases Unit (HCU), touches on the corrupt and sordid side of Scottish politics. 

This one, Silent Bones, begins with a mud-slide which unearths the body of a murdered investigative journalist.  Meanwhile the death of a hotel manager, originally believed to be an accident, soon turns out to be suspicious. The HCU soon discover the two deaths to be interlinked. They unearth the cover up of a violent rape at a pro-independence event as well as betting and match fixing scams featuring a shady elite book club called the ‘Justified Sinners’. But the ‘Sinners’ is more like a masonic lodge than a book club where potential members will literally kill to gain admittance.         
The Justified Sinners, a reference to an 1824 novel by James Hogg, is based on the Protestant concept of Predestination. where members of the “elect” can commit any sin they like as they are guaranteed a place in heaven – an obvious swipe at the Calvinist dogma of the Church of Scotland. This could also be a reference to the Epstein Files, where men from elite backgrounds are engaged in criminal and degenerate behaviour including paedophilia. 
Meanwhile DCI Pirie and her team come to life as real characters as their complex personal lives weave into the story.  Both of her assistants, Detective Sergeants Jason Murray and Daisy Mortimer, manage to use their partners in the investigation while Karen Pirie, a single woman in her thirties ends a relationship with her Syrian refugee lover. This backstory is an example of McDermid’s liberalism which views the Assad Government as the epitome of evil whilst portraying the new regime cobbled together from various Al Qaeda affiliates as an opportunity to re-build the country. She overlooks the persecution of religious minorities, not to mention the privatisation of national assets and collaboration with the murderous Zionist state by the new regime.  
The novel also delves into the differences between English and Scottish law. In England, an arrest must be necessary for specific reasons. In Scotland, an officer can arrest if they have reasonable grounds to suspect an offence was committed.
 This is a thoroughly well written, great thriller but is also testimony to the author’s bourgeois liberalism. McDermid sees corruption and degenerate behaviour as something that can be rooted out rather than an integral part of capitalism. We’ve heard that one before...