A Petty Move against China

China's new ambassador Zheng Zeguang was banned from entering Parliament in response to the Chinese government's decision to impose sanctions against a number of anti-Chinese peers and MPs.
`    Five MPs and two members of the House of Lords were sanctioned by China in March for spreading slanderous rumours and disinformation about the situation in the Chinese autonomous region of Xinjiang. They were singled out after the Johnson government imposed asset freezes and travel bans against four Chinese government officials as well as a Xinjiang security body for alleged “gross human rights violations” against Uyghurs and other minorities in the Chinese region.
    Zheng Zeguang was set to speak in both Houses of Parliament, but Peers and MPs led by former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, Lord Alton and Baroness Kennedy, campaigned to bar the Chinese diplomat from entering the Palace of Westminster. The Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, said: "I do not feel it's appropriate for the ambassador for China to meet on the Commons estate and in our place of work when his country has imposed sanctions against some of our members. If those sanctions were lifted, then, of course, this would not be an issue."
    The Chinese embassy has rightly dismissed this as “a short-sighted, reckless and cowardly move. We despise and strongly condemn this”.
    So do we. This petty and vindictive act, done to ingratiate themselves with the Biden administration, can only make things worse. Instead of crawling to the USA, the British government should take advantage of the economic freedom that came with Brexit to expand our trade with China, and indeed everyone across the world, without strings and without the blessing of Washington.

Johnson’s new tax is grossly unfair to workers

Boris Johnson was back on form this week fending off a backbench revolt over his plan to raise National Insurance rates to help the health service and social care for the elderly while at the same time mocking the ineffectual Labour opposition which takes its lead from the utterly useless Keir Starmer.
    Johnson’s new tax is grossly unfair to working people and it will raise nowhere near enough to address the current problems of the care home community.
    Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is calling for a “National Care Service” for all, funded by progressive taxation, including a wealth tax while Richard Burgon from the Corbynista camp spelt out the demand for a 10 per cent tithe on the super-rich - those with assets over £100 million – that could raise £69 billion to deal with the funding crisis.
    Even Dame Margaret Hodge, the Blairite MP for Barking, said Johnson was ignoring a "raft of better alternatives" including raising income tax or dividend tax. Sir Keir Starmer, however, confined himself to the usual platitudes, accusing the Tories of “putting their rich mates and donors before working people” while avoiding making any concrete counter-proposals.
    Starmer’s crowd will make the usual ineffectual statements. Union leaders will make paper calls for “action” and the assorted left poseurs will tell us that the only answer is to sign their petitions and join their factions. We shouldn’t be surprised at this. They've been doing the same thing for over 100 years.
    Labour’s first Prime Minister was Ramsay MacDonald in 1924. He talked about “socialism” – but only as a dream for future days. His job, he said, was to administer capitalism which he loyally did in the 1920s before openly betraying the labour movement to join the Tories in the bogus “National Government” of the 1930s. Tony Blair never talked about socialism at all. Nor does Starmer.
    Well, we need to talk about socialism. The capitalists do it all the time. Before the Russian Revolution they said that socialism sounded good in theory, but it could never work in practice. After 1917 they said it wouldn't work in the Soviet Union. And when the Soviet Union did survive they argued that it wasn' t really socialist and they presented it as a distortion of what it really was.
    They say, in essence, that the only economic and political system which works is one in which a tiny minority -- themselves -- exploit the rest of the population to ensure that they live lives of ease and luxury.
    If we were Martians observing the Earth from afar we would see how absurd and self-serving this theory is. Unfortunately many working people believe this because they are brought up to accept their own slavery.
    We have to prove them wrong. We have to say that capitalism is brutal and oppressive system that exists solely to ensure that the rich can continue to live the lives of Roman emperors on the backs of workers and peasants.
    Capitalism is the dictatorship of the rich. Their “democracy” is democracy for the exploiters and dictatorship for the exploited. Bourgeois elections are used so that the smallest number of people can manipulate the largest number of votes
    We don' t need to make any concessions to the ideology of the ruling class. Its system is failing and socialism is the only way forward.
    Capitalism had a progressive role once when it emerged from the feudal period. It's certainly not the case now. It's outlived its sell-by date. It's an oppressive and backward system which stifles the hopes and ambitions of the people who produce all the wealth of the world. The 21st century belongs to us.

Crimes at sea

by Ben Soton

Vigil : six-part series. BBC1, 9pm.Also available on BBC iPlayer. Stars: Suranne Jones, Rose Leslie, Shaun Evans, Paterson Joseph and Martin Compston.

Underwater adventure is a genre that’s been around for over 150 years. Jules Verne kicked it off in 1869 with Captain Nemo and his Nautilus in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas and hundreds of books, films and documentaries have followed set in both World Wars, the Cold War, and fantasy and science fiction scenarios.
    BBC1’s latest Sunday night drama, partly set on a nuclear submarine, raises issues over Britain’s so-called independent nuclear deterrent, the Trident nuclear weapons system.
    In episode one a sailor, Petty Officer Craig Burke (played by Martin Compston), is found dead and a civilian police officer, Amy Silva (played by Suranne Jones), is sent aboard to investigate. Tension mounts between Silva and senior members of the crew who view her as an interfering outsider. In an earlier scene Burke had raised concerns about the sub’s descent causing the sinking of a fishing trawler.
    Back on dry land Silva’s partner, Kirsten Longacre (played by Roe Leslie), discovers that Burke was in a relationship with an anti-nuclear campaigner, opening up possibilities for a conspiracy or cover-up. Meanwhile, events on the sub show that those in charge of this highly dangerous and not to mention expensive piece of kit (according to CND the total cost comes to £205 billion) are not as competent as they should be.
    The series is a reminder that Britain has not faced the threat of invasion for 80 years, whilst raising issues around the dangers of this country’s independent nuclear deterrent in the form of the Trident submarine. Firstly, it is not independent but under de-facto US control. Secondly, in terms of deterrent, it is comparable to using a hand grenade to swat a fly. In other words, more of a danger than a deterrent.
    After watching this drama, I’m relieved that this county’s risk of invasion is so small – but one might ask the question that if Britain is in any danger at all why does it have so many troops stationed abroad?
    As the series continues it transpires that a foreign sub may have been responsible for the sinking of the trailer. In total, six world powers have nuclear submarines: Britain, the USA, France, People’s China and India. Any of these states, with the likely exception of China and India, could have had a submarine in the North Sea at any time. But the opening credits of the drama show footage of the Russian President Vladimir Putin giving viewers the idea that the responsible vessel must have been Russian.
    Could this be part of the New Cold War against Russia (and China) with the narrative that Britain is not adequately defended with naval personnel involved with naïve but well-meaning peace campaigners, thus encouraging viewers to support increased defence spending and a further crack-down on dissent and protest?

A planned energy policy now!

Extinction Rebellion (XR) campaigners are back in town this week doing their best to “tell the truth about climate change” in colourful street protests to demand the urgent action needed to tackle the climate and ecological emergency.The ecology movement was established following a call from several academics and veteran green campaigners in 2018 to set up a movement that embraces Gandhi-style civil disobedience to take their demands to the streets and fire a common sense of urgency to tackle climate breakdown.
    Their sit-down protests and efforts to paralyse traffic in London over the last two weeks are part of XR’s long-term campaign to compel government action to avoid tipping points in the climate system, biodiversity loss, and the risk of social and ecological collapse.
    Few would disagree with them on this. Twenty or so years ago the jury was still out on climate change. The capitalists deployed battalions of well‑paid ‘experts’ to deny global warning, to claim renewable energy is costly and that nuclear energy is cheap and clean. Now only the likes of a Donald Trump are in denial. UNICEF has warned that a billion children are now exposed to a deadly combination of climate and environmental crises and with some changes to our climate now inevitable and irreversible, humanity has now been given an unequivocal ‘code red’ warning.
    XR says that if we are to have any hope of coping with the emergency, we must move beyond the politics that have so far held us back and into listening, dialogue and towards unity and action. The eco-warriors say they don’t want to seize power but simply want to place power in the hands of citizens through “citizens’ assemblies”.
    Members of a citizens’ assembly are typically assembled at random from the general public – like a jury – to look at an issue and then make recommendations to parliament or other elected bodies. To a limited extent they already work as advisory committees to bourgeois parliaments. The Climate Assembly UK is one of them.
    All bourgeois politicians, left, right and centre, now pay lip-service to the eco-lobby but few, if any, are prepared to challenge the super-profits that the banks and corporations get from their fossil fuel investments.
    The key issue is winning over the unions and the working class their leaders claim to represent to an ecological agenda to meet the pressing demands of the day.
    The Johnson government has set an ambition for two million green jobs by 2030 – jobs in insulating homes, making electric vehicles and rolling out wind turbines. And last year the Government launched the independent Green Jobs Taskforce, which includes representatives from the TUC and the Prospect union as well as industry and academia – to ensure that the climate transition delivers quality jobs and leaves no workers behind.
    Back in 2010 a major academic study, Zero Carbon Britain 2030, showed that with existing technology Britain can almost entirely eliminate its dependence on fossil fuels in two decades.
    Britain’s onshore and offshore wind and wave potential alone could provide two‑thirds of future carbon‑free energy need; available energy‑efficient construction can cut domestic housing energy needs by 70 per cent; and transport energy use can be cut by 63 per cent.
    What we now need is a planned and integrated national energy policy to reduce Britain’s dependence on energy imports and giant energy corporations, and to create skilled employment in new technology industries.

Days of hope in Stuart London

by Ben Soton

The Royal Secret by Andrew Taylor. HarperCollins 2021. Hardback: 480pp; RRP: £14.99; Kindle: 476pp; RRP: £7.99.

This is the fifth novel in the Marwood & Lovett series set in Restoration London. James Marwood and Cat Lovett are children of Puritan republicans, which puts them in a difficult position under the restored Stuart monarchy. By the fourth novel however, they are both doing rather well for themselves. Marwood works for Lord Arlington, Charles II’s intelligence chief. Meanwhile Lovett owns a thriving architecture business inherited from a late husband.
    Being a male and female in their 20s or early 30s, the novels contain an element of suspense as to whether there will be any romantic involvement between them.
    Taylor manages to bring Restoration London to life by giving a warts and all account of the period, covering all social strata from lowly servants to the king himself. Although the message of his novels is somewhat disappointingly pro-monarchy, he correctly points that there were many, including Catherine Lovett’s late husband, who harked back to the Commonwealth. They also show a period rife with corruption where most people seem to be on the take; an atmosphere common to periods of political demoralisation, such as after the collapse of a progressive regime.
    The Royal Secret centres around a Dutch plot to disrupt the signing of the Treaty of Dover between Stuart England and Bourbon France. Charles II was expected to convert to the Catholic faith at some later date and support France militarily in a war against the Dutch Republic in return for a £230,000 annual pension, a huge sum of money in those days.
    In those days the Dutch Republic was a bastion of Protestant progressive capitalism whilst France at the time represented reactionary feudal absolutism. Many Protestants would sympathise with the Dutch in a similar way as progressives today would side with Cuba, China or People’s Korea.
    In the novel Catherine Lovett is tricked by a Dutch agent into assisting his attempts to disrupt the treaty. Meanwhile a jealous Marwood chases a trail of murder and mayhem involving, amongst other things, a blackmailing servant and a pet lion. The question is will Lovett succumb to the seduction of the mysterious Dutchman, who may attempt to play on her possible republican sympathies? After all, this is a time of divided and complex loyalties – again, not everyone was glad to see the back of the English Republic.
    With the main characters still young, I look forward to seeing the adventures of Marwood and Lovett develop as the Stuart monarchy lurches from crisis to crisis until its eventual overthrow in 1688. Meanwhile, Taylor’s novels give an all-round insight into a sometimes-overlooked period in English history.

Oliver Cromwell

Oliver Cromwell

1599 -- 1658

That 'tis the most which we deteremine can

If these the Times, then this must be the Man

Andrew Marvell
1621-1678

by Andy Brooks

OLIVER CROMWELL, the leader of the bourgeois English Revolution, died on 3rd September 1658. Stricken by a malarial fever that proved to be fatal the Lord Protector willed himself to live until his auspicious day – the day his first parliament met in 1654. The day he smashed the Scottish Royalists at the battle of Dunbar in 1650 and forced the young Charles Stuart to run for his life the following year when the Royalists were routed at the battle of Worcester.

Cromwell led the parliamentary forces to victory in the civil war which began in 1642 and ended with the trial and execution of the king, Charles Stuart, in 1649. He presided over the establishment of the Republic of England, or Commonwealth as it was styled in English, and in 1653 he became head of state, or Lord Protector. Cromwell’s death was marked by genuine mourning throughout the country. His state funeral was the biggest London had ever seen. Two years later the Stuart royalty were back.

Today Cromwell’s death passes largely unnoticed but Oliver is not quite forgotten.

Marie Lloyd, the Victorian musical hall queen, sang about “the ruins that Cromwell knocked about a bit”. Elvis Costello wrote Oliver’s Army, a sardonic song about the modern British Army in 1979, and a radical punk rock band took the name of Cromwell’s New Model Army for their own. The name of Cromwell is preserved in the streets of London. Countless books, and articles have been written about his life as well as two feature films and a number of television documentaries and every year enthusiasts re-enact the major battles of the civil war.

The Quakers we meet on the peace demonstrations were founded by George Fox, whose pacifist beliefs were borne out of the violence of the revolution. Robert Owen, the founder of the Co-operative Movement, and William Morris, the Victorian socialist and artist, were both influenced by the writings of Gerrard Winstanley, the leader of the Diggers, the “True Levellers” whose attempt to establish co-operative farms in Surrey and other parts of the country were suppressed during the Commonwealth.

Irish nationalists call Cromwell a brutal English invader while many Protestants still see him as a religious reformer who fought for freedom of conscience for all faiths apart from Catholicism. And the Jewish community still remembers Cromwell as the leader who allowed Jews to live, worship and work in England for the first time since the pogroms of 1290.

But for the bourgeoisie Oliver is best forgotten, even though their ascendancy began when their ancestors took up the gun in the 1640s.

The ruling class abhor revolutionary change today because it threatens their own domination, so they naturally deny that their class ever came to power through it in the first place. For them the English republic is an aberration, a temporary blip in the steady advance of bourgeois progress, which is the myth they teach us in school. If they elevate anything at all it is the ‘glorious revolution’ of 1688, when the last of the Stuarts was deposed and replaced by a king of their own choosing. Though not as bloodless as they claimed – plenty was shed in Ireland – the establishment of a monarchy that was the gift of Parliament was achieved without the involvement of the masses, which was precisely what was intended.

For romantic socialists Cromwell represents the well-to-do Puritan merchants and landowners who dominated the Army Council – the Grandees who crushed the Levellers and the rest of the democratic movement in the army. But Marxists always recognised the historic role of Cromwell. In 1948 British communist leader Harry Pollitt said: “When the growing capitalist class, the poor farmers and craftsmen, led by Oliver Cromwell, shattered the system of feudalism, and executed King Charles I in the process, reigning monarchs and ruling nobilities everywhere saw the pattern of future history unfolding. The name of Cromwell was reviled, then, as much as Stalin’s is today, by the ruling powers of the old and doomed order of society.

“The English Revolution is ‘great’, because it broke the barriers to man’s advance. It allowed the capitalist class to open the road leading to modern large-scale industry. It permitted science to serve the needs of the new, capitalist society. And, because of these developments, it provided the basis on which, for the first time, a new class, the working class, began to grow, to organise and itself to challenge the prevailing system of society.

“Capitalism, at first progressive, in so far as it led the way for technical advance, developed to the point limited by its own structure. It became, as feudalism was before it, a barrier to the further advance of man. It ceased to serve a useful purpose. It had built up enormous productive forces, but was incapable of providing the majority of the people with a decent standard of life.

“Throughout the world, the working class, with the Communist Party at its head, now goes forward to put an end to capitalism and to build socialism. The English Revolution set this train of historic events in motion. That is why our Party is proud to honour its memory.”

World mourns loss of renowned “Red poet”

by Chris Mahin

The world has lost a great poet – and a militant communist. Jack Hirschman died suddenly on 22nd August at his home in the North Beach district of San Francisco. He was 87 years old. He died in his sleep, shortly before he was scheduled to take part in a Zoom meeting of the World Poetry Movement (WPA), a group of which he had recently been appointed coordinator.
    As the sad news spread, expressions of sympathy poured in from around the world – from other poets, former students, and fellow revolutionaries and political activists. In a statement issued to the Turkish news media, the World Poetry Movement called Hirschman’s death “a great loss to American and world poetry.” The organisation’s statement pledged that “WPA and the poets of the world, who share his humanist and revolutionary ideals, will keep the memory of this great poet alive; will continue to work … for a freer, more just and egalitarian world.”
    Jack Hirschman was a brilliant poet, scholar, and translator -- and a proud communist. (The documentary film made about him in 2010 is fittingly entitled Red Poet). In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, he stated: “The most important thing as a poet is that I worked for the communist movement for 45 years, and the new class of impoverished and homeless people.”
    In addition to publishing more than 100 volumes of his own poetry, Hirschman translated over two dozen books from languages including Russian, French, German, Greek, Italian, Spanish, Albanian, Yiddish, Vietnamese, and Creole. He was deeply committed to ensuring that the works of revolutionaries like Pablo Neruda of Chile, Nazim Hikmet of Turkey, and Rene Depestre of Haiti were available in English in the United States.
    Hirschman was named poet laureate of San Francisco in 2006 by then-mayor Gavin Newsom, a post that allowed Hirschman to create the San Francisco International Poetry Festival. Three years later, he became the poet in residence at the San Francisco public library.
    Jack Hirschman was born on 13th December in New York City in 1933 into a Russian Jewish family and grew up in the Bronx. While still a teenager attending the City College of New York, he worked as a sub-editor for the Associated Press. Later he taught at Dartmouth in New England and the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). Hirschman was fired from UCLA in the 1970s for encouraging his students to resist the draft during the Vietnam War.
    In 1973, he moved to San Francisco where he became part of the city’s vibrant literary scene, becoming a close friend of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the writers from the Beat generation grouped around City Lights bookstore in North Beach.
    For decades, Jack Hirschman was a constant presence in San Francisco’s streets and cafes, attending innumerable poetry readings and political rallies, distributing copies of his poetry and the People’s Tribune newspaper. Hirschman served as the assistant editor for the literary journal Left Curve, formed the Union of Left Writers in San Francisco and was a founder of the Roque Dalton Cultural Brigade, the Revolutionary Poets Brigade, and the League of Revolutionaries for a New America.
    I first met Jack in the early 1980s. He was always warm, funny, and totally unpretentious. He went out of his way to encourage anyone who wanted to write – provided they were going to stand on the side of the oppressed. Whenever I sent him an issue of the New Worker containing an article on US history that I had written, the man who wrote more than 100 volumes of poetry somehow always found the time to write back. His response would invariably contain kind words of praise for my article and for the New Worker – often with a few exclamations in Italian or Russian thrown in for emphasis.
    Above all else, Jack Hirschman had a warrior’s spirit, a fierce determination to oppose injustice anywhere in the world. As he himself once wrote: “Poetry is really a weapon. It’s a spiritual weapon for the transformation of the world. And, of course, all my poems are love poems. The nicest thing in the world is to propagandize for love.” Rest well, Comrade Jack. Others will take up your weapon.

End of an era

Few suppose Joe Biden will lose any sleep over the concerns of his European allies who are now bleating on about America’s hasty retreat from Afghanistan, let alone the wails of their expendable Afghan servants left stranded at Kabul airport when the last US troops pull out at the end of the month.
    The last few days have been a bitter lesson in real-politik for British politicians who still talk, at least in public, about a “special relationship” with the USA, whilst there’s a growing realisation amongst the movers and shakers of the European Union (EU) that their supposed ‘super-power’ status is just another Brussels pipe-dream.
    Britain, which still has the fifth greatest economy in the world, can of course stand on its own two feet. But Johnson prefers to spout nonsense about “Global Britain” rather than take any serious steps to break the slavish dependency on the USA, scrap the £billions spent on the useless US Trident nuclear weapons system and use the money saved to develop a truly independent economy for the benefit of the millions who live here.
    Tony Blair and his kind can drivel on for as long they like about “human rights” and “imbecilic” US decisions, but no-one takes them seriously – least of all anyone who counts in America’s ruling circles. The Americans are leaving Afghanistan because they’ve lost the war. Crocodile tears are the most that the Afghans left behind to the tender mercies of the Taliban can expect.

opportunity knocks

Sharon Graham has won the election to be the next general secretary of Unite. She succeeds the 70-year-old veteran Len McCluskey, who prolonged his stay at the top table but finally stepped down this year after 10 years in office. Unite’s first woman leader received almost 5,000 more votes than her nearest rival in a three-horse race that ended this week. She will now take over from Len McCluskey as leader of the second biggest union in the country.
    As usual these days the race to the top was, in practice, confined to three full-time officers and the factions they head. Whilst all three claimed to be following in the footsteps of Len McCluskey the only one who had their old chief’s blessing was Steve Turner – and that was only grudgingly given after Len’s chosen man, Howard Beckett, dropped out when he realised he couldn’t win. Turner – the official broad left ‘United Left’ candidate – came a credible second whilst Gerard Coyne – the right-wing ‘moderate’ – was well behind in third place.
    Sharon Graham coyly says she’s “not a member of any Unite or Labour faction – other than my own supporters group”, which though technically true masks the fact that her ‘Workers Unite’ group has built up a very powerful left-leaning platform supported by some Trotskyist movements within the union and focused on grass-roots issues to get the vote out.
    Turner relied on a run-down broad left machine that simply could not cope with the demands of social media or the lock-down restrictions imposed on public work during the campaign, while Coyne mistakenly hoped that the backing of the Murdoch press and dog-whistle support from Starmer & Co would be enough to turn the tables on his ‘left’ rivals.
    Sharon Graham says: “My slogan all along has been ‘Back to the workplace’ to build the union to fight for jobs, wages and conditions.” Let’s hope she does so.

Protecting our Beautiful Blue Planet

 By John Maryon

Yuri Gagarin was amazed as he observed the natural wonders of the Earth from the Soviet spacecraft Vostok 1 on 12th April 1961. The world's first cosmonaut said " Orbiting the Earth in the spaceship, I saw how beautiful our planet is. People, let us preserve and increase this beauty, not destroy it".
    Pollution and the depletion of natural resources affect our quality of life but the greatest threat to all life on Earth comes from global warming caused by a build-up of greenhouse gases. The most important are Carbon Dioxide, Methane, Nitrous Oxide and Fluorinated Gases in addition to the presence of water vapour. These gases allow sunlight to pass through but have far less transparency to infra-red radiation reflected back from the Earth's surface. This greenhouse effect could develop into a runaway form such as is believed to have destroyed the environment on Venus causing the oceans to boil away.
    Carbon Dioxide, (CO2), released from burning fossil fuel is the major cause of global warming and climate change. The problem is being made worse by the destruction of rain forests in Brazil and other areas which retained large quantities fixed carbon. Until recently the US administration was in denial of the problem, driven by political and commercial motives. They have now rejoined the Paris Climate Accord and accepted that action has to be taken. Global temperatures have almost reached the 1.5 °C limit and urgent action is required.
    The Paris agreement to limit temperature rise allowed individual countries to set their own targets taking account of trees, soil and oceans to absorb CO2. Climate finance would be made available to enable poorer countries to adapt and switch to renewable energy.
    The New Communist Party's policy for a Planned and Integrated Energy Strategy highlights the challenges facing Britain and puts forward active measures to overcome the problems. Privatisation of energy utilities has made essential planning virtually impossible due to the desire for quick profit and short termism. We call for full public ownership of the power generating capacity and supply networks. The infrastructure does not exist for a rapid transfer to all electrical vehicles making the shift from private car and road freight to public transport and rail goods transport important. Investment is required to convert all existing diesel rail links to electric, restoring rural bus services and for the development of hydrogen engines that only exhaust water vapour as they produce power.
    A balanced and safe energy mix for electricity generation will require more investment into land and off-shore wind farms, solar power, tidal and wave energy. It may be possible in the near future to collect solar energy from space with large collectors and beam it down to Earth.
    Coal fired power stations could possibly be equipped with carbon entrapment technology. CO2 is then captured at source and transported to an underground storage area. Such power plants or a new generation of much safer nuclear units are required as base stations for those times when the sun does not shine or the wind does not blow.
    Nuclear power remains an option but it is controversial and comes with its own risks including the problems of nuclear waste storage, high decommissioning costs and possible pollution. Current proposals for joint Chinese/French ventures are in jeopardy as the government comes under increasing pressure from the US to cut investment ties with China. Energy from nuclear sources is a risky proposition due to the catastrophic events which may result due to human error, technical failure, cyber-attacks, natural disasters, war or terrorism. Reactors may be of a type that can breed fuel for nuclear weapons or to produce further energy. Future developments may include more advanced types of Reactor such as the Molten Salt unit that uses Thorium as fuel and may have certain advantages from safety and security considerations. Many now consider that Fusion will be the power source of the future.
    The New Communist Party is firmly opposed to fracking technology to extract gas from rock formations; a process which can pollute water tables and cause subsidence. Fracking increases CO2 levels by producing more fossil fuel, that was locked away, now to be burnt. During the operation there is the risk of releasing methane into the air and water systems.
    Many northern British cities still bear the scars of the Industrial Revolution. Blackened stonework on buildings being testament to the grim reality of the environmental destruction that was caused. Moths and butterflies developed into new sub-species to blend with the soot.
    Britain possess the technology to become carbon zero. The NCP calls for all new homes, schools and public sector buildings to be developed in this manner. A combination of solar power, heat pumps to upgrade ground-heat and solar heated water, along with improved levels of thermal insulation can make a big contribution. Tree planting and green spaces are essential to absorb CO2.
    It is not only climate change that causes concern. We live in an age of colossal waste and rampant pollution in which we are consuming our natural resources faster than they can be replenished. A build-up of microscopic plastic particles and nuclear waste dumping by Japan into the Pacific along with oil spills all contribute to the contamination of the seas. Fish and small mammals struggle to cope in our polluted rivers. Greater efforts should be made to make the polluter pay the price.
    One of the more obvious areas of concern is that of packaging. Plastic bags are out but but the problem goes much deeper. Most packaging includes plastic rather than card or paper. In many cases it is totally unnecessary being solely a means of making the product more attractive. It should be made a legal requirement that almost all types of packaging should be capable of being recycled. More domestic appliances are now unrepairable and often it is not possible to even replace batteries. We have become a throw away society. It is less costly to dump in developing countries than to bother with recycling. Inbuilt obsolescence, trendy fashion and dubious marketing gimmicks are the hallmarks of a capitalist market.
    We clearly cannot continue in this manner. A strong political will and the acceptance of a shared responsibility for our actions are required. The NCP calls for new policies and a new way of thinking that puts environmental issues above the greedy pursuit of profits. Communists will respect and live in harmony with the natural world including all the other creatures with which we share a common home.
    In 2019 China manufactured 80 per cent of the world's solar panels. The US instead of applauding this achievement has made attempts to wreck the industry by making unfounded allegations of human rights abuses to curb sales. It is the gas guzzling US itself that is a major cause of world pollution and shows little respect for both its own citizens or others with its permanent aggression to bomb and sanction the world.
    The New Communist Party stands with the Greens in their sincere and noble aims of protecting our planet. We also believe, however, that success involves a greater political dimension that tackles the ideological causes behind the problems. Environmental protection cannot be considered in isolation. It needs to be seen as a part of the larger class struggle.

Defend Ken Loach!

Ken Loach has been expelled from the Labour Party. Loach says he was kicked out after he refused to “disown” other victims of the Starmer purge. “I am proud to stand with the good friends and comrades victimised by the purge. There is indeed a witch hunt,” Loach said last weekend. “Starmer and his clique will never lead a party of the people. We are many, they are few. Solidarity.”
     A life-long socialist, Loach never hid his past support for Trotskyist movements and George Galloway’s Respect Party when returned to the Labour fold in 2017. But his expulsion has nothing to do with what Loach did or did not do in the past. He’s been hounded out because of his high-profile backing of Jeremy Corbyn and his principled support for the Palestinians that includes support for the boycott Israel campaign.
     Twenty MPs, including Jeremy Corbyn, Diane Abbott and John McDonnell, along with five members of the House of Lords, have signed a statement in support of the campaigning film director. Headed by Richard Burgon, the Chair of the Socialist Campaign Group, the statement said Loach was an “outstanding socialist” whose expulsion was “shameful”. Now the Zionists are demanding their heads as well. The veteran English film director has become
the latest victim of the Blairite campaign to drive all the prominent Corbynistas out of the Labour Party. He certainly won’t be the last.

 

End of the road in Afghanistan

As the last American troops withdraw from Afghanistan the sectarian Taliban Muslim militia has seized nine provincial capitals in an offensive than now directly threatens what poses as the national government in Kabul. In 2001 an American-led invasion drove the Taliban out of Kabul to install a puppet regime in the “war on terror” that the imperialists launched following the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. The invasion of Iraq soon followed along with “regime change” in Libya and a less than covert bid to do the same in Syria that was thwarted by the steadfastness of the Syrian people and the timely intervention of the Russian air force.
     American forces, and those of their NATO allies including Britain, installed a puppet regime in Kabul which they said would bring prosperity and democracy to Afghanistan.
    Twenty years later the Americans and their allies are leaving with their tails between their legs while the Taliban, which is backed by Pakistani intelligence, battles it out with northern and western war-lords who can count on the support of Russia, India and Iran.
    Some 2,300 American soldiers were killed in the Afghan campaign and over 20,600 wounded. Hundreds of mercenaries called “contractors” also died at the hands of the Afghan militias and while no-one in the West bothers to accurately count the Afghan losses most observers believe that about 241,000 people were killed in the Afghan and Pakistan war zone since 2001. More than 71,000 of those killed were civilians.
    Some senior British officers and Tory politicians who really should know better are now bleating on about the “betrayal” of the Afghans, They would be better advised to heed Kipling’s words after the illusionary British victory in the Boer War: “Let us admit it fairly, as a business people should. We have had no end of a lesson: it will do us no end of good”.

Another French connection

 by Ben Soton

Baptiste Series 2, currently showing on BBC1, Sundays at 9pm; also available on BBC iPlayer. Created by: Harry Williams, Jack Williams. Written by: Harry Williams, Jack Williams, Kelly Jones, Catherine Moulton. Stars: Tchéky Karyo, Anastasia Hille, Barbara Sarafian.

BBC1 is currently screening the second and final series of Baptiste, a gripping drama in which the retired French police officer Julien Baptiste (played by Tchéky Karyo) tracks down missing persons, those whom the regular police are incapable of locating. The drama emerged from an earlier series, The Missing, originally shown in 2014, in which the main character played a prominent role. The French detective was later revived when the first Baptiste series was launched in 2019.
    In the current series the family of the British Ambassador to Hungary, Emma Chambers (played by Fiona Shaw), goes missing and she uses Baptiste to find them. The search leads them to a Hungarian far-right party and its links to an even more sinister terrorist group known as Gomorrah. In episode three a Hungarian far-right politician uses a children’s story as the basis for a speech she is about to make, showing the simplistic and childlike nature of their arguments. At face value, the programme dismisses the view that the European Union  is an oasis of enlightenment, and that Brexit Island is a bastion of ignorance.
    Episodes so far have been dominated by flash-backs between past and present. The purpose of this technique is to keep the viewer focussed but equally it can also cause confusion.
    The event that separates past and present to us is a massacre by the fascist terror group Gomorrah, in which Chambers is seriously injured and Baptiste has a nervous breakdown. As the series progresses it appears that Gomorrah is the key to the disappearance of Chambers’ family. Meanwhile, the sub-plots based around Baptiste’s chaotic personal life also feature.
    Baptiste raises the issue of why people go missing. An estimated 170,000 go missing every year, an equivalent to one person every 90 seconds. Around 70,000 of these are children, many of whom are in local authority care – known as ‘Looked After Children’.
    Previous series of Baptiste and The Missing have focussed on the global sex industry and the trafficking that accompanies it as a possible reason why many of the people, particularly women and children, disappear.
    A television series set in Hungary, involving the British ambassador with a French police officer, is a reminder that we live in an interconnected world. The Hungarian police are portrayed as incompetent, corrupt and possibly in league with the far-right. Ironically, the British police, who would normally be involved with such a high-level disappearance, are nowhere to be seen. Is this part of the BBC’s Remainer agenda, which views this country as being left isolated after Brexit?
    When it transpired that the British husband of the Hungarian extremist leader is the mastermind behind Gomorrah my fears came to light. The narrative promoted by the series is as follows: Britain has left the EU, whilst the far-right are gaining ground in Hungary. The two events are connected. The British ambassador, left disabled after a shooting, represents Britain isolated and weakened after Brexit. The saviour is a retired Frenchman, acting out of good will.
    The series is soon to reach its climax. I am anticipating a dramatic ending as well as a resolution of Baptiste’s personal problems. When watching the BBC, however, beware false narratives.