Turning the screws on Labour

Unite the union has decided to cut its donations to the Labour Party by 40 per cent. Labour will lose over half a million pounds from one of its major affiliates – and all down to the Starmer government’s refusal to intervene in the year-long Birmingham bin strike that was triggered by the Labour-run council’s move to cut the bin workers’ wages.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham told striking members that "we're pushing back on one of the most vile attacks on workers we have seen in a long, long time.
"And the joke about this - it's not an attack from Rupert Murdoch, not an attack from Amazon. But an attack from a Labour council, under a Labour government. Labour should hang their heads in shame. They're an absolute disgrace”.
She’s right, of course. But punishing Labour is one thing – changing its course is another. Though Sharon Graham was the outsider who upset the grandees apple-cart when she won the race for the top job in her union in 2021 on a left platform it was still a battle of the bureaucrats. She only differs from the other full-timers that she defeated in showing more deference to rank-and-file militancy than her predecessors. But generally her faction differs little from all the other “left” factions that run most of our unions today. Their leaders see themselves as “professional negotiators” rather than workers’ leaders. They see mass action as a last resort and then only as a bargaining factor. None of them want to assert real control over the party the unions still largely fund. All they want from Labour is a bigger piece of the action.
That, some say, is how it’s always been. It’s not for nothing that the cartoonist David Low portrayed the TUC as a “cart-horse” in the 1950s. But there were exceptions. The post-war Communist Party of Great Britain helped draw up the constitution of the electricians’ union – in the days when local stewards could call strikes and every strike was “official”  from day one unless later deemed “unofficial” by the Executive.
By the 1970s the old communist party, with its staid Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Union Rights,  embraced the view that the highest form of life was that of a full-time official. It was easily eclipsed by “rank-and-file” movements led by the left social-democratic posers in a variety of self-styled Trotskyist fronts. Those that climbed up the greasy pole of the union apparatat soon sold out. Their grass-roots organisations came and went. But that’s not to say the method was wrong. Look at the Anti-Nazi League of the Seventies. It has evolved into the anti-fascist and anti-racist mass movement that confronts the Faragists and the likes of the man who calls himself “Tommy Robinson” on our streets today.
This is what we need to get back to in the unions today – building a united front with all left forces ready to build a genuinely rank-and-file movement and willing to take on the employer for higher wages and fight for peace and socialism.

The Chosen Men return!

 by Ben Soton

Sharpe’s Storm by Bernard Cornwell, Harper-Collins. Hbk: 2025, 368pp, rrp £22.00. Sbk: 2026, 368pp, rrp £9.99. Audio: 628 minutes, rrp £17.99.

This is Bernard Cornwell’s 24th novel in the Sharpe series – set in 1813, as the British army along with their Spanish and Portuguese allies advance into France during the Napoleonic wars. Most of the Sharpe novels are set during the war with France when Britain was aligned with the absolute monarchies of Prussia, Russia and Austria. So I wouldn’t imagine the Sharpe saga, with its glorification of war, especially a conflict where this country was arguably on the wrong side, to be especially popular on the left.           
What of the character Sharpe? Richard Sharpe was born around 1780 in poverty, becomes involved in crime.  In the television series, Sharpe, played by Sean Bean, is a Yorkshireman; in the original novels he is a Londoner.  He eventually joins the army and begins a successful military career.  So successful that he is given a commission by Arthur Wellesley, the first Duke of Wellington.  This gives him both strength and vulnerability.  On the one hand he is Wellington’s man, giving him a degree of protection. But he lacks the wealthy connections of most other officers and therefore Wellington can easily break him as he could make him.  
For this reason Sharpe is often given dangerous missions; in the case of Sharpe’s Storm Admiral Sir Joel Chase.  has been tasked by Wellington to overview the river Ardour, check its bridges and examine the possibility of getting warships down it. This is made increasingly difficult as the events take place during a storm.  Although Sharpe is admired by the military top brass, he still manages to make enemies amongst junior officers from the ranks of the gentry. In this story Sir Nathaniel Peacock, a man who obviously bought his commission and with limited experience, is a liability.  Peacock continually reminds Sharpe of his social superiority; which Sharpe is able to brush off with a degree of humour and sarcasm.
The idea of Sharpe is based on the notion that the ruling class, which may contain a few bad apples (anyone who has watched the news recently knows that it is more than just a few), is fundamentally good, recognises talent and is willing to occasionally bring in new blood.  This positive view of the ruling class explains why the series is popular on the right.  Sharpe, although a fundamentally decent individual, has absolutely no concept of class loyalty. Meanwhile the character also has deep insecurities; which emanate from the knowledge that he may never be fully accepted.  Thus accepting the limitations of meritocracy. Sharpe is ultimately a mercenary for his own ruling class.

Stop the drift to war

It didn’t take long for Starmer to switch from blocking the Americans from using  British bases to attack Iran to permitting it and now actively collaborating with US imperialism and Zionist Israel in their onslaught against the Islamic Republic. He can count on the Faragists and Tories to back him while Tony Blair, who can barely show his face in public in Britain these days, thinks we should have gone in with Trump from the start.

This shouldn’t surprise us. Farage thinks he’s Trump’s mouth-piece in Britain while crawling to the Americans is almost compulsory for Tory and Labour leaders who drone on and on about “partnership” and the “special relationship” to justify British imperialism’s slavish support of American power throughout the world. 
But on the street millions upon millions have seen through the lies of the bourgeois media. They want no part in Trump’s crusade. This is the message that must be heard throughout the labour movement as well. Stop the bombing! End the War!

Every cloud...

This week we saw a minor victory for free speech when the High Court ruled in favour of the Guardian journalist Owen Jones in the Raffi Berg libel case. Jones, best known for his book Chavs –The Demonising of the Working Class back in 2011, launched his career as a man of the left but soon gravitated to the centre to join the prominenti of the mainstream media. He did, however, attract the ire of the Zionists when he accused a BBC journalist of pro-Israeli bias in December 2024
.
Jones' article cited BBC journalists who accused BBC news online editor Raffi Berg of fostering a culture of 'systematic Israeli propaganda'.  But the court rejected Berg's lawyers' core argument that Jones' reporting presented him as "a rogue journalist and editor who deliberately disregards and breaches the duties of accuracy and impartiality".
Jones' piece in Drop Site News quoted BBC staffers saying Berg "reshapes everything from headlines, to story text, to images" and "repeatedly seeks to foreground the Israeli military perspective while stripping away Palestinian humanity". Jones said that "facts unfavourable to Israel have been stripped out of Berg’s reports" and that he played a "crucial role" in "conduct that imperils the integrity of the BBC".
Berg instructed Mark Lewis of Patron Law, previously a director of UK Lawyers for Israel, as his solicitor. His legal team says that Owen’s piece strikes "at the claimant’s professional reputation as a journalist and editor" and has led to "an onslaught of hatred, intimidation and threats", including death threats. 
Nevertheless the judges ruled that the article by Jones expressed an opinion, and indicated the basis for that opinion through examples of Berg's journalism and editorial role. The ruling is central to determining whether the case is to be pursued.
Berg will now need to show that Jones did not genuinely hold the opinion he expressed in his reporting, or demonstrate that the opinion is not one an honest person could hold on the basis of any fact that existed at the time of its publication. It will be interesting to see if Berg decides to take this any further...

The view from the Donbas

Boris Litvinov, Theo Russell & Andy Brooks

by Theo Russell

Members of the New Communist Party and International Ukraine Anti Fascist Solidarity recently held an online meeting with Boris Litvinov, the Secretary of the Donetsk Region of theCommunist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF). The meeting was also joined by Gedrius Gebrauskas, the general secretary of the Communist Party of Lithuania, who is currently living in exile in Moscow. We publish here a summary of the main points which were discussed.
Boris Litvinov, the Donetsk communist leader,  said that though recent initiatives have led to talks on the Ukraine conflict the war continues unabated. On the US-Russian peace talks there are currently plenty of delegations meeting in various places, creating the illusion that the Americans want peace. But while Trump says he won’t send troops to Ukraine, he’s happy for the Europeans to pay for weapons to send to Ukraine to continue the war.
The leading European states dream of endlessly prolonging the conflict, with the aim of doing away with Russia. The European media spreads the idea that Russia is preparing to invade Europe, and the EU representative for foreign policy, Kaja Kallas, has made the ridiculous claim that in the past 100 years, Russia has attacked at least 19 countries, “some as many as three or four times”. 
We need to explain that Russia isn’t preparing to attack anyone. But Ukraine is our concern. It was part of the Soviet Union. It is our problem and we need to solve it. Let Europe solve their own problems with the United States!
We hope to convince the European countries to stop sending money and weapons for the war.
We still don’t understand why the European states blew up the Nord Stream pipeline and cut off Russian energy.
On Western claims of about a million Russian casualties let’s be clear. There are victims on both sides in any war. But when we return 1,000 body-bags to Ukraine, Ukraine sends us 80 in return, and this is the normal ratio in such exchanges. War is very complicated, now with modern systems such as drones, and inevitably the war will carry on. 
 Zelensky is a criminal. His latest demand is for 1.5 trillion US dollars to cover Ukraine’s budget for five years. If Europe continues to send money to ther Kiev regime, a global catastrophe, including the possibility of a nuclear conflict, becomes highly likely.
We want to see a just settlement of the Ukraine crisis. We also want conflicts elsewhere in the world to end in Palestine, Iran,  Lebanon, Yemen and Sudan. This is our main concern.
Andy Brooks, the NCP general secretary. said that the primary contradiction in the world today is between United States imperialism and the rest of the world it seeks to control and exploit. President Trump may not want world domination but he does want to divide the world into spheres on influence – with the lion’s share in American hands –  in line with the wishes of the dominant sections in the USA – manufacturing, big oil and the tech giants. As with Biden, the aim is still to control the world market in energy, and to challenge any country which tries to establish genuine economic independence.
Europe believed that Russia would lose quickly in 2022 and that the sanctions against Russia and against Russian oligarchs would create the possibility of a change of leadership in the Kremlin. This they believed would enable British and Franco-German imperialism to exploit Ukraine in partnership with the Americans. This did not happen.
Trump’s 22 point “peace plan” for Ukraine includes total American control of Ukraine’s mineral resources and the current US-Russian talks cover economic projects which completely exclude Europe. 
These talks are secret. Now we oppose secret diplomacy, which was banned by the UN after 1945, and we still don’t know what is happening in the US-Russian talks, which are by-passing the United Nations. What does seem clear is that Trump’s goal is to take 70 per cent of Ukrainia’s assets for himself leaving the 30 per cent of liberated territory for Russia and nothing for the Europeans.
For our part we hope that a future settlement will recognise the legitimate right of the people of the Donbas and southern Ukraine to join the Russian Federation and that the democratic forces in Ukraine will be given complete freedom of expression. 
Boris Litvinov said our mission is to help people to open their eyes. The capitalist part of our state wants to join the US dollar system, but there is another section which is patriotic. This section includes capitalists and left forces. We recognise that we need to protect our country’s national interests , even in alliance with capitalist forces.
Now Trump is hoping to impose a digital currency on the world. When this happens and a new international situation comes about, the European states need to choose what to do. If they decide to ally with Russia, China, India, Brazil and the other BRICS states, then there will be no space left for the Americans and the dollar will collapse.
We feel sorrow for the people of Ukraine. They are being used as cannon fodder to achieve the future aims of the United States. Many Ukrainians have fled to find a better life and there are not many people left to continue fighting. Now the Western countries are talking about sending troops to Ukraine. That means you too will have coffins returning – who will be responsible for this madness?

The Madness of King Trump

Rambling speeches, delusions of grandeur, unhinged threats to friend and foe alike,,,and now a demand for “unconditional surrender” as his offensive against Iran falters in the first week of open combat. The Iranians have crippled the American military network across the Middle East, cut off the Persian Gulf to all Western shipping while giving the Israelis a taste of their own medicine with daily drone and missile strikes on Tel Aviv and other cities across the Zionist entity. America and Israel’s “achievements” so far have been the killing of 165 school-kids in an air-raid last week and the sinking of an Iranian frigate in the Indian Ocean.
Trump’s team initially believed that they could wipe out the Iranian leadership and force the Islamic Republic to beg for mercy in a matter of a few days. Their treacherous attack in the midst of negotiations to end the crisis neither shocked nor awed the Iranians. They killed some but not all the Iranian leaders. They destroyed some but not all of Iran’s stockpile of drones and missiles.
The Iranians, enraged at the death of their Supreme Leader and many others in the leadership vow to fight on no matter what the Americans or Israelis throw at them. Their Arab allies, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, north Yemen and the Palestinian resistance are joining in to help them. The Iranians have cut off the Persian Gulf and the Yemenis are blocking the Red Sea to all Western shipping. The spot oil price is soaring. The stock markets of the imperialist world are jittery amid fears that a massive hike in the price of oil on the open market will trigger another global slump. The longer the war goes on the more likely that will be, And even the Americans are now talking about a five or six week campaign.
In Britain the Tories and the Faragists are predictably rooting for a Trump triumph. So are Starmer & Co and the ageing Blairites he surrounds himself with. Jeremy Corbyn warns that “we cannot let Keir Starmer drag this country into another illegal war. That’s why I tabled a Bill to require Parliamentary approval for the foreign use of British bases” – a view supported by the Greens, the Bennite rump on the Labour back-benches and beyond.
Starmer’s bid to allow the Americans to use British bases for their war effort has been blocked by four Cabinet ministers, led by Energy Secretary Ed Miliband.  
Starmer is still trying to appease The Donald and the feudal Arab oil princes who invest in Britain but depend on American guns to keep them on their thrones. But wiser counsel has prevailed in Europe. None of the members of the European Union, apart from the Baltic States which are little more than American protectorates, have shown any enthusiasm to join the Trump crusade against Iran. And Spain’s social-democratic government has taken a more principled position, refusing to allow the United States to use its military bases for attacks on Iran and condemning the strikes as unjustified and outside international law.
And this is what Britain must also do. The mass movement, the millions who’ve marched for Palestine are now demonstrating to stop any British involvement in imperialist aggression, stop the bombing and end the cycle of violence that threatens to plunge the entire world into flames. Stop bombing Iran! Stop Trump’s war!

The Shape of Things to Come

The Green victory in the Gorton & Denton by-election was a slap in the face for all the major parliamentary parties. Labour lost a seat it’s held for a hundred years. Reform came a poor second  and the Tories lost their deposit trailing behind just a few hundred votes above the Liberal Democrats, the Monster Raving Loonies and the other also-rans. 
Trumped by the Greens the Faragists put their failure down to the “Muslim vote” while the Starmer crowd blame left “extremists” for making the common course with the Greens that led to Labour’s downfall in Manchester. But at the end of the day Starmer & Co got the kicking they so richly deserved because voters were sick of the lies of the false prophets of all the mainstream bourgeois parties in Britain today.
Jeremy Corbyn, one of those “extremists” that Starmer doubtless had in mind, welcomed the Greens’ stunning victory and said his supporters “will work constructively with the Greens, because there is only one way we can bring about real change: together”.
On the other hand Richard Burgon, one of the few left social-democrats still in the Parliamentary Labour Party says the “blame for Labour’s defeat lies squarely with Keir Starmer and his clique”.
He says “they put factional interests over having the candidate best placed to win, Andy Burnham. If Labour is to be the “Stop Reform” party, then the leadership must stop treating progressive voters with contempt - and start appealing to them.
“That means a return to real Labour values - through policies like a Wealth Tax, public ownership of energy and water, and an ethical foreign policy that are all popular with the public. And it means ditching the approach of trying to ape Reform and kicking the left, that has alienated so many people who have voted Labour previously”.
We’ll see. The Greens deservedly got a massive protest vote this time round but their “eco-socialism” is only a rehash of the stale left social-democracy we see time and time again within the European Union that the Greens much admire. 
Angela Rayner and Andy Burnham wait in the wings to pick up the pieces when Starmer inevitably goes. They uphold the NHS. They talk about public ownership. They pay lip-service to the old Bennite social-democratic tradition. They support the union bureaucrats at the helm of the labour movement. But 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. We, as communists,  want real change. We have to put socialism back on the working-class agenda. 
We must keep up the fight against the whole capitalist system in Britain and throughout the world. The struggle for peace and socialism must begin anew – in the unions, amongst the rank and file and on the street. It must start now...

Stone Age stories

 by Ben Soton

Circle of Days by Ken Follett, Grand Central Publishing; 2025, hbk  608pp rrp £25. pbk rrp £10.99.

For years Ken Follett has long been a master of both contemporary and historical fiction.  His latest novel, Circle of Days, takes us back to ancient Britain – a time after the development of agriculture but before writing reached these shores. The building of Stonehenge is a major aspect of the book; a monument still standing just a few miles outside Salisbury in Wiltshire, the area referred to as the Great Plain. 
This is the first major novel set during the prehistoric era since Bernard Cornwell wrote Stonehenge in 2000. The two novels present very contrasting views of the period. Cornwell’s novel portrays a society with an existing hierarchy; Circle of Days is set in a more anarchic world with competing and sometimes conflicting communities – farmers, herders, ‘woodland folk’, flint miners and a caste of priestesses.  Follett paints a world of conflict. 
The farmers are the emerging and most powerful group with an element of the story focussing on the age-old rivalry between them and the herders – the basis of the Cain and Abel myth. Meanwhile the woodland folk, obviously the remnants of  the hunter-gatherer society, appear to be doomed. The novel shows the different attitudes and cultures of the rival groups.  Women within the farming community are seen as property of their men whilst the woodland folk practice a form of free-love. The priestesses are an overwhelmingly lesbian grouping; while being the only ones who can count.
 Follett, who is not a Marxist, is painting a picture of an emerging class society. It is widely known that farming triumphed over hunter-gathering and herding, eventually leading to class-society and the rest is history. The author, who has always favoured class compromise, predictably sides with those in the various communities who favour compromise and negotiation. As the story develops, we see tit-for-tat warfare between the rival groupings; which includes the burning of the forest by herders and attacks on grain stores by woodlanders. 
The building of the henge takes place in the later stages of the novel; its construction is the idea of Joia, a priestess who sees it as a means of uniting the rival groupings and bringing more people to the Great Plain. Its construction is opposed by Troon, the leader of the farmers with designs on domination over the region.  As Joia builds the Henge he builds an army.  However are these not two sides of the same coin?  Standing armies and megaliths are both features of a class society; with warriors and priests (in this case priestesses) becoming part of the new ruling-class. 
This is pure Follett; delving into the personal and often the sex lives of the key characters. It has a strong resemblance to his 1989 novel Pillars of the Earth, set around the building of a cathedral in 12th century England. Both novels are based on the premise of ‘Build it and They Will Come’.  As a novel set in pre-history much of the story is down to the author’s imagination; however it is a fitting tribute to those who built Stonehenge.       
  

Uneasy lies the head...

 Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is the first member of the Royal Family to be arrested since Charles Stuart was held by the New Model Army at the end of the First Civil War in 1646. Charles remained in custody before his trial and execution in 1649. The Republic of England, or Commonwealth as it was styled in English, was proclaimed soon after. Oliver Cromwell, the MP for Huntingdon who was the leading Parliamentary commander during the civil war,
later became head of state, the Lord Protector, a post he held until his death in 1658. 
Andrew’s arrest is not going to bring down the House of Windsor nor is he likely to share the fate of his loathsome predecessor. Nevertheless the high-life of the former prince that revolved around Jeffrey Epstein, a degenerate American brothel keeper who supplied young girls to prominent politicians and businessmen on both sides of the Atlantic, has brought the Royal Family into disrepute not seen since the Abdication crisis of 1936.
In those days the bourgeois parliament and the leaders of the Church of England believed that Edward V111’s morals and his sympathy for Nazi Germany made him unfit to head the Anglican church let alone an Empire that spanned a quarter of the entire world. These days Andrew’s antics have merely embarrassed our current king, who’s clearly washed his hands on his errant younger brother.
The monarchy, of course, is part and parcel of British bourgeois democracy. During Elizabeth 11’s long reign they built up a cult around the House of Windsor based on two powerful myths – the first being that the Royal Family are paragons of virtue and the second that they have no power at all in the modern British state. Neither is true.
The first is blatantly obvious. The second ignores the nature of the bourgeois state and the role of the ruling family that heads it. To be sure, the Westminster parliament is a sovereign assembly that can pick and chose monarchs – it got rid of James 11 in 1688. It forced Edward out in 1936. The monarch is, on the face of it, a figurehead, But at the end of the day it is absurd to think that the House of Windsor, one of the richest families in the world, has no power at all.
New voices are now questioning the role of the monarchy – a natural feature of the early days of British communism. There were also outspoken republicans in the social-democratic movement like Tony Benn and Ken Livingstone. Even some right-wing social-democrats like Willie Hamilton, the Fife MP who branded the royal family gold-plated scroungers joined in the calls for the monarchy to be scrapped. But republicanism was barely, if ever, mentioned during the post-war decline of the revisionist Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). Calls for a democratic republic were said to be “divisive” given the supposed popularity of the monarchy amongst the working class and irrelevant in the forward march of labour that was conjured up in the British Road to Socialism.
Our position, from the day we were founded is clear. The New Communist Party calls for the abolition of the Crown, the House of Lords and all titles of nobility. They serves no democratic purpose whatsoever. 

A just decision

 The High Court has ruled the Palestine Action ban unlawful.Three judges led by Dame Victoria Sharp, president of the King’s Bench Division, concluded that the decision to ban the group was unlawful. However, the ban will remain temporarily in place to allow the government time to appeal.
On 5th July last year membership of or public support for the Palestine Action campaign became a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison. The pro-Palestinian direct action network was placed on the list of proscribed organisations, categorising it alongside internationally recognised ‘terrorist’ groups.
Over 2,700 people have been arrested since the ban took effect, most under section 13 of the Terrorism Act. More than 500 individuals, including members of the clergy, pensioners and military veterans, have been charged.
The court upheld the challenge on two of four grounds. Judges found that the proscription represented “a very significant interference” with the rights to freedom of speech, peaceful assembly, and association. They also ruled that the decision of the then Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, was inconsistent with her own stated policy.
Though Dame Victoria Sharp described Palestine Action as an organisation “that promotes its political cause through criminality and encouragement of criminality” she said that “the court considered that the proscription of Palestine Action was disproportionate. A very small number of Palestine Action’s activities amounted to acts of terrorism within the definition of section 1 of the 2000 Act.
“For these, and for Palestine Action’s other criminal activities, the general criminal law remains available. The nature and scale of Palestine Action’s activities falling within the definition of terrorism had not yet reached the level, scale, and persistence to warrant proscription” .
Or as Jeremy Corbyn put it: “we knew the proscription of Palestine Action was absurd and immoral. Now, we know it was unlawful too. Today’s ruling is a vindication for all those who had the courage to oppose genocide – and a day of shame for those in our government who enabled it”.
The judgement resolutely rebuffs the Starmer government’s attempts to criminalise political dissent and activism aimed at stopping material support for genocide. This is a historic ruling. For the first time an organisation banned under the Terrorism Act has successfully challenged its proscription in court.
Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori said this was a monumental victory.  “We were banned because Palestine Action’s disruption of Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, Elbit Systems, cost the corporation millions of pounds in profits and to lose out on multibillion-pound contracts.
“We’ve used the same tactics as direct action organisations throughout history, including anti-war groups Keir Starmer defended in court, and the government acknowledged in these legal proceedings that this ban was based on property damage, not violence against people. Banning Palestine Action was always about appeasing pro-Israel lobby groups and weapons manufacturers, and nothing to do with terrorism”.
The ruling, and the court victories of the previous weeks in the Filton cases, show that the Government’s actions were not only immoral but unlawful.
We call for the dropping of all charges against those who have been linked to this unlawful proscription and other cases of protest against British complicity in Israel’s genocide, including the organisers of the national marches for Palestine facing criminal charges. 
We call for the resignation of police commissioner Mark Rowley, as well as former Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and current Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood. And above all, we call for the resignation of the head of the whole rotting edifice, Sir Keir Starmer.