No2 NATO – No2 War

A new mass movement was founded in London last week at a meeting supported by a galaxy of anti-war campaigners including Workers Party of Britain leader George Galloway and Socialist Labour’s Chris Williamson, the former MP hounded out of the Labour Party on trumped-up charges of anti-semitism. Other supporters include Max Blumenthal, the founder and editor-in-chief of the Grayzone, an independent investigative news site as well as the rapper Lowkey together with NCP comrades, supporters of the International Ukraine Anti-Fascist Solidarity campaign and many, many more right across the broad anti-war spectrum.
    The hidden hand did it best to stop this meeting taking place. Venues were cancelled at the last minute. But the conference went ahead thanks to the generosity of the Venezuelan embassy that opened the doors of its cultural centre in London to the anti-war campaign to allow its foundation meeting to take place.
    On the street people are sick of the shortages, price hikes and soaring inflation due to the Ukraine war and the NATO sanctions regime on Russia. Millions want to see an end to the conflict that has brought death and destruction to Ukraine while impoverishing millions of working people in Britain and the rest of Europe over the past 12 months or so.
    Now People’s China has launched a 12-point peace plan that could lead to a just and lasting peace in Ukraine. The Russians have welcomed the initiative. So has the Global South or what we used to call the non-aligned countries of the Third World. But the Americans are trying to kill it stone dead.
    Biden doesn’t want peace. He wants victory – regardless of the suffering of the Ukrainian people he claims to support.
    The American establishment, the “deep state” that cuts across the bogus political spectrum in the United States, is dominated by the war lobby that reflects the interests of the most aggressive and reactionary elements of the American bourgeoisie. They are supported by the venal elements of the British ruling class who believe that their global post-colonial interests are best protected by the military might of US imperialism.
    Since the Second World War crawling to the Americans has been 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 US power throughout the world.
    The Stop the War movement has long ceased to play any positive role in the anti-war movement. It calls for “peace” while making the same demands as NATO for an unconditional Russian withdrawal from the Donbas and Crimea. But now we have the chance to close ranks around a new movement committed to genuine anti-war demands.
    In Britain the ruling class would have us believe that we live in what the Americans call the “free world”; that the USA is some sort of democratic utopia and that anyone who opposes imperialism is evil, mad or both. Backed by bought and paid-for labour leaders and a daily dose of lies from the bourgeois media they think they can play this cynical game forever and ever. We must prove them wrong.