No arms for Israel!

Lord Cameron has come back from Israel empty-handed. The Foreign Minister went there to urge restraint on the Netanyahu government following the Iranian missile and drone attacks that were, themselves, a reprisal for the Zionist bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus that killed eleven military advisors including two of their top generals. Though the RAF, together with the French and American air force, did most of the work in fending off the Iranian drones, Cameron got nothing in return from Netanyahu apart from demands for more Western sanctions against the Islamic Republic and unconditional NATO support for whatever revenge the rabid Zionist leader is seeking.
Though not surprising in itself – the only people Netanyahu needs to heed are the Americans – it might, nevertheless, be a step too far for the Israeli leader because Cameron was clearly speaking for Joe Biden himself when he landed in Tel Aviv this week.
Biden, or rather the shadowy cabal that pull the strings behind him, must have sanctioned the Damascus attack that started this new round of fighting. Despite subsequent White House denials it’s difficult to see why Netanyahu would have opted for such a dangerous escalation without getting the green light from his masters in Washington. Some believe the Israeli leader wants to prolong the war in Gaza to scupper American plans for a new NATO bloc in the region that would include the oil-rich Saudis – and thus considerably reduce the role of the Zionist state in the region. Others that he simply wants the war to continue to remain in office and stave off the corruption charges he will face once his immunity from prosecution is lifted. Maybe he simply miscalculated the response in Tehran and Washington.
The Zionists don’t care what the Iranians think but they are certainly concerned at what is going on in Washington. Biden, who barely knows what day it is, is just a pawn of the “deep state” – that cabal of the most venal and aggressive elements within the American ruling class is clearly divided about what to do next.
We see this openly discussed in their media. Some still believe in backing Israel to the hilt to creat the “Greater Middle East” that would break up the existing Arab states into smaller, sectarian puppet governments whose rulers would depend on American and Israeli guns for protection. Others say this is simply beyond the reach of imperialism these days and that the only way forward is to cut a deal with the feudal Arab oil princes to buy off opposition on the Arab street and impose a sophisticated surrender peace that would give the semblance of a two-state solution while reinforcing American hegemony over the entire region.
The alternative is an escalating conflict that has already drastically reduced Western traffic through the Suez Canal amid fears of another all-out Middle East war that could disrupt or even cut the oil supplies from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf that the Western world depends on.
British workers have no say in what goes on in the United States but they do have a voice in the unions and on the street. Tell the Labour and union leaders that claim to represent us that British arms to Israel must be halted. We want an end to the war in Gaza and want justice for the Palestinian Arabs. And we want it now!

Old Town blues

by Ben Soton

The BBC’s latest Monday night drama, This Town, is actually set across two towns, or more precisely cities in the 1980s.  It covers some of the politics, music and culture of the period featuring the Handsworth riots in Birmingham as well as the IRA bombing campaigns.  Also featured are the music based sub-cultures of the period; skins, rude boys and Zulus; whilst the involvement of organised crime gives it an updated Peaky Blinders feel.
The story centres around an extended family that cuts across ethnicity, nationality although interestingly not class.  The Birmingham side of the family, mixed race British/West Indian includes Gregory Williams, a soldier in the British Army (played by Jordan Bolger) and his younger brother, (played by Levi Brown) a college student and aspiring musician Dante.  
Meanwhile the Irish-Catholic Coventry side of the family, the Quinns, include Bardon (played by Ben Rose), another college student and aspiring musician; his IRA father Eamon (played by Peter McDonald) and alcoholic mother and ex-wife Estella (played by Michelle Dockery).
The series proves that Michelle Dockery should not be seen as a type-cast actress; she can ably play a working-class alcoholic as well as an aristocrat from Downton Abbey.
It opens with a scene from the Handsworth Riots of 1980 and shows the extent of police racism of the period.  Many of the scenes are intersected with music from the era as many contemporary bands had their origins in the West Midlands.
Much of the plot centres around attempts by Dante to avoid being drawn into organised crime whilst Bardon struggles to avoid being drawn into the IRA campaign by his father.
The plot is further complicated when Gregory, Dante’s brother, is ordered by his superiors to spy on the Irish side of his family. In this sense the drama reflects bourgeois attitudes of the time that are still around – that being Irish makes you susceptible to “terrorism” and being black makes you susceptible to organised crime. To avoid this both Bardon and Dante, along with other teens form a band as a means of escape amid numerous references to the M6 as a way out of Birmingham. Needless to say the essence of the series is that of individualism versus the community.
 

Back to the Future

Everybody expects the Conservatives to get trounced at the local elections next month. Few doubt the outcome with Labour still at least 18 points ahead in the opinion polls and the Tories undermined by growing support for the new Faragist Reform Party. But nothing can be taken for granted these days, least of all where Labour is concerned.
Starmer says “our mission-driven government will restore pride and purpose in our country. Let’s make this a reality, together”. Meaningless platitudes that will not get the vote out.
No one knows what Labour stands for these days beyond slavish support for the United States and Israel and an economic programme that differs little from the Sunak plan that Starmer claims to oppose. Starmer may have won the blessing of the City of London and the Murdoch media empire but he’s lost hundreds of thousands of party members in the process.
These are the people Labour relied on to get their vote out. Some 200,000 have dropped out of the party under Starmer’s watch. Some were supporters of the Palestinian cause hounded out on trumped up charges of “anti-Semitism”. Others were Corbynistas who’ve simply dropped out of the party whose leader has abandoned all of Labour’s core beliefs.
Some, not many, have turned to George Galloway’s latest political slate or the alternative platforms of the assorted left that try and repeatedly fail to build an alternative “workers’ party” to replace Labour. They’ve always failed – even Arthur Scargill’s valiant attempt came to nothing – because no alternative social-democratic party can get off the ground without the support of the trade unions. And the unions, for good or bad, are still largely in the sway of Labour’s bureaucrats.
George Galloway has proved, once again, capable of tapping the protest vote amongst the Muslim community to get back into parliament. But that’s as far as it goes and that’s as far as it will ever go. Without mass support from the labour movement Galloway’s “Workers Party” will fizzle out – like Respect which died the death in 2016.
Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott are a different matter. They certainly have mass support amongst the Corbynistas that rebuilt Labour’s strength in London during the Corbyn era. That may be enough to hold their parliamentary seats at the next general election. But on its own it won’t be enough to force Starmer to let them back into the Parliamentary Labour Party let alone build a new left social-democratic platform to challenge Starmer and the old Blairite gang.
As always the battle remains on the union front. Though the Labour Party is dominated by the right wing in the parliamentary party the possibility of their defeat exists as long as Labour retains its organisational links with the trade unions that fund it.
A genuine rank-and-file movement has to be built to sweep out the opportunists and bureaucrats who have reduced the unions that once represented millions of working people into hollowed out avenues for career advancement.
The fight for a democratic Labour Party is linked to the fight for a democratic trade union movement. In the unions we must struggle to elect genuine working class leaderships, who are prepared to represent and fight for the membership against the employers and against the right wing within the movement and to campaign for the removal of all anti‑trade union legislation.

Take on the Zionists!

The Americans, like the Israelis, want to crush Hamas and the rest of the Palestinian resistance that they believe is the major obstacle to the imposition of a surrender peace that would allow the Israelis to annex the parts of the West Bank they call “Greater Israel” while the Palestinians would get a next to nothing – a powerless “independent” statelet run by quislings that the feudal Arab oil princes need to justify their collaboration with imperialism on the Arab street. Even this “two-state” solution is too much for the Netanyahu government and its Zionist settlers’ bloc. The only thing they want to give the Palestinians is a one-way ticket off the land they want to colonise.
Biden, Sunak and the rest of the imperialist pack can ignore and even justify the massacre of tens of thousands of Palestinian Arabs in the Gaza Strip. But the murder of seven Western aid workers this week is a different matter. Three of the innocent victims were British, another was American.
This time round the shock and horror on the street can’t be simply dismissed as pro-Arab propaganda or outright “anti-Semitism”. Nothing the Israelis do with their weasel words about a “tragic accident” and an offer to pay blood money to the families of these hapless victims of Zionist terror can whitewash their latest atrocity in Gaza.
Some say Biden has told the Israelis that he wants an end to the fighting by the end of the week. That may be wishful thinking. Biden and the most venal and aggressive sections of the American ruling class that he represents have given unconditional moral and material support to Israel – support that has enabled the Zionist war-machine to slaughter over 33,000 Palestinian Arabs.
There are, of course, divisions within America’s ruling circles and the British Establishment over the current imperialist stand on Palestine. Arming Israel to the teeth to perpetuate the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights clearly no longer works. The Houthi Yemeni government’s blockade that has closed the Suez Canal to Israeli and Anglo-American shipping is bad news for imperialism. Anger on the Arab street that turns on the oil princes would be a nightmare.
Meanwhile the mass monthly protests that have rocked London for months on end have mobilised public opinion in support of the Palestinians and encouraged others to publicly speak out against Israeli aggression.
Over 600 prominent lawyers, including former Supreme Court justices, have signed a letter warning that the UK government is breaching international law by continuing to arm Israel while a former Conservative minister has publicly accused two Tory peers of working for “the interests of another country”.
Sir Alan Duncan, who served as a Foreign Office minister under Theresa May, says the Conservative Friends of Israel group was “doing the bidding of Netanyahu” and called for two of its prominent members, Lord Polak and Lord Pickles, to be removed from the House of Lords. He also accused several ministers and former ministers of not supporting international law by failing to condemn illegal settlements, including deputy premier Oliver Dowden, Michael Gove, and former home secretaries Suella Braverman and Priti Patel.
Alan Duncan has broken the bourgeois consensus in Sunak’s ranks. Now someone needs to do the same in Starmer’s….

A step in the right direction

US imperialism, after five long months of genocide, finally bowed to world public opinion this week by refusing to veto a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza. But the Americans soon made it clear that they weren’t going to do anything about it,
If the Americans were truly concerned about the plight of the Palestinians they could have cut off all military supplies to Israel to force the Zionists to open up their check-points to allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, accept a permanent ceasefire and to withdraw all Israeli troops from the Palestinian Arab enclave. Instead they’ve rushed to tell the world that the UN resolution was “non-binding” to assure the Israelis that the flow of American arms to Israel will not be suspended. 
This clearly wasn’t enough for the rabid Zionist leaders enraged at the further isolation of Israel on the world stage. Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the resolution as betrayal. He cancelled an Israeli delegation to Washington. “Israel will not cease fire,” Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz said. “We will destroy Hamas and continue to fight until the last of the hostages return home” while another minister said that “the Security Council decision proves that the United Nations is antisemitic, and its secretary general is antisemitic and encourages Hamas”.
Without sanctions the American abstention is in itself a meaningless gesture – a sop to the Palestinian solidarity movement that is sweeping across the United States and the rest of the world. Nevertheless it is a step in the right direction. Equally significant is the fact that  the Sunak government broke ranks with Washington on this issue – joining France, Russia and People’s China in supporting  the modest call on the Security Council for  “an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan respected by all parties leading to a lasting sustainable ceasefire”.
The Israelis thought that they could crush the Palestinians and drive them out of Gaza to clear the land for more Zionist settlers. They never imagined a war like this that has closed their Red Sea port of Eilat and forced over half a million Israelis to flee the country. They never expected such fierce resistance. Not just in Gaza. In the West Bank many Palestinians have joined the partisans to defend themselves against marauding settler gunmen. In the north Israeli incursions are paid back in kind by the Lebanese resistance on a daily basis. 
Now the anti-war movement is growing even in Israel. Former Israeli Chief of Staff Dan Halutz says Netanyahu is leading Israel “from bad to worse”. A junior minister has resigned in the first public crack in Netanyahu’s emergency grand coalition while demands grow for Netanyahu to step down and call fresh elections.
While the Palestinians and Yemenis take on the Zionists head-on the millions on the Arab street and the millions upon millions throughout the world who have taken to the streets in support of their just struggle must step up the campaign to stop the Israeli slaughter and force the Zionists to recognise the just demands of the Palestinian Arabs. 

A landslide for Putin

 Vladimir Putin was swept back to the Kremlin in the Russian presidential elections last week. In a 77 per cent turn-out an overwhelming 88 per cent of the electorate voted for Putin, the leader of the ruling United Russia party, in last week’s poll much to the dismay of the Western media that routinely dismisses all elections that Putin wins as rigged.
Despite the best efforts of imperialist intelligence their fifth column inside the Russian Federation failed in its feeble attempts to disrupt the ballot while the Ukrainian raid across the border ended in yet another spectacular defeat for the fascist regime in Kiev. Putin now has a renewed mandate to lead the country in its confrontation with the United States and the rest of the imperialist pack.
The Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) candidate came second with just over four per cent of the vote followed by two other candidates from right-wing parties in the Duma, the Russian parliament as people closed ranks around their veteran national leader in times of war. But the communists ran a good campaign that they believe will lay the future foundations for Party growth throughout the Russian Federation.
“The party did a great job,” the CPRF said.”We participated in all debates, presenting our programme in all the constituent bodies of the Russian Federation and understood that the party and our patriotic union have great support. Our candidate was backed by one million supporters and we believe that’s a big deal. As a result, the CPRF candidate came second and the party confirmed its status as the country’s main opposition party”.

Stop the slaughter 

Israel has now killed over 31,000 Palestinians in its genocidal assault on Palestinian Arabs in the Gaza Strip. Many more are trapped beneath the rubble of their own homes. We must keep taking to the streets in solidarity with Palestine.
The Israelis want to drive the Palestinian Arabs out of the Gaza Strip to make room for Zionist settlers. Starvation is being used by Israel as a weapon of war. The Palestinians in the besieged enclave are desperately short of food, water and other essential supplies and UN experts warn that Gaza is facing imminent famine.
But the partisans stand firm. No street or alley is safe for the Israeli marauders in Gaza or indeed for the Zionist settler gunmen whose reign of terror has fired a new wave of armed resistance in the occupied West Bank.
The Establishment, which as a whole does whatever the Americans say, has been rocked by a wave of protests that has turned into a mass movement demanding an end to British support for Israeli aggression. That’s why the bourgeoisie demonise the demonstrators and want to stop the demonstrations.
But nothing can silence the cry for justice for the Palestinian Arabs. We will keep demanding an immediate and permanent ceasefire and an end to the UK-Israel arms trade. We will keep protesting until Palestine is free. Let them hear it in Tel Aviv! Let them hear it in Washington!

No ordinary tale

 by Ben Soton

The Last Devil to Die by Richard Osman; Penguin, London 2024 Pbk £9.99 432 pp

The Last Devil to Die is the fourth instalment in Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series based around a group of elderly crime-solving amateur sleuths.  Once again Ron, Joyce, Ibrahim and Elizabeth are brought together to solve the murder of an antique dealer.  Meanwhile a hundred, thousand pounds worth of heroin goes missing; naturally the two events are closely connected.  The plot of the novel revolves around various and often fatal attempts to locate the box. 
As one might expect elderly characters have a limited shelf life and it appears that Osman is preparing for life’s most definite certainty by bringing in new characters.  In this case a computer expert known as Computer Bob and Mervyn, a septuagenarian who appears to be a victim of an online dating scam – who, at face value, may not make the best of detectives.  However, this character might be in the novel to remind us that not all pensioners are as street wise as the main characters. 
 Mervyn’s tragic situation provides an interesting side story to the main plot of the novel whilst at the end of the novel we hear of the arrival of a new resident – Edwin Mayhew.  Meanwhile the relationships between the secondary characters continue to develop.  Bogdan and Donna consider marriage and Ibrahim, a psychiatrist, visits the convicted criminal Connie Johnson in prison.  
The Last Devil to Die also shines a light on the tragic and delicate issue of dementia.  We see Stephen, Elizabeth’s husband, entering the final stages of the illness.  For many years he has been a keen chess player and often plays it with the local handyman, Bogdan.  However, as his memory fades, he now believes that Bogdan is going to teach him how to play the game.  The question arises as to what point to you lose a loved one when they have the condition –  there will come a point when Stephen is no longer aware who Elizabeth is.  
This aspect shows the darker side to old age. Not everyone in their seventies and eighties is as mentally active as the main characters.  However, the main characters; Ron, Joyce, Elizabeth and Ibrahim are as mentally astute as ever.  Whilst unlike Agatha Christie’s somewhat implausible Miss Marple, a seventy something spinster who has barely set foot outside her West Country village, this gang of four actually has a wide-ranging set of life experiences.
The question is has Richard Osman come up with an ultimately unique idea?   A group of pensioners, living in a Kent retirement home have become the new amateur sleuths of the twenty first century.  Perhaps more plausible than Miss Marple, Poirot or even Sherlock Holmes.  

Another brick in the wall

Moves to curb democratic protests and solidarity movements were announced this week under new government definitions of “extremism” that will be used to blacklist groups the ruling class deem to be seeking to undermine what they call Britain’s “liberal democracy”. 
The new rules will, of course, not affect the Zionists or the racists who see the Tory party as their natural home following the collapse of the BNP and the National Front. What they will do is  prevent public bodies from providing platforms for those spreading “hateful anti-British” ideas that “poison community life”. Though the definition will have no effect on the existing criminal law  as it only applies to the operations of government itself, its intention is clearly to isolate and marginalise the massive Palestinian solidarity movement and climate change campaigns that have swept the streets and challenged the bourgeois consensus in recent years.
The Sunak government would dearly like to ban the demonstrations outright but it simply doesn’t have the public support to do so. So now it is stepping up the harassment of demonstrators and smearing the organisers as merchants of hate. But who believes their lies these days?
London hasn’t become a “no-go” area for Jews. In fact many members of the Jewish community have joined the massive Palestinian solidarity marches that have rocked London over the past five months and have all ended peacefully – despite the dire predictions of “mob rule” in the Tory media. 
Hundreds of thousands of people have supported the recent cycle of demonstrations calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Millions more support the demand for justice for the Palestinian Arabs and an end to fighting in the Gaza Strip. This is an attack on democracy, not a defence of it. The right to protest must be defended.

Keep up the fight

International efforts to stop the fighting in Gaza have come to nothing in recent weeks. The Palestinian resistance have rejected the Americans’ worthless Ramadan cease-fire “pause” that would clearly not have led to a lasting truce given Israel’s declared aim to re-occupy the Strip and wipe Hamas off the face of the earth. The Palestinians want a permanent cease-fire, the total withdrawal of all Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip and internationally guaranteed pledges to speedily work towards the establishment of the independent Palestinian state that the imperialists accept when they talk about a “two-state” solution.
Air-drops and floating piers aren’t going stave off starvation in Gaza. If the Americans really want to help they should just tell the Israelis to allow food and medical convoys cross their border into the enclave. If the Americans really want to see the release of the Israelis in Palestinian captivity they should accept the Palestinian offer of a prisoner exchange. If the Americans really want to see an end to the fighting they should stop vetoing truce proposals at the United Nations that have the support of all the members of the Security Council as well as virtually all the countries in the entire world.

Robbing the poor

Though the Tories care little or nothing for the working people they exploit to keep the bourgeoisie in clover they have to pose, like virtuous Roman Senators, as impartial governors of the state machine  –  especially in the run-up to the general election. When the going is good the bourgeoisie will sacrifice a tiny fraction of their immense wealth to maintain the health service and what’s left of the “welfare state”. When times hard – and they certainly are now as we enter the 16th  year of a recession that still shows no sign of recovery – they will try to pass the entire burden onto the backs of the workers with austerity measures that they call the “national interest”.
This week’s Spring Budget was no exception. Jeremy Hunt tinkers around income tax and national insurance contributions but at the end of the day it was as Keir Starmer said "just another short-term cynical political gimmick”.
This is a budget for the wealthy drawn up a government that represents the ruling class. People on low incomes or benefits will be hit by cuts in the social wage. Pensioners face an average £1,000 hit to their incomes because of the tax changes. The Labour leader says the Tories “give with one hand and take even more with the other" and "nothing they do between not and the election will change that” – and on this occasion he’s quite right. But Labour has nothing to offer in exchange. 
The renationalisation of all the utilities, industries and services that were once in public ownership would pour billions back into the Treasury. The health service could be rescued by restoring the wealth and profit taxes of the Wilson era and scrapping the Trident nuclear arms system could easily provide the funds to end the homelessness crisis. But the Starmer leadership is committed to maintaining the tax-break regime that began after the Tory come-back in 1979  
Paul Nowak, the General Secretary of the TUC slammed “a deeply cynical budget” packed with “wishful thinking on productivity and pre- election gimmicks”.  We need a government that will take responsibility for growth, Nowak said, with stronger public services and strengthened public infrastructure not least to meet the climate crisis. For working people up and down the country a change of government cannot come to soon.
Indeed. We will all be glad to see the back of Sunak. But we’ve also got to defeat the class collaborators and bureaucrats who run Labour and most of the unions these days. If we don’t we can only expect the same again from Starmer & Co.

A slap in the face for Starmer

Galloway bagged almost 40 per cent of the vote in the Rochdale by-election last week that was dominated by the war in Gaza. Starmer and the sad-sack Blairites that surround him told us that the average Labour voter wasn’t interested in Palestine. Last week proved them wrong.
Though there is a substantial Muslim minority in Rochdale the swing to Galloway and his new Workers’ Party of Britain went far beyond the Muslim community. Disowning their own candidate for supporting Palestine and making remarks deemed to be “anti-Semitic” by the Starmer bureaucracy didn’t help Labour either.
Galloway says he believes his win will “spark a movement, a landslide, a shifting of the tectonic plates in scores of parliamentary constituencies”. But, of course, we’ve heard all this before.
The MP kicked out of Labour for opposing the imperialist invasion of Iraq in 2003 returned to Parliament on two previous occasion on his old Respect platform. But Respect never took off as a national party. Whether Galloway is third-time lucky this time round remains to be seen but without the mass support of the union movement that seems unlikely. 
Nevertheless George Galloway’s victory was a slap in the face for Starmer & Co. It augurs well for Jeremy Corbyn’s re-election in London and it was a warning shot to Labour to never take their traditional vote for granted. Now it’s their turn to look over their shoulder. Let them wonder where their slavish support for Israeli aggression and boot-licking the Americans is taking them...   

Hobson’s Choice

The American presidential election is being viewed with increasing trepidation in Westminster and the other chancelleries of Europe. Not surprisingly considering the choice facing the electorate – a senile old man in thrall to the most aggressive and venal sections of the American ruling class or Donald Trump, whose calls for trade wars and tariffs could easily trigger a global slump not seen since the Wall Street Crash of 1929.
Though Trump is ahead in the opinion polls at the moment that could easily change if the movers and shakers in the Democratic Party dump Joe Biden in favour of a new leader to face the challenge in November. Many favour Michelle Obama, a lawyer and author, whose only claim to high office is that she is the wife of President Barack Obama and served as the First Lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017. Needless to say the views of bourgeois politicians this side of the Atlantic will count for nothing in their calculations.
Gone are the days when British politicians on both sides of the House could pose as equals to their American counter-parts and talk about a “special relationship” with US imperialism. Gone – like the dream of the Franco-German bourgeoisie of an independent European Union that could play off East against West or the nonsensical “Third Way” of the Blairites which, in itself, was just another version of the Keynesian economic model pioneered by Fascist Italy and the Third Reich in the 1930s. 
In the old days British imperialism bragged about the Empire on which "the sun never set" while the German imperialists talked of "world domination". United States imperialism has always been more subtle. After the Second World War it made a bid to control the economic development of the world through the Marshall Plan and its dominance of the fledgling United Nations. This was thwarted by the opposition of the Soviet Union and the new people's democracies. During the Cold War much of the world was divided between the rival spheres of influence of the United States and the USSR. However the end of the Soviet Union enabled the United States to reinforce its grip on Western Europe.
Western European leaders still pose as equals of the Americans in the NATO alliance but in reality they’ve been forced to accept the model of subservience imposed on Japan by US imperialism after its defeat in 1945.
Dependent on American protection to defend their own global interests they destroyed the Yugoslav federation and the Libyan Jamahuriya at Washington’s behest. They fan the flames of war in Ukraine and the Middle East and prolong the unhappy partition of many countries including Cyprus, Ireland, Kashmir and Korea.
Now all they can do is watch as the drama of the race to the White House plays out. Whether Michelle Obama can mobilise the same rainbow coalition that swept her husband into the White House in 2008 is another matter. Biden’s blanket support for Israeli aggression has alienated Arab-Americans as well as large sections of the Black and Muslim community that has traditionally supported the Democrats in the past. Whether they will return to the fold will ultimately depend on Biden’s departure and a more even-handed approach to the Palestinians in the run-up to the election.

Donbas communists speak

Boris Litvinov with RT's  Steve Sweeney in Moscow

by New Worker correspondent

Boris Litvinov, secretary of the Donetsk district of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, joined a Zoom meeting with members of International Ukraine Anti Fascist Solidarity (IUAFS) while on a visit to Moscow in February. This was our first contact with comrade Litvinov for some time as residents in the Donbas are still unable to access many applications including virtual meeting platforms.

It came at a time when the NATO-backed Ukrainian forces have massively stepped up deliberate attacks on places where large numbers of civilians gather with long range weapons. There have been two recent horrific attacks in Donetsk city and the town of Lisichansk in Lugansk in which almost 50 civilians died.

“Every day the situation in Ukraine is becoming more and more unpredictable. Now our forces, those of the Russian Federation and the local militias, are step by step gaining more positions in the fighting,” Litvinov said.

“After all the talk about the Ukrainian counter offensive it is now obvious that it has failed. Now both sides are preparing for offensives in the spring and summer.

“But there is a big difference between the conduct of the war on both sides. French, British and American long-range missiles and shells are being used indiscriminately against Donetsk and other cities in the Donbas. Civilians are being killed every day, and 50 percent of Donetsk city is without power. This has become a big problem.

“The Russian Federation and Ukraine are waiting for the other side’s ammunition to be exhausted, or for the other side to weaken.

“If we look back to the attacks on our country throughout history, in 1918 14 countries of the Entente Powers attacked Russia, and in the Second World War all [the Nazis led] the forces of Western Europe were brought together to fight our country.

“At the moment, you wouldn't believe it, 50 countries are participating in this military operation against Donetsk.

“What Western people can't understand about the Russians is our collective mentality and our internationalism. This is especially difficult for many Anglo-Saxons, for people in Britain and the United States, to understand.

“Yes, sometimes we take time and we don't take action, we are absolutely different from people in Western European countries, but when it comes to a huge threat, sooner or later we ull together, shoulder to shoulder, to resist.

“What is happening now, we are together, we are brothers, we are comrades. This is our country, this is our motherland. Maybe not everyone realises this, but in spite of this the majority of our people realise that when there is a huge threat we can come together to defend ourselves.

“Actually, this is a disaster which is threatening our country, and it is not just Russians by the way, it is also 130 different nationalities living in our country.

“For us this is very emotional for all of us. We can't understand why Europe doesn't resist. There are millions of people in different countries, we do understand that most of the people are brainwashed, but still ordinary people should understand that it is high time to stop sending money to kill people, instead of sending money on healthcare, education and housing.

“But people in the West have very short memories, they should understand never to mess with Russia, never to attack Russia. These people don't learn from history that we know how to fight, and sooner or later this will bring terrible results for many European countries.

“This time we will achieve victory, but at a terrible price. How many lives of young people, how many Russian people, how many Ukrainian people, do we need to lose?

“It's high time to stop it. We don't want to fight, please stop sending money to kill people. What can we do? We have to defend our people.

“Please remind your people, please read the history of Russia. Whenever Russia is attacked it has been rebuffed, and it has been our victory.

“The Ukrainians are Slavonic people, they are our brothers, so please make efforts to pressure your governments to stop sending money to kill people in Ukraine.

“Putin is not Russia, and Russia is not Putin. There are many people in Russia, including ourselves, who are against him. To a very large extent what is happening now is his fault. If he had taken the decision to recognise the Donetsk and Lugansk republics he should have done it in 2014.

“He waited eight years, and it is his fault that people are dying today. We in the Communist Party have called on Putin to do this for eight years, and during that time Ukraine acquired huge amounts of armaments and soldiers from abroad. So it is his fault that our guys are dying now in Ukraine, his fault personally and the government which he heads.

"The Communist Party is alive and our comrades now have a faction in the Donetsk parliament, the People's Council, with six people out of 90. They are working hard and actively, and actually more than any other faction in the parliament. There are four communists in Kherson, three communists in Zaporizhia and four communists in the Lugansk parliament”.

Chaotic scenes in Parliament

The chaotic scenes in Parliament that followed the Speaker’s decision to take the Labour amendment to a Scottish National Party demand for an “immediate cease-fire” in Gaza certainly staved off the Labour revolt Keir Starmer was most desperate to avoid. Whether Sir Lindsay Hoyle’s handling of the motion on the Gaza crisis was a breach of the arcane rules and conventions of the House of Commons is a matter that only MPs can judge. Over fifty of them already have done so – signing a motion of no confidence in Sir Lindsay Hoyle, whose position is now seriously in question.
The Labour amendment calling for an “immediate humanitarian cease-fire” was clearly intended to move closer to the worthless platitudes of Joe Biden and his minions who drivel on about striving to end the bloodshed and talk about a “two-state solution” to meet some of the Palestinian demands while vetoing every cease-fire call at the United Nations and rushing weapons to Israel to help them continue the mass slaughter of civilians in the Gaza Strip.

Boycott the Zionist state

The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign is a Palestinian-led movement for freedom, justice and equality. BDS upholds the simple principle that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of humanity.
Israel is occupying and colonising Palestinian land, discriminating against Palestinian citizens of Israel and denying Palestinian refugees the right to return to their homes. Inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement, the BDS call urges action to pressure Israel to comply with international law.
BDS is now a vibrant global movement made up of unions, academic associations, churches and grass-roots movements across the world. Since its launch in 2005, BDS is having a major impact and is effectively challenging international support for Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism.
The tragedy of the Palestinian Arabs began when British imperialism first occupied their land in 1918 and encouraged Zionist immigration through the Balfour declaration. British imperialism sought to create a community of Zionist settlers who would prolong their occupation of Palestine indefinitely. The Zionists helped British colonialism crush the Palestine Revolt in 1936. But after the Second World War the Zionists seized the opportunity to push for a separate state of their own. In 1948 the British colonial mandate ended and the State of Israel was proclaimed. On that day the first Arab-Israeli war began. It has never ended.
The first war led to the expulsion of a million Palestinian Arabs from their homes by the Zionist regime. Those refugees and their descendants have never given up their right to return to their land. And this is the heart of the crisis in the Middle East that has led to five full-scale wars and continuing simmering conflicts.
Israel is an American protectorate. It is economically and politically entirely dependent on American imperialism and successive Israeli governments have existed to serve the needs of American imperialism in the region. Those needs are to weaken and divide the Arabs to ensure that the big oil corporations can continue their exploitation and plunder of Arab oil until it eventually runs out.
While licking the boots of the Americans is second nature to Labour leaders Starmer is mindful of the mass support for the Palestinians on the street that threatens to undermine the Labour vote, and not just amongst the Muslim community. That’s why the protests that have swamped the capital time and time again over the past few months must continue until the Israelis are forced to cease-fire and end the bloodshed. That’s why the campaigns across the country supporting the Palestinians and calling for a boycott of the Zionist state must continue until the legitimate rights of the Palestinian Arabs are restored. 

An epic tale of the West Country

 

 by Ben Soton

The Armour of Light by Ken Follett: Macmillan 2023; 752 pp; £25:00 Hbk, £6:00 Pbk

The Armour of Light is the fifth novel set in the fictional West Country city of Kingsbridge.  The previous four include The Pillars of the Earth set in the 12th century; The World Without End, covering the Hundred Years War and the Black Death and the Column of Fire set during the Reformation.  Meanwhile in 2020 Follet wrote the prequel The Evening and the Morning set in the years before the Norman Conquest.     
Follett’s latest novel is set during the Industrial Revolution, covering the period from 1792 to 1824.  Kingsbridge is now a centre of cloth-making; with the inevitable class-struggle between employers and workers.  The novel includes strikes, machine-breaking and in general highlights many of the injustices of the period.
The Armour of Light also highlights religious differences between the Anglican Church, favoured by the Establishment and the Methodists, who were in turn favoured by more progressive employers and some workers.  We  see an element of scandal with members of the gentry having affairs with member of the lower orders and a focus on events abroad; namely the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.  To summarise the book could be described as Silas Marmer meets Jane Austin, meets Sharpe.     
The novel is however a product of Follet’s politics; which he describes as centre-left.  Ken Follett, the husband of former Labour MP Barbera Follett, is a committed Blairite and almost certainly a supporter of the present Labour leadership.  The book’s heroes are the better or progressive manufacturers; namely Amos Barrowfield and David Shoveler (known as Spade).  Both men, although committed Methodists, are involved in affairs with female members of the gentry.  The novel’s leading villain is Alderman Hornbeam, a bad employer and harsh magistrate.  Another character portrayed in a positive light is Sal Clitheroe, essentially an early form of trade-union moderate who favours class collaboration.  But her husband Jarge Box, a more militant worker who sympathizes with the French Revolution, is portrayed as a drunken, hot-headed fool. 
Many of the main characters find themselves either on or near the battlefield at Waterloo.  This is an obvious attempt by Follett to promote “national unity” above that of class; a concept rejected by Marxists.  Ironically, at one point in the story Jarge Box argues that the Napoleonic Code may well be a fairer legal system than English Common Law; not so much the drunken fool there.   
Despite its faults The Armour of Light is still an enjoyable read; especially when Follett’s last novel the apocalyptic Never was such a disappointment.  It is well researched and contains interesting and useful historical information.  What is also interesting is whether Follett, who turns seventy-five this year, will write a sixth and final Kingsbridge novel; taking the city into the present day.    

The voice of the oppressed

The Israelis are rampaging through Gaza. Raiding hospitals. Killing women and children. Destroying schools and homes .Spreading terror with bombs and drones – that’s what their much vaunted army is good at – but it’s a different story when they come up against the Palestinian resistance. The Israelis are paying a high price for their aggression in Gaza and the West Bank. Their northern border is ablaze. Over half a million Israelis have fled abroad to escape the fighting and the Houthi Yemeni government’s blockade has closed Israel’s only port on the Red Sea.

China, Russia and the Global South are demanding an end to the fighting but these calls are ignored by the Israeli government that knows that it can do whatever it likes under the protection of US imperialism.
Though Americans maintain the pretence that Israel is an independent state everyone on the Arab streets knows that the Israelis can do nothing without the sanction of US imperialism and that ultimately it is the US government that denies Palestinian rights and seeks the destruction of the Palestinian resistance.
The most venal and aggressive sections of the Anglo-American ruling class that thought this was going to be the “New American Century” are dying on the streets of Gaza.
They can’t crush Arab resistance. They can’t stifle the global anti-war movement calling for an immediate end to Israeli aggression. The voice of the oppressed, the millions that support the legitimate rights of the Palestinian Arabs is being heard across the world. Let them hear it in Tel Aviv! Let them hear it in Washington!

Meanwhile in Rochdale...

A former Labour leader tells us the party’s leadership has sometimes lacked political “savvy” with its handling of recent crises, including its green spending pledge and the Rochdale by-election. But Neil Kinnock, a grandee who now sits in the House of Lords, was perhaps understating the crisis of confidence that has shaken the Starmer leadership over the past few weeks.
Labour still has a huge lead over the Tories but the mounting anger at Starmer’s refusal to call for an immediate end to the fighting in Gaza is undermining Labour’s support throughout the movement.
Dumping the Labour candidate in the Rochdale by-election shows how unfit Starmer is to lead the Labour Party. The Zionist lobby that launched the witch-hunt that drove Ken Livingstone and many other supporters of the Palestinians out of the Labour Party worked hand in glove with Blairites to undermine Jeremy Corbyn. Last week they joined the Tory media to force Starmer to get rid of Ali.
Azhar Ali, a member of the Muslim community, has been suspended after making some anti-Israeli remarks at a private meeting deemed to be “anti-semitic” by the Tory press. The leader of the Labour group on Lancashire County Council; an advisor to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown during the last Labour government had been, until last week, a staunch supporter of Starmer & Co and was seen a safe pair of hands to hold Rochdale. Disowned by Labour but too late to replace him Azhar Ali’s name will still appear on the ballot paper as the official Labour candidate at the end of the month.
Now the door’s wide open for yet another George Galloway come-back. Standing on his own “Workers Party of Britain” platform the veteran Palestinian solidarity campaigner hopes to be swept back into Parliament by a protest vote that goes far beyond Rochdale’s Muslim community.

Where are we going?

Labour looks set to win the next general election. If the vote was held now the fifteen to twenty points lead in the opinion polls would give Starmer a landslide victory of Blairite proportions. But the polls can be misleading.
    Sunak is undoubtedly in trouble. He’s failed to win back the so-called “middle Englanders” who abandoned the Tories when the economy nearly collapsed under Liz Truss. Sunak’s failed to appease the Tory bigots over the refugee crisis who are now turning to the “PopCons” – the ‘Popular Conservative’ Trussite faction in parliament or the Faragist Reform Party.
    Only time will tell whether the appeal of the “Popcons” or the “Reformers” will split the Tory vote. Sunak’s team hopes not. Some think they can still rally the Tory faithful. This, of course, may just be wishful thinking. But it’s interesting to note the air of caution coming from one of the leading Blairites this week.
    Peter Mandelson, a Blairite grandee, says people “are not pricing in sufficiently” the possibility of Labour failing to win a majority. Labour’s poll lead is “artificial” and “is going to contract”. A landslide is not a foregone conclusion and if Labour fails to maintain its current momentum, it is on course for “a somewhat more ambivalent result than than the opinion polls are currently suggesting”.
    That’s certainly true. Starmer has hounded out most of the Corbynistas that the party relied on to do the canvassing needed to get the Labour vote out while promising little or nothing to the millions of working people whose votes will decide the next election. Starmer & Co may well believe that crawling to big business, media barons and the Americans is the key to victory – but it means nothing to the workers who will only rally round Labour if there’s real reform on the agenda.
    We reject the “parliamentary road” and electoral politics. But the left social-democrats who call themselves “revolutionaries” aren’t the answer. They claim to be the alternative voice of the labour movement. But their slates will end up, as always, amongst the also-rans at election time. The same goes for George Galloway and his new “Workers Party of Britain”. Though he bucked the system in the past, returning to parliament on two occasions on his Respect platform, he achieved nothing.
    These posers call for social‑democratic reforms while campaigning against the only mass force capable of implementing reform, the Labour Party itself. The paltry results of all these parties reflect the futility of trying to compete with Labour in bourgeois elections.
    They foster the illusion that there is a left electoral alternative to Labour when the reality is that the only alternative — in the current situation — to a Conservative government is a Labour government. So they end up portraying Labour rather than the ruling class as the main enemy of the working class. Objectively they end up in the camp of the class enemy.
    A Labour government, with its links with the unions and the co‑operative movement, offers the best option for the working class in the era of bourgeois parliamentary democracy. Our strategy is for working class unity and our campaigns are focused on defeating the right‑wing within the movement and strengthening the left and progressive forces within the Labour Party and the unions.
    We must demand that the Labour Party reflect the wishes of the millions of its affiliated union members, expressed through the unions’ democratic procedures. And the unions we must struggle to elect genuine working class leaderships, who are prepared to represent and fight for the membership.
    The Party must campaign for a democratic Labour Party controlled by its affiliates; a Labour Party whose policies reflect those of a democratic union movement would become a powerful instrument for progressive reforms that would strengthen organised labour and benefit the working class.
    Our Party’s strategy is the only way to fight for the communist alternative within the working class of England, Scotland and Wales. We want day‑to‑day reforms and they can only be achieved by the main reformist, social democratic party in Britain, the Labour Party. We want revolution and that can only be achieved through the leadership of the communist party.

The thin red line

The Sunak government has wisely dismissed General Sanders recent call for a “citizen army” for war with Russia, which in his mind has already begun in Ukraine. "This war is not merely about the black soil of the Donbas, nor the re-establishment of a Russian empire” the worthy general says. “It's about defeating our system and way of life politically, psychologically, and symbolically. How we respond as the pre-war generation will reverberate through history. Ukrainian bravery is buying time, for now”.
Downing Street says the “British military has a proud tradition of being a voluntary force. There are no plans to change that" adding that "hypothetical scenarios" about potential future conflicts were "not helpful".
The grandees are well aware of the outcome of such a war in which there would be no winners and very few, if any, survivors. They know how deeply unpopular a return to conscription would be with the teenagers who would be the first to be called up for what was called “national service” until it was abolished in 1960. The same goes for the senior officers who shudder at the thought of injecting the youth culture of today into the armed forces.
General Sanders, the Chief of the General Staff, is a scion of the ruling class who’s spent his entire life in the army. He knows all this. He knew he’d get no takers when he made his controversial comments at the International Armoured Vehicles Conference (IAVC) in London last week. His speech isn’t the beginning of a new campaign to take us back to the “good old days” but part of the efforts by the most venal and aggressive sections of the British ruling class to serve US imperialism ND maintain and increase British defence expenditure. 
The United States is the only country that’s used nuclear weapons against a civilian population and since World War II they have threatened to nuke other countries including those that don't possess nuclear weapons. Britain is a major arms supplier and its troops are deployed in a growing number of war zones and areas made unstable as a result of imperialist intervention and aggression. 
In 2008 the Americans removed their nuclear missiles from the UK after judging that the supposed threat from Moscow had diminished. Now they’re coming back.
Now US navy secretary Carlos Del Toro calls on the UK to "reassess" the size of its armed forces given "the threats that exist today” and the Americans are using the “Russian threat” to create new bases on our soil for their weapons of mass destruction. According to the Telegraph the US plans to place  B61-12 gravity bombs, three times as strong as the Hiroshima device, at the RAF Lakenheath air base in Suffolk.
In the corridors of power those who do the bidding of the United States argue that this is the only way to protect the British imperialist interest across the globe. They call it the “special relationship” though the only thing that is special about the Atlantic alliance is that the Americans speak our language. General Sanders, however, speaks theirs.

 

Fanning the flames

The shameful decision of the Sunak government to send the RAF in to bomb Yemen in support of American offensive against the defiant Arab republic has done nothing for the merchant shipping the imperialists claim to be protecting. The Houthi government that controls most of the country have stepped up their blockade that’s closed the Red Sea to all Israeli shipping. And the US campaign, ludicrously called “Operation Prosperity Guardian” has now put the Red Sea off limits to British and American vessels as well.
    Though crawling to the Americans is second nature to Conservative and Labour leaders it’s a different ball game in Europe. Franco-German imperialism wants to sit this one out and the European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrel says that the bloc has no intention to send warships to the US naval mission in the Red Sea.
    “This bloc does not intend to escalate the conflict with the Yemeni army, we must do everything possible to ensure freedom of navigation, but at the same time avoid escalation,” Borrel said.
    The EU wants to distance itself from Anglo-American aggression to guarantee the continued supply of oil and gas from Qatar and the other oil kingdoms of the Persian Gulf which supply most of the continent with its energy needs these days. Qatar, which has long supported the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, has warned that the escalation of the crisis in the Red Sea could force shipping to take a much longer and more expensive diversion via South Africa that would seriously impact on LNG cargoes to Europe.
    It will also affect the delivery of supplies from the Far East to Europe. Tesla has announced that due to the auto parts flow disruption caused by transportation delays, it will stop its production in its Gigafactory in Berlin. Volvo, the now Chinese-owned car manufacturer. Has suspended production at its plant in Ghent, Belgium, due to delays in parts deliveries.
    The Houthi leaders have repeatedly said that their objective is to stop the slaughter in Gaza. Their blockade will end when the Israelis cease-fire. One call to Tel Aviv from the White House would do the trick, If the Biden administration had any sense it would do it now.

Preparing for Power?

The Tory government is on its last legs. Playing the race card over the refugee crisis has done nothing to boost their flagging fortunes. The pundits say Sunak will go for an autumn general election. The opinion polls put Labour streets ahead of the Tories. The media tell us Labour is preparing for power and Starmer is already writing the next King’s Speech. But what is Labour preparing us for?
    Absolutely nothing if anything the Labour leadership say is anything to go by these days. No national mass housing plans. No renationalisation of the railways or the energy and water utilities. No major increase in public investment in education or the health service, Doing whatever the Americans want – well that goes without saying.
    It difficult to see where Labour actually differs from the Conservatives on most issues – and this is what Starmer wants. Starmer’s spent most of his time knifing Corbyn in the back and driving out the former Labour leader’s supporters out of the party. The Labour leader clearly thinks this is the key to victory at the next general election.
    But a manifesto that consists entirely of vacuous platitudes will do nothing to mobilise working people to vote Labour – and if Labour can’t get their vote out then the Tories will win by default.

A dangerous escalation

In the 19th century the imperialists used “gun-boat diplomacy” to carve up Africa the rest of the world into various European spheres of influence. It worked because only the colonial powers could manufacture the weapons of mass destruction needed to enslave the people of what is we now call the Global South. They thought their realms, like the British Empire on which “the sun never set” would last forever. They called it “civilisation” and “the White Man’s burden” when they brutally crushed all resistance to the forces used to build colonial empires that spanned the globe. But they couldn’t crush the spirit of freedom amongst the oppressed masses who swept away the colonial system after the second world war.
The masses of the Third World who took up the gun in the national liberation wars in Algeria and Zimbabwe showed that it was people, not arms, that decide the outcome of struggles while the Korean and Vietnamese people taught the American imperialists a lesson they still have yet to learn.
If the Anglo-American attacks on Yemen were meant to build a new NATO bloc in the Middle East to protect Israel and intimidate the Arabs it has clearly failed. Most of America’s allies have refused to join this new “coalition of the willing” which only consists of Britain, the United States, Canada and some tiny islands in the Pacific that no-one’s ever heard of.
If the US-led attacks were meant to force the Houthi government to abandon its blockade of Israeli shipping they have clearly failed. The Red Sea remains the “Arab Sea” and the Houthis are now adding British and American vessels to their list.
The Yemenis say they will end their blockade once the fighting in Gaza stops.  All the Americans have to do to make that happens is to tell their puppets in Tel Aviv to cease-fire and end the carnage.

One up for the RMT

The RMT transport union ended its dispute with Transport for London (TfL) following an improved pay offer from City Hall that has added an extra £30 million to the pay budget to meet union demands on pay, grading structures and travel facilities. 
Last month RMT rejected  a below inflation pay offer of five per cent from the London Underground. This, they said was “unacceptable when TfL has created a bonus pot of £13 million for senior managers and the commissioner took an 11 per cent pay rise in 2023 taking his salary up to £395,000”.
RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said: “Following further positive discussions today, the negotiations on a pay deal for our London Underground members can now take place on an improved basis and mandate with significant further funding for a settlement being made available. This significantly improved funding position means the scheduled strike action will be suspended with immediate effect and we look forward to getting into urgent negotiations with TfL in order to develop a suitable agreement and resolution to the dispute”.
Though Management initially refused to budge the solid response by the membership to past strike calls and the union’s determination to continue prolonged industrial action forced them to respond realistically to the union’s demand for higher pay and the restoration of full staff travel facilities for all Tube workers.This is what collective bargaining is all about and this is why it has to be defended.

 

Stop the war – support the Palestinians!

Millions upon millions throughout the world are again demanding an end to the carnage in Gaza – not least in London where the biggest demonstrations in support of the Palestinian Arabs in the Western world are regularly taking place. Across the bourgeois political spectrum mainstream politicians justify their crawling to American imperialism by parroting Zionist lies and claiming the public as a whole largely support Israel. But a recent YouGov poll tells a different story.
    The survey commissioned by Medical Aid for Palestinians and the Council for Arab-British Understanding shows that there is an overwhelming level of public support in this country for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
    The survey conducted on 20-21 December 2023 found that 71 per cent of the British public believe there definitely (48 per cent) or probably (23 per cent) should be an immediate ceasefire in Israel and Palestine. Only 12 per cent felt that there should definitely not (6 per cent) or probably not (6 per cent) be an immediate ceasefire.This echoes the results of a similar YouGov poll on 19 October,     demonstrating robust and continuing public support for an end to the current violence in Gaza.
The poll also found that only 17 per cent of people approve of the Sunak government’s handling of the conflict and only 9 per cent approved of the Labour Party’s handling of the conflict.
    Chris Doyle, Director of CAABU, says “This poll shows a total and utter lack of public confidence in the way both the UK government and the Labour Party have handled this. The figures could hardly be lower. This should be a wake-up call to the political leaderships to realign themselves both with public sentiment, international law and the need to address the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza”.
    There’s not much chance of that happening in the near future. Crawling to the Americans comes as second nature to the ruling class who believe that their global interests are best preserved through the might of US imperialism. Since the Second World War grovelling to the White House 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 American power throughout the world. So it’s no surprise to read this week that Keir Starmer regularly liaises with US national security adviser Jake Sullivan.
    But some Labour MPs disagree. One former shadow minister, told the parliamentary news blog PoliticsHome, that Labour should support a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and expressed concern over how much the US position appeared to be influencing Labour's foreign policy approach. "We don't have an independent foreign policy, a Labour policy," the MP who was not named, said. "We have outsourced it to the US administration: that's not helpful. I don't like it”.
    Starmer and his cohorts 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 these people think they can play this cynical game forever and ever. We must prove them wrong.

A man of his times

by Ben Soton

Yours For the Revolution – The Evolution of Tom Mann’s Political Thought: Phil Katz, Manifesto Press, 2023, £20.00

“Yours For the Revolution” was how the legendary trade union leader Tom Mann would sign his letters; his life is the subject of Phil Katz’s latest book. Katz is also the author of works such as Freedom From Tyranny: The Fight Against Fascism and the Falsification of History; a study into how the, EU-backed far-right is attempting to falsify history and equate communism with fascism. With this in mind any book by Katz is certainly worth reading.

    The book, by its name covers the ideological development of Tom Mann (1856-1941) from Christian Socialist, through syndicalism to eventually arrive at Marxism-Leninism and the Communist Party of Great Britain. It is divided into seven sections covering key periods in Mann’s life. Subsequently the book is useful for anyone interested in the history of the labour movement from the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries.
    Mann is best known for his involvement in the 1889 London Dock strike and the development of New Unionism. New Unionism saw the emergence of Trade Unions representing unskilled workers; a move away from unions representing primarily skilled, and to that matter male workers. The 1889 Dock Strike saw gains for many workers including an eight-hour day and the establishment of a Royal Commission of Labour. The Royal Commission eventually saw some union leaders bought off by the establishment; most notably John Burns, who later became a Liberal Peer. This was far from the case with Tom Mann. He remained active in the Labour Movement in Britain and abroad; with his activism taking him to Australia, South Africa, America, Russia and eventually China. His support for workers across the globe drove him in the direction of internationalism and his understanding of the state eventually lead him from the limited ideology of Syndicalism to Marxism-Leninism.
    Katz criticises revisionist historians who wish to keep Mann in his early Christian (Utopian) socialist phase; thus, hiding the syndicalist and especially communist phase in his development. To achieve this, they often make little reference to his life after the 1880s; subsequently ignoring the remaining sixty years of his life. The author points out that there have been attempts to dilute the work of William Morris in a similar war; portraying him as a romantic artist and a designer of wall-paper rather than a Marxist revolutionary.
    In this, highly detailed book Katz performs an outstanding role in debunking this reactionary myth; making the book a fitting tribute to one of the British labour movement’s most outstanding figures. Tom Mann was after all a founder member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, which he remained a member of until his death in 1941.

The hopes and fears of all the years

So this is Christmas. Celebrating the winter solstice goes back to hallowed antiquity from the Stone Age hunter-gatherers whose lives revolved around the seasons to the Saturnalia when Roman masters served their slaves in orgies of feasting and drinking in which all the rules of society could be temporarily broken. In the Middle Ages the Catholic Church, itself largely a product of the feudal era, turned the old pagan holiday into a Christian holiday to celebrate the birth of the founder of their faith in pageants and parades that heralded the coming spring.
In Britain Jesus seldom gets a look in these days. Though still fun for the kids the modern festival has been largely been reduced to eating and drinking and a ritual exchange of cards and gifts.
This orgy of consumerism is, of course, a welcome break from the drudgery of work. A chance to put one’s feet up, eat and drink and enjoy the life the rich enjoy in their mansions every day of their worthless lives. But for the homeless, unemployed and destitute victims of the capitalist crisis, it’s just another day of despair. The festive clichés of the politicians and the princes of the church mean nothing to them. Meanwhile the Palestinian Arabs fight to stave off a brutal Israeli enemy in Gaza.
In Britain millions of people of many faiths or none at all have taken to the streets to call for an end to the fighting. People from all walks of life are now campaigning for Palestinian rights and freedom. They are taking on corporations that profit from the Israeli occupation, the Sunak government that still refuses to hold Israel to account and the media that does not report the truth.
Palestinian solidarity protests have been held every week in London and in many other towns throughout the country. Huge marches, the biggest in Western Europe, have rocked London. They must continue until the guns fall silent and the legitimate rights of the Palestinian Arabs are recognised once and for all.
  Over Christmas we get the usual drivel from the Established Church, whose clergy reserve their most pious platitudes for the supposed birthday of the ‘Prince of Peace’ on 25th December while ignoring his teachings for the rest of the year. 
These modern Pharisees talk about the “poor and needy” while ignoring the words of the Nazarene who drove the money-changers out of the Temple and told his followers to “go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven”. 
They tell us to think about those needier than ourselves and many of us, will indeed, give generously to beggars or charities. But what we should be thinking about is those much wealthier than ourselves and the capitalist system they uphold and how they’ve got the money to spend every day of the year like Christmas, living off the backs of workers forced to make do with the miserable crumbs left at the rich man’s table.
   But the days when people listened to the rich men who told us that the greatest virtue of humanity was the possession of the largest amount of money are over.
    The ruling class maintains that capitalism is the only game in town. And it is – but only for themselves. Capitalism, in the final analysis, is simply a system designed to perpetuate the rule of the rich to ensure that a tiny handful of parasites can live the lives of Roman emperors on the backs of the millions upon millions of working people. There is only one answer to the crisis and that is socialism. Speed the day!