Stop arming Ukrainian fascists!

In London...

by Theo Russell

Activists protested last week in London, Glasgow and Dublin, calling on Britain and NATO to stop sending weapons to the illegitimate Banderite junta in Kiev. They demanded “No More British Challengers, Storm Shadows and Depleted Uranium for Ukraine!”, “No More British Weapons for Ukrainian Nazis”, and “Zelensky - Your mandate expired on 29th  March 2024 - Step aside and stop blocking peace talks!” 
The protests on 15th August coincided with the Ukrainian attack on Russia’s Kursk province, where the British government has given permission to the Kiev junta to use British weapons on Russian territory, including Challenger 2 tanks which use depleted uranium shells. 
These shells don’t pose an immediate radiation threat, but the particles from their use go into the soil and water table, remaining radioactive for 4.5 billion years. They have led to a surge in cancer cases affecting people of all ages in Serbia and Iraq, and no-one knows how the DU can be removed from the environment.
But the biggest controversy concerns permission for Kiev to use its Storm Shadow missiles for long range strikes into Russia. Less than a week after Labour took power, Keir Starmer suggested that Britain would give Zelensky the green light, but the next day Downing Street changed its mind.

...Glasgow

The problem for the fanatical war lobby at the Daily Telegraph and at the top of the British military is that the Storm Shadow is a joint project and its use requires the permission of France, but also from the Americans as they are the dominant force in NATO’s military support for Ukraine.
The UK has repeatedly pressed Washington for permission for long range strikes, but last week a Pentagon spokesman told a briefing that the USA is concerned about the potential for escalation.
The Kremlin has repeatedly warned that such strikes would lead to NATO bases anywhere in the world becoming targets of the Russians and states and armed groups allied to Russia. 
Such NATO strikes would be incredibly reckless and another step towards a possible all out NATO-Russia conflict – and yet Britain continues to push for them!
Former UK ambassador to Moscow Tony Brenton said on BBC Radio last year that "Britain is the most aggressive of all the NATO members in Ukraine” and has “more special forces in Ukraine than any other NATO country”. 
A senior aide to President Putin, Nikolay Patrushev, says that NATO countries – primarily the USA and the UK – had masterminded the Ukrainian foray in Kursk province, which he said was “planned with the participation of NATO and Western special services".
In that operation a video has emerged of Ukrainian soldiers in Kursk wearing Second World War German helmets sporting the emblem of the Waffen SS and taunting a Russian prisoner.
The International Ukraine Anti-Fascist Solidarity (IUAFS) campaign to expose the countless crimes of the Banderite Nazis in Ukraine – NATO’s proxies whose ancestors created their own fascist ideology in the 1930s – is operating in a very difficult and hostile environment in Britain. 
The murders, torture and imprisonment of tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been totally hidden by the British media, which since the NATO coup in 2014 has reported only from one side of the war which started that year.

and Dublin...

But we know from ten years of protests on the streets, and our experience of working class communities, that very many people in Britain don’t believe the daily lies of the Banderite-London-Washington propaganda network, but they do know that Nazis are running wild in Ukraine. 
At every protest we have held the number of people showing support for our demands has been 20 to 30 higher than those who have attacked us.
At our London protest many people showed their support, some (including one who looked like a senior military officer) were very unhappy. The only person to launch an aggressive verbal attack was a Ukrainian Banderite, who is presumably on an extended holiday in Britain. He was met with an equally strong response and didn’t stick around for long.
Despite the difficulties we face we will continue our solidarity with all those resisting the return of Nazism to Ukraine, defending the rights of all of Ukraine’s national communities, and the millions living in exile.
Since 2014 we have warned that what is happening in Ukraine is “a warning to Europe and the world”. After recent events in Britain, it is now clear to everyone that the fascist threat is growing rapidly in the rich and powerful capitalist states on both sides of the Atlantic.

Indian independence: the challenge of today

supporting the naval mutiny in 1946

by D Raja
General Secretary, Communist Party of India

 On 15 August 1947 the people of India won their independence from colonial rule after a long historic struggle. The communists played a glorious role in this struggle.
 A group of committed, intellectually sharp and patriotic young people started coming together to build a nationwide organisation in the second decade of the 20th century. Their first big success was the foundation of the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) in 1920, which brought progressive and nationalist leaders of the working class together. The AITUC challenged the anti-worker policies of the British Raj and also politicised the workers on long-term political demands, including independence.
It was a time of significant global and domestic churning with the end of the First World War, the success of the Bolshevik Revolution led by Lenin in Russia and the arrival of Mahatma Gandhi on the Indian political scene. The communists took the onus of radicalising the agenda of the freedom movement by working both within and outside the Indian National Congress and gained significant successes that proved crucial for our country.
The Communist Party of India (CPI) was founded on 26 December 1925 in Kanpur. The coming together of communists from the length and breadth of the country became a very effective platform to push progressive demands and make them part of the freedom struggle. Maulana Hasrat Mohani, who was the Chair of the reception committee of the Kanpur Conference, was the first one to demand ‘complete independence’ from the British, marking a significant departure from the earlier demands of limited autonomy. Further, communists were also the first to demand a Constituent Assembly for our country.
The CPI took the lead in organising peasants through the All India Kisan Sabha, students through the All India Students’ Federation, writers and intellectuals through the Progressive Writers’ Association in 1936 and artists through the India Peoples’ Theatre Association in 1943.
Meanwhile, the British Government tried their best to crush the emerging communist movement but failed in the wake of the support communists received from the people and the role they were playing in the freedom struggle. All this culminated in what’s aptly called the ‘Last War of Indian Independence’, the Royal Indian Navy mutiny of 1946. Inspired by the Free Indian Army of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and supported by the CPI, the sailors went on strike defying the orders of their British superiors. The CPI called a strike in their support in Bombay and hundreds of thousands joined in. Violence from the British started proving counter-productive and the foreign rulers were made to realise that their days in India were numbered and that people were no longer going to tolerate foreign yoke.
The CPI’s understanding of society and the agenda for their future endeared it to the most downtrodden in society. The communists went to the people explaining the nature of exploitation in factories and fields and mobilised them. At the Kanpur Conference itself, M Singaravelu Chettiar opposed the inhuman practice of ‘untouchability’ and the CPI became one of the frontrunners against the caste system. Equipped with the modern and scientific ideology of Marxism and with the rich contributions of social reformers, the CPI went ahead in mobilising women and took the lead in the struggle against patriarchy. The CPI’s idea of a free, egalitarian India, bereft of the hierarchies of class, caste and patriarchy moved millions of people and they joined the fight for justice and equality in society.
As we approach the eighth decade of independence and the centenary of our Party it is imperative to note what brought us closer to the people and what challenges lie ahead in our continuing and uncompromising struggle for the values we upheld and the society we dream of building – a classless, casteless nation ensuring social, political and economic justice for all our citizens.
The RSS [Hindu nationalist movement] was formed in the same year as the CPI. But their propaganda is bereft of positive values. Instead of fighting the British, the RSS identified minorities and communists as the enemy. The RSS and its leadership remained subservient to the British when communists were making supreme sacrifices and it was the RSS’ poisoning of the political environment that led to the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, leading to a ban on the RSS. After the ban was lifted, the RSS worked covertly and overtly towards the goals of a hierarchical, theocratic Hindu Rashtra [Hindu Nation] and many affiliated organisations in all fields of life have mushroomed around it that are collectively called the Sangh Parivar [RSS Family]. The ruling party, the BJP, is nothing but the political arm of the RSS and it harbours the same casteist, exploitative and misogynist ideology. How the CPI will take on this ideological challenge and reinstate a progressive, socialist agenda is the most important question that concerns us today.
Though we have a glorious history of fighting the British and then contributing significantly in the shaping of our nation after winning independence that should not be taken as a relic but as inspiration in moving ahead with struggles with increased vigour. Our task and concern has always been the same, the welfare of the people of India. When the people are reeling under RSS-BJP misrule and their divisive and communal ideology threatens to break our society, our task is to move closer to the people in their everyday lives.
 This is no mean task given the ascendancy of RSS-BJP and their arsenal of surveillance and misinformation. The RSS is infiltrating the bureaucracy and all wings of the State. This poses the threat of debasing our secular, democratic republic and to impose a theocratic Hindurashtra. As Dr Ambedkar [the architect of the Indian Constitution] warned we must save independence and our secular, democratic republic before such a calamity happens.
 We must remain ever vigilant to protect the values that we inherited from that great freedom movement. The Party should intensify its struggles and campaigns not only for the immediate demands but for our ultimate goal of establishing a socialist society in our country. 

 

Bye Bye Biden

Joe Biden was clearly looking for a glorious send off at the Democratic Party’s national convention this week – Kissinger-style shuttle diplomacy to end the Gaza war and a Ukrainian push into southern Russia to seize the Kursk nuclear power plant and force Putin to beg for peace. Such is the stuff of dreams.

He shuffled off to his long-overdue retirement without either. Kursk didn’t fall and the Ukrainians are now being pushed back by the Russians and all the American talk of Israel’s acceptance of a  “bridging proposal” to end the genocide in Gaza was, within days, shown to be just...talk. 
One wonders who actually advises the “leader of the free world” these days. The Ukrainian sortie into Kursk province clearly underestimated Russia’s defence capability while Washington’s latest diplomatic efforts in the Middle East, led by the hapless Anthony Blinken, were doomed from the start because they talked of a deal the current Israeli government doesn’t want while asking the Palestinians to lay down their arms while offering next to nothing in return. 
The Americans could, of course, easily end the fighting in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Israel and Ukraine are essentially American protectorates. These puppet regimes cannot survive without American economic and military support. The fanatical Zionists in Tel Aviv and the fascist Ukrainian nationalists in Kiev genuinely hate Arabs and Russians but they get away with it because they are ultimately only doing the bidding of American imperialism. They turn their back on genuine peace proposals that would end the conflicts because that’s what their masters in Washington want. When they are no longer of any further use they’ll be dumped – like the imperialist stooges who ran like hares when the Americans cut their losses in Afghanistan in 2021.

War Crimes UK

There’s no doubt that the Israelis are breaking international law. A UN Commission has found that Israeli forces have committed crimes against humanity, including the killing of defenceless civilians  and the forcible transfer and torture of Palestinian Arabs in the Gaza Strip. The Zionist state remains under investigation for genocide at the International Court of Justice. And last month, the same court ruled that Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestine is unlawful.  
If Israeli leaders are found guilty of war crimes – and the International Criminal Court has already applied for arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu – then British ministers and senior civil servants could be held liable too.  
The Global Justice Now campaign has published legal advice which shows that the UK may be liable for crimes committed by Israel during the onslaught on Gaza and through Israel’s illegal occupation of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and the Golan Heights. The advice, written by leading barrister Sam Fowles, says that the UK’s trade relations with Israel and provision of intelligence and diplomatic support could also make UK officials liable for Israel’s breaches of international humanitarian law. 
 Last week a British diplomat resigned over the British government’s refusal to ban arms exports to Israel. Mark Smith accused Israel of waging “war crimes in plain sight” against the Palestinians after he resigned from the Foreign Office over British arms sales to the country.
He said he had flagged his concerns about the sales at “every level” of the ministry, up to Foreign Secretary David Lammy, but the response was “not satisfactory”. Smith took the principled stand over Palestine. We must redouble our efforts in support of Palestine. The struggle must continue until Palestine is free!

A dangerous escalation

The Ukrainian raid into southern Russia last week was clearly monitored and probably even directed by the NATO military advisors embedded in the Ukrainian army. The main target was the Kursk nuclear power station that the Ukrainians hoped to seize and then swap for the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southern Ukraine that was liberated in 2022. Their secondary objective was to seize Russian land to swap for recent Russian gains in the Kharkov region of northern Ukraine.
Russian resistance has foiled the Ukrainians on both counts. Though the Ukrainians are still entrenched on Russian soil their advance on Kursk has been beaten back while any hopes for peace talks and a negotiated settlement to end the war have now been dashed as the Kremlin vows to fight to drive all the Ukrainians out of their lands and carry on fighting until Kiev accepts Russia’s terms to end the conflict. 
Though no one knows exactly why the lame-duck Biden administration sanctioned this Ukrainian sortie it is clearly linked to the American presidential election. The war lobby, the cross-party clique that represents the most venal and aggressive circles within the American ruling class, are always ready to cuff the Russians while Democrat bagmen may believe that a slap in the face to the Russians will boost Kamala Harris’ chances in November.
Whatever the motive it’s a dangerous gang. This sort of escalation brings NATO one step closer to a direct clash with the Russian army – a clash that could easily turn into a nuclear exchange in the heart of Europe.
The aim of the NATO alliance all along has been to force war on the Russian Federation, and now the whole world can see the terrible price which has been paid for a war which could so easily have been avoided. 
In the past the Russian Federation did everything possible to avoid a full-scale war in Ukraine. The Kremlin spent eight years supporting the Minsk process plan, involving simple autonomy for the then Donetsk and Lugansk Republics, while Ukraine, with NATO’s support, broke ceasefire after ceasefire and thousands of civilians in those republics died in constant Ukrainian attacks. When the Russians intervened to support the anti-fascist resistance and stop the persecution of the Russian-speaking minorities in the Donbas in 2022 they withdrew all their forces around the Ukrainian capital to negotiate a peace deal with the fascist regime only to be double-crossed at the last moment by the NATO powers who told the Zelensky regime to keep on fighting.
Sir Keir Starmer likes to pose as the equal of the Americans in the NATO alliance but in reality Britain is no better than the rest of the Western European pack that have 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. Fearful of the second coming of Donald Trump and uncertain of the loyalty of the Harris team all they can now do is watch as the drama of the race to the White House plays out.

What is behind the wave of far-right violence?

By Theo Russell

Serious rioting has taken place in English cities across the country, with scenes more familiar to Belfast: bricks and bottles thrown at police and police vehicles, and a police station wrecked. And the groups involved do in fact have connections and common views with Loyalist organisations in Northern Ireland – the only other part of the UK where major violence broke out. 
These disturbances are not the usual localised friction between police and Muslim or poor white communities, they are being coordinated by a resurgent right wing populist group led by the maverick Tommy Robinson, and still known as the English Defence League (EDL) despite various name changes.
The rioters, apart from attacking the police, targeted mosques and hostels for asylum seekers. 
A neo-Nazi group which sprang up during the Covid pandemic, the Patriotic Alternative, is also playing a major role in inciting the violence.
The new Labour prime minister Keir Starmer quickly declared that these riots were crimes and "not protest".
These events are unprecedented in the history of far right violence in Britain since 1945. Until recently the EDL seemed to be gradually fading away after a wave of protests against immigration and Muslim influence in the 2005-15, with their eccentric leader Tommy Robinson facing a growing string of various criminal charges.
Robinson now faces arrest after fleeing the country last Monday, the day before he was due to appear at the High Court in London.
Only two days earlier he had led possibly the largest far-right rally in England since Sir Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirt movement in the 1930s. 25-30,000 of his supporters packed Trafalgar Square in the heart of London waving English and British flags.
The current wave of violence followed the horrific attack on a community centre in Liverpool in which a mentally ill teenager killed three children last Monday. After claims that the attacker was a Muslim terrorist who had arrived on a migrant boat went viral on X and Telegram, the violence began the next day in Southport, near Liverpool, before spreading throughout England. 
The EDL supporters and agitators have taken advantage of a totally uncontrolled online environment, to stoke lies, rumours, provocations and bigotry.
Ironically the website which released the fake “Islamic terrorist” report which triggered the wave of violence, Channel3 Now, is a small American news outlet whose main coverage is of murders and deaths across the USA with contributors in America, Britain, India and Pakistan. It quickly removed the story and issued an apology.
But Elon Musk's X platform (formerly Twitter) stands out as a major instigator of the violence. Since he bought Twitter and created the sinister sounding X, Musk has restored the accounts of Trump and other right wing populists under the “libertarian” banner much loved in the USA – complete freedom of expression regardless of content.
In the midst of the violence Musk posted a shocking statement that “civil war is inevitable” in Britain. He then recycled accusations by Nigel Farage that the new Labour prime minister Keir Starmer was operating “two-tier policing” - being soft on ethnic minority criminals and "terrorist" (read “Palestinian”) supporters, while cracking down hard on right wing anti-migrants. 
Under Musk’s control ‘X’ has become a factory for churning out lies and fake rumours. The 100 top X posts promoting fake conspiracy theories about the Trump assassination attempt reached 215 million people, and only five per cent of these posts underwent a token X "community fact-check".
It is important to understand that American internet giants almost totally dominate Britain's web space and are massively reshaping our politics and economy.
Other far right online influencers include the "Europe Invasion" X hashtag #enoughisenough, and a wave of YouTube videos warning of an Islamist takeover of Britain.
Many other organisations have created the political space for the growth of right-wing extremism. The GB News TV and radio channel, and online TV channels Talk (previously Talk TV), have stoked the ‘soft’ far-right views which flourished in the Conservative government under Rishi Sunak.
The right-wing populist Unity News Network (UNN) website led by David Clews is linked with the openly fascist Patriotic Alternative, led by antisemitic conspiracy theorist and former BNP director of publicity Mark Collett.
Clearly considerable sums of money have gone into these entities, we know some of it from right-wing business millionaires.
There are now widespread calls for online social media platforms to be properly policed considering the role they have played in this crisis. Ofcom, the British regulator for the broadcasting and telecommunications industry, sent an open letter to UK online service providers on 4th August demanding that they “protect their users from videos likely to incite violence or hatred”, warning that after a new Online Safety Act is passed later this year, these services will have three months to stop such videos appearing or act quickly to remove them.
Such calls have been made for many years. but for the past 14 years the Conservative government’s business policy has been effectively dictated by lobbyists and wealthy donors representing major business interests, resulting in an online free for all.
Limitations of the Far Right
But it is important to realise that despite their ability to create chaos and violence, the far-right organisations are extremely small in size and represent a tiny proportion of the population.
This became clear on 6th  and 7th  August when counter protestors came onto the streets across England in huge numbers, dwarfing the EDL protests. Videos show that there were also considerable numbers of younger people clearly ready to use physical force against the rightists. In many places the racists were only saved from a beating by the police keeping the different groups separate to avoid violence getting out of control.
But the causes of the deep class divisions in Britain are far more complex. While the EDL clearly involves actual fascist agitators, it has successfully mobilised a mainly poor white section of the working class.
Many of these supporters insist they are not racist and claim there are a considerable number of ethnic minority EDL supporters. Their main targets are the alleged growing Muslim influence in Britain and illegal immigrants. These are communities which over the past 40-50 years have seen local industries shut down or relocated overseas, and the disappearance of secure, long-term, well-paid jobs which have been replaced by far fewer, very low paid, short term and ‘zero hour’ contracts. In parallel the total number of union members declined, reducing the proportion of working people with at least some class consciousness and political education.
These are areas where local councils cannot cope with local demand for services, particularly housing, with large numbers facing waiting years or even decades for affordable housing, and hundreds of thousands of families in extremely poor quality temporary housing across the country.
These areas also have very high crime levels and are riddled with extremely violent gangs linked to the drug trade.
Professionals such as doctors and dentists are in no hurry to move to such areas, so what practices there are can't cope with the demand. They are also shunned by national retail chains meaning that local people are dependent on small, expensive shops offering poor quality, unhealthy food, and cheap, unhealthy fried chicken and pizza joints.
Poverty in Britain has reached such shocking levels that it has been the subject of several UN reports. 30 per cent of UK children are now classed as living in poverty, there are almost two million people suffering undernourishment, and food banks (to which only people on benefits are sent) are quite possibly our fastest growing ‘industry’.
Wages in Britain are so low that over a third (35 per cent) of people who have jobs are also claiming social benefits. But even with top ups it is common for families to run out of money before payday, with parents going without food for days in order to feed their children.
Added to all this is the surge in energy costs - a basic necessity for all - caused by the sanctions on Russian oil and gas. 
In large parts of Britain schools have to provide breakfast to the children because so many of them get no breakfast at home.
To save on accommodation costs, asylum seekers have been housed in hotels near long-neglected poor communities. One commentator pointed out that many in these areas “can’t even dream of staying in a hotel”.
A particularly sore point is that local councils have a duty to house asylum seekers, not only putting a huge strain on their finances, but angering many who can’t obtain affordable social housing themselves.
Under the Conservatives hardly any new house building took place, and the perfect conditions were created for landlord and property developer exploiters to flourish.
This explains precisely why the focus of the recent violence was on migrant hotels and hostels in former industrial towns and cities.
The poor working class communities have seen a staggering increase in wealth in the UK for the middle and upper classes in the past 14 years, a Tory party rife with nepotism and corruption, and see the mainstream political and media classes – ‘Westminster’ - as inhabiting a different planet from their own.
Fundamental economic problems 
We also need to take into account the fundamental weaknesses of Britain’s economy, which is based on a generally low skilled workforce, a massive lack of infrastructure investment and training, and an overwhelming focus on the service and consumer sector which doesn’t actually create anything. This is an economy incapable of anything more than slow or zero growth.
From around 2000 onwards there has been inward migration on an unprecedented scale which can’t be ignored. When the European Union introduced freedom of movement, the UK (under a Labour government) was the only EU member to approve immediate movement from any EU member state.
At that time the EU had just expanded into Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the Baltics, so the UK became a magnet for workers in countries where wages were 20 or 30 times lower, which were themselves suffering the effects of the collapse of socialism, and there was little social provision or job protection.
A separate wave of migration has been triggered by the devastation of economies in the global south after the collapse of the Soviet Union and some other people’s democracies through unequal trade, debt bondage, regime changes and ‘colour revolutions’, wars, sanctions and climate change.
This led to the emergence of a large network of purely criminal people-smuggling gangs, facilitating the mass movement of purely economic migrants from parts of Africa as well as genuine refugees from countries like Syria and Iraq.
The numbers arriving on illegal small boat crossings is a very small proportion, but  they lie behind the EDL chants of “Stop the Boats“. In the last recorded year 12,800 migrants arrived illegally compared to 685,000 legally.
This legal migration is due to post-Brexit labour shortages, mainly in the NHS and hospitality sector.
This very large influx of people is not a problem in itself, but the extreme neo-liberal and austerity policies of the Conservative government meant that instead of providing extra services for them, there were severe cuts to spending on schools, hospitals, local councils, housing, policing and transport.
The British state has also encouraged and in some cases made special provision for asylum seekers from countries (Hong Kong, Afghanistan, Ukraine) where British imperialism was deeply involved in regime change and wars.
It has poured huge resources into reactionary proxies such as Wahabi Muslim extremists in Afghanistan, Syria and Libya and the Banderite Nazi gangs in Ukraine. These groups in turn carried out a series of horrific terrorist attacks in Britain itself which were a godsend to the far right.
In the 2010s major scandals erupted over claims that Muslim gangs organised the sexual exploitation of teenage girls in Rotherham and Rochdale in the north of England. These claims lie behind the EDL chants of “Save Our Children” and “paedo Muslims off our street”.
These claims certainly had some credibility, however research has shown that such exploitation is widespread across England and that, according to a Home Office report, the offenders “are most commonly White (people)”.
Blame the Russians!
One of the most despicable episodes in this crisis has been the attempt by reactionary elements to blame the riots on hordes of Russian bots and trolls.
This was started by a former security minister, Stephen McPartland, with support from MI6, former BBC journalist asset Paul Mason, and the increasingly rabidly right wing Daily Telegraph, who accused Vladimir Putin of mounting a “disinformation operation” to foment violence in Britain, describing it as "part of the Russian playbook".
Under the recently defeated Conservative government wild accusations of hacking and political interference by Russia and China reached ever more hysterical levels.
The real reason for these claims is the desperate attempts by the most reactionary, warmongering elements of the ruling class to uphold Britain's rapidly declining ‘global role’, who even dream of regaining parts of their old empire, by collaborating with the Americans in wars, sanctions and attempted regime changes around the world.
Let us remember that these imperialist interventions have resulted in the deaths of several million people. 
A former head of MI6 claimed in an interview with the Telegraph that the Channel3 Now website, which picked up and spread the lies that the Liverpool attacker was a Muslim terrorist and illegal immigrant, was a Russian disinformation outlet. 
In fact Channel3 Now’s only Russian connection is that it bought a Russian-language YouTube car rallies channel years ago as a platform. Unfortunately the Channel3 Now story was reposted by RT News, and some pro-Russian Telegram channels, but none of this amounts to a genuine disinformation operation, and the Channel3 Now claims turned out to be a desperate ploy which was full of holes.
In fact far from having any Russian connections, the original ‘Muslim terrorist’ lie was a post on X by a woman in the North of England – who had also been temporarily removed by Twitter in 2021 for spreading misinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic and vaccines. She has since admitted to creating the post and apologised for the horrific consequences.
The Daily Telegraph also claimed recently that Russia and China were working to boost the following of the popular rapper Lowkey, an opponent of Britain’s wars, to manipulate public opinion in Britain in favour of the Palestinians through fake accounts.
But the Telegraph forgot to mention that its source for these claims was an agency led by Israeli military veterans, with 40 of its employees reserves in the Israeli military who were called up to fight in Gaza.
So claims that Russia tried to encourage the riots are actually part of a “British playbook” to justify spending £16.6 billion in military and economic support for Ukraine (official government figures from July 2024), backing Israel’s genocide against the people of Gaza, and its continued participation in the killing of untold numbers of Yemenis – a war which the Western media has almost totally ignored.
The Zionist Hand
One final element in the anti-migrant violence is the role of Israel. Professor David Miller, who was sacked in 0ctober 2021 by Bristol University for his comments about Israel (later ruled wrongfully dismissed), said “the recent Islamophobic riots in the UK should be seen as the latest phase of Israel's war on British Muslims”. 
He says “Tommy Robinson… has been working for Israel since 2009 as part of the so-called 'counter-jihad' Islamophobia established by Israel” and is “paid as part of Israel’s Online Influencers Programme in response to Operation Al-Aqsa Storm”. 
Miller says that Israel’s “assets and operatives in the British political and media class such as Suella Braverman and Michael Gove” failed to close down pro-Palestinian protests. So “now the State of Israel is weaponising its cannon fodder on the white nationalist far-right, who have greater numbers than either Zionist street thugs or Iranian secularist extremists”. 
By 7th August the EDL violence effectively ended with a far bigger mass movement of anti-racists taking to the streets, but also with an extraordinary display of national unity against the right-wing violence. Police chiefs, national newspapers and almost all politicians praised the mobilisation of communities, and it was this, rather than fast track courts and heavy sentences for the rioters, which led the EDL supporters to give up their anti-migrant campaign. 
The reality is that without the presence of police the EDL rioters would have been met with overwhelming physical force against them.
However there are elements attempting to justify the protests, led by Nigel Farage and other Reform party leaders, along with some right-wing Conservatives MPs and former ministers alleging “two-tier policing”.
These are exactly the same elements who last autumn accused the police of being hard on right wing protesters and soft on the allegedly pro-terrorist “hate mobs” Palestine protests. Faced with bullying from Conservative ministers, London’s police chief, Mark Rowley, refused to accept that these protests were violent and staunchly defended their democratic right to peaceful protest. The pro-Israel Zionist counter protests at both national and local Palestine protests failed and in June were effectively abandoned. 
At the same time the disgusting campaign alleging a wave of antisemitic incidents, including violence, with claims that large parts of British cities were “no-go areas for Jews”, which was widely amplified across the mass media, faded away. If these claims were true, where is the epidemic of antisemitism now? 
The truth is that apart from a handful of incidents this “wave” was actually an Israeli-inspired disinformation operation.
The British ruling class has failed to close down the mass pro Palestinian protest movement (supported by 70 per cent of the population). This, along with the defeat of the anti-migrant protests has revealed the mass strength of progressive, anti-racist forces. 
During the latest violence the police response has been almost entirely directed against the far right. But we also have to recognise that the deepening crisis of capitalism in Britain has created the conditions for mass discontent and alienation. This involves much larger numbers of working people than the small racist groups who took to the streets last week.
These deep-seated problems have created the conditions for far-right groups to flourish, not only in Britain but in Western Europe and the USA, and the far right has temporarily taken advantage of them to stage an attempted uprising.
The weakness of Britain’s economy and the failure to provide decent incomes and basic, affordable services necessary for a civilised life, have not gone away, and with a ruling class which has set the financial conditions so that money can’t be found to fix those problems, there is no sign of any real solutions to the problems facing working people in Britain anytime soon.

They shall not pass

By New Worker correspondent

 
On 4 October 1936 the working people of East London, inspired by communists and other left-wing movements, clashed with Sir Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts in Cable Street, Stepney.  They were able to halt and force back the fascists. Pogroms in Europe had forced many Jews to flee to London. The fascist legions which had previously been supported by the Daily Mail with headlines such as 'Hurrah for the Blackshirts' were opposed by the Daily Worker with calls for people to come out onto the streets to block the Mosleyites.
Those events of the past century may be remembered as today's right-wing extremists again play the race card to stir up hatred and fear.  In violent protests they abused minorities damaging their property and provoking confrontations with the police.  As was the case in the 1930s local people have turned out, supported by trade unions, left and centre political parties and organisations such as Say No to Racism, to send a clear message of opposition to fascism. Anti-fascist rallies have been held in many large British cities. People gathered in parts of London, Birmingham, Sheffield, Southampton, Newcastle, Liverpool, Bristol and many other places up and down the country.
Mark Rowley, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service said "we put thousands of officers on the street and I think that the show of unity from communities, together defeated the challenges we have seen”.
Three young girls were killed in a horrific stabbing in Southport.  A 17 year old teenager has been charged with their murder. The fascists saw this as an ideal opportunity to begin their campaign of attacks by spreading lies on social media that a Muslim immigrant was involved. In fact the accused is a British born Christian. The ultra-right are motivated by race hatred. They are generally poorly educated people who consider other races to be inferior. At various times and places they must always have someone to hate, either people with a different skin colour or culture, gays or those they consider to be political opponents such as communists or socialists. Behind them are the men in smart suits who are the real promoters of fascism.
Capitalism is in crisis which is reflected by increasing authoritarian and reactionary trends.  Racism and fascism are actively fostered by the ruling class and its supporters when capitalism and imperialism are in trouble. Their strategy aims to divide the working class, to curtail long term rights and at all cost to prevent socialism.  The common characteristics of fascism outlined by R Palme-Dutt in his work Fascism and Social Revolution were as follows: 

1. To maintain capitalism in the face of revolution
2. Increase capitalist dictatorship
3. The destruction of working class movements 
4. To suppress parliamentary democracy
5. The extension of state monopolistic organisation of finance, industry and commerce
6. A closer concentration of each imperialist group into a single economic-political unit
7. The resolution of conflict by means of war

Racist ideology insists that that some races, their own, are born superior and others inferior.  Racism may take the form of discrimination, segregation, prejudice or genocide. It may be imposed by apartheid but is not confined just to the question of colour as shown by Zionism and Nazism. The ideology was adopted by the capitalist class to justify colonialism. Indigenous peoples were portrayed as lower order human beings in a physical, cultural and moral sense.  It is an established and deliberate practice of imperialism to promote conflict between different ethnic groups and to then divide and rule for their own selfish interest. 
The New Communist Party of Britain has repeatedly warned of the dangers of advancing fascism both at home and overseas. In its ultimate form it represents the direct rule of the most reactionary and ruthless sections of the ruling class. Western, so called Democracies, have powerful military industrial complexes who control policy, making a parliamentary road to socialism all but impossible.  Involvement of the private sector in state administration is having the effect of marginalising the domestic process.  As the capitalist crisis deepens and Imperialism becomes more desperate fascists have been allowed to play a major role in Ukraine.  In Britain sinister forces lurk in the wings as the public start to lose faith in the parliamentary process. 
In order to distract attention from an appallingly bad record of governance and economic incompetence successive power holders in Britain, with the full support of the mass media, use the issue of immigration to transfer blame to others. Irrational hatred and fear have been created.  Against a background of never-ending austerity, spreading poverty, failing public services and crumbling infrastructure the extreme right-wing has attempted to harness the discontent to support their hideous agenda. Social issues such as housing shortages have exacerbated tensions, all of which has led to a witch hunt by people seeking someone to blame, other than the government whose fault it is. Unthinkingly a few have been drawn into organised, violent thuggery. 

We can beat the racists!

Thousands of people have taken to the streets to counter the racist mobs who terrorised asylum seekers, members of the Muslim community, and other ethnic minorities in a wave of violence that swept through a number of towns in the north of England last week.

The bourgeois media that routinely scapegoats immigrants, asylum-seekers and ethnic minorities goes into top gear whenever there’s a Labour government while some politicians will always court the extremists  when there’s a leadership contest in the offing. And summer always brings out the football thugs who’ve nothing to do when their team’s not playing.

 But though egged on by the likes of Nigel Farage and the man who calls himself “Tommy Robinson” the riots were clearly organised by a hidden hand that spread the lies on social media about the murder of three young girls in Southport that sparked off the violence. 

The fact that racist attacks continued even after it was confirmed that the Southport murderer was neither a Muslim or an asylum-seeker shows that covert forces were at work – though whether they are far-right extremists, maverick intelligence officers or cynical politicians seeking to exploit the genuine grievances of white workers remains to be seen.   

The direct hand of the state can be ruled out on this occasion. The bourgeoisie don’t like random violence. Torching cars, looting shops and burning libraries is not in their play-book. They know it can easily spread to the homes of the well-to-do if not immediately curbed. So the Tory media has closed ranks with the Starmer government in support of the police and the judiciary. Hundreds of rioters have been arrested. Trials are being fast-tracked and three men have already been jailed for violent disorder.

The New Communist Party recognises the need for any sovereign state to set an immigration policy in accordance with its resources. But we firmly oppose any immigration policy that discriminates, either directly or indirectly, on the basis of race, creed, colour or gender.

We call for the repeal of the Immigration and Asylum Acts of the 1990s, passed by both Tory and Labour governments, which make it very difficult for many genuine asylum seekers to establish their claims.

Asylum seekers must be treated humanely and their claims dealt with swiftly. While this process takes place they must be given decent accommodation and welfare benefits to survive. No asylum seekers should be locked up unless there is good reason, with evidence, to believe they are criminals and no child asylum seeker should ever be locked up.

Scapegoating minorities is an old trick the ruling class use to divert working people away from their real problems. In the old days it was the Jews – now its the immigrants and the refugees. The real problem is capitalism itself – a system that enables a handful of parasites to live the lives of Roman emperors on the backs of the millions upon millions of working people.

Long-standing anti-fascist movements like Stand Up to Racism mobilised tens of thousands of people this week to defend their communities from racist attacks. That’s all right as far as it goes. But we have to build an even bigger movement to tackle the underlying causes of violence and drive the racists off our streets. 

The man who built the Berlin Wall

by Alan Stewart
 
The Rise and fall of Erich Honecker; The Man who Built the Berlin Wall: Nathan Morley, Pen & Sword, Barnsley 2024, 272pp, rrp £25

Erich Honecker was born in Saarland in 1912. In 1922, when he was ten, he joined the Communist youth organisation, the Young Spartacus League. Then from 1929 onwards he was active in the German Communist Party, the KPD.  He was arrested by the Gestapo in December 1935 and was subsequently jailed by the Nazis.
After World War Two, in 1946, he co-founded what would become the youth movement of the new Socialist Unity Party (SED), the Free German Youth. The SED, a mass party based on the merger of the KPD and the Social Democrats (SDP) in what had been the Soviet Zone of occupied Germany, soon became the leading party in the new German Democratic Republic that was established in 1949.
Honecker played a leading role in the new people’s republic and as Security Secretary of the SED Central Committee he was the prime organiser of the building of the so-called Berlin Wall in 1961 to isolate the NATO enclave of West Berlin that lay in the heart of the German Democratic Republic.
In 1970 he initiated a power struggle, with the apparent support of Leonid Brezhnev, that led to him replacing Walter Ulbricht as General Secretary of the SED in 1971.
Honecker, like Ulbricht, was instrumental in the processes of detente which led to the GDR and West Germany being accepted into the UN in 1973 and the Helsinki Accords in 1979.  There were even attempts to normalise relations with West Germany when the social-democratic Chancellor, Willi Brandt, was at the helm in the early 1970s.
In the GDR itself there was state subsidised housing. There was also a comprehensive welfare state with free health care and full employment. There were great achievements in the sporting and cultural fields. Plus between 1970 and 1987 the net income of the working population rose by 97 per cent. All of this is well documented by Nathan Morley in his book.
Honecker was totally undermined by the new Soviet leader Gorbachev and in October 1989 the SED Politburo forced him to resign.
However Morley notes that Honecker and his wife had amassed no personal wealth or property.  He would die in relative poverty in Chile in 1994. But his great achievements and his personal integrity should be never be forgotten.

Fifty years since the fall of the Greek junta

the day of the generals

by our Balkan affairs correspondent

On 24 July 1974 the military dictatorship that had ruled Greece collapsed. Seven years before, on 21 April 1967, a group of far-right army officers led by Brigadier-General Pattakos and Colonels Papadopoulos and Makarezos seized power after a coup d'etat. In the early morning of that day, tanks marched onto the central streets of Athens while small mobile units of the army were arresting politicians, government officials and prominent figures who were regarded as having left-wing sympathies.The coup was  supported by the American imperialists, the Greek oligarchs and some of the   bourgeoisie. 
The same junta, made up of right wing generals that acted on the behalf of President Nixon, Henry Kissinger and the CIA took power claiming that an “imminent communist plot” was about to take place. In reality scheduled elections were due in May of that year that would have seen George Papandreou’s moderate Centre Union Party come to power. But unfounded fear, spread by the Western powers, that a Papandreou government would undermine the country’s role in NATO allowed the Generals to ‘save Greece’ with the acquiescence of the then king, Constantine II, and the powerful Orthodox Church. 
“The Revolution of 21st April” was the slogan of the military dictatorship. Their symbol was a soldier standing in front of a phoenix rising from the flames. But resistance began from day one. Outside Greece communists and other democratic forces built solidarity movements to demand the release of political prisoners and the end of military rule. Inside Greece the fight-back was led mainly by the Communist Party of Greece (KKE).The Junta was finally brought down by the actions of communists, left wing students, unions and ordinary working class people. 
This year the conservative New Democracy party government wanted to make a big show of the ‘Restoration of Democracy’, but in reality, after 50 years, the same bourgeois system is still in power along with its hallmark corruption, nepotism and populism.
In the 50 years since the fall of the Junta the country has seen many changes. The formation of a Hellenic Republic and the abolition of the monarchy by a nationwide referendum.The creation of a welfare state, a national health service, state schools and the like. However a small, wealthy landowning elite made up of powerful dynasties and oligarchs, still control the country through their old mechanisms. While the other “left wing” social democrat and liberal parties joined in the “celebrations”, to their credit , the leaders of KKE did not take part in the festivities marking the 50th anniversary of the "Restoration of Democracy".
Instead a speech was read out in Parliament and a letter published decrying the restoration of bourgeois parliamentary democracy. A senior KKE MP, Nikos Karathanasopoulos, stated that Greece had forgotten that the KKE was the only party that actively fought against the Junta , and that after "democracy was restored " it only lead to the stabilisation of capitalist power, further anti-communist persecution and greater integration into  NATO and the US Alliance.
He added that for all the achievements of the post dictatorship governments, a small minority still dominates the working classes. The struggles and sacrifices of the KKE may have brought the collapse of the dictatorship but the mechanisms that created it were still hard at work exploiting the masses. And that slogans such as "Greece Out Of NATO" must be heard even louder and the strikes against privatisation and labour exploitation must be expanded. As well as the popular struggles that still need resolving such as the Cyprus issue and anti union laws.
The invasion of Cyprus 50 years ago was a direct result of the Junta taking power and gave Washington the green light to allow Turkey to invade a weakened Cyprus under a puppet dictatorship, similar to the one in Greece. Fifty years on and the island is still divided, to the shame of the so called “guarantors”, namely, Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom with its military bases at Akrotiri and Dhekleia from where it launches its air-strikes against the Arabs in the Middle East.
The fall of the military dictatorship in Greece owes everything to the brave working class people of Greece who stood up to seven years of crackdowns , to the banning of political parties and newspapers. to the arrests of prominent communists and union leaders and to the complete militarisation of justice and law. The people and their leaders freed Greece from a tyranny that could have lasted decades. Thankfully the people remember the communist resistance ,the siege of the students at the Athens Central University, the general strikes and other acts of bravery, even if the current regime chooses to whitewash them from history.

No end in sight...

The Middle East is now on the brink of all-out war following this week’s targetted killings of Palestinian and Lebanese resistance leaders in back-to-back Israeli air strikes in Beirut and Tehran. Some say this is what the Israeli leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, wants to stave off the Gaza cease-fire he fears would split his coalition and force him to call fresh elections he almost certainly lose. Bowing out while facing bribery, fraud and breach of trust charges is not how Netanyahu wants to be remembered. He wants to end his days covered in Zionist glory as the man who built “Greater Israel” and brought the Palestinians to their knees. But he’s failed, so far, on all counts.
Israel has failed to drive the Palestinians into Egypt to clear the decks for the Zionist settlement of the Gaza Strip. Israel has failed to stop the confrontation with the Lebanese resistance on its northern border. The Yemenis are maintaining their naval blockade that has closed down Eilat, Israel’s port on the Red Sea. The Palestinians still hold scores of Israeli prisoners and Hamas and the other Palestinian resistance movements fight on using tunnel networks under the Strip that the Israelis have failed to uncover.
It hasn’t been for the want of trying. The genocidal Israeli campaign in Gaza has brought death and destruction to the Palestinian enclave on an industrial scale. Some 39,000 Palestinian Arabs have been killed and over 90,000 more wounded in the round of fighting that began in October 2023. Most of them were defenceless civilians.
But behind Israel stands American imperialism. Despite all the talk of “Zionist lobbies” or the “Jewish vote” only the Americans count in Tel Aviv. The Israelis are American puppets that, until recently, enabled the Americans to pose as friends of the feudal Arab kings who allow the Big Oil corporations to plunder their oil in return for a juicy cut and American protection.
Likewise the Zionist leaders who strut the world posing as independent politicians are just alibis for American aggression in the Middle East. US imperialism provides the military and economic support that keeps Israel going. The country is a virtual American protectorate and their leaders will ultimately do whatever America wants.
The war goes on in Gaza because that’s what American imperialism wants. They want the fighting to continue until Hamas is crushed – because Hamas stands in their way, because the Palestinian resistance sabotaged the American plan for NATO expansion in the Middle East when it launched its raid into Israel last October.
But what the Americans want and what they get is another matter altogether. They failed in Iraq. They failed in Afghanistan. They failed in Syria and they will fail in the Middle East.
The establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 led to the expulsion of nearly a million Palestinians from their homes. The war that began in 1948 continues to this day. The Palestinians fight on and they will continue the struggle until their legitimate rights are restored.
UN resolutions have provided the basis for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East. First of all Israel must totally withdraw from all the occupied territories seized in 1967, including Arab East Jerusalem and Syria’s Golan Heights. The Palestinians must be allowed to establish a state of their own on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Palestinian refugees whose homes are now in Israel must be allowed to return or, if they so wish, be paid appropriate compensation in exchange. And all states in the region, including Israel, should have internationally agreed and recognised frontiers guaranteed by all the Great Powers.