Counting the days…

How long has Starmer got? The immensely unpopular Labour leader who claims to run the country licks the boots of Donald Trump while turning his back on starving Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Booting out four more of his own MPs for sticking up for the disabled shows how unfit he is to lead the party let alone the government he heads.
On his own front bench there’s plenty more than ready to take his place while supporters of Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, are once again talking about his return to national politics.
Meanwhile others are looking to the new political platform which the Corbynistas hope will be built on the foundations of the five-strong Independent Alliance bloc in parliament that Jeremy Corbyn currently heads. The Corbynistas say a new left party will "build a real alternative" to Labour following the launch of a consultation exercise this month.  
Zarah Sultana, the Coventry MP purged last year for voting to scrap the two-child benefit cap, says she’s planning to create a new political party with Corbyn and the Alliance though what sort of “party” it will be remains to be seen. Corbyn and the four other MPs in his bloc are naturally wary of setting up a party that could easily be dominated by Trotskyist or communist movements whose views they do not share. This, they say, is what happened to Arthur Scargill when he launched his Socialist Labour Party (SLP) in 1996. His party became a magnet for all sorts of fake left posers which Scargill drove out in crippling purges that marooned what was left of the SLP to the fringe of left politics in the UK. They look  also at George Galloway, whose attempts to build alliances with the Socialist Workers Party and the Brarite CPGB (ML) all ended in tears.
What the Alliance MPs clearly want is some sort of political platform, based on a few basic social-democratic demands, that reflects the consensus amongst their MPs and revolves around Corbyn and Zarah Sultana at election time. This is, afterall how General de Gaulle’s Rally of the French People worked from 1947 to 1955. His Rally was open to members of other parties apart from communists and former collaborators. But it was always led the general and those who worked with him in the Gaullist resistance during the Second World War. Similar movements emerged throughout the Third World in the 1950s, much like Nasser’s Liberation Rally in Egypt that eventually became the Arab Socialist Union and a number of other mass based parties in the countries that broke the chains of colonialism in Africa and Asia in the post-war era.
Others simply want another conventional social-democratic party though it is difficult to see how this could succeed without union funding and a legion of activists to maintain the electoral machine needed to sustain its growth at local and national levels.

Our future is communist!

By John Maryon

From the first glimpses of primitive communism in Stone Age family groupings to the growth of feudalism and the emergence of capitalism into imperialism , now in terminal decline, humankind has passed through a number of historical epochs. Today a new stage of development is underway in certain countries to build socialism which will in turn make the qualitative advance to communism.
Change is very necessary. Everywhere we look in the imperialist world we see crisis. Its symptoms are economic stagnation, industrial decline, inflationary pressures, job losses and stock market volatility.  Workers with falling standards of living are being made to carry the burden of its failure.  
Full socialism means the public ownership of of the means of production, transport, financial institutions and the land.  All would be owned and utilised by the people for the people. Then, as full masters of their own destiny, their work and creativity would be employed for the common good. The greed, speculation, exploitation and corruption of the bourgeoisie would be relegated to the history books. 
Monopoly capitalism, the final phase of capitalist failure, is no longer competitive.  Increasingly it adopts economic warfare and physical threats to maintain its hegemony.  It is a system based upon exploitation of the masses while the rich become more wealthy every day.  According to the Office of National Statistics the top one per cent of families, with an average wealth of £3.6m own over 230 times, that of the poorest 10 per cent.
Following the Second World War many people thought that socialism was just round the corner. Inspired by the achievements of the Soviet Union, under Joseph Stalin's leadership they were no longer prepared to put up with the conditions that had existed in the 1930s. The mood was for change. A Labour government, led by Clement Attlee was elected in 1945.  Basic industries and public transport were nationalised, the NHS established and a full programme of social care initiated. The slums were replaced with magnificent new council houses; homes for the people.
One may well ask what has gone so badly wrong and what can be done about it.  Looking back we can see that the socialist programme did not go far enough. Those industries and utilities taken over were in a poor financial position and required heavy investment.  Profitable companies should have been added to the list to provide funds. The NHS should have been allowed to make its own drugs and equipment. The banks and financial institutions were left untouched. On balance the steps taken were half hearted social-democratic measures that left bourgeois state power unchallenged.  
Over the following years the Tories sold off and privatised everything they could lay their hands on. Industry, utilities, council houses and local authority care homes were all sold off.  Brainwashed by the mass media, people were conditioned to accept these moves.  And Labour, firmly in the hands of the right wing, did almost nothing about it. Now, of course, they have all gone and we are left to pay through the nose for falling standards of service. The Labour Party had again betrayed the working class allowing those early gains to be lost. 
This betrayal was not the only one that set back the first stages of building socialism in Britain. The political line of the Communist Party of Great Britain, at a time when it should have been adopting a vanguard role to inspire the masses, degenerated into a revisionist party replacing real socialist objectives with a social democratic approach. In relation to the world class struggle they also abandoned proletarian internationalism. 
Setbacks within the UK  were matched by the collapse of revisionism in the Soviet Union which led to its fall and along with it the hopes and aspirations of millions of workers worldwide. One of the basic causes of the breakdown of the socialist system in the Soviet Union was the failure to appreciate the importance of moral incentives, as opposed to personal gain, as the fundamental lever for building socialism in human society. Another was the widespread belief that once socialism was achieved it was irreversible. This led to complacency and a failure to address important issues. Since 1955 Stalin, who had played a major role in building and defending the Soviet Union, was never mentioned in text books.  Thus his warnings in relation to the market and private property were ignored.
For the sake of peace, justice, equality and a sustainable future we need socialism and we need it now.  A vanguard party equipped with a Marxist-Leninist understanding is an essential feature for this to be achieved.  Lenin said that for a revolutionary situation to be transferred in to a full revolution the following factors are necessary:

First: an acute crisis situation with widespread discontent with the ruling class being unable to manage in the old way. 
Second: when the suffering of the oppressed classes have grown acute.
Third: when there is a considerable increase in the awareness and activity of the masses. 

The first two conditions exist in Britain today.  It is the task of communists to explain what is wrong and show that it is the bourgeoisie who are the villains. Not poor immigrants.
Today socialism in various forms, suited to specific local  conditions, is again on the march. The social progress and economic might of People's China has been amazing.  Measured in terms of what I would call 'Real GDP'  (the real value of goods and services without such American features as exorbitant medical fees, high rents and legal costs) is on a par with the USA.  Its mixed economy does have certain risks but it is a cardinal task for the Communist Party of China to ensure that no one is left behind.  A prosperous society is being created for everyone to enjoy.
The other socialist countries are in the face of threats and harsh sanctions are all making excellent progress.  Cuba has endured a blockade by the USA for over 60 years and Democratic Korea, Laos and Vietnam, who took on and defeated the might of American imperialism in their fight for freedom, have all recovered from almost total destruction.  
As socialism rises to become communism everyone’s needs will be fully met. Money, the lifeblood of capitalism and its mechanism for exploitation, will disappear. Under capitalism, income dominates people's existence. When  communism arrives in Britain it will transform society. Socialism, the first stage of advancement, implements the principle 'from each according to his ability to each according to his work'. Communism, the higher phase of socialist development, adopts the greater principle, ‘from each according to his ability to each according to his needs'.
Anxiety and fear will be replaced with harmony and mutual cooperation. Everyone will have an equal chance of opportunity to develop to their full potential. Human civilisation will flourish as never before. 
If we want a better tomorrow within a new and beautiful society we have to struggle for it.  With communism class and race discrimination, bigotry and sects will disappear. Women will be able to play a full role in society. Communists, socialists and all progressive people need to come together for an essential class struggle.  
The Labour Party continues to betray the working class as do other so called communists who are in reality a fake left. We need to be on our guard. We need to build the New Communist Party of Britain, a party that has stuck to it's principles, as a vanguard party for true social and economic progress.

The world today through Marxist eyes

 by Robin MacGregor

Revolutionary Democracy: Volume Two, No. 2 (New Series) April 2025 
£7.50 including p&p from NCP Lit, PO Box 73, London SW11 2PQ

 Once again lucky New Worker readers have a chance to purchase another issue of Revolutionary Democracy which has arrived from New Delhi. The tried and tested three-part format of articles on contemporary India and surrounding countries, statements of parties belonging to the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organisations (ICMLPO) and material from Soviet and other archives remains unchanged.  
 This issue opens with a self-explanatory piece on Emergent Fascism and People’s Resistance in India particularly the high-caste Hindu chauvinism promoted by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which is related to that party’s neo-liberal economic policies. Next is a timely reprint of the Communist International’s December 1933 thesis on Fascism, The Danger of War and the Tasks of the Communist Parties which has all too many parallels for today.  
 A short article describes a police crackdown in late January on peaceful demonstrations by workers at the Maruti Suzuki plant in New Delhi, where temporary workers staged a massive protest against the Japanese owned car factory demanding permanent jobs at greatly improved rates of pay and an end to fire and rehire.  
 The huge dispute, involving around 4,000 workers, was significant for securing support from a new union and from other workers at supplier plants. At the plant 83 per cent of the workforce are employed on short-term contracts. “Only 5,713 permanent workers out of the total workforce of 34,918 enjoy the benefits and high salaries that the company claims to provide its workers”. This has become very common in recent years in India. The protest was met by a violent police charge and the uprooting of tents belonging to the workers who were perfectly entitled to make their protest. As a tail-piece the final piece in this issue is a book review dealing with the broader question of Japanese companies in India. 
 A similar piece deals with the continuing war against the tribal peoples in central India whose lands contain great mineral wealth. Here the false claim of needing to fight against the Maoist Naxalite movement gives the Indian state an excuse for mass murder to pave the way for mining companies. 
From the specific to the general we have a detailed analysis of the dire state of agriculture which involves 93 million households, the vast majority of which are very small and thus unable to take advantages of machinery. While in theory farmers are now less likely to be under a landlord’s thumb, they are now more likely to be tied to moneylenders. Despite the vast number of small farmers, “1.1 per cent of rural households own about 20 per cent of land and it is they who produce for the market and call the shots”. 
 Next comes an account of the RG Kar Movement which started with protests against the brutal rape and murder of a junior doctor at Kolkata’s RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, which snow-balled in mass protests across Bengal, involving many more than the medical profession.
The July 2024 Uprising in Bangladesh which saw the collapse of the brutal Awami League government is fully recounted by a regular RD contributor, Badruddin Umar. 
 From the archives we have a 1957 article on Commodity Production and the Law of Value Under Socialism by Soviet economist K Ostrovityanov, which editor Vijay Singh states was an important step in establishing a market economy under Khruschev. This is followed by another instalment of Lenin’s Criticism of Bogdanov’s Reactionary Sociological Views, first published in 1937 by A V Shchegolov.
 After some declarations by ICMLPO parties on Palestine, Syria and about the Kurdish PKK laying down their arms. There is also more archival material. 
From 1946 we have a document reflecting on Communist Party of India policies on the question of the formation of Pakistan and its implications for India’s national unity. Similar issues are also covered in a 1952 correspondence between the Indian and Soviet parties where the question of Kashmir loomed large.
Nearer to home for British readers is a brief 1947 discussion between Zhdanov from the Soviet Union and Nicos Zachariadis of the Communist Party of Greece concerning the civil war. All in all another interesting collection.

Revolutionary Democracy is a half-yearly theoretical and political journal published in April and September from India. It contains material on the problems facing the communist movement, particularly relating to Russia, China and India, the origins of modern revisionism, the restoration of capitalism in the USSR and developments in the international communist movement.

Creeping fascism

Only the Starmer leadership and their toadies in the BBC could turn the Glastonbury music festival into a massive rally in support of the Palestinians. But that’s what they did when forgot about the rap-punk Bob Vylan duo and tried to censor Kneecap. These artists are not afraid of police action. Nor are their fans or the millions upon millions who had never heard of them until last week but are now echoing their calls for “free Palestine” and “death to the IDF [the Israeli army]” all around the world.
Now Palestine Action faces is going to be outlawed as a terrorist organisation. It would be one of, if not the, most draconian attack on everyone’s freedom of speech and right to dissent.
The police have been given powers to arrest and charge with terrorism anyone declaring support for Palestine Action. It is a chilling attack on the right to non-violent protest.
Palestine Action has been proscribed as a terror organisation. Anyone supporting the non-violent activist group could face up to 14 years in prison.
Since the 1990s there has been a procession of Police and Crime Acts, Immigration and Asylum Acts and anti‑terror legislation. And since the 11th September 2001 attacks on the United States, there has been an avalanche of very repressive anti‑terror measures, including detaining suspects indefinitely without charge or trial along with the introduction of control orders that amount to house arrest. These anti‑terror laws have been used against people who are plainly not terrorists – usually peace protesters. Now they’re being used to suppress the direct action Palestine solidarity movement that campaigns to end British involvement in the genocidal war against the Palestinian Arabs. 
Shamefully only a handful of Labour MPs voted against the proscription of Palestine Action. Jeremy Corbyn’s Independent Alliance took the principled stand. So did the Greens and the SD&LP from northern Ireland.
Supporters of Palestine Action have voiced concern about the precedent this sets for protestors who are calling for an end to Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. Critics decried the chilling effect of the ban, which puts Palestine Action on a par with the gunmen suicide bombers of the sectarian al-Qaeda and ISIS movements, making it a criminal offence to support or be part of the protest group.
“Let us be clear: to equate a spray can of paint with a suicide bomb isn’t just absurd, it is grotesque. It is a deliberate distortion of the law to chill dissent, criminalise solidarity, and suppress the truth” says Zarah Sultana, the maverick Labour MP suspended from the party for opposing Starmer’s plans to ends the two-child benefit cap. Or as the journalist and environmentalist campaigner George Monbiot put it “you can blow the limbs off a child...you can directly and deliberately target journalists, academics, you can blow up entire families, you can target people who are queuing for food aid. You can do what the hell you like and you will not be condemned by this government. But spray a bit of paint on some war planes, on some weapons of war, and that paint becomes the true weapon of war. That becomes the true aggression. That becomes in [Home Secretary] Yvette Cooper’s words a ‘disgraceful attack’”.

After the guns fall silent…

...real negotiations must begin – and not just on the thorny issue of Iran’s nuclear energy industry. The American-inspired truce that some say was brokered at Israel’s request may have put the Israeli-Iranian conflict on hold but it hasn’t stopped the fighting in Palestine. In occupied Palestine Zionist gangs spread terror in the West Bank while the Palestinian resistance fights on against a brutal foe who kills scores of civilians every day in what is clearly an attempt to drive the Palestinian Arabs out of their Mediterranean enclave to make room for more Zionist settlement.
Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian leader who signed the Camp David surrender treaty, with Israel once said that the United States held “99 per cent of the cards” in the Middle East and that he relied on the Americans to advance the peace process in the region by “bringing Israel to reason”. The Arab traitor, who was assassinated by Islamic militants in October 1981, was wrong.
Sure – recent events have shown that the United States can bring “Israel to reason” any time they like as the Zionist entity is a total dependency of the United States. But the Americans, who certainly hold 99 per cent of the cards in Tel Aviv, have little or no sway in the corridors of power in Tehran let alone the Palestinian resistance. 
Despite all the talk of “Zionist lobbies” and 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 an American protectorate and their leaders will ultimately do whatever America wants.
Iran is perfectly entitled to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. While Trump and his Israeli and European followers bleat on about Iran’s supposed nuclear bomb project the International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed that the claim by Israel and the USA that the Islamic Republic is secretly building a nuclear weapon is false. Likewise the continuous monitoring of Iranian nuclear activities by the agency has not unearthed any evidence of departure from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) that Iran has signed. 
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 in October 2023.
But what the Americans want and what they get is another matter altogether. They failed in Iraq. They failed in Afghanistan. They will fail in Syria and they will fail in the rest of 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 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 the 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 the Great Powers.

Stop the drive to war

Trump walks out of the G7 conference in Canada. He threatens to kill the Iranian leader and join Israel in its offensive against the Islamic Republic of Iran. All in all it seems that the American establishment, the “deep state” or war lobby that cuts across the bogus political spectrum in the United States, that represents the most venal and aggressive sections of the American ruling class is back in charge if the mercurial acts of the man in the White House is anything to go by these days. That, of course, we won’t know for sure as Trump’s bargaining style is a heady mixture of lies, bluff and threats What we do know is that the entire Middle East will be set ablaze if US imperialism does openly join in the war to save the skin of its Israeli puppet.
That’s why the Stop the War movement and the rest of the Palestine solidarity coalition has added the slogan No War on Iran as part of its mobilisation for the big national demonstration in London this weekend. That’s why we, as communists, must also help in the effort to stop British involvement in any future American aggression in the region.
The Americans will almost certainly want to use Diego Garcia, the Anglo-American military base in the Indian Ocean, as a staging post to conduct strikes on Iran. They may also want the RAF squadron in Cyprus to join them in what the Israelis are openly calling “regime change” in Iran. 
Crawling to the Americans is second nature to Labour and Tory politicians who still drone on and on about trans-Atlantic “partnership” and the “special relationship” to justify British imperialism’s slavish support of American power throughout the world. So we shouldn’t expect much from the Starmer government that bleats on about “de-escalation”, says Iran must never have a nuclear bomb while supporting Israel’s supposed “right to defend itself” whenever anyone demands a serious response to Zionist war-crimes from the British government. 
Stop The War convener Lindsey German says Trump has “absolutely no business bombing or attacking the country in any way. To do so would be a completely illegal war crime which will cause misery to millions and drive the world into the worst Middle East war ever.
“The claims that Israel is simply defending itself against the attacks by Iran over the last week are completely false. 
“We know from the past 20 months of Israel’s assault on Gaza they’re not defending themselves, they’re engaged in an aggressive and genocidal war, and they intend the same for Iran”.
 In Britain the ruling class would have us believe that we live in what the Americans call the “free world”; that the USA is some sort of democratic utopia and that anyone who opposes imperialism is evil, mad or both. Backed by bought and paid-for Labour leaders and a daily dose of lies from the bourgeois media they think they can play this cynical game for ever and ever. We must prove them wrong and stop this war.

The Gordon riots

by Ray Jones

In June 1780 thousands of people marched through London and started what is said by some to be the greatest riot Britain has ever seen. Led by Lord George Gordon, after whom it became known – an MP for a pocket borough in Wiltshire – the initial cause was a bill set to give very limited rights to Catholics. In the forefront were the middle classes organised in the powerful Protestant Association. Peacefully they marched through London to present a petition against the bill to Parliament.
But Parliament quickly rejected it and the situation swiftly changed. What started off peacefully enough became violent and destructive; the middle classes stepped back (although some liberal Whigs continued to pay lip service to the cause) and the initiative was taken up by the poor. For a week London was held by the ‘mob’. All except one of the prisons were wrecked and the inmates released, Parliament was blockaded. The houses of wealthy Catholics were burnt and looted as were Catholic chapels (most of which were attached to the houses) but poorer Catholics were mostly left alone. The Bank of England was attacked and perhaps this was some kind of turning point.
For a week the magistrates and the authorities were remarkably inactive and for the most part the troops obeyed the law which restrained their actions, not having a magistrate willing to read the Riot Act. The King, George III, stepped in and demanded that the law be reinterpreted to allow the troops to ignore the magistrates and fire at will (that is as they were ordered, because there is a suggestion that before this a lot of fraternisation was going on). Fifteen thousand soldiers had been brought into the city and they opened fire killing between 400 and 700 people and wounding many more.
The riot was effectively crushed. Twenty five rioters were tried and hanged and Lord George Gordon was tried for treason but acquitted (possibly because he had turned against the rioters before the end – and no doubt being a Lord and MP helped).
Although the Gordon Riots are sometimes categorised as purely anti Catholic riots there is much to indicate that they were more complex than that. It’s true that “No Popery” was a common battle cry of the rioters and that anti-Catholicism had deep roots going back before the English Revolution but poor Catholics were not targeted. It was the wealthy and powerful that were mainly attacked and institutions that represented authority.
The change in the law was seen as a means of allowing more men into the army to be used against the Americans in their struggle for independence which many supported. But it was also used to bolster the King’s push for absolutism in Britain – hence the other battle cry of “Liberty!”. The very limited freedoms that people had were cherished and people looked nervously at the rest of Europe and linked Catholicism with the absolutist regimes on the Continent and the even greater poverty they saw there.
The conditions for working people were hard. London was over-crowded, dirty, stinking, poverty-stricken and disease ridden but with tiny islands of immense wealth and enormous class differences. Working class political organisation was in its infancy. It’s not surprising that people struck out in revolt sometimes.
If readers fancy a fictional account of the riot they might try Charles Dickens’ Barnaby Rudge. He is hardly pro-riot and the novel was written years after the event but his liberal attitude (for the time) is clear and being a journalist he did some research.
As for Gordon he later converted to Judaism and died in prison after being jailed for libelling the queen of France, the French ambassador and the administration of justice in England.