Let the good times roll…

The race for the Labour leadership has begun. Not officially. No leadership challenge has been formally made. No election under rules has been set. And Sir Keir Starmer is still at the helm. But no one doubts that his days are numbered as Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham set out their stalls in preparation for the contest to come which will give one of them the keys to Number Ten.
Streeting is a Blairite who has nothing to offer working people apart from more of the same rubbish they got from Starmer. He wisely plays down the fact that he was a protégé of the disgraced Peter Mandelson while Andy Burnham plays up demands for social justice to fend off the Greens and woo back the Labour vote on the streets that until recently had traditionally backed Labour. The self-proclaimed “left” on the Labour back-benches – the sort who support the Socialist Campaign Group and other Bennite campaigns – is backing Burnham, largely to keep Streeting out. John McDonnell, a one-time ally of Jeremy Corbyn, says that the former Labour leader should be able to rejoin the party if Burnham becomes leader. But this has been ruled out by the Burnham camp.
But everything hinges on Burnham winning the Makerfield seat. If he fails – and the Faragists are going to put up a strong challenge – then all bets are off for both Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting.

Back in Brussels…

...all eyes are on the battle for Labour’s top job. Whoever gets it it’s a win-win for the Common Market. Streeting is opening calling for a return to the European Union. Burnham says nothing now that could play into Farage’s hand but only last year he told his supporters that “I want to rejoin the EU. I hope it happens in my lifetime…”. Whoever wins a second referendum looks inevitable. Rejoining the EU is now back on the agenda, and the Remainers are winning the argument given the pathetic leaders of the Brexit camp these days.
The Tories had a golden opportunity after Brexit to build an independent British economy freed from the fetters of the European Union. Johnson, Truss and Sunak squandered it in pursuit of the impossible dream of a free trade agreement with the United States – that was never on the cards in Washington. 
Lexit, the left case for leaving the European Union, never got off the ground. The public face of the Brexiteers is now that of Nigel Farage, Kemi Badenoch and the followers of Tommy Robinson that we see draped in Union Jacks at the anti-immigration rallies of the lunatic fringe.
But one only has to look at what’s happening in Europe today to see that rejoining the European Union will not solve the problems of working people. Communists need to make the case for staying out of the EU, trading freely with everyone throughout the world and building an independent economy needed to restore our public services in the 21st century. 

The cruel Atlantic trade

by Ben Soton

The Great Resistance – The 400-Year to end Slavery in The Americas by Carrie Gibson, Basic Books, New York 2026, 640 pp, Hbk £30 Pbk £20

The 16th Century saw the opening up of the Americas and the establishment of transatlantic trade routes.  The trade in sugar, cotton and tobacco was central to the development of capitalism and with it the industrial revolution; central to this process was the trade in human capital across the Atlantic ocean.
In this book Carrie Gibson gives a detailed account of resistance to this evil institution. 
She pieces together a myriad of small texts and in so constructs the four-hundred-year history of slavery in the Americas. It begins in the late 1400s and ends in 1888 with the abolition of slavery in Brazil. 
The transatlantic slave trade was initiated by Spain and Portugal and later involved Britain, France and to a lesser extent the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden.  Resistance took many forms, including suicide, while rebellions took place almost as soon as the slave-trade began.  Resistance also took the form of guerilla warfare. Slave revolts took place wherever slavery existed and were more widespread than many of us may have previously been aware.
The book goes into considerable detail as to how the major events of late 18th century contributed to the ending of slavery.  The American War of Independence saw both sides offering to free slaves prepared to join their fight. The French Revolution, with its emphasis of ‘The Rights of Man’, influenced the successful revolt in Haiti – the first state to abolish slavery in the Caribbean. It was not the actions of well-meaning white folk but the result of the actions of slaves themselves that ended slavery; a theme that the author stresses throughout the book.  
Gibson downplays the role of Royal Navy’s West African Squadron in ending the slave trade in 1807.  Gibson points out that most of the captives liberated were not returned to Africa but ended up in the Americas as indentured labourers.  She also points out that the African Squadron was more of a means of extending Britain’s imperial interests in Africa than actually helping Africans.  On a more surprising note the author is highly critical of Simon Bolivar, a hero of the Latin American left, whose attitude to people of colour was at best ambiguous.   
The 19th century saw the gradual abolition of slavery across the Americas. It did not result in an age of prosperity for the former enslaved people; after all it was their former owners who received compensation. The freed slaves still suffered from the ravages of colonialism, segregation and racism. Problems that are for the most part unresolved. The book stands as a testimony to those who fought against the evil institution of slavery.    

1926 – a year to remember

by Andy Brooks

May 1926 – when the unions tried, but sadly failed, to halt the employers’ offensive against the miners. The fledgling British communist party, founded a few years earlier in 1920, did its best to rally the workers during the general strike that was called off by the defeatists and gravy-trainers in the big unions on surrender terms that set back the labour movement in Britain for many years to come.
On the 100th anniversary of the General Strike the NCP is republishing Stalin’s comments on this momentous event in the history of British trade unionism. The new pamphlet includes a brief historical review of the strike written in 2006 by Ken Ruddock, a leading member of the New Communist Party who sadly passed away in 2020, together with Stalin’s report delivered at a meeting of railway workers in Tiflis on 8th June 1926. 
Another tribute, this time from the Socialist History Society includes a reprint of Ernie Trory’s long out-of-print Brighton and the General Strike and other articles on great strike.
It’s called Remembering the Battle of Lewes Road and it’s edited and introduced by Christian Høgsbjerg for the Brighton & Hove trades council.
The booklet contains two pamphlets. One by Ernie Trory, the famous NCP Brighton communist and unemployed workers’ leader, and another by Andy Durr of the Brighton Trades Council that were first published in the 1970s. Above all, it is an affirmation of the support which the working class of Brighton gave to the miners in their dispute with the coal owners and the Conservative government, and an homage to the 22 men who were imprisoned from two to six months for their attempt to prevent the tram sheds at Lewes Road being opened for strike-breaking purposes on 11th May 1926. Both pamphlets draw from the personal experiences of those involved, and the pamphlet finishes with Ernie Trory's rewriting of the song Sussex by the Sea, written in the idiom of the strikers. This is a must for anyone interested in the history of the labour movement on the South Coast.
The General Strike of 1926 pamphlet can be ordered from the Lit Dept at the NCP for £4:00 including postage. Remembering the Battle of Lewes Road is an illustrated booklet which can be obtained for just £6:00 from the Strike Map online store at: https://organiseandstrike.sumupstore.com/ 

Now the fun begins...

The knives are out. The back-stabbers are at play as the struggle begins anew in the corridors of power within the Labour Party for the key to Number Ten. Sir Keir Starmer says that the United Kingdom faces going down 'a very dark path' as he pledges to fight on as Prime Minister. And former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, a one-time ally of Jeremy Corbyn, says Wes Streeting is planning a stealth coup to move against Starmer to avoid a leadership contest which could include Labour’s “King of the North”, Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham.
The solid vote for the Scottish and Welsh nationalists in last week’s elections in Scotland and Wales along with the spectacular rise of Reform in the council votes in England spells doom for Keir Starmer and the ageing Blairite crew that has brought Labour to the brink of electoral collapse in recent years.
The results – the collapse of the Labour and Tory vote across the country, sweeping gains for the Faragists and more modest but significant gains for the Greens and the Liberal-Democrats came as no surprise to the pundits who long ago read the writing on the wall when the Labour leader purged the Corbynistas and drove hundreds of thousands out of Labour’s ranks soon after Starmer became leader in 2020. The likes of Peter Mandelson believed the working class would put up with this and more as they “had nowhere else to go”. They said Labour’s loveless landslide victory, largely due to the Faragist intervention that split the Tory vote, was a vote of confidence in their particular brand of class collaboration which revolved around following what they believed was the dominant trend within the British ruling class; crawling to the Americans and the Americans; upholding the old Tory austerity programme and carrying on with the stealth privatisation of the health service.
Many of them clearly believed this rubbish even though reality was staring them in the face as hundreds of thousands took to the streets every month to demonstrate against Israeli aggression and hundreds of thousands more abandoned Labour at the ballot box. Starmer clearly still believes in the old lies – trying to block the Blairites chosen successor and clinging to power when it’s obvious the game’s up.
But just getting rid of Starmer will not revive Labour’s fortunes. Labour needs to accept the inevitability of independence for Scotland and Wales and the re-unification of Ireland. It needs go beyond the parameters of political debate set by the bourgeoisie that revolve around law and order, immigration and the European Union and campaign to win the demands of the union movement that the Labour Party was set up for in the first place back in the early 1900s.
 A genuine return to a working class agenda and a commitment to restore the welfare state and the public sector that existed until the Tory come-back in 1979 could win back the traditional Labour vote. That may be a call to far for the Burnham and Rayner camp but it has to be made – inside or outside the Labour Party.

  

   

The spirit of May Day

May Day is workers’ day. But its origins go back to the  rituals of hallowed antiquity. Long before the emergence of trade unions, May Day was a spring festival dedicated to the spirits that people thought controlled the destinies of humanity. Houses were decorated with green branches. Peasants danced and picked a "May King and Queen", believing this would magically bring about a  good harvest and prosperity. 
Nowadays it’s a time to remember past struggles and achievements and look forward to the bright red future still to come. From the big parades in the people’s democracies to the rallies in Europe and throughout the Global South, May Day is celebrated to honour the generations that have gone before us and to look to the future with confidence and determination. 
We recall the fight for the eight-hour day and the strikes in the United States on May Day 1886 that ended in the murder of six strikers by the police in Chicago, and the deaths of seven police the next day when a bomb exploded during a protest in the city’s Haymarket Square. Eight union leaders were arrested on trumped-up charges and four were later hanged.
In 1889 the First International, the International Working Men’s Association, declared May Day an international working-class holiday to commemorate the Haymarket Martyrs, and the Red Flag, representing the blood of working class martyrs – the martyred dead of Labour’s anthem – was adopted as the international symbol of working people.
Lenin’s May Day was a call to action. He said “May Day is coming, the day when the workers of all lands celebrate Their awakening to a class-conscious life, their solidarity in the struggle against all coercion and oppression of man by man, the struggle to free the toiling millions from hunger, poverty, and humiliation. Two worlds stand facing each other in this great struggle: the world of capital and the world of labour, the world of exploitation and slavery and the world of brotherhood and freedom.
“On one side stand the handful of rich blood-suckers. They have seized the factories and mills, the tools and machinery, have turned millions of acres of land and mountains of money into their private property. They have made the government and the army their servants, faithful watchdogs of the wealth they have amassed.
“On the other side stand the millions of the disinherited. They are forced to beg the moneybags for permission to work for them. By their labour they create all wealth; yet all their lives long they have to struggle for a crust of bread, beg for work as for charity, sap their strength and health by back-breaking toil, and starve in hovels in the villages or in the cellars and garrets of the big cities.
“But now these disinherited toilers have declared war on the moneybags and exploiters. The workers of all lands are fighting to free labour from wage slavery, from poverty and want. They are fighting for a system of society where the wealth created by the common labour will go to benefit, not a handful of rich men, but all those who work. They want to make the land and the factories, mills, and machines the common property of all toilers. They want to do away with the division into rich and poor, want the fruits of labour to go to the labourers themselves, and all the achievements of the human mind, all improvements in ways of working, to improve the lot of the man who works, and not serve as a means of oppressing him”. Let us all follow in Lenin’s footsteps to build a better tomorrow for the generations to come.

Russian communists' front-line report

 

by New Worker correspondent

NCP members held on online meeting with five comrades from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) on Saturday. The main Russian communists speaker for the CPRF was Donbas communist leader Boris Litvinov, who gave the following assessment of the current situation in Donetsk and the Ukraine.
“There is martial law in the Ukrainian controlled parts of Donetsk, so all activities are currently banned. Ukraine’s forces are suffering 1,000-1,500 casualties daily. There are fewer and fewer actual Ukrainians on the front line, and more and more foreign mercenaries from around the world, many from Latin America, in addition to the people seized on the streets in Ukraine. As a result, a growing number of soldiers on the Ukrainian side prefer to surrender at the first opportunity, rather than die” Litvinov said.
“In most areas near the front line less than five per cent of the normal population remains when the Russian and Donbas forces arrive. The Ukrainian military is forcibly removing civilians, including women and children, from towns and villages near the front line they still control. For example in Avdeyivka, only 800 remained from the original population of 32,000”.
When the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was established in 1922 – the first time Ukraine ever existed as a separate territory – the heavily industrialised Donbas, a completely Russian speaking area, was included in the new Ukrainian republic, so Russian has historically been the main language in the region for the past 104 years. But it was outlawed by the Ukrainian fascists.
Litvinov pointed out that “when the Russian forces arrived in Kurakovo there were still 30 children in the town, and their first action was to set up a school for them. Under Ukrainian rule they were brought up to speak only Ukrainian, and couldn't speak any Russian.
“Now NATO is using the territory of the Baltic States to launch attacks on industrial and energy plants in Northern Russia. These attacks are aimed at provoking Russia to strike back at those states leading to an extremely dangerous escalation of the war.
“According to the Russian Federation Ukraine is using drones made in France, Britain and Germany, or built from parts sent to Ukraine, which are being used to target industrial plants all over Russia, just as the USA and Israel are attacking plants all over Iran, and Iran has hit facilities in the Gulf countries.
Refuting Western claims that Russia deliberately targets civilians Litvinov said “the Russian military only ever strikes targets related to military production. Residential buildings or areas are never targeted, and the Russian forces issue warnings to civilians to leave areas they are planning to strike”.
It’s the Ukrainian fascists who target innocent civilians Litvinov said “On Lenin's birthday, 22nd April, from the early morning, Ukrainian forces struck the areas around monuments with missiles and drones, as they knew that local people would be laying flowers there, and several people were injured. But in spite of these attacks, members of the CPRF and trade unionists still managed to lay flowers at the monuments.
“This war would have ended long ago without the massive support Ukraine has received from Western states. We believe that if the USSR had still existed, all these problems, and the war, could have been avoided in other ways. Members of the CPRF are united in the eventual goals of ending all wars, and to defeat imperialism”.