We can’t stop now!

Thousands are being massacred in Gaza, and the Western world remains silent. Israel has treacherously broken the ceasefire. For the last two weeks, Israel has completely blockaded Gaza, using starvation as a weapon of war as it continues to kill Palestinians with impunity in the occupied West Bank as well as the beleaguered Palestinian enclave. And now, with the blessing of Donald Trump the Zionists have resumed their genocidal assault on Gaza.  
The Israeli war-machine has killed at least 45,000 Palestinians in Gaza and displaced more than 90 per cent of Gaza’s population. Palestinians in Gaza are facing imminent famine. Yet our political leaders still refuse to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, and for Britain to stop arming Israel. 
All we get are weasel words from Starmer. His Foreign Minister, David Lammy told the House of Commons on Monday that Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip was “appalling and unacceptable” and “a breach of international law”. The next day it was watered-down by Downing Street. Starmer’s spokesman Dave Pares refused to repeat that line, telling reporters that  “our position remains that Israel’s actions in Gaza have a clear risk of breaking international humanitarian law”. Shameful nonsense.
Hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets in London and all over the country to demand a halt to Zionist aggression and call for justice for the Palestinian Arabs. As Israel’s genocidal assault continues we must keep on taking action until the Palestinians win their fight for freedom. We can’t stop now!

Tax the rich instead

Opposition to Labour’s new austerity programme is growing. “Slashing disability benefits is a cruel political choice that will cost lives” says Jeremy Corbyn. The former Labour leader says none of the cuts announced are necessary and the government should tax the super-rich instead. Diane Abbott dismisses Sir Keir Starmer’s claim that the cuts in benefits had a moral purpose. “This is not about morality,” she says. It is “about the Treasury’s wish to balance the country’s books on the back of the most vulnerable and poor people in this society”. And the Greens tell Starmer that millions were struggling in “a deeply unfair, unequal economic system” while billionaires got ever richer. Why put the burden for tackling the crisis on the elderly, children, the sick and disabled “rather than on the shoulders of the super-rich with a wealth tax”. 
The Starmer government pleads poverty to justify means-testing the pensioners’ winter fuel benefit. It won’t pay compensation to the three million or so women born in the 1950s who were not properly informed about the state pension age increase. But it can find plenty to fuel the proxy war against Russia and pay for Trident and the rest of our so-called nuclear deterrent.  
The Labour biggies and the ruling class that they serve maintain that capitalism is the only game in town. And it is – but only for themselves. Capitalism, in the final analysis, is simply a system designed to perpetuate the rule of the landowners, industrialists and capitalists to ensure that a tiny handful of parasites can live the lives of Roman emperors off the backs of millions upon millions of working people. There is only one solution to the capitalist crisis – socialism! 

More Tory rubbish

The Chancellor, Philip Hammond, tells us that austerity is coming to an end. But there was little sign of that in his budget statement to parliament this week. Labour Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell rejected his claim, saying that more welfare cuts were come. He also said that prisons, schools and local authorities would not have much to celebrate about the new budget, and should be preparing for more difficult years ahead.

Hammond said this was a budget for "strivers, grafters and carers". But it was, as usual, a budget for the capitalists, bankers, industrialists and landowners who really run this country. The Chancellor doled out some sops to provide the mainstream media with more fake news about a “give away” budget for “Middle England”. But robbing Peter to pay Paul seldom fools anyone these days.

The bourgeois media trumpeted Hammond’s decision to lift some low-paid workers out of income taxation by raising the personal allowance to £12,500. But raising the higher tax band to £50,000 will benefit the high-earners whose loyalty the Tories need to retain at the next election.

A one-off £400 million “bonus” for schools to buy “little extras” goes nowhere to compensate for a decade of cuts, whilst the much vaunted £4 billion for mental healthcare comes out of the existing £20 billion already earmarked for the NHS, which everyone who works in the health service thinks is woefully inadequate.

Hammond says that austerity will end but “discipline will remain”, which means the same in Tory-speak. No wonder the Labour leader has called this a “broken-promise budget”. Jeremy Corbyn points out that the spending plans bring no benefit to poorer people and will only lead to further cuts to many public services.

Corbyn deplored the decision not to reverse the benefit freeze, saying: “The benefit freeze takes £1.5bn from 10 million low- and middle-income households. A low-income household with children will be £200 worse off. For them, there is no end to austerity. Labour would have ended the benefit freeze.”

Corbyn told parliament: “This government is harsh on the weak and feeble on the strong… This budget won’t undo the damage done by eight years of austerity and doesn’t begin to measure up to the scale of the job that needs to be done to rebuild Britain.”

That job can only be done by Labour. Corbyn’s overwhelming support within the trade union movement and the rank-and-file of the Labour party shows that Labour is still a potentially strong weapon for our class. Although the New Communist Party has never confused Labour with a revolutionary party, nor imagined that we can build a people’s democracy through parliamentary elections, a Labour government, with its organisational links with the trade unions and the co-operative movement, offers the best option for the working class in the era of bourgeois parliamentary democracy.

Our strategy is for working class unity. We struggle to defeat the right-wing within the movement, and campaign to strengthen the left within the Labour Party and the unions. We support Labour’s demands for the restoration of trade union rights, progressive taxation, state welfare and a public sector dedicated to meet the people’s needs.

The shaky Tory coalition is riven with dissent over the European Union. It can and must be brought down to pave the way to a new general election. Mass pressure from the labour and peace movement is needed to speed the day and ensure that Labour gets a big enough mandate at the next general election to govern without the dubious assistance of the Scottish National Party or the Liberal Democrats.