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The Kremlin warned Britain of the grave consequences of supplying Ukraine with depleted uranium (DU) shells. Some said this simply meant escalation. Others, the gurus of the bourgeois media who pose as ‘military experts’, told us that they posed no danger to Ukrainian civilians and that, in any case, this was just another empty threat from the Russians who would soon be on their knees following a Ukrainian spring offensive. What none of them foresaw was that the “grave consequences” that would follow would be the taking out of the DU ammo dumps and the possible release of deadly radiation into the air.
That’s exactly what happened when a Ukrainian military depot was totally destroyed by a Russian ballistic missile this week. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says reports that radiation levels have risen in the aftermath of the Russian strike are wrong.
Whether deadly gamma rays really were released when the warehouse went up is a matter of indifference to the hapless citizens of Khmelnitsky. They stampeded to the shops to buy iodine pills and are being told not to drink the tap water. They're seeing patrols going around the streets with radiation dosimeters after the explosion. They were not prepared to give their authorities the benefit of the doubt. Neither should we.
Sadly Labour’s leaders and most of the trade union bureaucrats think otherwise. They spend their time thinking of new ways to take the UK back into the European Union and drivelling on about the “human rights” they believe can only exist under the rule of the bourgeoisie. These days many of those who pose as socialists have also become cheer-leaders for imperialism and its lackeys in Israel, south Korea and, of course, Ukraine.
No treaty explicitly banning the use of DU is yet in force, however repeated UN General Assembly resolutions have highlighted serious concerns over the use of DU weapons. Needless to say, the UK, together with the USA, France and Israel, are the only states that have consistently voted against the resolutions.
Sadly, the influence of the venal social-democrats and the bogus left stretches far beyond the union movement. Its dead-hand stifles debate in academia and within the traditional anti-war and peace movements in Britain.
CND and the Stop the War campaign are in the doldrums precisely because they refused to take a principled stand when the Russians intervened to defend the people of the Donbas last year. But genuine communists, such as the New Communist Party, along with anti-imperialists and revolutionary socialists, stepped up their solidarity work in support of the Donbas people’s republics and the underground Ukrainian anti-fascist resistance.
More people are now seeing through the lies of the imperialists and their willing tools in the peace and labour movement. Stop the War, which originally called for an end to the fighting on NATO’s terms, is shifting. CND to its credit has called on the Sunak government to put an immediate end to its use of DU. They say “inflicting it on the people of Ukraine is the last thing they need” – it’s the last thing we need too.
UK is supplying depleted uranium (DU) shells to Ukraine to be used by the Challenger tanks Britain is sending. DU ammunition was first deployed by the United States in the 1990 Gulf War. In that war and the 2003 Iraq War 300 metric tons of DU weapons were used, and 10 metric tons were used in the 1999 NATO military action in Yugoslavia. DU weapons were also used by the US military in Syria in 2015.
Significant increases in horrific birth defects, leukaemia and other cancers, kidney damage, and mental illness in children have been recorded in areas where the munitions were used.
In 2001, the World Health Organisation (WHO) completed a scientific review that concluded that depleted uranium is both chemically and radiologically toxic.
The DU used in battle is spread throughout the environment including the soil and water tables, and remains radioactive for more than 4.5 billion years.
The rich Western countries which dominate and control the UN and its bodies have promised to clean up the DU in Iraq, but have failed to deliver.
It is likely that the people of the former Yugoslavia and Iraq will be living with the tragic consequences of the use of DU for generations to come, unless the rich nations come forward to finance environmental cleansing and monitoring on a massive scale.
But we can try to stop DU weapons being used in yet another NATO-backed war, a war which the entire NATO alliance is prolonging with billions in arms deliveries and active support for the Kiev regime through intelligence and undercover forces operating in the country.
We are calling on the British government to reverse its decision to send depleted uranium shells to Ukraine, and ensure that DU ammunition already sent to Ukraine is not used in battle.
Look for the Golly...
...the Golly on the jar” was the jingle when Robertson’s used a “golliwog” to promote their jams and marmalade. Generations of kids collected the golliwog tokens needed to get a seemingly endless series of enamel Golly badges.
Back in the news following a row over their display in a south Essex pub we’re told – at least in some quarters – that these rag-dolls are “loveable” mementos from the “good old days”. In fact these hideous frizzy-haired dolls with their bulging eyes and bright red lips are nothing more than offensive racist caricatures of black people.
The landlord of the White Hart Inn in Grays wonders what all the fuss is about when the police followed up complaints about his collection of gollywogs displayed behind the bar – including two hanging from a beam above. He denies there’s any racist motive behind the display of his wife’s collection of these dolls. He says "a mountain has been made out of a molehill" and that the dolls were "part of our history".
It certainly is part of our history – but not one that there’s anything to be proud of. The gollywog comes from the American slave-owning past seen through the spectrum of pre-war British colonialism, the “white man’s burden” and “lesser breeds without the law”.
We have, of course, moved on from those days. The Empire has gone along with the colonial and racist ideology that was taught in our schools to justify its existence. The racist and Nazi movements that flourished in the 1970s have been marginalised by mass action on the street. Even the golliwogs have gone. They were eventually removed by Robertson’s in 2002. But the fact that there’s any discussion about this at all in the bourgeois media shows we’ve still got a long way to go.
