Last lap of the election…

It looks like curtains for Sunak on 4th July. Despite the fact that there is little enthusiasm for Keith Starmer on the street nothing the Conservatives say can shift Labour’s 20 point lead in the opinion polls. Amongst the Tory grandees the blame game has already begun with Remainers looking to the Liberal-Democrats while the die-hard racists and what’s left of their Brexit faction turn to Nigel Farage’s Reform platform. In Islington over a thousand volunteers are helping Jeremy Corbyn in his fight against the Labour machine to keep his seat in parliament and Nigel Farage managed to break the bourgeois consensus on Ukraine last week. 
To the eternal shame of the fake left Labour MPs who pose as peace campaigners while supporting NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine Farage’s repeated calls for a peace settlement
 take Russia’s legitimate demands into consideration. To the horror of Sunak and Starmer, who closed ranks to denounce Farage as an apologist for Vladimir Putin, Farage’s comments were favourably received on the street even in die-hard Tory and Labour areas. This is not surprising. Though tatty yellow and blue Ukrainian flags still fly over some Government buildings no-one on the street really cares about Zelensky these days. 

Assange: the end of a nightmare

 Seven years holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London followed by five years cooped up in a dungeon in Belmarsh. Julian Assange paid a very high price for defending journalistic freedom. Now he walks free following a plea-bargain deal with the American courts that led to his release this week. We all wish him well as he starts to rebuild his life in Australia.
The WikiLeaks founder will now fight for a pardon that Donald Trump says he will seriously consider if he returns to the White House while Assange supporters vow to continue to campaign to change the law in the United States to prevent further prosecutions against journalists.
We’ve learned many lessons from the Assange campaign whose ultimate victory was undoubtedly due to Assange’s refusal to grovel to imperialist demands and his campaign’s determination to fight for his freedom across the globe. That campaign swayed the Australian Labor government into pressing for his release. It clearly also influenced the Biden administration that is well aware that it needs to woo the liberal constituency in the United States with a show of clemency if it hopes to beat off the challenge from the Trump camp at the presidential elections in November.
The lesson learnt is to have no faith in British “justice” or the courts and constitutions of the other members of the “free world” in Europe. They will all do the bidding of their masters in Washington when the chips are down. The American whistle-blower Edward Snowden made a wiser choice when he fled to Russia in 2013...

Round four in the election stakes

We’re passed the half-way mark in the election race. The mainstream party leaders stomp the streets to confine the debate to which one of them is better at administering the bourgeois state that the ruling class themselves pay so little to maintain while on the fringe the left-social democratic outsiders scrabble for a protest vote that has failed to take the discussion beyond the parameters set by the ruling class on NATO, Trident, Israel and the European Union.
The one exception is in London where Jeremy Corbyn is battling to keep his Islington seat in the face of a strong challenge from the official Labour candidate. The former Labour leader  has published his own manifesto calling for energy, water, rail and mail to be brought back into public control, as well as for a Green New Deal to put Britain on the path towards a sustainable future.
Corbyn may be the odds-on favourite with the bookies to keep his seat in July but he’s still five points behind Labour in his constituency. This week the chair of the Islington North Labour Party resigned after being seen campaigning on the street for Corbyn.
Though the vast majority of voters who will be siding with Labour at the general election say Jeremy Corbyn should be readmitted to the party and he has the support of most of his old constituency party this will all be rendered meaningless if he loses his seat to a Starmer stooge. 
Though well to the left of anything Starmer’s got to offer Corbyn’s left social democratic programme is, indeed, thin gruel. It doesn’t call for the complete restoration of the public sector and the mixed economy that existed when Labour was at the helm in the 1970s or for the total repeal of the Tory labour laws that have hamstrung free collective bargaining since 1979. But a Corbyn victory will be a defeat for Starmer & Co.  It will enable Corbyn to continue to expose and oppose the worst aspects of Starmerism in parliament and provide a focus for the left-social democratic opposition within the Parliamentary Labour Party. And, of course, it will mean that the people of Islington will continue to get the support and assistance of a dedicated representative who has served the locality for over 40 years. 
The NCP’s electoral policy is to vote Labour. This is not because we support the venal right‑wing policies of Starmer & Co or because we think a future Labour government can solve the problems of working people. It is simply the best possible outcome under the current circumstances. We will, however, support independent left Labour activists who have mass support, even when they come into electoral conflict with the Labour leadership. It is part of our struggle for a democratic Labour Party. We supported Ken Livingstone when he ran, and won, the London Mayoralty and we support the former Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn in Islington.

On the campaign trail

This week the leaders of all the mainstream parties kicked off the election campaign in a desperate attempt to stir up some enthusiasm on the campaign trail for their manifestos that barely go beyond the usual bourgeois platitudes politicians reserve for these occasions.
The Conservatives, who are trailing badly in the opinion polls, are touting conscription and tax cuts for pensioners to win back the elderly constituency that the Tories have traditionally taken for granted in the past. Labour has confined itself to bland promises to recruit more teachers and cut hospital waiting lists while stirring up a hornets nest in London over Diane Abbott, who was eventually re-admitted to Labour’s ranks this week only to then be told that she will not be allowed to defend her Hackney seat on the Labour ticket.
Conscription is, of course, a red herring designed to capture the headlines and woo the hang’em and flog’em brigade that have now largely drifted over to the Faragist Reform Party. While national service does have some appeal amongst the older generation – particularly those who see it as some sort of penal servitude for juvenile delinquents  – it is bitterly opposed by those who would actually have to do it. But it’s not going to happen.
The Tories haven’t seriously costed the plan. Nor have they seriously consulted the military or the health service sectors that would be expected to train and employ these new recruits.
National service was abolished by a Tory government in 1960. It would need another Tory government with an overall majority to restore it – and that seems beyond their grasp at the moment. 

  No red lines for Biden

The Americans says Israel’s weekend strike in Rafah that killed scores of displaced Palestinians did not cross the “red line” President Joe Biden set two months ago. The Biden administration made clear in public on Tuesday that Israel’s despicable action would not trigger any serious reprimand from Washington.
This comes as no surprise to us. Israel’s brutal invasion of the Gaza Strip depends entirely on American funds and supplies. There can be no doubt that Netanyahu is doing the bidding of the American imperialists that the Israelis have loyally served since the 1950s.
Biden, a senile old fool who barely knows what day it is, is the front man for the most venal and aggressive sections of the American ruling class who believe that Israel is the key to imperialist control over the Middle East and the immense oil reserves that are currently being plundered by the big oil corporations of the capitalist world.
Netanyahu tells his people Israel is just "one step away from victory" but at the end of the day the decisive factor is not the guns of the imperialists and their lackeys but the will of the people. The British Empire on which “the sun never set” has long gone along with the other European colonial realms that once held sway throughout Africa and much of Asia. The French were driven out of Algeria and the Vietnamese defeated the Americans. Israel’s turn is coming.

Back to the Future

Everybody expects the Conservatives to get trounced at the local elections next month. Few doubt the outcome with Labour still at least 18 points ahead in the opinion polls and the Tories undermined by growing support for the new Faragist Reform Party. But nothing can be taken for granted these days, least of all where Labour is concerned.
Starmer says “our mission-driven government will restore pride and purpose in our country. Let’s make this a reality, together”. Meaningless platitudes that will not get the vote out.
No one knows what Labour stands for these days beyond slavish support for the United States and Israel and an economic programme that differs little from the Sunak plan that Starmer claims to oppose. Starmer may have won the blessing of the City of London and the Murdoch media empire but he’s lost hundreds of thousands of party members in the process.
These are the people Labour relied on to get their vote out. Some 200,000 have dropped out of the party under Starmer’s watch. Some were supporters of the Palestinian cause hounded out on trumped up charges of “anti-Semitism”. Others were Corbynistas who’ve simply dropped out of the party whose leader has abandoned all of Labour’s core beliefs.
Some, not many, have turned to George Galloway’s latest political slate or the alternative platforms of the assorted left that try and repeatedly fail to build an alternative “workers’ party” to replace Labour. They’ve always failed – even Arthur Scargill’s valiant attempt came to nothing – because no alternative social-democratic party can get off the ground without the support of the trade unions. And the unions, for good or bad, are still largely in the sway of Labour’s bureaucrats.
George Galloway has proved, once again, capable of tapping the protest vote amongst the Muslim community to get back into parliament. But that’s as far as it goes and that’s as far as it will ever go. Without mass support from the labour movement Galloway’s “Workers Party” will fizzle out – like Respect which died the death in 2016.
Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott are a different matter. They certainly have mass support amongst the Corbynistas that rebuilt Labour’s strength in London during the Corbyn era. That may be enough to hold their parliamentary seats at the next general election. But on its own it won’t be enough to force Starmer to let them back into the Parliamentary Labour Party let alone build a new left social-democratic platform to challenge Starmer and the old Blairite gang.
As always the battle remains on the union front. Though the Labour Party is dominated by the right wing in the parliamentary party the possibility of their defeat exists as long as Labour retains its organisational links with the trade unions that fund it.
A genuine rank-and-file movement has to be built to sweep out the opportunists and bureaucrats who have reduced the unions that once represented millions of working people into hollowed out avenues for career advancement.
The fight for a democratic Labour Party is linked to the fight for a democratic trade union movement. In the unions we must struggle to elect genuine working class leaderships, who are prepared to represent and fight for the membership against the employers and against the right wing within the movement and to campaign for the removal of all anti‑trade union legislation.

Fanning the flames

The shameful decision of the Sunak government to send the RAF in to bomb Yemen in support of American offensive against the defiant Arab republic has done nothing for the merchant shipping the imperialists claim to be protecting. The Houthi government that controls most of the country have stepped up their blockade that’s closed the Red Sea to all Israeli shipping. And the US campaign, ludicrously called “Operation Prosperity Guardian” has now put the Red Sea off limits to British and American vessels as well.
    Though crawling to the Americans is second nature to Conservative and Labour leaders it’s a different ball game in Europe. Franco-German imperialism wants to sit this one out and the European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrel says that the bloc has no intention to send warships to the US naval mission in the Red Sea.
    “This bloc does not intend to escalate the conflict with the Yemeni army, we must do everything possible to ensure freedom of navigation, but at the same time avoid escalation,” Borrel said.
    The EU wants to distance itself from Anglo-American aggression to guarantee the continued supply of oil and gas from Qatar and the other oil kingdoms of the Persian Gulf which supply most of the continent with its energy needs these days. Qatar, which has long supported the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, has warned that the escalation of the crisis in the Red Sea could force shipping to take a much longer and more expensive diversion via South Africa that would seriously impact on LNG cargoes to Europe.
    It will also affect the delivery of supplies from the Far East to Europe. Tesla has announced that due to the auto parts flow disruption caused by transportation delays, it will stop its production in its Gigafactory in Berlin. Volvo, the now Chinese-owned car manufacturer. Has suspended production at its plant in Ghent, Belgium, due to delays in parts deliveries.
    The Houthi leaders have repeatedly said that their objective is to stop the slaughter in Gaza. Their blockade will end when the Israelis cease-fire. One call to Tel Aviv from the White House would do the trick, If the Biden administration had any sense it would do it now.

Preparing for Power?

The Tory government is on its last legs. Playing the race card over the refugee crisis has done nothing to boost their flagging fortunes. The pundits say Sunak will go for an autumn general election. The opinion polls put Labour streets ahead of the Tories. The media tell us Labour is preparing for power and Starmer is already writing the next King’s Speech. But what is Labour preparing us for?
    Absolutely nothing if anything the Labour leadership say is anything to go by these days. No national mass housing plans. No renationalisation of the railways or the energy and water utilities. No major increase in public investment in education or the health service, Doing whatever the Americans want – well that goes without saying.
    It difficult to see where Labour actually differs from the Conservatives on most issues – and this is what Starmer wants. Starmer’s spent most of his time knifing Corbyn in the back and driving out the former Labour leader’s supporters out of the party. The Labour leader clearly thinks this is the key to victory at the next general election.
    But a manifesto that consists entirely of vacuous platitudes will do nothing to mobilise working people to vote Labour – and if Labour can’t get their vote out then the Tories will win by default.

Deck the Halls with boughs of holly…

 And the rich certainly will this time round with another election in the bag and a government that they hope will give them five more years to carry on exploiting and oppressing working people at home and abroad.

We are, supposedly, celebrating the birth of the founder of Christianity – which for the rich largely consists of rocking around the Christmas tree snorting coke and drinking themselves silly for days on end. They’ll leave Jesus of Nazareth to the tame clergy who reserve their most pious platitudes for the supposed birthday of the ‘Prince of Peace’ in December.

In his Christmas message Archbishop Justin Welby speaks about his concern over the country’s direction, saying that tolerance for minority groups has decreased and homelessness has increased. The head of the Church of England says, quite rightly, that the state of vulnerable people has worsened over the last nine years. But what’s he done about it?

A few weeks ago Archbishop Welby went out of his way to endorse publicly the ludicrous anti-Corbyn rant from the Chief Rabbi, another Pharisee. Now he obliquely tells us to forgive the scandal-ridden Prince Andrew, saying that “everybody makes mistakes, everybody is human” and that the royal family are a “gift to this country”.

Forgiveness is a Christian virtue and Jesus of Nazareth told us to love our enemies. But the Nazarene also drove the money-changers out of the Temple and said “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God” in acts that the Established Church would rather not dwell upon these days.

Meanwhile the Palestinian Arabs, the inhabitants of the “Holy Land” under brutal Israeli occupation or living a precarious existence in refugee camps throughout the Middle East, are largely forgotten by these apologists for Zionism in clerical garb.

These people will tell us this is the “season of goodwill”, but little of it will be shown to the poor and down-trodden by the powers that be that these pious charlatans support.

It’s not surprising that Jesus seldom gets mentioned, even by those who claim to worship him. The spirit of Christmas has long been reduced to exchanging gifts and cards, gluttony and drinking.

For some of us Christmas is, indeed, a welcome break from the drudgery of work. It’s a chance to put one’s feet up, eat and drink and enjoy the life the rich enjoy in their mansions every day of their worthless lives. For others, the homeless, unemployed and destitute victims of the capitalist crisis, it’s just another day of despair. The festive clichés of the politicians and the princes of the church are meaningless to them.

Their Christmas message is one of oppression, extortion and exploitation. Ours is for peace and socialism. Peace because only the oppressors and exploiters want war. Socialism because it is essential to eliminate exploitation, unemployment, poverty, economic crisis and war. Socialism will end this rotten system once and for all. Let’s get to work!

The struggle continues

The Tory victory bodes ill for the working class. Five more years of Tory rule means five more years of bread-line wages. Five more years of austerity and pay curbs to ensure that the rich can continue to live the lives of Roman emperors on the backs of the millions upon millions of working people they exploit at home and abroad.

     They’re going to have a good Christmas drinking themselves silly dreaming of making Britain the ‘Singapore of Europe’ – a spivs’ paradise for the money-launderers, drug-lords and oligarchs who have already turned London into a millionaires’ playground.

Labour didn’t lose because its manifesto was too left-wing. It lost because millions of working people who voted for Brexit in 2016 were not prepared to support Labour’s new Remainer stance that the Blairites had been calling for in the first place.

Ian Lavery, the national Chair of the Labour Party, rightly says: "The fact we went for a second referendum is the real issue in the Labour Party, it's about a lack of trust.”

Within the labour movement the blame game has already begun. The right wing say it’s all Jeremy Corbyn’s fault in a call to return to Blairite policies that have brought poverty and destitution to Greece and France and many other parts of the European Union  that we will now leave within the next few months. Or will we?

Boris Johnson’s withdrawal plan is clearly a form of Brexit but nobody knows what the outcome of the follow-up negotiations with the EU will be. If it is anything like what Mrs May’s deal envisaged then Britain will still remain tied to Brussels institutions for many years to come. It is equally clear that Johnson wants to replace the Treaty of Rome with a new ‘Treaty of Washington’ that would allow the big American pharmaceutical corporations to plunder the health service in return for cheap food imports that we could get from America anytime on ‘No deal’ World Trade Organisation (WTO) terms.

Even though the election was a disaster for Labour, we must remember that most class battles are won in the field of struggle and not in parliamentary debate. The struggle outside parliament, which is a bourgeois institution, will be far more decisive than the struggle inside the House of Commons.

The Blairites are bleating that Corbyn lost the election. But they’re the ones who sabotaged Labour’s campaign and it’s their failed Remainer policy that sank Labour’s hopes in its traditional northern strongholds. It’s Labour’s fifth column, which also includes the pseudo-left who told us to “Remain and Reform” and that “Another Europe is Possible”, that ultimately destroyed Labour’s chances in the general election.

Bourgeois democracy is democracy for the exploiters and dictatorship for the exploited. Bourgeois elections are used so that the smallest number of people can manipulate the largest number of votes.

The New Communist Party (NCP) has never confused the Labour Party with a revolutionary party, nor imagined that we can overthrow the bourgeoisie through parliamentary elections. But we believe that 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, and our campaigns are focused on defeating the right-wing and strengthening the left within the labour movement. Our party came into being out of the struggle against revisionism, to serve the interests of the working class. We shall not be diverted from that. We know that social democracy, of whatever trend, can never lead to socialism. But the struggles of the future can only come from a labour movement confident to lead the struggle for revolutionary change.