Stand by the Palestinians!

A wave of student revolts is sweeping across the entire Western world. Tent stake-outs and occupations demanding justice for the Palestinian Arabs and an end to Israeli aggression in Gaza have sprung up in centres of learning to challenge the bourgeois consensus in support of Zionism and Israeli oppression in the Middle East.
The bourgeoisie say they stand for intellectual freedom but only when it serves their purpose. It is the freedom of the straitjacket and the dungeon. When it’s challenged they show their true face – with tear gas, truncheons and rubber bullets. They preach this freedom with their Stealth bombers, their special forces and their economic blockades against all those who dare to stand up for themselves. We see what the ruling class mean by freedom in occupied Palestine. We see it when American police and national guard move to crush the student protesters.This is one struggle and one fight. Imperialism and Zionism must be defeated.

Stand by the Palestinians! Stand by the students!

Tory blues

Another bad week for the Conservatives. They lost the Blackpool South by-election and more than half the local council seats they were defending. The swing to Labour – over 20 per cent in the Blackpool poll – confirms the findings of the pollsters over the past 12 months. But it’s not all been plain sailing for Starmer & Co.
It’s clear that one of the reasons for the Tory collapse is the rise in the Faragist Reform Party. Though still not as big a force as that of UKIP during the height of the Brexit campaign it was, nevertheless, significant to note that the Tory vote fell most heavily in those wards where Reform fielded a candidate. Though Labour has been the major beneficiary this has also helped the minor parties like the Greens and the Liberal Democrats.
Though Gaza wasn’t the central issue on the doorstep Starmer’s slavish support for Israel has cost Labour votes within the Muslim communities that his party took for granted in the past. Muslim councillors who left Labour in protest at Starmer’s refusal to condemn Israeli aggression in Gaza successfully kept their seats as “independents”. And Labour lost overall control of Oldham, where the Muslim independents stood on “Vote for Palestine” platform and Labour’s vote went down in many other areas with Muslim voters.
Turn-out is never high in local elections. The councils have little real power and on the street most people don’t even know the name of their local representatives. Even at the best of times interest in these polls rarely goes beyond the pressure groups and councillors within the locality. Nevertheless they are a barometer of voting intentions.
We can safely say that Labour is heading for a landslide victory at the next election. It is equally plain to see that Starmer intends to fight it on a manifesto that barely differs from the Conservatives he claims to oppose.
The Tories have clearly lost the confidence of their core voters while the splits within their upper echelons reflect the deep divisions over Europe and its future relationship with American imperialism. Starmer and the ageing Blairites in his clique, think that this will be enough to propel them to high office. This may be so. Whether this will be enough to keep them there is another matter altogether...

No grounds for complacency

Last week’s local elections were bad news for the Tories. The Conservatives lost control of more than 40 councils in the poll which Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer says has set them "on course for a Labour majority at the next general election".
    It was certainly good for Labour but there’s no grounds for complacency. Labour ended up nine per cent ahead of the Tories picking up more than 500 seats and winning control of 22 more councils on the night. But the swing is nothing like the astronomical levels recorded by the pollsters at the beginning of the year and though the Conservatives lost over a thousand council seats nearly half of them went to the Liberal Democrats and the Greens.
    Though there’s still a year or more to go until the next general election if nothing changes a nine per cent swing will not be enough to give Labour an overall majority in the House of Commons. Starmer says Labour isn’t interested in cutting a deal with the Liberal-Democrats or the nationalists but this hasn’t stopped speculation in Westminster and in the bourgeois media about a coalition to avoid a hung parliament.
    The Liberal Democrats did join hands with the Tories to form a coalition under David Cameron. But it ended in tears at the 2015 general election with loss of 48 seats in the House of Commons, leaving them with only eight MPs. Nevertheless the Lib-Dems would still like to be king-makers if Starmer won’t play ball, Rishi Sunak might have no choice.
    Though local elections generally reflect national issues local issues sometimes benefit campaigns like the Canvey Island Independence Party that increased their share of seats on their local council. But unlike the Scottish or Welsh nationalists the only “independence” they want is that of their old Canvey district council in Essex.
    Needless to say the left posers who call themselves part of an imaginary “revolutionary left” were well down with the also-rans in this election. The reality is that these “alternative left” parties are rejected time and again by the same working class their programmes claim to advance. There isn’t even a remote possibility of any of them taking office as the rhetoric and wild promises of these parties do not reflect reality.
    The glittering display of pomp and circumstance for the coronation of King Charles at Westminster Abbey may have thrilled the royal fans and the gaping tourists who delight in these spectacles but it did nothing to change the lives of the millions of working people trying to cope with the cost of living crisis.
    In ancient days the slaves were kept quiet with free food and entertainment in the arenas and circuses whose ruins can still be seen across what was once the Roman Empire. When the going was good even the barons and their feudal church would provided feast days, religious holidays and sports for the peasants who tilled the land that kept the lords in clover. But the workers get nothing from the capitalists.
    The incompetence, greed and indifference towards the unemployed and the homeless sums up all that is rotten within the British ruling class.
    We don’t want the ‘austerity-lite’ of Starmer & Co. We don’t want a mealy-mouthed compromise with the worthless Liberal-Democrats that the liberal bourgeois pundits who pose as friends of the working class are now advocating. What we want is an end to austerity and the restoration of trade union rights. Saving the NHS, capping rents and building cheap council homes, raising wages, getting rid of the need for foodbanks, saving our schools, restoring the right to independence for the disabled, restoring proper care for the elderly and restoring legal aid to bring justice for all – restoring the public sector, cutting the defence budget and taxing the rich to make them pay for the crisis of their own creation will pay for all of this and more.
    Getting rid of capitalism and replacing it with socialism is the ultimate objective of working people. Getting rid of austerity and replacing it with social justice must be the immediate objective of the working class.

To vote or not to vote…

That indeed is the question that millions will face when the local elections in England are held next month. In the good old days you only had to produce your voting card to cast your vote. Now voters will have to prove who they are at the polling station with an approved list photo-ID card. Anyone who cannot confirm their identity with a passport or an ID from the Government’s list will be simply turned away.
    Now this won’t be a problem for the overwhelming majority of the electorate who never bother to vote in local elections. For those who do it won’t be much trouble for the elderly who only need to produce their free bus passes to get their ballot papers. But for the rest – particularly those who don’t have a driving licence or a passport the only alternative is to apply at least a week in advance for a photo-ID “Voter Authority Certificate” to cast their vote. This clearly will deter many young people from voting.
    The Government say they’ve done this to combat electoral fraud. But the scale of this abuse of the voting system is miniscule. A total of 193 cases of alleged electoral fraud were investigated by the police during 2022 when local elections were held in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The police issued one caution in relation to a case of alleged electoral fraud and court proceedings were initiated in relation to one other case.
    Many suspect that what really lies behind this move is a Tory belief that most young voters lean towards Labour and anything that deters them from voting can only benefit the Conservative & Unionist Party.

Struggling for peace

Campaigning to end war isn't an easy thing to do these days as the supporters of No2Nato are finding out when they try to book rooms of halls for anti-war events. The hidden hand is working overtime to ensure that all venues are closed for George Galloway and Chris Williamson in England, Scotland and Wales while a whisper campaign is underway to divert or demoralise the growing number of workers and students who’ve been drawn to the new anti-imperialist campaign,
    Some say No2Nato should just join the Stop the War campaign. Others that it will simply become another political platform for George Galloway and Chris Williamson and the left social-democratic parties that they head.
    Though only launched in February No2Nato has already held a number of street meetings while work proceeds to build national campaigning network. The union conference season, which kicks off in a few weeks’ time, is a golden opportunity to reach out to the activists and counter the torrent of propaganda on Ukraine that’s being pumped out on the mainstream media by the bourgeois lie-machine on a daily basis.
    Merging with moribund movements is a recipe for disaster. Stop the War and the almost forgotten Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament are dead in the water. They do nothing apart from providing a refuge for the has-beens and also-rans of the labour movement these days. As for where No2Nato is going – that largely depends on us and all the others who want to see a genuine anti-imperialist and anti-war movement take off in Britain.

A slap in the face for the Tories

 Last week’s local elections in England were a bitter blow to the Conservatives. Although these elections did not cover major cities such as London, nearly 9,000 council seats in authorities throughout England were up for grabs. The Tories braced themselves for hundreds of losses. The actual results were far worse than expected.

Labour did not profit from the Tory slump. During the campaign some Labour pundits unwisely predicted major gains, buoyed, no doubt, by a recent national opinion poll that put Labour 10 points ahead of the Tories. Despite some key gains in the south however, Labour still came out an overall loser.

All in all the Tories lost 1,324 seats, UKIP lost 145 and Labour were 82 seats down. The major beneficiaries were the Liberal Democrats, who gained an extra 703 seats, and the Greens, who won 194. Residents’ associations won 49 more council seats and other independent groups chalked up over 600 gains. Overall, the vote share between Labour and the Tories was tied on 28 per cent each – suggesting that the next general election may produce a hung parliament.

Labour’s failure is clearly down to the party’s ambiguous position towards Brexit, which differs little from Mrs May’s withdrawal plan that would keep us in the European Union (EU) in all but name. Labour’s call to remain in the ‘single market’ and a ‘customs union’ with the rest of the EU reflects the views of Labour Remainer MPs and powerful unions that have long swallowed the Brussels line.

Some Labour MPs have taken up the call for a general election to break the deadlock in Parliament but without the support of a substantial number of rebel Tory MPs the Government cannot be brought down. Although some die-hard Tory Remainers would accept a Corbyn-led Labour government if that was the price for a second referendum, few Tories relish the thought of a snap election that could cost them their seats. Spinning out Brexit with endless extensions puts off the fateful day and gives the Remainers more time to win support for a ‘people’s vote’ to reverse the decision to leave.

But a second referendum needs parliamentary agreement. It’s a lengthy process that took seven months last time and it can only be passed if a majority of MPs endorse it. Mrs May cannot even get Cabinet agreement for a second referendum and she is unlikely to get anything agreed over Europe in this fractious parliament.

In the meantime the European Parliament elections will go-ahead. Those who bother to vote will have the dismal choice of the usual assembly of gravy-trainers, has-beens and dead-beats assembled by the major parties to fill their slates.

Nigel Farage, who parted company with UKIP in 2016, has risen like Lazarus from his grave to launch the ‘Brexit Party’ to contest these farcical elections. Although his slate includes the veteran campaigner George Galloway and a handful of former Trotskyites who have made their name in the bourgeois media, the Brexit Party is expected to reduce the argument against the EU to the single issue of immigration to sweep up disaffected Tories.

On the other side the Remainers will spout the usual Brussels nonsense about the European Union that they claim has benefited working people.

The European Parliament has become a byword for undemocratic practices, corruption, nepotism, waste and fraud on a massive scale. It doesn’t deserve the credibility of a vote at all. Boycott the EU elections! Stand by the people’s vote to leave the EU!

LABOUR GAINS BUT NOT ENOUGH

by Daphne Liddle

THE LOCAL elections on Thursday produced little change in most councils despite titanic efforts on the part of Labour activists to sustain the growth shown in last year’s general election.

The main change has beenthe collapse of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) vote, mainly to the benefit of the Tories — showing that the racist and xenophobic policies of May’s government, as exposed by the cruel Windrush scandal, have attracted former UKIP voters back to the fold they originally emerged from.

In spite of this, in pure numbers Labour has gained many more seats throughout the country, if not councils. It has done better mostly in the areas where it was already strong, in the inner cities.

Labour aims of taking Tory safe seats in London — in Westminster, Wandsworth and Kensington-and-Chelsea — failed but did make some impression. In Westminster Labour took three seats from the Tories; in Wandsworth they took seven seats and in Kensington-and- Chelsea they took just one.

It should have been more in the borough that suffered the Grenfell fire disaster after that council’s abject failure to prevent the disaster in spite of many warnings from tenants and total failure to address the urgent needs of the survivors after the tragedy. But many of the bereaved and angry survivors have been moved out of the borough and so were unable to vote against the council that wrecked their lives. Labour’s high hopes of taking Barnet council from no-overall-control were dashed as the Tories won control. This is an area where local residents had hoped to put a stop to multi-billion-pound luxury housing developments — which are at the expense of demolishing existing council estates and driving low income households out of the borough.

allegations

It is also an area where allegations of anti-Semitism within Labour had made an impact on local Jewish voters. Mass media throughout the country have hardly mentioned Jeremy Corbyn in the last few months except in the context of these allegations, which have yet to have a fair hearing in the process drawn up by Shami Chakrabarti. Meanwhile the Labour leadership, in a vain effort to appease the anti-Corbyn media, have been suspending and expelling life-long anti-fascist and anti-racist activists on the basis of unsubstantiated allegations. Ironically a majority of those accused of anti-Semitism are themselves Jews.

It is not healthy for the Labour leadership to allow the Tory-supporting British Board of Jewish Deputies to chase Labour-supporting Jews out of the Labour Party, whilst at the same time the Board tolerates far higher levels of real anti-Semitism within the Tory party. It is very demoralising to many Labour activists.

Implementation of the Chakrabarti process would provide fair hearings for all. Labour did win one significant prize in gaining control of Plymouth and it wrested control of Trafford, in Manchester, to a position of no-overall-control.

Meanwhile trials of demanding that voters bring identification documents to be allowed to vote in five areas have provoked anger and outrage amongst voters who turned up to vote without such documents.

The main issues appeared to be in Bromley and Woking where, along with Gosport, people had to show one piece of photo ID or two from a list of other documents. In the other two test areas, Swindon and Watford, only a polling card was required.

In Bromley the area most affected was Crystal Palace — the most working class and the most ethnically diverse area of the borough. Tallies by the opposition Labour group found at least 13 people turned away from just one ward, Crystal Palace. There were also reports of some voters being angry and abusive to polling station workers when asked to show ID.

In Woking there was some confusion reported as to what ID could be shown, with one man saying he was initially told a photo rail pass was not allowed, even though it was listed amongst the accepted documents. The Government intends to roll out the need for voter ID nationally as a means to prevent voter impersonation; but the levels of attempted voter impersonation are negligible. And the policy will have a serious impact on low income voters who do not have either a passport or driving licence.

It is a policy that will definitely have much more impact on low income and ethnically diverse communities. It is racist and anti-democratic. These election results have restored some confidence to the Tory leadership and shown Labour activists that there is still a lot to do. But Labour is still gaining in real terms. The hard work is paying off in the face of ruing class very dirty tricks. There is no cause for Labour to lose confidence.