Right out of their minds!

The history of organised fascism and racism in Britain since 1945

by Daphne Liddle

FASCISM and racism are not exactly the same thing but in Britain they have historically been intertwined and they do have common elements. All fascist movements have proclaimed aggressive nationalism and militarism. They proclaim that inequalities of both nations and individuals are real and beneficial, and the idea that the improvement of humanity depends on the "less fit" failing and dying out.
Since 1945 in Britain most fascist organisations have combined racism with their fascism. Within that racism there have been two deep but connected strands. First there is the traditional British imperialist racism arising from the history of colonialism. This sees the peoples subdued by British imperialism in Africa, India and Far East – mainly people of a different colour skin – not as inherently evil but as intellectually inferior and childlike; needing to be ruled for their own good.
Secondly the anti-Semitic strand sees Jews as highly intelligent but very sinister. This links in with a long tradition of anti-Semitism more prevalent Catholic in Europe than in Britain. The underlying anti-Semitism that predominates in Britain’s fascist and racist organisations indicates that their roots are in European fascism and Nazism.
Publicly the fascists deny racism and anti-Semitism but new recruits are often drawn aside and asked them if they think it is really the blacks who are the root of the problem. "After all," they argue, "the blacks are not intelligent enough to be a serious problem without a powerful secret intelligence behind it all". They told all the conspiracy theories dating back to the publication in the 19th century of the fraudulent Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, and how western civilisation is threatened by a world conspiracy of Jews, communists, Freemasons and even mystical extra-terrestrial beings.
They invariably claim that the Holocaust never happened, that it was an invention of Jewish propagandists who used it to inveigle western powers to fight against Nazi Germany.
Just after the war the ideology of fascism and Nazism had taken a battering but there still remained two active strands who kept their heads down at first. They re-emerged when immigration into Britain from the West Indies, Africa and the Indian sub-continent provided opportunities for recruitment on the basis of anti-black racism.
Britain’s National Socialist Movement was led by Colin Jordan and published a paper called National Socialist. Behind Jordan was his mentor, Arnold Spencer Leese, a man who described himself as an "anti-Jewish camel doctor". He was a former army veterinary surgeon who had served in the Middle East. From 1929 to 1939 he led the 200-strong Imperial Fascist League, which was overshadowed by Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. Leese regarded Mosley as an opportunist Johnny-cum-lately and "a kosher fascist".
The Imperial Fascist League in the 1930s was extremely pro-German, adopting the swastika in preference to the Italian fascist symbol, the fasces. Leese favoured the extermination of the Jews but, suspecting the British public would never support this, he publicly advocated their deportation to Madagascar. After his release from imprisonment in the Second World War, he published a book, The Jewish War of Survival, which claimed that although the Jews and Freemasons had defeated Hitler, a determined policy of anti-Semitism could still succeed. Leese also published a newsletter, Gothic Ripples.
Jordan was an avid student of Leese’s conspiracy theories. In 1954 Jordan joined the League of Empire Loyalists, run by AK Chesterton but was expelled in 1957 after accusing the League of being soft on Jews. In 1958 he founded the White Defence League, which he ran from his headquarters, "Arnold Leese House" in Notting Hill.
In the same year the Notting Hill riots started against immigrants from the West Indies, Africa and the Indian sub-continent; they persisted through the summer of 1958 and lasted sporadically into 1959. Jordan took full advantage, holding street rallies nearly every night, whipping up the violence. He published a newspaper called Black and White News calling for repatriation.
Oswald Mosley was also doing his best to exploit the racial tensions with his Union Movement. He had spent much of the Second World War interned under Defence Regulation 18b.
In 1947 he published a book, The Alternative, a plan to save western civilisation from collapse. It called for a united Europe to be a third force between communism in the east and western capitalism.
There were several tiny, fragmented and unstable fascist groups about then, including the Briton’s Patriotic Society, the British National Party (not the modern one), the New Order Group, the Union of British Freedom, the 18b Detainees’ Fund, the Order of the Sons of St George, and others. In 1949 the Mosley’s Union Movement emerged from the chaos taking a stand against the demands of the Palestinian Jews but his undisguised anti-Semitism won his all round condemnation in the press. He had to flee the country and live in County Cork for three years, where he published a literary journal called The European.
In 1953 he returned to Britain and began electioneering, warning that a massive economic crisis was due and exploiting prejudice against immigrants from the West Indies. A year after the Notting Hill riots he stood as a candidate for North Kensington, campaigning for compulsory repatriation of immigrants but came bottom in the poll.
Disillusioned, he gave up on elections and changed tactics to seek international alliances in Europe. In 1962 he organised a "Conference of Venice" with various small European fascist groups.
Leese had higher status among international fascists because of his official recognition from the only remaining segment of the original German Nazi Party – the NSDAP Ausland or overseas section – which still operates in New Jersey in America.
In 1962 Jordan held a "Free Britain from Jewish Control" rally in Trafalgar Square and three weeks later Mosley held a similar rally there. Six thousand people turned up and most of them were anti-fascists. Jeffrey Hamm’s warm-up speech was drowned in a hail of copper coins, eggs and rotten vegetables. Fights broke out between Mosley’s supporters versus Communists, anti-fascists, anarchists, members of the Committee of 100 and the police. Mosley never got to speak.
Shortly after, the same battle was re-enacted in Manchester. He tried stomping round his old haunts in London’s East End but met with serious physical resistance. After that Mosley’s movement faded from the scene and Mosley went to live in France – though he did return occasionally to visit old fascist colleagues.
The League of Empire Loyalists was also involved in stirring up racism and so was John Bean, leader of a tiny organisation called the National Labour Party. It merged with Jordan’s White Defence League to form another British National Party in 1960 with Norfolk landowner Andrew Fountaine as president.
Fountaine had fought for Franco in the Spanish Civil War. Jordan became the national organiser and Bean was his deputy. This BNP opposed democracy as weak "decisions by head counting" and campaigned for repatriation of immigrants, with all Jews to be deported either to Israel or Madagascar.
Later that year Jordan founded "Spearhead" a paramilitary elite corps inside the BNP, which conducted exercises on Andrew Fountaine’s Norfolk estate while wearing imitation Nazi uniforms. The foundation of Spearhead split the BNP in 1962, with Bean and Fountaine concerned about its seditious and illegal nature. Jordan joined forces with John Tyndall, a former member of Bean’s NLP and the two tried to steer the BNP more firmly towards out-and-out Hitlerism.
Bean and Fountaine tried to unseat Jordan as BNP leader but failed because the organisation lacked internal democratic structures and because the headquarters, Arnold Leese House, was the property of Leese’s widow. She regarded Jordan as her adopted son and would tolerate no move against him.
Bean and Fountaine were forced out but they took most of the membership with them to found a new BNP, publishing a journal called Combat. Jordan and Tyndall hosted an international conference of National Socialists in Gloucestershire and founded the World Union of National Socialists (WUNS).
On 16th August 1962 Jordan and Tyndall, with others, were convicted under the Public Order Act with attempts to set up a paramilitary force. In 1963, on Hitler’s birthday, 20th April, Jordan launched yet another organisation, the National Socialist Movement, with about 20 members. Tyndall became national organiser with Mrs Leese as vice president. Within a year this tiny group had split after a clash between Jordan and Tyndall over the French neo-Nazi Francoise Dior. She had been engaged to Tyndall but while he was in prison she married Jordan. She later eloped from Jordan with her 19-year-old secretary, Terence Robert, "to shock Jordan into being a great leader".
Tyndall and Jordan also had differences in outlook between the "German" and "British" factions of their movement. Tyndall then founded the Greater Britain Movement while Jordan turned the NSM into the British Movement.
In 1967 Chesterton of the League of Empire Loyalists founded the National Front (NF), which merged with the Racial Preservation Society led by Robin Beauclaire. Martin Webster was its national organiser. Its initial policies were purely anti-immigration and opposition to international treaties like Nato and the United Nations. Webster had worked as one the racketeer slum landlord Rackman’s bully boys. He had also worked politically with Tyndall but there was animosity between them. Webster was a competent organiser but overtly homosexual, and Tyndall did not approve.
Around this time Webster openly boasted his wages were coming from the South African Apartheid regime but complained that he was underpaid. Later, in 1979, anti-fascists were able to expose that Webster received money from the Special Branch in exchange for information about the NF. This exposure helped to break up the NF.
For the first few years of the NF Webster and Chesterton maintained a bar on overt national socialists joining to keep Tyndall out. But individual members of Tyndall’s Greater Britain Movement infiltrated the NF, the ban was lifted, Tyndall joined and quickly took over.
The NF grew quite quickly in the 1970s to around 20,000 members in 1974. It stood in elections and came third in a number of parliamentary by-elections. It also developed links with the Ulster Volunteer Force and some members were involved in gunrunning for the UVF.
The fascists targeted young working class football fans, encouraging them towards extreme partisanship for their teams and nationalism. The fascists were a major factor in the upsurge of football hooliganism. They found that young lads who were bored and alienated and ready for a fight were ideal recruitment fodder.
There were frequent clashes with anti-fascists; especially as the Anti-Nazi League and Searchlight continually exposed the NF’s neo-Nazi links. These links led to a split in 1974 when new recruits who were more racist than fascist voted John Kingsley Read into leadership. This did not last long as the intimidation tactics of Tyndall’s "honour guard" restored him to the leadership. Read left to found the short-lived National Party.
There were a number of other related groups around at the time. The League of St George regarded itself as a more intellectual fascist and anti-Semitic organisation, which had links with some very wealthy people, including in the intelligence services.
At this time there was a deep division in Europe between the Catholic and Protestant fascists, which manifested itself in regular running battles in the town of Dixmude in Belgium. The NF, with its UVF links, attacked the IRA as "papists who breed like rabbits" – which upset the Spanish and Italian fascists. Eventually the Belgian authorities banned these rallies. The following year there was a violent, fatal football riot at the Heysel stadium, not far from Dixmude, between Protestant and Catholic football supporters.
Another shady group around in the 1960s and 70s was Column 88. This was an umbrella group of sinister, wealthy fascists and anti-Semites with international links who organised joint military training groups and liaisons. It is now thought that this was the British wing of what was known as Gladio in Europe. After the Second World War the western allies, pre-empting the Cold War, set up clandestine paramilitary groups in most western European countries to fight communism and prevent communist governments ever being elected.
By and large these groups were never activated for their main purpose, though in the 1960s when Italian communist Enrico Berlinguer seemed set to win a general election, he was coerced into backing down for fear of a right-wing coup. The Gladio groups seem to have had American financial backing; their members were mostly racists, fascists, nationalists, anti-Semites and racketeers.
The National Front’s real neo-Nazi agenda was confirmed in 1974 with the publication of a booklet, Did Six Million Really Die, by leading NF member Richard Verrall, under the pseudonym Richard E Harwood. He claimed that the Nazi Holocaust was a fabrication and attacked war crimes trials, including the trial of Adolf Eichmann. He based his arguments on a numbers game, claiming that the number of Jews in Europe under Nazi occupation had never exceeded 2.5 million (this figure is contradicted by all reputable sources, including the Nazis’ own figures; they reckoned 11 million Jews were living in Europe in 1942).
These arguments based on numbers are always spurious because of the different definitions of who is and who is not Jewish. It is likely that many of the people who were murdered as Jews would not have thought of themselves as Jewish. This does not lessen the crime of their murder. Probably there will never be exact numbers for the people who were murdered in the Holocaust. There is a consensus estimate of around six million Jews murdered, plus another five million, including socialists, communists, trade unionists, gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, people with physical and mental disabilities and others. Verrall claimed the Holocaust claim was a tool against "the white race" and that the concentration camps were in fact humane work camps.
Another infamous denier of the Holocaust is so-called historian David Irving. Irving started propagating neo-Nazi views when he edited a student magazine at Imperial College in 1959, which he filled with far-right nonsense. He later published a book, The Destruction of Dresden, praising the SS and attacking the RAF as war criminals, which was followed by several more spurious histories of the Second World War. Irving set up the Clarendon Club, which held secretive dinners among leading neo-Nazis. He was a great friend of many neo-Nazis, including their favourite printer, Anthony Hancock of Brighton. He also published a few editions of a journal, Focal Point. Since then his adventures in the libel courts and in the Austrian penal system have been well documented in the press.
In 1979 the National Front splintered after Margaret Thatcher made her infamous "swamping" speech. There were two reasons for this. One was Tyndall’s electoral adventurism; the other was the withdrawal of funds from the shady international body, known as the World Anti-Communist League (WACL).
Former member Geoffrey Stewart-Smith described WACL as "largely a collection of Nazis, fascists, anti-Semites, sellers of forgeries, vicious racists and corrupt self-seekers". It was formed in 1966 in Taipei, Taiwan, under the initiative of Chiang Kai-Shek and a group of exiled Ukrainian former Nazi SS men from the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which initiated the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations.
WACL used to stage conferences around the globe and had funding from various very rich South Koreans, the Sultan of Brunei, the Saudi oil sheikhs and the CIA. It was backed by Ronald Reagan and played a role in forming and funding the Contra guerrillas in Nicaragua and was linked to the notorious Colonel Oliver North. It allocated funds to extreme right-wing anti-communists around the globe. In Britain it channelled funds through Lady Jane Birdwood, a rabid anti-Semite and friend of many fascist and racist groups. She directed its funds in Britain to a number of organisations, including the National Front.
But in the late 70s the United States government started to feel embarrassed about funding out-and-out neo-Nazis and cranks. In 1980 former US Army and CIA officer Major General John K Singlaub was appointed to clean up WACL. He withdrew the funding route from Birdwood and instead directed it to slightly more respectable organisations around the extreme right-wing fringes of the Conservative Party such as WISE, the British League of Rights and the Monday Club. This was a major blow to the National Front finances.
The NF split into fragments: there was the Flag group, the New National Front, the Catholic-dominated Third Way group, which had connections with Italian fascist terrorists, and others. Fountaine challenged Tyndall’s leadership after the adventurist election disaster. Although Tyndall saw off the challenge, Fountaine and his followers split from the party to form the NF Constitutional Movement.
After these splits Tyndall was expelled and replaced as leader by Andrew Brons. Tyndall formed his own New National Front, which was forced by court action to change its name. Tyndall renamed it the "British National Party", which has since pushed out the NF as the dominant neo-Nazi party in Britain.
The NF rapidly declined during the 1980s, although it retained some support in the West Midlands and in parts of London (usually centred on the entourage of Terry Blackham). It tried in vain to gain support in the north of Ireland on several occasions.
The NF lost some of its racist skinhead support because of the group’s support for non-white radicals such as Louis Farrakhan and Ayatollah Khomeini. Griffin and Holland tried (unsuccessfully) to enlist the financial aid of Libya’s Colonel Gadaffi, but this was rejected once the Libyans found out about the NF’s reputation as fascist (a third of Libya’s male population was exterminated by Mussolini’s fascist troops during World War II). Members moved either to the British National Party, the rapidly declining British Movement, or to the White Noise umbrella group "Blood and Honour" that is associated with the commercial production of neo-Nazi music.
The party split again during the late 1980s between the "Flag Group" and the "Political Soldier" ideas of young extremists such as Nick Griffin, Patrick Harrington, Phil Edwards and Derek Holland, who were known as the Official National Front or the Third Way. Under the leadership of the Political Soldiers, the NF quit electioneering in favour of a return to clandestine paramilitary training groups.
The NF Flag Group contained the traditionalists loyal to Brons such as Ian Anderson, Martin Wingfield, Tina Wingfield and others. They ran candidates under the NF banner in the 1987 general election. In the 1990s the Flag Group declined as the BNP grew. The NF has continued to decline although it still exists as a small party, and fielded seven candidates at the 1997 general election.
John Tyndall founded the modern British National Party in 1980. In 1987 it set up headquarters in Welling, in south-east London. This was followed by an upsurge of racist attacks in the area including at least three racist murders: Rolan Adams, Rohit Dougal and Stephen Lawrence. There were fierce anti-fascist campaigns against the headquarters, with a series of mass protests. Eventually a Labour council was elected in Bexley, held a public inquiry into the effect of the BNP "bunker" on the local community and then gave the BNP its marching orders.
The BNP developed from within itself a group of thugs and football hooligans who called themselves Combat 18, led by Charlie Sargent. At first they acted as an "honour guard" for Tyndall and his coterie but later their violence brought such disrepute on the BNP they were thrown out. C18 fell apart over money generated by Nazi music bands in the "Blood and Honour" outfit. Sargent was apparently selling information to the Special Branch and mistakenly believed this gave him legal immunity when he murdered a fellow fascist.
The BNP began to divide in the mid-1990s as Tyndall lost popularity. By this time a seriously ambitious Nick Griffin had joined the BNP with aims to "modernise" it and make it electable. In Stratford, east London in 1997, as Tyndall approached a BNP conference at the Swan pub, he was assailed by half a dozen anti-fascists. He received minor injuries but the incident is notable because at the time the pub was full of BNP members who could see what was happening but not one came to the aid of their leader.
Soon after that Griffin ousted Tyndall. Tyndall’s clique cried foul and accusations of financial corruption flew back and forth. Since then Griffin has tried desperately to change the public image of the BNP, but anti-fascists like Searchlight keep exposing the deep neo-Nazism and anti-Semitism that is still there.
The BNP now has just over 50 councillors; this May they failed to make the breakthrough they were hoping for, gaining eight seats and losing eight.

Strategy for the Indian Revolution

by Kumar Sarkar

IT HAS TAKEN 87 years for the communist movement in India to recognise that the Indian society has its own specific qualities that need serious attention, if we are to construct a suitable strategy for the Indian Revolution.
When we look at the Indian society today, we note four basic problems: problems relating to class, caste, ethnicity and gender. Of these, the last three have special relationships with feudalism. And establishing the relationships of these three with the former, the class, either separately or in some combination, constitutes the central programmatic task.
The Communist Party of India (CPI) was established in 1920. But it was not until about 15-20 years ago that the communist movement addressed any problems strategically other than the class. The young communist movement adopted the European model of feudalism and its transition to capitalism. The situation was made worse by considering the Indian Revolution either in terms of the Soviet or the Chinese model, mostly the former. In 1951, in a major bi-lateral discussion with four central leaders of the CPI, in Moscow, Stalin said, "Your people copy our revolution. But these are different stages. The experience of the other fraternal parties needs to be critically taken into account and this adapted to the specific conditions of India."
Marx wrote about the "Asiatic Mode of Production", which is regarded by many Indian Marxists as similar to, but not exactly the same as, the Indian pre-capitalist mode of production. Marx also made other references to the specific qualities of Indian society, but it was the European model that was followed all along.
A few weeks ago the Communist Party of India (Maoists) had their congress, in which they agreed: "The Congress unanimously resolved that in India the feudal/semi-feudal society has its own specific qualities, in as much as it is deeply interwoven with brahminical ideology and the oppressive and discriminatory caste system."
The phrase or the concept of"brahminical ideology" has thus appeared for the first time in an official communist programme in India. The brahminical ideology is essentially the ideology of Hinduism, based on the caste system. It has two principal cornerstones: (a) treating caste-based social hierarchy of inequality and discriminations as natural, (b) their acceptance without opposition and protests. These are achieved by the philosophical stance of fatalism and philosophical theory of "Karmafal" or results of deeds done in previous life.
How these four aspects of class, caste, ethnicity and gender influence the programmatic tasks of the Indian Revolution is at the heart of the divisions in the communist movement in India today.
• The old sections of the movement represented by the CPI and the CPI
(Marxist) still fail to recognise the strategic character of caste, ethnicity and gender. They still view these as tactical matters, as "issues", important but not of strategic significance. In fact, it is only after the dalits or the so-called untouchables and women, particularly the dalits, taking up serious fights during the last two decades against the oppressive system of Hindu apartheid in some parts of India, that these so-called issues have started to enter the CPI (Marxist) programme in some form or the other.
• The Maoists, however, have chosen tribal peasants as their starting
point. The tribals mostly live in jungles, are landless peasants, and worst victims of social discrimination, being treated as outcastes. The Maoists also support the demands of autonomy of different ethnic nationalities, mostly living in India’s eastern hill regions. There is a geographic pattern in India’s ethnic diversity.
This is, of course, only the beginning of a new strategy. India is a vast country with considerable industrial development and a large and growing working class living in numerous towns and cities and with very uneven industrial developments. Hence, the capture of power has to be multi-centred, but with a central strategy and with two main components:
rural and urban.
• The rural component primarily consists of forcible occupation of
lands by landless peasants and moving towards establishing alternative or parallel power locally and regionally, with the aim of creating "base areas". Such actions can start whenever and wherever possible. Based in the peasantry, the power must be politically oriented with "worker-peasant alliance".
The rural component has to take into consideration the role of the brahminical ideology.
• The urban component consists of establishing mass organisations of
industrial working class and non-manual workers, known in India as the lower middle classes, with a political orientation of "worker-peasant-lower middle class alliance". The objective of urban struggles is to prepare for eventual and final insurrections, when the urban areas have been surrounded by armed peasantry.
There is no strategy yet that deals with the both of these components adequately.
The Indian Revolution, as it can be appreciated, is at the stage of the democratic revolution. The Indian democratic revolution itself has had its own specific qualities. In my personal opinion, it was started by the rising Hindu bourgeoisie in Bengal, which soon became defeated by the Hindu revivalists there. One writer, Suranjan Das, has summed it up succinctly: "A particular paradox in the history of freedom struggle against the British Raj in the subcontinent lies in the fact that the maturing of mainstream Indian nationalism was almost synonymous with the strengthening of communalism in Indian politics, which in the long-run contributed to the partition of India along religious lines".
The Hindu revivalism has ended up in Hindu fascism as a major enemy, though it may not be the principal enemy. This is an outline of the problems of the strategy of the Indian Revolution.

Solidarity with the communists and the working class in Turkey

Join statement of communist and workers' parties

We, the undersigned communist and workers parties, vehemently condemn the police attacks against the tens of thousands workers demonstrating on the 30th anniversary of the May Day 1977 in Taksim Square in Istanbul.

We express our full solidarity with the communists, the trade unionists, the patriotic and progressive forces and demand the immediate release from custody of all arrested and the punishment of the responsible for the police riots. We support the demand by trade unions and political organizations that ask the resignation of the governor of Istanbul.

Once again the terror deployed in Istanbul demonstrated the hypocrisy governing the European Union, apart of course of the relevance of the NATO “human rights values” governing the allies.

We declare our full support with this “other Turkey”, the Turkey of the struggle for social and democratic rights for the working people, far away from the division between “ secular” and “Islamic” forces both serving the interests of big capital , US and EU.

The aim of the reactionary forces is to destroy the memory of the heroically struggle of the working class of Turkey and the sacrifices of the 36 workers killed on May Day 1977 on Taksim Square.

The brutal attacks against the workers and trade unionists in Turkey are attacks against the working class in all countries.

We appeal to the working people and youth, to the trade union movement, all progressive minded people in our countries to strengthen the protest movement against the brutal attack by the Turkish government and to reinforce the internationalist solidarity with the workers and youth in Turkey.

The Parties

Communist Party of Belarus
Workers’ Party, Belgium
Communist Party of Bulgaria
Party of Bulgarian Communists
New Communist Party of Britain
Socialist Workers’ Party of Croatia
AKEL, Cyprus
Communist Party of Denmark
Communist Party in Denmark
Communist Party of Estonia
Communist Party of Finland
Unified Communist Party of Georgia
Communist Party of Greece
Communist Party of Ireland
Party of the Italian Communists
Socialist Party of Latvia
Socialist Party of Lithuania
Communist Party of Luxemburg, KPL
New Communist Party of Netherlands
Communist Party of Norway
Communist Party of Poland
Portuguese Communist Party
Socialist Alliance Party, Romania
Communist Party of the Russian Federation
Communist Workers Party of Russia-Party of Communists of Russia
New Communist Party of Yugoslavia, Serbia
Communist Party of Slovakia
Communist Party of Peoples of Spain
Communist Party of Sweden
Communist Party, Turkey
Communist Party of Ukraine
Union of Communists of Ukraine

9th May 2007

Stop the escalation of the anti-communist and anti-democratic attacks in Europe

Joint statement of the international communist movement

The decision made by the government of Estonia to remove the monument honoring the memory 270.000 Red Army soldiers dead in the antifascist fight followed by brutal police attacks in Tallin-, the acts of vandalism of the grave of Janos Kadar in Budapest on 2 May, the implementation of the new “lustration law” in Poland targeting 700.000 people, the anticommunist Romanian National Security Law, the anticommunist statement of the Romanian president Traian Basescu and the partial rehabilitation of the former fascist Romanian prime minister I.Antonescu are only some of the new anticommunist and antidemocratic attacks occurred in the last time in Europe.

Our parties vehemently protest against these measures which are directed not only against the communists, the heroic antifascist fighters, against the fighters of the international brigades in the Spanish civil war and the antifascist victory in the WW II but also against elementary democratic rights and liberties.

We consider accountable the European Union, having in mind several statements and decisions preparing the ground for these developments and for denying any measure to stop this situation.

On the occasion of the big campaign against the Anticommunist Motion in the Council of Europe in January 2006 our parties and other progressive forces from all countries warned on the real aims and goals of the attacks against communists and their ideology.

The aim of these measures is the attempt made by the ruling forces in the European countries, in the EU, NATO and the other imperialist centers to intimidate and to counter the growing resistances against the anti social anti laboral policies followed by the governments and their supporters.

In face of the growing influence of the ideas of the October Socialist Revolution and of the achievements, despite the mistakes and errors of the socialism in the 20th century, in sharp contrast with the every day’s reality for millions, the attempts to rewrite history and to escalate state sponsored anticommunism will increase.

In spite of all this we are confident that nobody, no mater if political force, government, NATO or EU will be able to stop the impact of the communist ideas in the working class and youth, simply because they proved more than ever to be true and the way for the realization of the popular aspirations and demands.

That’s way we will multiply our efforts for joint action, in support of the popular struggles, first of all of the working class, of a large movement in support of democratic rights and liberties.

It’s time, for all progressive minded people in Europe to remind on the catastrophic impact of the same these policies in the history of our continent.

It’s time to vigorously react and condemn by any mean any antidemocratic attack, any anticommunist measure.


We demand

• Abolition of all anticommunist laws , decisions and governmental actions condemning the communist ideology, the communist symbols as well as the persecutions against the communists, the antifascists and the fighters for socialism.

• Severe punishment of the responsible for the vandalisms to graves and monuments honouring the memory of the antifascist fighters.

• To set an end to the massive campaign of terrorizing millions of people for their political opinions.

• Abolition of the laws and other decisions banning the activity of the communist parties

• To stop the campaigns aiming to defame and distort the real history of the anti nazi and antifascist fight in the education and mass media.

• To stop the anticommunist campaigns of changing names of public places honoring the heroic struggle against fascism.


The parties

Communist Party of Belarus
Workers’ Party, Belgium
Communist Party of Bulgaria
Party of Bulgarian Communists
New Communist Party of Britain
Socialist Workers’ Party of Croatia
AKEL, Cyprus
Communist Party of Denmark
Communist Party in Denmark
Communist Party of Estonia
Communist Party of Finland
Unified Communist Party of Georgia
Communist Party of Greece
Communist Party of Ireland
Party of the Italian Communists
Socialist Party of Latvia
Socialist Party of Lithuania
Communist Party of Luxemburg, KPL
New Communist Party of Netherlands
Communist Party of Norway
Communist Party of Poland
Portuguese Communist Party
Socialist Alliance Party, Romania
Communist Party of the Russian Federation
Communist Workers Party of Russia-Party of Communists of Russia
New Communist Party of Yugoslavia, Serbia
Communist Party of Slovakia
Communist Party of Peoples of Spain
Communist Party of Sweden
Communist Party, Turkey
Communist Party of Ukraine
Union of Communists of Ukraine

9th May 2007

Kim Il Sung -- A hero to remember

by Andy Brooks

KOREAN PEOPLE on both sides of the divided peninsula and amongst the overseas Korean community paid tribute to Kim Il Sung last week on the 95th anniversary of his birth on 15th April 1912. Kim Il Sung was an outstanding communist leader and thinker who will always be remembered by working people all over the world.
The great leader, comrade Kim Il Sung, was one of the giants of communism – the man who led the people in a war of liberation from Japanese occupation and then defended that victory against invasion by the United States and its allies in 1950, using the fledgling United Nations as a puppet.
He then went on to lead his country in building its own, independent socialism, steering a careful path during the period of Sino-Soviet ideological conflict and managing to remain on good terms with both parties.
And after the demise of the Soviet Union and the loss of the eastern European socialist countries, an enormous setback for communism globally, when parties were becoming demoralised and failing around the world, Kim Il Sung stopped the rot by summoning a global conference of communist and workers’ parties in Pyongyang in 1992.
When Kim Il Sung formed the Down with Imperialism Union at the age of 14 no one, least of all the Japanese imperialists, could have dreamt that within 20 years Korea would be free.
Kim Il Sung saw the hopelessness of the sectarians, flunkeyists, dogmatists and factionalists who called themselves communists in the 1920s. So he decided to form a communist movement from the youth and the grass-roots of the villages and factories, and surprised everyone with the emergence of the mighty Korean communist movement that led the people to victory in 1945.
When Kim Il Sung gathered a small band of heroes to form the first guerrilla units to take on the Japanese Army no one could have imagined that this would become the People’s Army that brought the American imperialists to their knees begging for an armistice in 1953.
Kim Il Sung not only grasped Marxism-Leninism but he applied it to the concrete conditions of the Korean people. He knew that once the masses realised their own strength they would become unstoppable. He knew that serving the people was the be-all and end-all for the Korean communists and for the Workers’ Party of Korea that he launched in 1945. He developed Korean style socialism into the Juché idea – which elevates the philosophical principles of Marxism-Leninism as well as its economic theories – and focuses on the development of each individual worker, who can only be truly free as part of the collective will of the masses.
Kim Il Sung was born in a world of oppression and exploitation. He lived and fought to end that rotten system and he lived to see the construction of a modern socialist system in the north of Korea. But he wasn’t just a Korean communist. He was a great internationalist.
The leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea championed the struggle for colonial freedom, non-alignment and Third World co-operation. He pioneered the call for south-south co-operation which is now bearing fruit today. He sent technical and military assistance to the African and Arab peoples struggling for independence and he constantly strove to strengthen the world communist movement.
Some members of the New Communist Party, like myself, had the honour of meeting Kim Il Sung. All of us know him as a great friend and teacher. The President of the NCP, Eric Trevett, met Kim Il Sung on a number of occasions because Comrade Kim was very interested in the British communist movement. Kim drew parallels with the problems the Korean communists faced in the 1920s but always maintained that communists had to resolve their problems in their own way, based on their own conditions – like the Koreans themselves.
Today, the Workers’ Party of Korea, with Kim Jong Il at the helm, is relentlessly advancing into the future to fulfil the dream of all Koreans, the peaceful re-unification of the country.
Kim Il Sung worked tirelessly all his life to end the cruel partition of Korea but all his efforts were rebuffed by American imperialism. More than six years ago, on 15th June, Kim Jong Il signed the historic joint declaration with south Korean leader Kim Dae Jung that outlined the way forward to achieve this goal. But the forces of US imperialism have moved to stall progress and prevent the Korean people from achieving their undeniable and inalienable right to the end of partition and to reunify their country.
Democratic Korea began to develop its nuclear industry in the 1990s but agreed to suspend its programme following an agreement with the United States that was to have led to the construction of two light water reactors in the DPRK. This agreement was never honoured and it was virtually torn up by the Bush administration. The American diplomatic and economic blockade on the north since the end of the Korean War was maintained.
The DPRK was branded by the American imperialists as part of the “axis of evil”, and one of the “outposts of tyranny”, that include Cuba, Syria and Iran, and was topped by Iraq until that country was invaded by US-led imperialism in 2003. The US army and its south Korean puppets rehearse the invasion of the north in annual war-games and the south Koreans have developed a cruise missile of their own targeted on the DPRK.
In face of these renewed threats the DPRK has had no alternative but to develop a nuclear deterrent to defend its socialist system. At the same time it has pledged that it will never be the first to use nuclear weapons and it has also vowed never to threaten the use of nuclear weapons or allow the transfer of nuclear technology to other countries.
We believe that the will of the Korean masses, expressed in concrete terms by their vanguard party, the Workers’ Party of Korea, will overcome all obstacles to fulfil the revolutionary tasks that faced the Korean people when they began their long march to socialism in the struggle against Japanese imperialism.

Fighting Modern Slavery

Interview with Muhktar Rana

On Friday 23rd March MUKHTAR RANA, a veteran Pakistani campaigner for labour and trade union rights, former member of the Pakistani parliament and former prisoner of conscience, spoke to the New Worker on the campaign against bonded labour in Pakistan and his role in launching it. He began by explaining how people come to be bonded labourers:

FAMILIES become victim to disease or famine or some other disaster and have to borrow money in order to survive. They get an agreement with big landowners or factory owners and end spending the rest of their lives working to pay off the debt.
The big landlords and factory owners use dirty tricks and fraudulent accounting to keep them always in debt; they charge too much for helping these people to survive and pay wages too low for them ever to repay the debts.
Those who work on the land are given nothing from the crops they produce and the wages they are paid are very, very low. The children of these bonded labour families are also forced to work and the women are misused for sex.
This kind of slavery is spread all over the world and, according to various international human rights bodies; there are around two million bonded peasants and labourers in Pakistan working in farms, factories and kilns. They are kept in big camps under armed guard to stop them escaping.
My first contact with bonded labourers was when I was running an educational institution called the People’s Academy in Faislabad (formerly known as Lailpur but renamed after King Faisal of Saudi Arabia after his death).
Bonded labourers working in a nearby brick kiln walked miles to my academy to see me and explain their situation.
I had also become a member of the national Parliament of Pakistan. I won the votes of the working class of Faislabad and I also chaired the People’s Party of the district of Faislabad. Under my supervision we won 90 per cent of the national and provincial MP seats because I was very popular among the workers. Even one of the very big capitalists, Saigal, was defeated in spite of tremendous support from a lot of mullahs.
After coming to know the situation of the bonded labourers working in that brick kiln I decided, along with my family, to involve the trade unions in working for the freedom of bonded labourers and the movement started to gather momentum.
But I was thrown into jail for five years for opposing the martial law imposed by the President, Mr Bhutto, because our manifesto demanded democracy. We had been demanding this in the past, throughout various periods of military rule.
Some other trade union leaders also suffered and were even thrown out of Pakistan and never allowed to come back. They took refuge mainly in Britain and Sweden.
During my imprisonment Amnesty International adopted me as a prisoner of conscience. After I had completed my term of imprisonment Mr Bhutto met me. There is a long story of how he apologised for his actions.
But during that period Bhutto again imposed another period of martial law in Karachi when the people demonstrated against the elections he had conducted – claiming they were fraudulent. I went with my family to Karachi to campaign against martial law, with a manifesto against military rule and for the restoration of democracy.
Mr Bhutto then, instead of putting me in prison, threw me out of Pakistan. It was because Swedish Amnesty International had adopted me as a prisoner of conscience. Then I had a choice of going to Sweden or Britain. I was born in the Punjab desert and I was a bit nervous about Sweden’s cold climate, and in any case I could speak English but not Swedish so I opted to come to Britain. And in London there were various committees – backed by some MPs – campaigning for me to be allowed residence in Britain. The British Library was another attraction that drew me to choose to come to London.
I walked out of London airport without much fuss; I had come on the grounds that I needed medical treatment and I had a certificate from Pakistani doctors confirming that I needed to come for treatment. I started living in London in 1977 and while I was living in sheltered accommodation as a patient I founded the Peace and Human Rights Trust. My wife Norma and her son became fellow trustees.
Our objectives were to campaign for peace and human rights. As I was well known in Pakistan, especially amongst the working class and peasants, I discussed with my fellow trustees and decided to start campaigning in Pakistan for two important goals:

1) To work for the freedom of bonded labourers and peasants;
2) To work for the establishment of a welfare state and other human rights in Pakistan.

Since 1977 I had been going back to Pakistan to campaign against corruption but in 2003 I went to Pakistan and we held our first seminar on the issue of bonded labour, including in the bangle-manufacturing industry, for a welfare state and for the abolition of Bhatta (the form of bonded labour imposed on brick kiln workers). Various political leaders, human rights activists, representatives of labourers and peasants and journalists took part in the seminar. To the good luck of the trust it was very well reported and an office of the PHRT was formed in Pakistan.
To our pleasant surprise similar seminars were held in almost every province and the issues of bonded labour and a welfare state were brought into focus. But the most active and physical response was reserved for Hyderabad, the capital of Sindh province. The journalists, lawyers and human rights activists in Hyderabad responded enthusiastically and we formed a trust unit for Sindh.
After the creation of that unit and various conferences the issue of bonded peasants and labourers started whipping up. To our surprise the office of the chief minister of Sindh made a very wrong claim that there were no bonded labourers in Sindh. But to our greater and pleasant surprise the provincial minister for the interior came to our support. He said the Sindh government claim was wrong and that there were two million bonded labourers and peasants in Sindh. And he supported the campaign of the trust for their liberation.
As a matter of fact the cruelty of the big feudal landlords of the Sindh was so well known for such a long time that various peasant groups have been formed for the rights of peasants and tenants. One of the best known was the Hari (peasant) Committee.
Some of the bureaucrats favourable to the cause of the Haries had written very good reports about the problem.
Bhutto was from Sindh and for a while he was President, chief minister responsible for administration, Prime Minister and chair of the People’s Party. Part of the manifesto of the People’s Party was for the freedom of bonded labourers and peasants but the problem continued under his rule and still continues today. After him his daughter also became president of Pakistan twice.
They also made a law for the abolition of bonded labour and the constitution of Pakistan bans any kind of forced labour.
There have been various High Court decisions and precedents in place banning bonded labour and freeing the peasants and labourers. And there are various human rights organisations all over Pakistan working for the freedom of bonded labourers and peasants.
But in spite of all this today according to the human rights groups and the International Labour Organisation there are still an estimated two million bonded labourers and slaves in Pakistan. Because the big landlords rule the politics, hand-in-hand with the military. They have control over the government and politics.
But good things have been happening. For example a young minister of labour in the central province – a friend of mine and the son of another friend of mine – got deeply involved in the movement for the freedom of bonded labourers and peasants.
He succeeded in getting thousands freed and rehabilitated in spite of serious opposition from a corrupt administration and cruel landlords.
According to Sajjad Ali Shah, a former chief justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, a young labour minister was targeted and killed. Police claimed he had committed suicide. The workers and peasants of Sindh loved the young central minister and do not believe he committed suicide. They are indebted to the help he gave.
Soon our trust workers and leaders succeeded getting bonded labourers and peasants released with the help of lawyers, courts and the media.
To our happiness both the judges and the media have played a very big role in this and in getting the issue whipped up nationally.
There is a significant case of a bonded labour family that raised the issue throughout the nation.
Munoo Bheel is the head of the family; about nine years ago because of international pressure the landlord, Abdur Rehman Murri, was forced to release them. But shortly after that the landlords sent his armed guards and got the family re-abducted. They did not get Munoo Bheel himself because he was not at home when they came. But Murri and six other men were identified by witnesses as being responsible for abducting the family and the case was registered with the local police but they have taken no action yet to release the family or bring the kidnappers to justice.
Human rights org-anisations from Sweden and Pakistan were campaigning for the freedom of the Munoo Bheel family but the big landowner is so powerful that for years Munoo Bheel could not get his family released. We joined the campaign for his release and to our very pleasant surprise we found an ally in the Pakistan Chief of Justice, Mr Iftikhar Mohammed Choudry – the one who has been arrested and detained recently by the dictator General Perves Musharraf because of his actions to defend human rights.
In the Supreme Court, Choudry brought a “suo moto” (self-motivated by the court) case and ordered that the Munoo Bheel family should be released. But the police have been playing tricks and the family has not yet been released so far.
But the cause of this family is getting support from the trust and from the very highest court in Pakistan. The campaigning goes on.
In order to satisfy the Supreme Court, they sent the inspector general of police for Sindh, saying that anyone who gave information that led to the whereabouts and release of the Munoo Bheer family would get millions of rupees reward. But so far there has been no response because the chief minister of Sindh and his colleagues are refusing to cooperate with the Supreme Court.
Not only that; although the big landlord Murri had been imprisoned for abducting the family and not releasing them, his friends have been threatening our trust coordinator in Pakistan. They said that if the trust did not stop pleading to keep Murri in prison the coordinator would be killed. So far he has survived and our representations in court have succeeded in stopping attempts by Murri to get bail. We are determined that the Munoo Bheer family will be found.
And we will keep on with the campaign for the freedom of bonded labourers until every labourer who is a bonded slave is freed unconditionally.
To focus attention on the campaign in Britain we are having a gathering on Sunday 8th April on my birthday at the Bakehouse in Blackheath, which will celebrate the release of 3,000 bonded labourers.
We need to raise fund because once these bonded labourers and peasants are freed they have no home and no job. We need to build accommodation for them and to provide them with food and clean water. In the Sindh there is a problem with salt water; clean water has to be transported over long distances. We have taken out bank loans to set up camps to provide accommodation and we are getting support from NGOs (non-government organisations).
We prefer to raise funds from the working class and there has been a response. One small landlord who is sympathetic has given 50 acres to the trust to provide accommodation for freed bonded labourers. And recently some other small landlords have offered a car for communications. More and more political and human rights workers and social workers are offering cooperation.
But the process has been stopped because of the presidential attack on Choudry and now the progressive campaigners in Pakistan are having to fight to get justice for the Chief Justice.
Anti-Slavery International are supporting us and their director has promised to come to Pakistan and to provide more funds for legal and political work.

The Soviet National Anthem

A Paul Robeson classic

No to the New Anti-Cuba Manoeuvres of the EU

Joint Appeal of Communist & Workers' Parties of Europe

We, the undersigned parties, vehemently condemn the intensification of the anti-Cuba campaign being carried out by the EU, especially its intent to pass a “mid-term and long-term strategy on Cuba” at the next summit of the European Council.

With this document, the EU aligns itself completely with the policies and plans of the U.S.A. for a strike against the Cuban revolution, in complete contradiction with the powerful sentiments of friendship and solidarity for Cuba, held by the people of Europe.

For the first time ever, the EU will publicly reveal a joint strategy against another country of the world. It is assuming an active role in the imperialist, anti-Cuba campaign, in complete accord with the so-called “Bush Plan” and is striving to actively enlist the EU member countries in the interventionist plans against Cuba.

It intensifies the regime of outrageous discriminatory practices, pressures and intervention that was launched in 1996 with the so-called “common position”. This development constitutes yet another dangerous step towards convergence with the policies of the U.S.A. It reaffirms the hostile stance of the EU towards the ideas of national independence and sovereignty.

It is particularly objectionable that this new anti-Cuba campaign, under the pretext of supporting “human rights” and “democracy”, is being primarily instigated by champion anti-communist, anti-democratic governments who promote the most reactionary anti-people measures in their own countries: those of the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Lithuania, and others.

The EU has neither the right nor the moral stature to impose terms on Cuba in regards to its relations with other countries.

We demand that our governments reject the “mid-term and long-term strategy on Cuba” in the European Council.

We demand the abolition of the “common position” and the development of relations with Cuba based on equality and the principles of international justice.

We call upon the working people, the youth, women and the peoples’ movements, as well as, every progressive and democratic-thinking person in Europe to express their opposition to these anti-Cuba maneuvers.

To reject and refute the reactionary propagandistic campaign, to isolate the political forces that support it.

To defend the right of the peoples to resist and determine their own fate.

To strengthen their solidarity with socialist Cuba and her people.


The Parties

Communist Party of Albania
Workers' Party of Belgium
Communist Party of Britain
New Communist Party of Britain
Socialist Workers' Party of Croatia
AKEL-Cyprus
Communist Party of Bohemia & Moravia
Communist Party in Denmark
Communist Party of Finland
Unified Communist Party of Georgia
German Communist Party
Communist Party of Greece
Hungarian Communist Workers’ Party
Communist Party of Ireland
Workers’ Party of Ireland
Party of the Italian Communists
Socialist Party of Latvia
Communist Party of Luxembourg
Communist Party of Malta
Communist Party of Macedonia
Communist Party of Norway
Communist Party of Poland
Portuguese Communist Party
Romanian Communist Party
Socialist Alliance Party, Romania
Communist Party of Russian Federation
Communist Workers Party of Russia - Party of Communists of Russia
New Communist Party of Yugoslavia
Communist Party of Slovakia
Communist Party of Peoples of Spain
Communist Party of Spain
Communist Party of Sweden
Communist Party of Turkey
Labour Party of Turkey (EMEP)
South African Communist Party

Killing ourselves to live

by Daphne Liddle

BRITAIN has been breaking records lately, with levels of personal debt, long working hours and having the unhappiest children in the western world. These things are linked and this article aims to explore how the ruling class manipulate us into becoming debt slaves and the cost this is having on ourquality of life and that of our children.
Since the Thatcher years of the 1980s, both Tory and Labour governmentshave tried to justify the rampant privatisation of public services and utilities on the grounds of giving us more choice. A choice of service implies that not all the services on offer are the same quality – some are worse than others. The best services, naturally, are reserved for those whocan pay a bit more. When we complain that the poor are getting fobbed off with inferior services they come back saying, “Oh no, everybody has choices,would you like a bit of credit to help you pay?”
So we end up going into debt to pay for things we once had supplied free,as part of the social wage – things like healthcare, higher education,social services and so on. Now, working class people can’t get into higher education without going deep into debt; many non-emergency surgicalprocedures that were once free have to be paid for.
Meanwhile the rapidly diminishing supply of council houses, coupled with rocketing house prices, have forced home buyers to take on record levels of major debt just to find somewhere to live. Banks and credit card companiesencourage everyone to borrow up to their limit and then pay back slowly –interest only – in a way that extends the amount of interest eventually payable.

The marketing media and their friends in the Government encourage us to see spending as a pleasurable experience – “retail therapy”.
“Lifestyle” programmes urge us to throw out our old clothes to keep up with fashions, now this also applies to our furniture and home decoration. Our identity is expressed in our belongings and no longer in ourselves or in ourcommunity, so that when we are burgled or the bailiffs repossess something we feel as though we have suffered a physical injury.We are encouraged to be proud of what we own – and to forget what we havelost in terms of the social wage, community spirit and time for relaxation and recreation.
We think ourselves well off surrounded by the latest electronic equipmentbut forget that in our grandparents’ time the wage of one worker, usually a man, was enough to feed and clothe a family. Now it takes the wages of twoadults working all the hours they can and they never get to clear their debts or get time to relax.
House prices are so high that now we are seeing new kinds of mortgages –50-year mortgages; multi-generation mortgages and interest-only mortgages,which effectively mean the “buyer” will be forever paying interest withoutever coming closer to owning the home – they might just as well call it rent.
Bank staff are ordered to pressure customers into taking out loans. So the loans are offered to all, regardless of their ability to pay back, even topeople with a history of debt problems and to people with mental health problems. “As long as they’ve got a pulse,” is the criterion.
Whatever they can persuade us to want, someone is there to arrange a loan or credit agreement. When we get into trouble with the repayments, they offer to consolidate it all “into one affordable loan” – which could take many years to clear and ends up with us paying far more than the original debt.
Thousands of families are so much in debt they are living on the edge of financial disaster. It only takes a sudden change, usually beyond their control, to break them. This could be a rise in interest rates, a sudden illness or injury or losing their job because their employer has gone bankrupt.

According to Credit Action statistics compiled in February, total personal debt in Britain has exceeded £1.29 trillion. The debt growth rate for the past 12 months has been 10.9 per cent, equivalent to an increase of £114billion.
The average household in Britain has £8,791 in debts, excluding mortgages;if you include mortgages the figure is £53,326. The average debt owed byeach adult individual is £27,445 and the average interest paid by each household on their total debts is £3,400 every year. Britain’s personal debtis increasing by £1 million every 3.85 minutes.
Not surprisingly many people are having serious problems. The Citizens’Advice Bureau has dealt with 1.4 million debt problems in the last year;this equates to 5,300 people a day. Around 1.4 million adults with more than£10,000 of unsecured debt report that they are “quite likely”, “likely” and“certain” to declare themselves bankrupt or take out an IndependentVoluntary Arrangement.

During the last quarter of 2006 there were 34,626 mortgage possessionactions initiated by the banks and other lenders – a rise of 15 per cent onthe previous year.
The number of people given County Court Judgements (CCJ) for unpaid debts increased by 18 per cent, with lenders seeking to recover around £500million of bad debts through CCJs. This is a step lenders are reluctant totake, because once a CCJ is issued no more interest can be charged and thedebt is repaid at a rate the debtor can afford – as low as £1 a week for people on very low incomes.
Working class people tend to see debt problems as their own fault and to feel embarrassed about them. When snowed under with serious debt some try to blank it out and pretend it is not happening. These people are punished most harshly, with high penalties for missed payments that quickly turn a bill of a few hundred pounds into a debt of many thousands. There are threats of court action but the courts can be a debtor’s best friend. As soon as a CCJ is set there is no more interest and the repayments become reasonable.Furthermore magistrates have the power to write off some debts. They tend to do this where the debtor is on a low fixed income and has already made payments to cover the original amount borrowed, excluding interest and penalty charges.
But if the debtor does not turn up in court to present their case, they face a visit from bailiffs who are now to be given new powers to break into people’s houses to distrain goods. This is a punitive measure that finance companies take to shock and intimidate debtors into paying. The goods seized rarely raise enough money to cover the debt because they are sold at rockbottom prices at auction. When unregulated bailiffs get a reputation for behaving like bullies and terrifying the families of debtors it suits the loan companies, because this will intimidate other debtors into paying uppromptly.

How can a worker whose debt repayments and essential living costs combined are greater than their income find more money? Legally there is only one way– to work extra hours, either in overtime or by getting a second job. Again,many workers blame themselves for getting into debt and see the extra workburden as part of the penalty they are paying for being foolish – not as adeliberate policy to exploit them to the hilt.
And it is deliberate ruling class strategy. Chancellor Gordon Brown’s“economic miracle” has been based entirely on high levels of domestic consumer spending. Two Australian economists – Shaun Wilson of the University of Sydney and Nick Turnbull of New South Wales – describe this as“secret Keynesianism”. The original forms of Keynesianism, first implemented in the 1930s in Roosevelt’s New Deal in America and later in Europe, relied on Government deficit spending on large public works to combat unemployment,take people off benefit and into work and to put more money in circulation.
Many social democrats have seen Keynesianism as relatively progressive inthat it did fund public utilities and reduce unemployment – in the short term; they boasted that it did away with the old capitalist cycle of boom and bust. But it was still capitalism and ultimately capitalism does nothave a kind face. In the long term it led to the devaluing of money and the rampant inflation of the early 1970s, followed by collapse and a worse crisis than ever – as we saw in the 1980s. The ruling class then abandoned Keynesianism and reverted to old fashioned free market, or “liberal”,capitalism, and started privatising all the public utilities thatKeynesianism had built.
Wilson and Turnbull argue that the new “secret Keynesianism” operates not by the Government undertaking deficit spending but by pushing millions ofprivate households into deficit spending.
They describe how the system operates: “Faster growth rates among countriesthat have placed an ever greater institutional reliance on the privatesector have led to now familiar claims about the superior functionalperformance of markets and the strength of the new, flexible hi-techeconomies. Critics of the achievements of these economies, however, point to the shifting burdens of adjustment that faster growth has entailed longworking hours, widening earnings inequality and higher consumer debt.”
Then they describe the effect in Australia: “We must now look beyond theformal balance sheets of state finances to understand how the state iscontinuing to ‘pump prime’ the Australian economy by relying onhousehold-based deficit spending. Are these policies either desirable or sustainable dimensions of Australia’s economic performance?”
They continue: “Australian households are no longer net savers, saving lessthan two per cent of their annual income. At the same time Australia’s oncemodest household debt levels have ballooned out in the last 10 years, risingto about 90 per cent of household income, closing the gap between Australiaand other countries like the UK, Canada and the United States. Debt-financed consumption expenditure is important in explaining Australia’s recently improved economic growth performance…. Household consumption remains the solid and consistent contributor to Australia’s economic growth.”
Wilson and Turnbull explain how the Australian government is deliberately pushing households into taking on more debt: “Australia’s dependence on rising household expenditure for growth is not coincidental. As we shallsee, there are a plethora of public measures, inducements, taxes and incentives to encourage private spending and growth in household debt in order to sustain Australia’s growth rate.”
They show that household spending on childcare; education and rent have risen linked to the “long-term ‘rollback’ of public provision”. They also say that “gambling accounts for an ever-increasing share of household expenditure” – funded by a run-down in household saving. This follows a dramatic increase in gambling resulting from government deregulation of the industry and an increase in casinos – a warning for Britain.
They conclude: “Recent economic growth has little or nothing to do with the benefits of increased market dynamism. In fact, it is the same old indebtedeconomy we have always had, but with ever greater reliance on household consumption, debt and long working hours to keep it blooming … government policies have assisted this success as a reworked variant of traditional Keynesianism – something not immediately obvious.
“The state, rather than undertaking the expense and risk of deficit spending to stimulate growth itself, is using policy mechanisms to encouragehouseholds to do this. Through these mechanisms households now undertake more of the state’s function in maintaining growth, financed by their rising consumption and household debt.”

Back in Britain we can see now why the European Union 48-hour directive is not working in Britain. Workers up to their ears in debt are as keen to subvert it as the bosses are. The boss does not need to crack the whip and impose long hours when the bank manager is cracking it harder. But of coursethe boss is well pleased with all the extra surplus value that long workinghours bring.
But the effects on our health and quality of life are devastating. A recentAmerican survey, published in Occupational and Environmental Medicine, showed that overtime and extended working hours are associated with anincreased risk of hypertension, cardiovascular disease, fatigue, stress,depression, musculo-skeletal disorders, chronic infections, diabetes andother health complaints.
In Japan they have a word, karoshi, for death by overwork and a few years ago there was a minor epidemic of it, leading to court cases against bosses.In Britain people rarely die of overwork but thousands suffer breakdowns –physical or mental or both – and end up on the “scrap heap” of incapacity benefit, with their life-expectancy shortened.
Professor Cary Cooper, a stress expert at Lancaster University Management School, claims the risk is not only to those who work over 60 hours a weekbut affects anyone regularly working over 45 hours. She said: “If you work consistently long hours, over 45 a week every week, it will damage your health, physically and psychologically. In the UK we have the second-longest working hours in the developed world, just behind the States and we now have longer hours than Japan.”
An Amicus survey found that one in five workers was put off sex because of long hours and a third said they did not have enough time to spend with their children. Long hours also lead to tiredness, lapses in concentration and higher accident rates.
Binge drinking is another product of the long hours culture. When young workers do not have time for leisurely relaxation and recreation they findthat hard drinking and drunkenness brings them a few hours respite from thestresses and tensions of endless work. But it does long-term damage to their health and leads to violence and anti-social behaviour.
Another factor in lengthening working hours is the target culture that has invaded many workplaces, where lower and middle management are constantly set new targets to improve performance. Failure to meet targets leaves them vulnerable to sacking so they drive those under them all the harder. Andsince it is unrealistic to imagine performance can be improved under all circumstances, this culture also encourages corruption, of middle management falsifying figures to make their performance appear better than it is.
The effects of long working hours on our children are also devastating andthere is a developing anti-child culture. Once children were seen as thefuture of the nation and our pride and joy. Winston Churchill, in the middleof the Second World War, spoke of the importance of “putting milk into babies” as a vital investment. Now children are seen as a nuisance, theydemand our time and attention and they distract us from work. Childcare is no longer taught in schools and few young adults have grown up with anyexperience of minding younger siblings. Many are terrified of the responsibility.
Long hours and big debts put many young people off having children at all.We are told that bringing up a child will cost us £180,000. Those who dohave children are regarded as self-indulgent and a burden on society.Overweight pregnant mothers are told they are a burden on the NHS. Anyone who takes time off work to look after children is regarded as a selfish slacker.
The rich of course are exempt from this disapproval. And the ruling classdoes not need to worry about the next generation of workers. There are thousands in Africa, Asia and eastern Europe – fully adult and trained at another country’s expense – queuing up to come to Britain to escape the direpoverty and wars that imperialism is imposing on their home countries.
It is not surprising that the recent Unicef report found that Britain’s children are the unhappiest in the developed world. The Unicef report covered six different areas of well-being using 40 separate indicators. In five of the six areas, British children came in the lowest third, making them overall the unhappiest children in the western world. In particular their own assessment of their well being was very low. This is hardly surprising in a society that regards them only as a nuisance and a burden.It is heartbreaking to compare them to children in socialist countries who are so confident and high achieving because they know their whole community treasures them and takes pride in them.
Britain is one of the few countries around the world that does not celebrate International Children’s Day, usually set on 1st June or in late May, though some countries celebrate it at different times.

What can we do to combat this culture of debt, long hours and child neglect? We can call on the trade unions to fight for higher wages but this alone is not enough. The credit companies would probably raise everyone’s credit limits and the Treasury and the banks would look upon it as a fresh supply of household deficit spending. This is a problem that has to be fought on many fronts.
Karl Marx said: “Workers of the World Unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains.” Now the debt culture is fooling too many workers into working all hours to pay for the use of the chains. It sets workers at odds with their unions in wanting to work long hours.
We must support the trade unions in their fight to defend the 48-hour limit. And we must involve them in discouraging debt, supplying debt counselling and campaigning for the restoration of the social wage – in other words to reverse the privatisation of the last two-and-a-half decades and restore free healthcare and education.
We must support the campaign to restore council housing, which will bring down house prices. We could demand that mortgage payers in serious trouble and facing eviction should have the right to demand that their local authority buy out the house from the mortgage lender by compulsory purchase– at a price that takes into account what has already been paid – and thenthe family remain in the house as council tenants. And we must call for the restoration of the Rent Act.
We must call for stiffer lending controls, so that banks and finance companies who lend to people they know will struggle to keep up payments cannot pursue their mis-sold loans in the courts. We must definitely call for the restoration of strict gambling controls and oppose the opening ofsuper-casinos.
We must use all our propaganda resources to combat the culture that judges people by the possessions and try to restore a sense of community in the working class. We must also use our resources to remind people that after a socialist revolution, personal and household debts would be abolished overnight. Probably in today’s anti-political and cynical culture not many would believe us but it is one benefit a socialist revolution can deliver instantly.

Common appeal of communist and progressive parties of Europe on the Rome Treaty

Common Appeal of Communist and Progressive Parties of Europe
on the foundation of the European Economic Community (EEC)

The Rome Treaty for the foundation of the EEC was an option of the main powers and West European monopolist capital. Today, 50 years later, the developments in the EU vindicate the forces that struggled against its policies, that had said and still say NO to the Maastricht Treaty, that voice their opposition to the “Constitutional Treaty”. They vindicate all those who today continue to fight against the European Union of big capital – a directorate of the big, neo-liberal and militaristic powers.

The goals trumpeted by the EU's dominant forces, the social democrat, conservative and various right wing forces – namely, the convergence of national economies, employment and improvement of the workers' conditions, more democracy, peace and cooperation on an equal footing - have proved false. The EU mission is to strengthen the European-based transnational capital and big business in the main European powers, by taking away rights and gains of the workers, expanding its economic power and influence upon policies at the European and State levels, and exploiting new markets and natural resources. This course leads to an increase in social inequality and regional asymmetries, the spreading of poverty and marginalization.

At present, there is a growth in attacks against jobs and wages, pensions and social security, labour and union rights. Fundamental rights, such as the right to an education, to healthcare and social security are transformed into commodities and sources of profit for big business. There is growing exploitation, unemployment and precariousness.
At the same time that, through the so-called “Economic Partnership Agreements”, unfair trading relations are imposed on some of the poorest countries of the planet, walls are built up for migrants in a fortress Europe.

Family-sized farming and fishing are ruined, self-employed workers and small entrepreneurs in industry, commerce and services are annihilated by the dominance of the financial and large-scale distribution corporations. Democratic rights suffer severe blows. There is a growth in anti-communism, in some cases sponsored by the governments of European countries, and in others, promoted by the European Union institutions themselves. Prohibitions and persecutions of left-wing, anti-capitalist political forces and popular movements are widespread. Racism and xenophobia are being fomented.

The militarization of the EU advances, as well as its cooperation with NATO and the US in the imperialist wars namely in Afghanistan and in Iraq, in the illegal CIA flights, the pressures against Socialist Cuba and Bolivarian Venezuela, against countries and peoples that resist. As “requested” by NATO and by the European Commission, military expenditures are rising and there is an ongoing arms race.

The big European capital uses the enlargement of the European Union and of NATO towards the East, as well as the policies of pressure against sovereign Eastern countries, to pursue its own objectives of political, economical and geo-strategic domination.

The sovereignty and independence of peoples and nations are increasingly undermined. There is a plan to re-launch the "Constitutional Treaty", in spite of its explicit rejection by the French and Dutch peoples. This global offensive of imperialism is being confronted by promising struggles of the peoples and workers, which we hail.

Our parties will strengthen their cooperation and joint action and will actively contribute to strengthen the working-class organisations and struggles and the anti-imperialist movement, to resist, challenge and fight against the neo-liberal policies and militarism and to reject the "Constitutional Treaty".

We appeal for the creation of alternatives that meet the needs and interests of the people, affirming socialism as the real alternative for the peoples of the European continent. We appeal for the convergence of activities and struggles that, throughout Europe, can pave the way for a Europe of peace, of cooperation among sovereign States, equal in rights, a Europe of employment and true economic and social development. A Europe open to the world, able to develop relations of friendship, fair trade and cooperation with all the countries and peoples of the world, respecting their right to an economic and social development. A Europe that can promote peace internationally and stand for the political resolution of the conflicts.

The Parties:

Workers' Party of Belgium
Workers' Communist Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Communist Party of Britain
New Communist Party of Britain
The Progressive Party of the Working People (AKEL) - Cyprus
Socialist Workers' Party of Croatia
Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia - Czech Republic
Communist Party in Denmark
Communist Party of Finland
German Communist Party (DKP)
Communist Party of Greece
Hungarian Communist Workers' Party
Communist Party of Ireland
Socialist Party of Latvia
Socialist Party of Lithuania
Communist Party of Luxembourg
Communist Party of Norway
Communist Party of Poland
Portuguese Communist Party
Socialist Alliance Party - Romania
Communist Party of the Russian Federation
Communist Workers' Party of Russia
Communist Party of Spain
Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain
Party of Communists of Cataluña
Communist Party of Turkey
The Party of Labour (EMEP) - Turkey
Communist Party of Ukraine
New Communist Party of Yugoslavia


23rd March 2007

Slavery and Freedom

by Prof Mohammed Arif

A talk given to the World Muslim, Sikh Federation in February.

I WOULD LIKE THANK the World Muslim, Sikh Federation for inviting me to speak to you on the subject of slavery and freedom.
In March this year we will be celebrating the bicentenary of the end of Britain’s part in the slave trade. There will be lectures, film shows, exhibitions and TV programmes. The Heritage Lottery Fund has granted £16 million for this purpose.
The Abolition of the Slave Trade Act was passed by the British Parliament in 1807. This Act outlawed the slave trade in the British Empire. However, the slave trade continued for more than 30 years in deferent forms after the act was passed.
During this period, major slave rebellions took place in Jamaica, Dominica, Barbados, Honduras and Guyana. This was primarily because the Act gave false expectation among slaves that their servitude might soon come to an end. This was a mistake and the rebellions were savagely crushed.
In fact, the Act was not respected even by the British who violated it by purchasing black people in the slave market to serve in their imperial wars. Black people were imported from the slave market in Goa and Mozambique to fight a war of conquest in Ceylon.
However, when the final end of the slave trade took place it was due to the enormous struggle by slaves themselves, who were at the heart of their own liberation (today they would probably be described as terrorists), with the help of their supporters and sympathisers throughout the world.
To understand the horrors of slavery, we need to be both passionate and informed about the way in which human relations were perverted by the insatiable thirst for incredible wealth.
I would like to quote Makgabuka K Kola, a distinguished African writer who said, “a person without knowledge of his own history, culture and identity is a lost person. He is like a lifeless leaf that drifts aimlessly with neither direction nor destiny over the ocean of time.”
This quotation underlines the significance of this meeting. The slave trade did try to disconnect African slaves from their heritage, achievements, culture and identity. The impact of the injustices of slavery is palpable today among the descendents of slaves.
Slavery is about the ownership and control of people by other people through economic and military means. It has existed since the beginning of time, long before it came to be seen in terms of race. In fact, slavery was an economic institution of the greatest importance. It was the basis of the Greek economy and propped up the Roman Empire.
The demand for African slave labour arose in the New World through the development of plantation agriculture, the long-term rise in the price of sugar, cotton and minerals, and the need for domestic servants. The African slave trade was massively boosted and carried out on an industrial scale as Europeans began to invade and occupy that continent. Corrupt African rulers were supported by Europeans to participate in the ghastly trade.
This point was eloquently elaborated by Karl Marx: “Western capitalism, in its period of primitive accumulation, turned Africa into a commercial warren for the hunting of black skin.” Marx further pointed out that “labour in the white skin can never be free when in the black it is branded”.
The British, French and Spanish scoured the Gulf of Guinea, moved east, around the Cape of Good Hope and up to Mozambique.
The slave traders moved into the interior, plundering as they went, capturing all, regardless of age and sex, setting tribe against tribe, murdering and looting. Darcus Howe, a distinguished writer has pointed out that for the first time in its history, Africa experienced murder and plunder on an unimaginable scale.
For the African continent it was tantamount to a Holocaust. The continent was robbed of its physical, intellectual, technical and productive capabilities. The process of negative “cumulative and circular causation” devastated the continent economically and socially.
Richard Gott has pointed out: “For more than two centuries the slave trade has been the central feature of Britain’s foreign commerce. The beneficiaries included financiers, landowners, and merchants. The wealth created by slave trade was a crucial element which made the industrial revolution possible. In some specific families that wealth has cascaded down from generation to generation.”
The state of Virginia in the US was the primary site for the development of black slavery. In 1672, the King of England chartered the Royal Africa Company to bring a shipload of slaves from West Africa to the trading centres in Virginia. Prior to that time, the Dutch had already formed their own Dutch West Indies Company in 1621 to ship slaves to the Americas. African slaves were in great demand because they were skilled workers and experts in tropical agriculture. They had high immunity to malaria and yellow fever compared with Europeans and Native Americans. The slave trade made slave traders rich and brought a massive supply of labour to the Caribbean and American colonies. Capitalism in America could not have progressed without the slave trade.
They did not succeed in enslaving Native Americans (so-called “Red Indians”) as they were rebellious, supported by their tribes and knew their country better than white immigrants, while African slaves found themselves in a strange atmosphere in a strange country without any help or support.
As a result of the trans-Atlantic slave trade between the 16th and mid 19th centuries, over 20 million Africans were removed from their home and shipped to the New World. Around 50 per cent died, either in transit or while being prepared for servitude.
These sons and daughters of the African continent were kidnapped and forcibly carried to the Americas to be sold and branded with the initials of their masters’ name, with large iron hooks hung around their necks. Extremely cruel instruments of torture were used against them. This applied not only to the US but also to the Caribbean and South America.Slavery in US was fundamentally different from other parts of the world. Here, most blacks were slaves and no slaves were white. It was strictly racial.
From 1660 to 1860, slavery in the United States was governed by an extensive body of laws: These laws made slavery a permanent condition inherited through the mother and defined slaves as property. It placed the label of inferiority on black skin and black culture. Slaves could not marry, own property, give evidence in a court of law, carry weapons, assemble in groups or leave plantations without permission of their master; slaves could be bought and sold, auctioned, rented and separated from their family.
It may be worth noting that many distinguished leaders of the US were slave owners. In 1774 George Washington held 202 slaves, while Thomas Jefferson owned 187 slaves and both became President of the United States and “founding fathers” of the nation. However, in their lifetimes, they did very little to relieve the suffering of slaves.
In fact, African slaves had very few supporters and friends in the countries which owned and traded them. With the honourable exception of Methodists and Quakers, many leading churches supported and profited from the slave trade. Many Bishops owned hundreds of slaves. The Church of England has recently apologised for its role in the slave trade.
Many slaves were converted to Christianity but that led to little improvement in their conditions. Slave owners had Christian names but no Christian ethics. The complicity of some Christian missionaries in the plunder of Africa has been very powerfully presented by Jomo Kenyata former president of Kenya: “When the white man came to Africa, he had the Bible and we had the land, and now we have the Bible and he has the land.”
The intellectual basis for the slave trade was provided by a twisted logic promoted by the slave owners, that slave labour was uneconomic and if slaves were freed, then they would not produce enough to feed themselves. At the same time, slave owners were renting slaves, earning rental income and were still able to feed them. This proved the duplicitous nature of this logic.
Slavery in America was different from other parts of the world not only because of its racial dimensions but also because it was solely motivated by commercial incentives. In other was words a slave was not only considered to be a chattel but also racially and culturally inferior.
It is important to note that ‘slavery was not born out of racism but racism was the consequence of slavery’.
Slavery has existed as a human institution in Africa and Asia since the days immemorial but it was not based on race or the colour of skin. It typically involved prisoners of war and was considered a humane alternative to prisoners being put to death. It was common in Africa for slave owners to adopt slave children and to marry slave women who then became a full member of the family. Slaves, after gaining their freedom, faced no difficulty in settling down in society as equals.
Slaves accumulated property and in some cases reached the status of kings, for example Jaja of Opobo in Nigeria.
One finds similar instances in the Islamic world: Prophet Mohammed’s own spokesman was a slave named Bilal. There had been a slave dynasty in India. Within Europe, slavery was common but was not based on the racial inferiority of slaves. For example, Cicero, the great orator and statesman of Rome, had a low opinion of the intellectual ability of the English, but it was not racial. He wrote in 50 BC to Atticus, his close friend and a slave trader who had settled in Athens: “Do not obtain slaves from England because they are so utterly stupid and incapable of being taught that they are unfit to form a part of the household in Athens.”
On the other hand, slavery in America was solely based on the colour of the skin and the racist perception of the inferiority of the African culture.
The example of Phyllis Wheatley is a case in point. Phyllis was born in Senegal in 1753. She was abducted into slavery at the age of seven and shipped to Boston, US. She was brought up by a family called Wheatley. At the age of 13, Phyllis had not only achieved a complete command of the English language, but also had studied Greek, Latin and published her first poem.
Later on, she published many masterpiece poems and pieces of prose. Had she lived in more enlightened times, she could have won the Nobel Prize. Many of her white opponents could not believe that a young black slave was capable of writing so well and so profoundly. They also could not tolerate her revolutionary views regarding freedom, human equality and human dignity.
The racists at the time tried to dismiss her as a fraud. The Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts prosecuted her in a court of law for plagiarism, which was a criminal offence at that time. She won the case and the racists were forced to acknowledge that she was the sole author of her works.
Oscar Wilde later on wrote that the mistreatment of Phyllis Wheatley could be put down to the fact that they (Americans) were a nation of philistines who would not have been able to define the term ‘philistine’.
It is an established maxim that where there is oppression, there is resistance! There were slave revolts in America as early as 1712. In New York slaves revolted – the revolt was not successful and 21 slaves were executed. Again there was another revolt in New York in 1741.
However, the successful revolt took place in Haiti in 1791. The slaves set up the first free black state. The Haitian revolutionaries exploded the myth of white imperialist supremacy by driving the Spanish, the British and the French out of their island in a brilliant guerrilla war.
Yet other islands also saw serious uprisings by slaves, assisted by French, they seized control of large parts of Dominica, Guadeloupe, Grenada, St Vincent, Jamaica, St. Lucia and Trinidad. The rebellion defeated two British armadas sent to destroy them, killing thousands of soldiers and seamen. The rebels were eventually defeated but they deprived the British of income from their sugar plantations for years. The danger of the continuing slave trade to British commercial interests became evident.
At the same time, anti-slavery movements were set up all over Europe and in America.
The 1772 Case of Somerset vs Stuart, with Judgement by Mansfield, the Chief Justice of England, freeing the slave (Somerset) from bondage is held to be a landmark in British judicial history. Mansfield held that slavery was irrational and could only be maintained by perverse laws.
In 1774, a Ghanaian scholar presented a brilliant thesis against slavery in a University in Holland, arguing that slavery was inconsistent and incompatible with Christianity.
In 1775, Lord Dumore, Commander of British Forces in America, declared freedom for slaves who joined the British forces against the rebels.
George Washington also asked the help of slaves to fight for freedom from the British, promising that he would put the issue of abolition of slavery before the Congress, knowing full well that the Congress would never approve it.In 1778, the Society of Friends of Blacks was set up in Paris.
In 1807 Britain finally abolished the slave trade in all its colonies.
In this respect, the contributions of Lord (William) Wilberforce (a Conservative MP) and Thomas Clarkson in fighting slavery were extremely important. They helped to set up anti-slavery committees throughout the country and mobilised public opinion against it.
Moreover, the French revolution of 1789 played a major role in providing the ideological basis for revolt against slavery. One of the first acts of the revolution was to abolish slavery.
When Britain finally abolished the slave trade, it compensated the slave owners but not the slaves, leaving the question of compensation and reparation unresolved. What Africans are asking for is the stolen fruits of their ancestor’s labour to be given back to their rightful heirs.
This is a powerful argument for the cancellation of all African debt as a collective way of admitting responsibility and atoning for the suffering western countries caused. Tony Blair has belatedly expressed “deep sorrow” over the slave trade without tendering an apology or restitution. This gesture is vacuous and unlikely to satisfy those who are demanding compensation for the descendants of slaves as well as for Africa generally.
It will not be out of the place to mention that indentured migrant labour from South Asia in the 19th century carried on where the classical slave trade left off. Indentured labourers from South Asia were dispatched to the plantations of the empire from the Pacific to the Caribbean. Death rates on these sea voyages were similar to those on the earlier Trans-Atlantic slave trade voyages.
Today there are some 30 million slaves in the world, if you include bonded labour, child labour, and a large numbers of women caught up in international prostitution.
Moreover, neo-liberalism and the dominance of multinationals are enslaving the people of Africa, Asia and Latin America, with debt bondage predatory pricing, skewed concepts of intellectual property rights, interference in internal affairs under the pretext of “human rights”, wars, occupations, setting up puppet regimes, and the outright exploitation and theft of the natural resources of these countries.
Whatever we do, ladies and gentlemen, we must not allow the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade to mollify us into self-congratulation. We ought to link it with the broader issues of today, such as poverty, disease, inequality, exploitation, environmental degradation, unprovoked attacks against defenceless countries, and occupation.
I firmly believe the battle is far from won.