Ireland: No to the proxy war in Ukraine!

protest outside UK embassy in Dublin 

by Bill O’Brien

one of the co-founders of the Irish Truth & Neutrality Alliance

The war in Ukraine has been going on for more then a year now and the left in Ireland are in a most confused state as they are in the rest of Europe and globally. Let's examine the issues involved and the different attitudes that prevail.

the history

Modern Ukraine became the state after the Russian Revolution when it was established. The commission of Nationalities chaired by Joseph Stalin established Ukraine, took the proposals to the Politburo where it was discussed and voted upon and agreed, then made official and stamped by Lenin.
    Previous to that the landmass of what is now the Ukraine was divided between different empires, mostly Polish, Hungarian and Russian.
    The new entity was to be economically viable, the existing big estates were to be nationalised and controlled by Soviets, production was to be collectivised, and the large estates amalgamated to increase the production of cereal crops. This continued until the collapse of the Soviet Union, when privatisation then took place.
    The Soviet republic of Ukraine guaranteed religious and civil liberties of all citizens. It incorporated two languages on equal footing within the state. In short, Ukraine had over 70 years of peaceful co-existence enjoyed by all Ukrainians. In 1953, Crimea was added to Ukraine by Nikita Khrushchev who was himself a Ukrainian from the Donbas. This was to increase the availability of hard-currency for the Ukrainian economy because most of the Black Sea holiday resorts, frequented by Western tourists, were on the Crimean peninsula.
    The Crimea had been for centuries part of Russia. In the 1860s a war was fought between the British Empire and the Russian Empire known as the Crimean War, no mention of Ukraine at that time, as it did not exist. A small part of what is now modern-day Ukraine was itself called Ukraine, which gave the name to the larger entity when that came into existence.

genesis of the current crisis

After the collapse of the Soviet Union different forces in Ukraine began to come into being. Two schools of thought began to come into play. There were those who wanted to merge with the European Union and the other that wanted to merge with the Russian Federation. A general election was held and those who supported the Russian Federation got 52 per cent of the vote and those for the EU 48 per cent. This was an extremely divisive result. It also had a linguistic and geographical divide as the EU vote was concentrated mostly on the western side of the Ukraine, where Ukrainian was spoken, and the pro-Russian vote on the eastern side, where Russian was spoken.
    The American imperialists and the CIA organised a coup d'état and the elected Ukrainian president had to take refuge in Russia. This led the provinces in the Donbas separating away from the rest of Ukraine. An eight-year war between Donbas and the rest of Ukraine took place. There were at least 14,000 dead in that eight years.
    There was a peace agreement signed twice in Minsk but it was never honoured by NATO. A former German Chancellor, who was supposed to be the guarantor of the agreement, said they never had any intention of honouring it. The agreement was a way of playing for time till they built up an army. It became clear to the people of the Donbas that they were in mortal danger as just before the Russian intervention in 2022, the Ukrainians forces who had been trained in the most modern of warfare by NATO and were about to commence a genocidal war against them and their two provinces. Russia had to make its move.
    But Russia seriously under-estimated the determination and callousness of NATO and the West and initially were left unprepared. They did not believe that NATO and the EU would allow Ukraine to be totally sacrificed the way they did in order to get at Russia.
    Both the EU and the USA had agreed not to extend NATO forwards to the East to include Ukraine, this too was an undertaking that was not kept. The West had prepared themselves well and were initially able to repel the Donbas/Russian intervention. The situation has since been dramatically reversed.

propaganda

A propaganda campaign to totally control the media in the West and particular those in Europe, which has not been seen since the 1950s and ‘60s during the height of the Cold War, had been prepared and ruthlessly put into action. No Russian media outlets are allowed.
    Russia Today was banned immediately. Even some diplomats from embassies were treated very hostile by the interviewers. There was never any mention of the 14,000 killed in the eight years previous to the intervention. Nor were there any comments made as to the type of Nazi state the Ukraine is and the corruption that was prevalent in it at the time of the Russian intervention.
    Programmes like {Ukraine on Fire} by Oliver Stone were taken off the Internet, as well as programmes exposing Nazism done by independent television in Britain. A Russophobic culture was created so that people were reluctant to question anything they heard from the media. Comments would not have been published in any event. That total censorship is only recenty begging to be dispelled.
    All of the print media in Ireland is anti-Russian, social media such as Facebook is monitored extremely thoroughly. A lot of people, including Russians and Russian-speaking Ukrainians, have had their accounts suspended for posting information they received from the relatives back home.
    Ukrainian flags placed on all civic buildings, churches and city streets of the main towns, give the impression that there's a war going on between Ukraine and Russia and not a war between Russia and NATO, totally ignoring the civil war that is also going on in the Ukraine between Russian speakers and Ukrainian fascists.

potential global conflict

As the war progresses vast portion of the population of Ukraine have fled the country. There's reports of between 2–3 million people moving to countries in Western Europe. Russia has also taken in four million but you don't hear about that in the Western press. It's believed that as many have gone to Russia if not more, that have come to Western Europe.
    Ukrainian casualties in this war have been horrendous, they have now turned to conscripting 16-year-olds, plus men up to the age of 60. It's believed also there are 20,000 Polish troops fighting in Ukrainian uniforms. The Polish government have ambitions of regaining some of their old Empire in western Ukraine in the final settlement of this war.
    The American armaments industry is making a fortune and testing their new technologies at the expense of the ordinary Ukrainian. One of the biggest dangers is that this could escalate into a nuclear war or that the Ukrainians fascists could make a dirty bomb, which is not beyond them.

the fascist state

Since the current regime came into power all opposition has been banned, including even Social Democrats, Christian Democrats and other Liberals. The Orthodox Church has had their churches desecrated and expensive valuables stolen. Orthodox convents have been desecrated and the nuns both young and old assaulted and sexually violated. Most of these nuns are elderly as young women have not been entering these congregations in recent years.
    The minorities have been discriminated against also, particularly Romany gypsies and Hungarians living in the extreme south-west of Ukraine. The Hungarian government made representations on their behalf in recent weeks.
    A very common occurrence in the streets of Kiev and other cities is to look for Russian speakers and ask questions in Ukrainian. When they are unable to answer they are tied with cling film and their faces are painted green to show they are septic to Ukrainian society. Romany gypsies are particularly prone to this treatment. A lot of these incidents were exposed on social media but none of the National media have taken them up. This is another example of biased censorship.
    Trade unions were also banned. On one occasion in the city of Odessa the trade union hall was burned to the ground causing 50 deaths and over 100 hundred serious injuries. This was done by a group called the Right Sector who have now been incorporated into the Ukrainian army, enforcing the regime's philosophy and idolatry.
    A large element within Ukraine has a long history of supporting Nazism. During the Second World War these people supported the German occupation. They carried out the extermination of Jews and Romany people plus Communist and other anti-fascists. They built and carried out many of the tasks in the concentration camps within Germany itself. The collaborator of the time, Stefan Bandera, who was assassinated in West Germany in 1959, now has monuments erected to him and main streets in the capital city Kiev called after him in recent years.
    Ukrainian soldiers wear Nazi decorations on their uniforms and are quite often seen doing the Nazi salute. Nazism is the idolatry and philosophy of the Ukrainian army. An army that is now being armed by NATO.

Opposition to war

The opposition to this war in Ireland has been very disappointing overall. There has been no serious focusing on the atrocities committed by the Right Sector, the Azov Battalion or any of the other fascist forces at play on behalf of the Ukrainian regime. Those who even attempt to raise these issues are accused of being pro-Russian and are subject to all kinds of derogatory remarks and name-calling. Nevertheless there appears to be growing awareness that something is not right and people are beginning to question the media narrative. Groups have emerged and held demonstrations against the war in both Dublin and Cork such as the Stop The War group, the Irish Neutrality League, the Peace and Neutrality Alliance and the Truth and Neutrality Alliance. Of these, the Truth and Neutrality Alliance has the most migrant support with Russian speakers from East Ukraine and Crimea.
    The Irish Neutrality League have been doing tremendous work in Cork by exposing the breach of our neutrality by allowing NATO warships to visit the city for courtesy calls and a bit of recreation for their sailors. They haven't missed picketing one of those ships in recent years. This is very much to their credit.
    The Peace and Neutrality alliance, which has been going for around 26 years, has held monthly demonstrations at Shannon airport against Americans travelling via Ireland to battle zones in the Far East. They also picket the Irish parliament, the Dáil, one day a month. They have produced pamphlets and leaflets and statements on neutrality, which is commendable.
    The Anti-War group is a group of individual young people not affiliated any party. They have demonstrated against the war on the streets and within social media, and should be commended and supported. The last demonstration at the spa was organised by them.
    The Truth and Neutrality Alliance is made up of various Republican and Socialist groupings. It has only going since the beginning of this war but it has some old hands who have over 50 years of experience in protesting against war. At least two of them were in the CND in England in the 1960s.
    They believed that truth is essential to the building of peace and the best foundation for the building of a peace movement. They have been exposing the type of regime that has been going on in Ukraine since the coup in 2014.
    They have a lot of of Russian speakers from the Crimea and from Ukraine itself, and therefore their particular knowledge is of critical importance getting the truth out regarding this war. They have held three demonstrations so far in central Dublin against the war. One was outside the British Embassy as it was Johnston who prevented a peace deal being accepted on more than one occasion.

The negative left

The people on the left whom we consider to be negative as they find it difficult to accept the actual truth coming out, never cease to amaze us.
    The Irish Anti-War Movement claims they are for peace when they’re clearly in support of NATO. They even had the cheek to distribute their leaflet amongst the supporters of our anti-war group, which included a lot of Russian-speaking Ukrainians. The first demand on the leaflet was “Russian Military out of Ukraine”. One Russian-speaking Ukrainian asked who was giving out that leaflet. I said he is a toffee-nosed Dublin architect and a member of the Socialist Workers Party/People Before Profit. She said has he any idea what's going on on the ground? It was pointed out to her that that man was living in the clouds for so long he wouldn't recognise the ground.

the unions

The trade union movement has been extremely silent in all of this. When it makes soundings it always anti-Russian. The members of the Dublin district trades council and a full-time official from a British-based union involved themselves with a picket at the Russian embassy at the early stages of this war.
    All this despite the fact that their colleagues in Ukraine had been banned by the fascist regime and over 50 trade unionists were burnt alive in the trade union hall in Odessa after a May Day rally in 2014. There was no mention of that nor condemnation by the Irish union movement, which is to their shame.

the Irish Labour Party

The leadership of the Labour Party in Ireland have condemned Russia even though the social democrats have been banned by the fascists in the Ukraine. Do they not realise if they were in the Ukraine they too would most likely be jailed and their money and property confiscated?!

Sinn Féin

Sinn Féin have called for the expulsion of the Russian ambassador. An organisation that claims to be for Irish neutrality should be behaving in a neutral manner and inform themselves of the facts of what's going on within the Ukraine. It should be putting particular attention to the atrocities and bombings that took place previous to the start of the war in the Donbas.

No2warNo2Nato

Different campaign groups can take heart that all the opinion polls taken in recent months clearly state that the Irish people are very much in favour of neutrality. The campaign is growing and there is great potential to build a genuine anti-war movement. Truth is the main foundation for peace.
    If the fascists were to win in Ukraine, which thankfully is most unlikely, it will embolden fascism in other European countries and it will be the working class that will suffer.

Corbyn’s last stand?

Jeremy Corbyn has been blocked from standing as a Labour candidate at the next election. Labour's National Executive Committee voted 22 to 12 on Tuesday for a motion from current Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer to prevent his predecessor from being endorsed for the seat he has been an MP in for 40 years. Corbyn said this was a "shameful attack on party democracy".
    None of us would disagree with the former Labour leader when he says "today's disgraceful move shows contempt for the millions of people who voted for our party in 2017 and 2019, and will demotivate those who still believe in the importance of a transformative Labour government. Now, more than ever, we should be offering a bold alternative to the government's programme of poverty, division and repression".
    Some of Corbyn’s supporters are urging him to stand for re-election as an independent Labour candidate. He’s held the seat since 1983 and over the years he’s built up a personal vote within the constituency. Whether that is enough to overcome Labour’s machine is another matter.
    Corbyn can rely on the support of his loyal constituency activists and what’s left of the Corbynistas in the Greater London area. But it’s highly unlikely that any of his former colleagues will stick their necks out to support Corbyn if he decides to defend his seat as an independent.
    It’s true that John McDonnell has given him some lukewarm backing. The former Shadow Chancellor who was once Corbyn’s Number 2 says he believes the decision can be overturned. He said it is a “matter of principle” and “quite a number of us will be campaigning to reverse this decision” in the hope that “common sense does prevail”.
    Jeremy Corbyn says he will "not be intimidated into silence". Sadly the same cannot be said of most of the Labour MPs who once supported him in the House of Commons.

Is Paris burning?

Barricades and fires. Tear gas and water cannon. Violence on the streets as millions of French workers take to the streets throughout the country in protest at the Macron government’s move to cut their state pensions. Sending in the riot police has only triggered more demands for President Emmanuel to stand down following his emergency presidential decree to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. No wonder Macron’s postponed King Charles’ visit to France.
    The turmoil in France is a bitter lesson for those who believe the European Union is some sort of haven for social progress and peace. Pensions cut to enable the rich to continue to live their lives of luxury and ease. Workers forced to pay for the billions spent arming the Ukrainian fascists. This is the reality of France today.
    The likes of Macron can be found all over Europe. Venal politicians who serve the ruling elites of Europe who, in turn, do the bidding of their masters in Washington, It’s what the European Union is all about.
    But the spirit of the French Revolution and the Paris Commune lives on. Passed on through generation after generation of French workers who struggled to wrest concessions from the grasping bourgeoisie they are now fighting to defend their rights on the streets of France today.

21st Century Communism

by Robin MacGregor

The International Communist Movements – Annual Report 2019-2020: Academy of Marxism, Chinese Academy of Social Science ; Bari: Marx 21 Edizioni, 2022, 328 pp; €18:00 from: www.marx21books.com

This volume is a welcome collaboration between the Academy of Marxism, which is part of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and the Italian publisher Marx 21 Edizioni of Bari. CASS is not just another think tank, but plays an important role in shaping party and government policy in China.
    It is “an English and compressed version” of a work first published in Chinese in June 2020. Both Editors, Xin Xiangyang and Pan Jin’e, hold senior positions in the influential Academy of Marxism, while the individual authors and translators (all Chinese) share the same affiliation. It seems this is the second such report, but is the first to appear in English.
    In all there are fifteen chapters, plus an Appendix summarising recent developments in the world’s communist parties.
    The first by joint editor Pan Jin’e not only summarises the contents of the book but looks at the recent activities of various other parties such as the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. This is followed by an article on history of the Communist International which was established in 1919, and offers interesting reflections on its positive and negative impact on the communist movement, particularly on China. Two articles are devoted entirely to China; one outlines the achievements of the entire 70 year life of the Peoples Republic, while the other focuses on the May Fourth Movement, which in 1919 saw student protests in Beijing over China’s shabby treatment at the Treaty of Versailles spread like wildfire across the country resulting in a widespread interest in Marxism at the expense of reactionary traditional nationalism, which resulted in the foundation of the 50 strong Communist Party of China in 1921.
    These are followed by an account of the global balance of forces since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Despite the fall of socialism in the Eastern Bloc capitalism has not got all its own way thanks to China’s powerful economy which will be the anchor of a new order with “a community of shared future for mankind”.
    There are four articles on the recent activities of the ruling parties in Cuba, Peoples Korea, Laos and Vietnam. That for Vietnam covers the Communist Party of Vietnam in the run up to its 13th National Congress which took place in 2021. The two articles on Cuba and DPR Korea both focus on constitutional developments which both countries made in 2019, when the DPRK made important amendments to its constitution and Cuba brought in an entirely new one. Finally, that on Laos deals with the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party’s policy on developing the party’s cadres.
    The final section deals with recent developments of non-ruling communist parties. This starts with general survey of activities of Western European communist parties, their congresses and electoral activities. It does so fairly and, unlike some Soviet era publications on this theme does not pretend that they on the verge of revolution.
    This is paralleled by a similar piece on activities in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe where there have been some positive results under very difficult circumstances, particularly the legislation passed in some countries and in the European Union which brazenly equates the liberators of Auschwitz with its builders. This is followed by a useful summary of those parties involved in the European Left, which had as setback in the 2019 elections for the EU’s so-called parliament. This section also includes a more detailed account is of the Workers Party of Belgium which has had an unexpected electoral success.
    The article entitled “The Communist Party USA: 100 Years in Struggle for New Development” is interesting,but does not really live up to its title as it largely revolves round the CPUSA’s 2019 Convention. The informative article entitled at on “New Developments of the Japanese Communist Party” is more accurate. This gives a detailed account of the party’s recent policies, achievements and activities. The article does not shy away from addressing the party’s recent decline.
    On the whole the translations are decent enough with few obvious howlers, but on occasion a native English speaker should have been on hand to give a final polish. The title of the Belgian article is “Revival of the Workers’ Party of Belgium and its Enlightenments” could obviously have been improved upon.
    However, these are small grumbles which a reviewer feels entitled to make. The volume provides useful concise outlines of subjects which for British readers are normally below the horizon. We hope to see another volume, which is promised in the introduction before not too long.

Re-birth of a Great Nation – The Rise of China

China - the workshop of the world

by John Maryon

Millions of workers were inspired during first half of the 20th Century by the unprecedented growth of the world's first workers’ state. Under the leaderships of Lenin and Stalin the Soviet Union made many historic achievements.
    Revisionism ultimately destroyed the USSR, but the Red Banner is today carried forward by People's China, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), Vietnam, Laos and Cuba. I would like to examine the impact of the dramatic rise of China under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and its role in the world today.
    The new people's governments in both Russia and China faced similar challenges with peasants and an emerging working class living in near feudal conditions with mass poverty. Each applied Marxism, adapted to their own specific conditions, to build socialism. Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC and chairman of the Central Military Commission, was re-elected as President of the People's Republic of China for a further five years at the 2023 National People's Congress. Xi, who comes from a humble background, has remained a man of the people and is well respected in his homeland.
    At the 2023 National Congress, Xi Jinping spoke of the challenges facing the nation and the objectives for the current development period. He said that China would unswervingly advance high quality development on the journey of building a great modern socialist country. The President called for innovation and open development that was green and would benefit everyone. Whilst rural poverty had been eliminated, further efforts were still needed to advance rural revitalisation. He also spoke of the need for self-reliance in the face of US sanctions and called for protecting the nation's security with “A Great Wall of Steel”. He stressed that Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan were integral parts of People's China.
    China's GDP grew by three per cent during the last year to 121 trillion Yuan and is planned to rise by 5.2 per cent in the current year as the country emerges from its strict Covid restriction measures. In size its GDP is second only to that of the USA. China will soon surpass the USA, but when population is taken into consideration its per capita value is much less.
    The USA, alarmed at what they see as a challenge to their world domination, have done much to try to undermine China's economy. They have applied sanctions, disrupted supply chains and imposed selfish trade restrictions. No doubt they hoped that companies such as Huawei would be bankrupted, but the company has responded with an ambitious programme of research and development.
    It in the field of space research that China has been able to demonstrate its rapid advance in science and technology. Soil samples have been returned from the Moon and a rover vehicle soft-landed on Mars. Being banned by the USA from the so-called ‘International Space Station’ has not been a problem. They have built their own and are looking forward to working with other nations in its laboratories. Ambitious plans for the near future include the construction of a manned research station, in co-operation with Russia, at the lunar South Pole.
    China’s military expenditure is set to rise by 7.2 per cent in 2023. By comparison, Japan's rise will be over 20 per cent and Germany 17 per cent. China's defence spending remains at 1.5 per cent of GDP compared with four per cent for the USA.
    The Chinese military is being strengthened and modified to meet increased threats of US aggression. The current US spend is 855 billion dollars compared with China's 225 billion dollars. Xi Jinping said last year that China does not want war but that the era of being bullied was over.
    Unlike the USA, China accepts the fact that we live in a multi-polar world. Its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is designed to promote mutually beneficial co-operation and bring peoples together with investment projects that foster trade and development.
    China's foreign minister, Qin Gang, described the BRI as a “high quality public good initiated by China and jointly built by all partners, whose benefits are shared with the world”. The BRI has provided vital infrastructure, created over 420,000 jobs in countries along the route and helped to lift 40 million people out of poverty. The BRI is the world's broadest and largest platform for international co-operation and offers colossal business opportunities on a win–win basis.
    One of the great achievements of the CPC has been to lift billions out of poverty. Life expectancy in its rural regions, including Tibet and Xinjiang, has more than doubled since people's power was established in 1949. After the eradication of absolute poverty in 2020 China has continued to revitalise its rural areas, which have been left far behind the big cities. Residents of rural areas have less disposable income than urban dwellers. As called for by the People's Congress, the building of new rural homes is being accelerated and greater investment in agriculture, rural infrastructure, education, health and social care are being stepped up. Greater efforts are being made to provide greater opportunities for young people to stay in their home villages.
    The USA is stepping up its efforts to cause trouble and create tensions throughout the globe, in order to provoke wars and conflicts that support its own hegemonic ambitions.
    China on the other hand has emerged to become a powerful force for peace and diplomacy. Two important recent examples were as follows.
    Firstly, Iran and Saudi Arabia have agreed to establish diplomatic relations following a conference hosted by China. This will be a major setback for US imperialism.
    Secondly, China's peace proposals for Ukraine contained in a 12-point peace plan for the Ukraine conflict. China has called for respecting sovereignty, abandoning the Cold War mentality, ceasing hostilities and resuming peace talks. It has also called for resolving the humanitarian crisis, protecting civilians and prisoners of war, keeping nuclear power stations safe, reducing strategic risks, facilitating grain exports and the stopping of all unilateral sanctions while keeping supply chains stable. And as you would expect from China, the promotion of post-conflict reconstruction.
    China's progress in building up its infrastructure has been amazing and has become symbolic of its modernisation. Investments in civil engineering projects, the power network and expansion of the transport network, including rail, air and roads, have been impressive. The total length of China's railways now exceeds 155,000 km, of which 42,000 km are high-speed.
    A further 2,500 km of high-speed links will be added this year. The China–Laos railway, which opened at the end of 2021, has brought economic benefits to both countries, increased trade and encouraged an increase in people-to-people contacts. Regular freight services now operate between China and Europe.
    China is forging new relationships with the multi-polar world. Xi Jinping made an important speech at the recent Dialogue with World Political Party's High-Level Meeting. He called for respect for the diversity of civilizations, underlining the principles of equality, mutual learning, dialogue and inclusiveness. Stressing the importance of the common values of humanity, Xi said: “Peace, development, equality, justice, democracy and freedom are the common aspirations of all people.”
    The president urged countries to keep an open mind in appreciating the perception of values by different civilizations. He called for more people-to-people international exchanges to promote mutual understanding and friendship. He discussed China's path of modernisation and peaceful development that was at variance to the crooked path taken by others in their pursuit of hegemony in a uni-polar world.
    In People's China a great nation has been re-born. A dynamic new political force has emerged, under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, which seeks to unite all people and nations to create a beautiful, new multi-polar world. A respectful, peaceful new society based upon Marxism and equal, shared values.

Who guards the guardians?

Baroness Casey has issued a damning report on the conduct of the Metropolitan Police. This independent review was set up last year following the kidnap, rape, and murder of Sarah Everard by a serving member of the London police. During the proceedings another member of the Met charged with rape turned out to be a serial rapist and a violent sexual predator who had preyed on women for over 20 years.
    London’s police say their vision “is to be the most trusted police service in the world”. In their own words they say “we contribute to making London the safest global city, we protect its unique reputation as an open and welcoming city, and we want Londoners to be proud of their police”. But that’s been, once again, seriously questioned.
    While the Met is the public face of law and order in London that’s rolled out to control protests and demonstrations and monitor picket lines for the benefit of the employers that they ultimately serve. Catching criminals is another matter and sadly only a small number of perpetrators are ever brought to justice.
    Baroness Casey was tasked with determining “whether the Met’s leadership, recruitment, vetting, training, culture and communications support the standards the public should expect”. Her report concluded that London’s police is “riddled with deep-seated racism, sexism and homophobia”.
    None of us should be surprised at its conclusions or the corrupt and decadent culture within the capital’s police that the report exposed. Nor should we expect more from the worthy social worker whose recommendations are little more than appeals for the Met to genuinely reform itself.
    Some on the left call for a renewed effort to end the corrupt culture that exists within the Met. Others for the replacement of the Met with a new police authority. Sadly none of this is going to happen and even if it did it wouldn’t change the essential nature of the London police.
    The Metropolitan Police is a key instrument of the bourgeois state and its culture reflects that of those who rely on it to maintain the power of the ruling class in the capital of the country they control. Rapists and murderers within the police force are, naturally, severely punished – not just for abusing their power to break the very laws they’re paid to uphold but also by bringing the institutions of repression that the ruling class ultimately rely on to maintain their power, into disrepute.
    The police are supposed to protect and serve the public; fighting crime and promoting justice for all under the laws of the land.
    Who will guard the guardians is a question that goes back to the philosophers of ancient Greece. Socrates believed the solution was to properly train their souls. These days the talk is of “transparency”, “accountability” and “awareness programmes”.
    Communists rightly argue that only a people’s police force can justly serve the needs of the working class. But we will only get that when we get a people’s government, and that sadly is not on the horizon at the moment,
    In the meantime we must argue for the complete overhaul or break-up of the Metropolitan Police to weed out the psychos and perverts in its ranks and root out the sexist, homophobic and abusive sub-culture that was exposed in the Casey report.

The language they understand

Budget Day is never good news for workers – least of all when it’s under a Tory government. But whilst the Chancellor droned on in Parliament workers were walking out in a new wave of strikes against the austerity regime. Tube workers and train drivers, junior doctors, teachers and civil servants were all taking industrial action over pay.
    Down the ages the employers’ mantra has always been “Management’s right to manage”. In its purest form, it is expressed in the Master and Servant laws of the Victorian era when unions were barely legal, and the ‘corporate’ laws of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. In post-war Western ‘democracies’ the corporate class do their best to marginalise unions and limit the right to strike.
    The bosses claim that they have their workers’ best interests at heart and that strikes are pointless and useless. But no-one believes them.
    If it wasn’t for the unions, kids would still be climbing up chimneys whilst their parents slaved away in factories and mines six days a week for just enough to keep them going.
    The five-day week, paid holidays, pensions, free health care and education, all the trappings of what we used to call the Welfare State – were won by the labour movement. Genuine reforms by Labour governments brought in the health and safety legislation and recognition laws that empowered the unions in the 1970s.
    Those days may be forgotten but what workers still know is that free collective bargaining is meaningless without the ability to withdraw one’s labour. And at the end of the day, the only thing Management understands is industrial action.
    

One–Nil to Lineker

Gary Lineker has been reinstated as presenter of Match of the Day following an apology from the BBC. The BBC has wisely backed down over the Lineker saga whilst the Government tries to distance itself from a row that was clearly of its own making.
    The Government clearly wanted to silence Lineker who had Tweeted his objections to the Government’s new asylum seekers’ plan – a widely-publicised but clearly personal opinion made in his own time and on his own Twitter account.
    Many believe that the Government wanted the BBC to make an example of the sporting guru. The Government clearly believed that packing cross-Channel asylum seekers off to Rwanda was a vote winner that would shore up Tory support in the so-called “Red Belt” of northern seats taken from Labour at the last general election. But they were much mistaken.
    Millions of people supported the football guru who was suspended for comparing the language used by the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, to introduce the new Tory ‘Illegal Immigration Bill’ to that used in Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Millions more defended the former England player’s right to free speech – a right supported by Lineker’s colleagues who walked out in sympathy. Even the supine Labour leader was moved by the furore over the sports presenter to call on Rishi Sunak to “stand up to his snowflake MPs waging war on free speech” following the Gary Lineker row.
    What Lineker said was quite right. The Tory plans are indeed “beyond awful”. As he said: “There is no huge influx. We take far fewer refugees than other major European countries. This is just an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the ‘30s.”

Embracing Equality

The struggle for equal rights and the ending of all discrimination against women is re-affirmed every year on 8th March, International Women’s Day. In the people’s democracies and other parts of the Global South the day is genuinely celebrated to mark the end of feudal concepts and the emancipation of women who Chairman Mao famously said “hold up half the sky”. The day was adopted as a UN holiday for women’s rights and world peace by the United Nations in 1977. But its origins go back to the early days of the modern socialist movement at the end of the 19th century. Marx and Engels wrote about the social situation of working women in their day. They focused on the exploitation of wage labour as well as the additional forms of inequality and oppression, exclusion and discrimination that were part and parcel of the capitalist system of oppression.
In 1911 the Second International Socialist Women's Conference established International Women's Day to demand the right to vote, to fight against sex discrimination in the workplace and to hold public office. All these aims were achieved by the Russian revolutionaries in 1917. International Women’s Day became a public holiday in the first workers’ and peasants republic and as Lenin put it “ the Soviet Republic of Russia promptly wiped out, without any exception, every trace of inequality in the legal status of women, and secured her complete equality in its laws”.
Capitalism has nothing to offer working women except exploitation, oppression and poverty. The problems working women face today are rooted in the capitalist way of organising society and production according to the criterion of maximum capitalist profit. They cannot be solved by imperialist associations and institutions, business groups and governments.
That’s why International Women’s Day is barely recognised in the imperialist heartlands beyond the inevitable commercialisation used to sell goods to the “women’s” marker. Likewise bourgeois politicians all pay lip-service to its aims but they rarely go beyond their usual attempts to woo the “women’s” vote. When women’s rights get a mention by the media gurus that serve the ruling class it is only as a tool for imperialist propaganda. They’ll point to the lack of women’s rights in Third World countries that defy the West – but ignore those of the feudal Arab oil princes and the servile dictators of South America that do the bidding of US imperialism. They’ll elevate the problems of middle-strata women in breaking through the “glass ceiling” of bourgeois society while routinely ignoring the problems of inequality, homelessness, unemployment, domestic violence, drink and drugs that hit working class women the hardest.
Many of the issues affecting women naturally also impact on men and the fight for equality for women is a crucial part of the class struggle. Inequalities sow divisions in the class when unity and solidarity are most needed.
The emancipation of women can only be achieved under socialism. Or as Lenin put it “it is precisely the Soviet system, and the Soviet system only, that secures democracy. This is clearly demonstrated by the position of the working class and the poor peasants. It is clearly demonstrated by the position of women…the working women s movement has for its objective the fight for the economic and social, and not merely formal, equality of woman. The main task is to draw the women into socially productive labour, extricate them from "domestic slavery", free them of their stultifying and humiliating resignation to the perpetual and exclusive atmosphere of the kitchen and nursery”.

A Windsor Knot

Rishi Sunak may not have achieved much during his tenure in No 10 over the past five months. But the “Windsor Agreement” that resolved the long-standing dispute over Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit relations with the European Union was no mean achievement for the Tory leader who had to ride rough-shod over the protests from his Unionist allies in the north of Ireland and amongst his own back-benchers.
    The agreement was given a diplomatic and highly symbolic blessing by King Charles and Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, over tea at Windsor Castle last week. But the donkey work was done by Sunak’s team, who together with their Irish and Brussels counterparts, managed to settle the dispute over the movement of goods between the European Single Market and the United Kingdom to the satisfaction of all the players with the exception of the northern Irish bigots and Boris Johnson.
    Johnson, who clearly hoped to exploit the issue to pave the way for his political come-back, predictably says he cannot support this new Brexit deal. The Democratic Unionists are equally sceptical claiming the new agreement may undermine Northern Ireland’s status as part of the United Kingdom. But Sinn Féin Vice-President Michelle O'Neill said "I rarely find myself agreeing with a British prime minister but access to both markets has to be grabbed with both hands".
    The Irish government, the rest of the European Union and the majority on both sides of the House of Commons have welcomed the Windsor Framework. More importantly, as far as the British ruling class is concerned, so has the White House.
    The Remainers are, naturally, hoping that this will create a new and favourable climate to greater co-operation with the European Union. Regardless of who wins the next general election they’re working in their think-tanks and their less than secret conferences for some sort of associate status with the EU that would create the climate for a second referendum and a return to full membership of the Brussels club.
    They say Brexit isn’t working but that’s not true. There have been problems but these were almost entirely due to the short-sighted policy of the Johnson government that placed all its bets on replacing the Treaty of Rome with a “Treaty of Washington” that would create a colossal trans-Atlantic free trade area. It was a pipe-dream that depended entirely on Donald Trump getting re-elected. And we all know what happened next.
    What Johnson should have done – and what Sunak should do now is to reach free trade agreements with our other major trading partners – like China – and ending the sanctions regime against Russia which had pushed energy prices to breaking point. There is an alternative to slavishly imposing sanctions at the behest of the Americans. Sunak could pursue an independent economic policy to revive the ailing British economy. We could return to the “golden era” of trade with China that existed when David Cameron was at the helm. We could access cheap gas from Russia if we stopped supporting the American sanctions regime.
    But Sunak won’t. Neither will Starmer. The bourgeois consensus that all the leaders of the mainstream parties reflect is that British imperialism’s future can only be guaranteed by American might – and that can only be secured by doing America’s bidding.
    It may work for them but it doesn’t work for us. Socialism is the only answer to the crisis and we have to put it back on the working class agenda now!

Allie Burns returns

by Ben Soton

1989 by Val McDermid. Softback: Sphere 2023; 464pp, rrp £8.99. Hardback: Little, Brown 2022; 432 pp, rrp £20

1989 was by the standards of those of us belonging to the progressive part of humanity a pretty dreadful year. The main news stories seemed to have been counter-revolution, leading to the destruction of socialism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union and AIDS. These two events are reflected in 1989, the most recent novel by Scottish crime writer Val McDermid.
    The story features the adventures of the investigative journalist Allie Burns; the lead character in 1979 McDermid’s previous novel.
    Ten years on Burns finds herself working for Ace Media and living with her girlfriend Rhona, also a journalist. Both women work for Ace Media, owned by the multi-millionaire Wallace Lockhart. Lockhart, who has striking similarities with Robert Maxwell is not painted in a good light. He is portrayed as power grabby and venal whilst the story covers the theft from his company’s pension fund. Meanwhile his slightly wayward daughter Genevieve; again, a parody of Maxwell’s daughter Ghislaine, is portrayed as reckless and devious as well as willing to cheat her own father out of money.
    Essentially two stories – the first being about HIV infected Scots migrating to Northern England in the hope of better treatment for what was then a fatal illness. The second, and longest part of the book takes Burns to the German Democratic Republic on the brink of the notorious counter-revolution. The novel exposes the author’s lack of awareness about left-wing politics and the former socialist countries. At some point in her novel, she describes life in East Germany as so bad that it would make the Trots who sell Socialist Worker vote Tory. I would like to take this opportunity to point out that Socialist Worker sellers were and still are on the same side as the Tories when it comes to supporting the overthrow of people’s democracies past and present.
    McDermid’s lack of understanding of left-wing politics should not necessarily diminish her abilities as a crime writer. Her politics can best be described as Guardian reading left-liberal; constantly exposing capitalism’s failings whilst showing an innate hostility to its only alternative. The book possibly represents an evolution in the development in the lead character Alison Burns from investigate journalist to private detective; two jobs with a very similar skill-set. In other words, watch out for future novels featuring the investigative journalist turned private-eye.

No2 NATO – No2 War

A new mass movement was founded in London last week at a meeting supported by a galaxy of anti-war campaigners including Workers Party of Britain leader George Galloway and Socialist Labour’s Chris Williamson, the former MP hounded out of the Labour Party on trumped-up charges of anti-semitism. Other supporters include Max Blumenthal, the founder and editor-in-chief of the Grayzone, an independent investigative news site as well as the rapper Lowkey together with NCP comrades, supporters of the International Ukraine Anti-Fascist Solidarity campaign and many, many more right across the broad anti-war spectrum.
    The hidden hand did it best to stop this meeting taking place. Venues were cancelled at the last minute. But the conference went ahead thanks to the generosity of the Venezuelan embassy that opened the doors of its cultural centre in London to the anti-war campaign to allow its foundation meeting to take place.
    On the street people are sick of the shortages, price hikes and soaring inflation due to the Ukraine war and the NATO sanctions regime on Russia. Millions want to see an end to the conflict that has brought death and destruction to Ukraine while impoverishing millions of working people in Britain and the rest of Europe over the past 12 months or so.
    Now People’s China has launched a 12-point peace plan that could lead to a just and lasting peace in Ukraine. The Russians have welcomed the initiative. So has the Global South or what we used to call the non-aligned countries of the Third World. But the Americans are trying to kill it stone dead.
    Biden doesn’t want peace. He wants victory – regardless of the suffering of the Ukrainian people he claims to support.
    The American establishment, the “deep state” that cuts across the bogus political spectrum in the United States, is dominated by the war lobby that reflects the interests of the most aggressive and reactionary elements of the American bourgeoisie. They are supported by the venal elements of the British ruling class who believe that their global post-colonial interests are best protected by the military might of US imperialism.
    Since the Second World War crawling to the Americans has been almost compulsory for Tory and Labour leaders who drone on and on about “partnership” and the “special relationship” to justify British imperialism’s slavish support of US power throughout the world.
    The Stop the War movement has long ceased to play any positive role in the anti-war movement. It calls for “peace” while making the same demands as NATO for an unconditional Russian withdrawal from the Donbas and Crimea. But now we have the chance to close ranks around a new movement committed to genuine anti-war demands.
    In Britain the ruling class would have us believe that we live in what the Americans call the “free world”; that the USA is some sort of democratic utopia and that anyone who opposes imperialism is evil, mad or both. Backed by bought and paid-for labour leaders and a daily dose of lies from the bourgeois media they think they can play this cynical game forever and ever. We must prove them wrong.

A True Tale of the Raj

 

By Ray Jones

The Patient Assassin, a true tale of massacre, revenge and the Raj: By Anita Anand, Simon & Schuster, 2019, £20.00 hbk

This is a history of the Amritsar Massacre of 1919 when British troops in India shot down over 600 peaceful demonstrators, without warning or order to disperse, and the life of Udham Singh who 20 years later had his revenge.
    It’s a fascinating story which begins and ends in the book with the botched execution of Udham in London in 1940, in which a young Albert Pierrepoint, latter to become Britain’s most famous (or rather infamous) hangman played a part. It’s a saga in which the author herself has a family connection as her grandfather missed being involved in the massacre by minutes and the emotional link comes through in the work.
    A very readable book full of interesting information, with vivid descriptions of people, events and cultures. The British Raj and Government come out badly, up to their necks in blood and lies – as you might expect. But sadly anti-imperialist forces, such as the Soviet Union and the communists, when they are mentioned at all, are seen from the perspective of the capitalist class. The author does not draw Marxist conclusions from the clear evidence she presents and so the book feels unbalanced – but remains never-the-less compelling.
    Udham Singh was in the garden when Brigadier-General Dyer ordered the troops to open fire but survived, it’s said, to clutch a handful of blood sudden earth and swear his revenge. Dyer was already dead before Udham got his chance but the man he killed was Sir Michael O’Dwyer, lieutenant governor of Punjab at the time of the massacre and can be said to have had overall responsibility.
    Coming as it did in the middle of World War II the assassination does not seem to have had the impact we might expect. The authorities did their best to rush through the trial and inevitable execution and damp down any political repercussions in India.
    Today Udham Singh’s statue still stands in Punjab where he is considered by many a nationalist hero. But the case of Udham Singh can also be seen as an example of the ineffectiveness of individual terrorism, as understandable as it might be, when faced with a powerful and merciless imperialism.

The trail of a turncoat

None of us should be surprised at Keir Starmer these days. Crawling to the Americans. Pandering to Zelensky’s vanity in Kiev. Stating that Jeremy Corbyn will not be allowed to stand for re-election on the Labour ticket. The Labour leader is doing his best to prove to the ruling class that he will be a safe pair of hands when and if his party wins a majority in the House of Commons. And Labour members who don’t like it can simply push off.
    "The Labour Party has changed," Starmer says, "from a party of protest, to a party of public service...[Labour] will never again be a party captured by narrow interests... if you don't like that, the door is open, and you can leave". Over a hundred thousand already have. Many more will undoubtedly follow as Starmer and the ageing Blairite clique that backs him in Parliament prepare an election manifesto that is barely distinguishable from that of the Tories.
    In his quest for high office Starmer needed allies within the labour movement. He posed as a left-winger to jump on the gravy train and aligned himself with the Remainers when he was a member of Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet. But once he became leader – elected on false pledges of “continuity” – he speedily dumped them in favour of a neo-liberal agenda that doesn’t even pay lip-service to social justice.
    Of course we’ve seen all this before. Every Labour leader, apart from Jeremy Corbyn and Harold Wilson, has come from the Labour right. Ramsay MacDonald, who led Labour’s first government back in the 1920s, talked about socialism, albeit in the far distance future, while admitting that all his government could do was administer capitalism. These days Starmer never even mentions it.
    What we get is this sort of vacuous nonsense. “The Labour Party I lead is patriotic. It is a party of public service, not protest. It is a party of equality, justice and fairness; one that proudly puts the needs of working people above any fringe interest. It is a party that doesn’t just talk about change – it delivers it”.
    Ultimately social democracy can never solve the economic and social crisis facing working people because it basically upholds the system which has created those problems in the first place.
    But the “socialism” of Attlee, Wilson and Callaghan that was based on Keynesian economics – like Mussolini’s corporate state or Roosevelt’s “New Deal” delivered the welfare state, the NHS and the education system. Starmer offers nothing.

End Sanctions Now!

Chinese, Russian and Arab relief teams are working in Turkey and Syria. Humanitarian aid from the Third World is pouring in to earthquake stricken region. But aid from charities and agencies in the West is being hindered by the US sanctions regime against Syria.
    While the Americans and their NATO allies bleat on about the plight of the Ukrainians to justify the billions of dollars-worth of arms being sent to Kiev to fight the Russians they turn a blind eye to the suffering of people who need medical aid, foodstuff and children’s needs aid in quake-afflicted in Syria.
    Under pressure the Biden administration has temporarily lifted sanctions on aid to Syria for a total of 180 days largely for the benefit of the Kurdish autonomous zone in northern Syria which is under American occupation. And it’s unclear whether the new measures have lifted the sanctions blocking much needed financial assistance to Syria.
    The answer is, of course, to end the sanctions regime altogether to speed humanitarian aid to the hundreds of thousands left homeless and destitute in Syria and help in the massive reconstruction needed to restore life to the shattered region.

Another view from India

by Robin McGregor

Revolutionary Democracy: New Series Vol. I, no. 2, September 2022. £5.00 + £2.50 P&P from NCP Lit: PO Box 73, London SW11 2PQ

The latest issue of this twice-yearly Indian Marxist journal has once again arrived on these shores. This time half the journal is taken up with matters pertaining to Ukraine, with the remainder devoted to contemporary Indian politics and some historical material.
    Sadly this is an issue in which the journal’s affiliation to the views of the late Albanian leader Enver Hoxha strongly come to the fore, with a number of sectarian pieces arguing that events in Ukraine demonstrate the “imperialist” nature of contemporary Russia which they say is backed by what they call “social imperialist” China. This inevitably then leads to support for the Ukrainian “resistance” and the puppet Ukrainian regime. Calls to “Stop the War in Ukraine” are inevitably followed by demands for the “Russian occupiers” to “get out” which is, of course, the demand of US imperialism and its NATO lackeys.
    Statements by the Revolutionary Communist Party of Volta – PCRV / Burkina Faso and the Revolutionary Alliance of Labour of Serbia amongst others take this view. Of course Hoxha considered that this had been the nature of the Soviet Union after the death of Stalin and the coming to power of Nikita Khrushchev and his alleged restoration of capitalism in the USSR when Mikhail Gorbachev was merely the Stavropol Komsomol regional deputy director of agitation and propaganda.
    Two long articles originally published in Albania in 1974 and 1987 are reprinted here which back up this argument. They accuse both Khrushchev and later promoters of “Soviet Revisionism” of encouraging Great Russian chauvinism, particularly on the place of the Russian language in the non-Russian parts of the USSR.
    Allegations of “Great Russian chauvinism” have of course long been levelled throughout the existence of the USSR, by Trotskyists and by imperialists who sought to destabilise the USSR by fanning ethnic conflict.
    It is often overlooked that many of nationalists in the non-Russian republics were just anti-Russian (and anti-Soviet),extremely anti-Semitic and very hostile to minorities within their borders and in neighbouring countries.
    It might be worth noting that it was Stalin who reversed Lenin’s policy of using the Latin alphabet for newly literate peoples in Siberia and the Central Asian soviet republics and insisted on the Cyrillic alphabet that was the norm in the rest of the Soviet Union apart from the Caucasus – not least because Russian was the second language of the entire USSR.
    There are three substantial articles dealing with contemporary India. The first deals with the impact of the latest budget from the right-wing BJP government of India on the peoples of India. India is poorest half of the population own a mere six per cent of the nation’s wealth. Things are getting worse with inflation in commodity prices affecting the poorest particularly harshly.
    Another article describes how a 1942 Ordinance used by British colonial authorities to clamp down on the growing Independence movement is still in force in new guises and has been used to supress national movements in Jammu and Kashmir. An example of the Indian government’s brutality is given in an account of a massacre of villagers of Silger in one of India’s Tribal Areas by government forces allegedly in pursuit of Maoist terrorists.
    Of the historical material we have an offering from the Editor on Grover Furr, the American academic who has carefully expose as lies all of Khrushchev claims in his 1956 “Secret speech”. There is also a somewhat technical, but important piece concerning the authenticity of some of Lenin’s last writings when he was very ill.
    This issue concludes with another piece from the Soviet archives. This time we have Stalin’s observations made in March 1951 on the Communist Party of India’s tactics. By that time the party was frustrated by its lack of progress since the formal ending of colonialism in 1947. Stalin’s advice was that copying the Chinese path was unsuitable for India was inadvisable, partly because geography did not permit the Soviet Union offering the same military support that it had given to China and that India had a larger working class. Stalin was firmly opposed to individual terrorism such as bumping off particularly bad landlords.
    It is to be hoped that this and related previously published materials will be consolidated to a separate book as they have much to say about Stalin’s later years and Soviet relations with the Indian and Chinese parties (and other topics) which needs to be better known.

Zelensky in Wonderland

The British government rolled out the red carpet for Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday who addressed Parliament, held talks with Sunak and had an audience with King Charles that was a Ukrainian PR dream. The British government promised to supply the Ukrainians with more heavy weapons and provide more training facilities for their fighter pilots in Britain so that Ukraine can achieve a "decisive military victory on the battlefield this year". Well, that’s what Sunak says. But what does it all mean?
    Very little it seems given the parlous state of the British armed forces these days. A few Challenger tanks are hardly likely to change the balance of forces on the Donbas front as the entire Ukrainian army fights to stave off the advance of what is still only a Russian expeditionary force.
    Sunak, like Boris Johnson before him, may like to pose as a world leader and the greatest friend of Ukraine in Western Europe. But at the end of the day the only power that counts in NATO is the United States and Zelensky’s fortunes, and indeed his fate, will be decided by the amount of military assistance Washington gives him.
    The Americans call all the shots in Kiev and they’ve backed Zelensky to the hilt so far. Whether they will in the future depends on Biden’s long-term war aims – and those can still only be guessed at.
    Russia’s war aims have always been public. The Russians are fighting to defend the Crimeans and the people of the Donbas whose republics have chosen to join the Russian Federation. Russia is fighting to defend the anti-fascist Ukrainians whose parties have all been banned in Ukraine and whose leaders are either languishing in some Ukrainian dungeon or living in exile in Moscow.
    The Ukraine conflict has, however, exposed the limitations of American power. Imperialist sanctions have not brought down the Putin government. The Russian army has not been defeated (all its withdrawals in Ukraine were voluntary and for tactical reasons). Sweden and Finland have not joined NATO – largely due to the Turkish veto.
    US imperialism has, of course, achieved some of its objectives. It has ensured the survival of their puppet Ukrainian regime. It has sunk, in more than one sense, the Russian Nord Stream 2 pipeline that the Americans feared would make Germany dependent on Russian natural gas and made Western Europe dependent on much dearer American supplies. It has restored American hegemony over all their European allies – with the help of their willing tools in France, Germany and the United Kingdom.
    Biden is, after-all, just a figurehead for the American deep state – what we would call the “Establishment” – that reflects the entire spectrum of bourgeois opinion. Their internal discussions – the rows between the “hawks” and the “doves” and the speculation of retired generals and diplomats – reflect the divisions within the American ruling class.
    So the Americans may have enough now to call it a day. Some believe that speculation in the mainstream US media about a “partition” of Ukraine that would meet most of Russia’s demands reflects genuine divisions within America’s ruling circles. Others think it’s merely disinformation designed to wrong-foot the Kremlin before their spring offensive. That certainly seems to be the view of most Russian commentators.
    None of this need trouble Sunak because he wasn’t in the loop in the first place. At the end of the day, like all British post-war leaders, he will just have to do as he’s told.

Dublin protesters say No to War!

By Theo Russell

Irish campaigners stood by the people of the Donbas last Saturday in a demonstration outside the British embassy in Dublin to protest against Britain's role in Ukraine.
    They accused the UK government of sabotaging the peace negotiations last year, prolonging the war with massive arms deliveries, the active involvement of British military personnel in the fighting in Ukraine, and years of training and arming Banderite Nazi battalions and covering up their horrific crimes against civilians in the Donbas and other Russian speaking parts of Ukraine.
    The action was organised by the Truth and Neutrality Alliance with support from the Social Democracy movement and a number of Irish republicans, members of Ireland’s Russian community and other anti-war activists including two who had travelled from England in order to take part in the action.
    In a blatant act of political interference, six members of Ireland’s secretive Special Detective Unit demanded the names and addresses of some of those in attendance. Undeterred, the protesters remained outside the Embassy for an hour, highlighting the thousands killed in Kiev’s eight-year war on the Donbas and the western media censorship of the conflict.
    The Truth and Neutrality Alliance, said in a statement: "The war has been going on now for almost a year. The war is the direct and deliberate result of the failure to implement the Minsk agreement and the eastward expansion of NATO.
    "Britain and NATO played a key role in that and has continued to up the ante ever since encouraging greater involvement in the conflict, arming one side in it and sabotaging any efforts at peace negotiations, ratcheting up the tension and risking outright nuclear war which will see us all burn, not just Kiev or Moscow.
    "Ireland is complicit in this. We have called this protest at the British Embassy due to the ongoing escalation of the war in Ukraine and Britain’s role in this as evidenced by the recent decision to send more Challenger tanks to the extreme right-wing regime in Ukraine.
    "Since the start of the war the Irish government has moved us closer to being full members of NATO, imposing sanctions and engaging in the training of troops involved in the war. Irish neutrality was already violated with the use of Shannon Airport by US troops.
    "Now the Irish government wants us to participate in a foreign conflict. As part of its commitment to the war, the government has agreed to take in an unlimited number of Ukrainian refugees. We DO NOT OPPOSE refugees coming to Ireland, but the solution to their plight is peace, not more war. They are not to blame for the war, that lies with all the parties involved in it, which includes Britain, the USA and all the members of NATO.
    "Peace means respecting the people of Ukraine but also respecting the right of the people of Donbas and Crimea to decide their own future. Crimea was only incorporated into Ukraine in the latter half of the 20 th Century.
    "The people of Donbas initially wanted more autonomy and respect for their culture, under the Minsk Agreement. The failure to implement it, the sabotage by Britain and others of the accord alongside 8 years of attacks by Ukrainian forces pushed them towards calls for independence and that must be respected.
    "The push for us to join NATO has been accompanied by an unrelenting campaign in the Irish media, with journalists openly advocating war and even praising the Azov Battalion whilst overlooking all of their crimes. Coverage is one sided and dissenting voices are not given much if any space at all.
    "This occurs at a time when the Irish government is complicit in the blocking of media sources that are critical of their position. Whilst pro-war official media sources from European governments and the Ukrainian government have unfettered access to the airwaves, Russia Today is blocked in most European countries. Other non-governmental critical voices are censored on social media and through the use of algorithms to hide their articles from a wider public.
    "We call for the lifting of real and also de facto censorship in the media. We call upon the Irish government to cease its support for war and instead argue for peace talks now. We call for a clear withdrawal from our involvement in NATO and the war. There are no humanitarian training exercises. All military training is designed for war, even demining.
    "The Irish people are paying a costly price for involvement in the war and the people of Ukraine and Russia pay for that in blood. It is time for peace.
    "No to War, No to NATO!"

• South Front report

Support the strikes!

We’ve seen the biggest wave of strikes for a decade this week. Hundreds of thousands of teachers, along with train drivers, civil servants, bus drivers and security guards walked out in a co-ordinated day of action on Wednesday. And their leaders warn of plenty more to come if their just demands for more pay are not met. While the mealy-mouthed Labour leader sits on the fence and tells his MPs not to join picket lines the TUC general secretary Paul Nowak rightly says “it really is now the responsibility of Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt to get round the table and make sure resources are available to fund decent pay in public services”.
    Workers are taking industrial action across the public and private sectors, in response to 12 years of falling pay and an environment that has repeatedly asked workers to pay the price while dividends and executive pay have soared.
    For months and months the Tory government has refused to open serious negotiations with the unions. While energy prices soar and inflation rises the Tories smear the unions with talk about “Reds” and “wreckers”. While the Tories bleat on about the “economy” they can still find plenty to give the Western puppet regime fight the Russians in Ukraine. And there’s still plenty of tax breaks to ensure that the ruling class can continued to live their lives of ease while millions of out-of-work or poorly paid workers turn to food banks to survive.
    The bourgeois media have done their best to sway public opinion against the unions. But no-one believes them any more. Support for the workers remains high in the opinion polls and more importantly, on the street. The public want an end to the austerity regime and this is why Labour, if the opinion polls are to be believed, still has an astronomical 25 point lead over the Tories.
    The Sunak government can be forced back to the negotiating table. The new anti-strike laws can be defeated. But only through mass pressure and mass protests. This week’s strike could be the spark that ignites a movement to end austerity once and for all.

rotten to the core

Why it took two weeks for Rishi Sunak to get rid of Nadhim Zahawi is a mystery in itself. The Tory press has been full of stories about to the now disgraced former Tory party Chairman’s breach of ministerial rules in an attempt to cover up the fact he was facing a probe into his tax affairs.
    Now the Sunak camp is saying that this all goes back to the Johnson era and it has nothing to do with the new premier – which is at best slightly misleading as Sunak was, afterall, the most senior minister in Johnson’s Cabinet.
    Though Zahawi seems surprised at the furore in the media that may have ended his political career for ever nothing should surprise us about his antics. Tory politicians, like most of them on both sides of the House, are just in it for themselves. One goes. Another takes his place.

“Plane Wreck at Los Gatos” – 75 years later

Woody Guthrie

by Chris Mahin

A song of solidarity with immigrants still rings true years after the tragedy

The fire began over Los Gatos Canyon. It started in the left engine-driven fuel pump. The plane crashed 20 miles west of Coalinga, California, on 28th January 1948. It came down into hills which, as one commentator noted, at that time of year are “a beautiful green, splendid with wildflowers … a place of breathtaking beauty.”
    Newspaper articles at the time described an accident involving a Douglas DC-3 carrying immigrant workers from Oakland, California to the El Centro, California Deportation Center. Those accounts gave the name of the plane’s pilot (Frank Atkinson), and co-pilot (Marion Ewing). They mentioned the name of the flight attendant (Bobbi Atkinson) and the guard (Frank E. Chapin). However, the newspaper stories that reported the crash did not include the names of any of the 27 men or of the one woman who were passengers on that flight, victims who were buried in a mass grave at Holy Cross Cemetery in Fresno, California. Those reports simply dismissed them as “deportees.”
    One visitor to the crash site described the scene this way: “I was born and raised in Coalinga and can remember going to the crash site the day after the incident. My father, older sister, and I viewed the crash and even though I was about six years old at the time, I can remember it as if it happened yesterday. It was a cold and damp day and even though the reports were that the site had been cleaned up, this was not the case. The sadness of seeing the meager possessions of the passengers and the total lack of respect by those who had the task of removing the bodies will be something I will never forget or forgive.”
    Three thousand miles away, a man who had himself once been forced to leave his family to look for work took notice. Musician Woody Guthrie left his birthplace in Oklahoma during the Great Depression and then did plenty of “hard traveling” before ultimately ending up in New York. He was outraged by the callous indifference of the news stories which couldn’t be bothered to mention the names of the workers who died in the crash. Out of his anger came a song – Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Deportee), a ballad in which he assigned symbolic names to the dead:


Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won’t have your names when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be “deportees” …

Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,
Our work contract’s out and we have to move on;
Six hundred miles to that Mexican border,
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves …

The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,
A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills,
Who are these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says, “They are just deportees”

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except “deportees”?

The song, as Woody Guthrie wrote it, was without music; Guthrie chanted the words. “Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Deportee)” was not performed publicly until 10 years after the plane crash, when a school teacher named Martin Hoffman added a haunting melody and Woody’s friend Pete Seeger began performing the song in concerts. The song’s eloquent plea for justice for immigrant workers has stirred the conscience of fair-minded people ever since.
    Often referred to simply as Deportee, the song’s continuing broad appeal can be seen in the fact that it has been recorded by wide variety of artists (and artists on both sides of the Atlantic.) Among the musicians who have covered the song have been Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, and Bruce Springsteen, as well as Christy Moore and Billy Bragg. The list also includes the Kingston Trio; Cisco Houston; Judy Collins; The Byrds; Joan Baez; Arlo Guthrie; Sweet Honey in the Rock; Hoyt Axton; Peter, Paul, and Mary; Roy Brown Ramirez, Tito Auger and Tao Rodriguez-Seeger and Paddy Reilly among others.
    The lyrics of Woody Guthrie’s song about the disaster sound as if they were written just days ago, not more than seven decades in the past. (This is especially true of the verse “They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.”)
    The great labour leader Mother Jones once said that we should mourn for the dead and fight like hell for the living. We should pay special heed to the appeal for the unity of all workers which rings out so beautifully from Woody Guthrie’s song. Today, we can honor the dead of 28 January 1948 best by speaking up in defense of the living immigrant workers of today – regardless of documentation status -- and by demanding that the exploiters cease their cowardly attempts to use the immigration issue as a wedge to divide workers.

Free all Ukrainian political prisoners!

by Theo Russell

London comrades returned to Whitehall on Saturday to bring the crimes of the Ukrainian government to the attention of the British people. Some 30 protesters joined the picket opposite Downing Street organised by the International Ukraine Anti-Fascist Solidarity (IUAFS) campaign, to let the people “know that the regime in Ukraine, to which the British Government has given billions of pounds in financial and military support, has been committing horrific crimes against its own people, including Russian speakers, opposition activists and campaigners, journalists and Roma people, under the cover of accusing them of treason”.
    A IUAFS spokesman said: “Several mayors in eastern Ukraine have been summarily executed local along with elected civilian officials for "crimes" such as negotiating humanitarian corridors with the Russian military. They should have been entitled to a due process of law, instead of being tortured, shot, and then dumped in the street.
    “Hundreds of journalists, bloggers, politicians, elected representatives, activists, priests, sportspeople, and even Ukrainian negotiators and military officers have been arrested and beaten, and some tortured or murdered. Most were charged with treason simply for opposing Kiev's policies, and not brought to trial after many months.

NCP leader Andy Brooks

    “Alexander Matyuschenko, one of dozens of leftists arrested in Dnipro, central Ukraine, was an activist with the Livizta (Left) organisation, which campaigned against social spending cuts and right-wing propaganda. He was arrested by SBU (Ukrainian intelligence) and Azov members, tortured and forced to shout the nationalist salute, Slava Ukraini!, while his wife's hair was cut off with a knife.    "One of Ukraine’s most prominent human rights activists is Elena Berezhnaya, Director of the Institute of Legal Policy and Social Protection, who has spoken before the UN Security Council. She was arrested in March 2022 in Kiev. There has been no news of her since.
    "We know about these crimes because Ukrainian ultra-rightists and even regular soldiers have bragged about them in social media posts, including one of a Russian soldier who had one of his eyes gouged before he was killed, with the caption 'One-eyed captured Russian pig'.
    "We think it is essential to speak out about the actions of a government for whom the British government seems to have unlimited resources to support, at a time when millions here in Britain are facing a grim and uncertain future and our basic public services are chronically underfunded and understaffed”.
    During the protest a woman waiving the flag of the Donetsk people’s republic was attacked by a reactionary, believed to be from the Caucasian republic of Georgia. But he was dragged away by a policewoman supported by an Iranian who left a nearby protest to chivalrously intervene on the picketer’s behalf.
    Towards the end of the protest the demonstrators came under a torrent of abuse from a small group of Ukrainian and English supporters of the Nazi-infested regime in Kiev. They were, however, speedily warned off by the police.
    The protest was supported by the Consistent Democrats, CPGB (ML), New Communist Party, Socialist Labour Party, Socialist Fight and the Posadists in Britain. Solidarity messages were received from former Labour MP Chris Williamson who is now a leading member of the Socialist Labour Party, Phil Wilayto of the Odessa Solidarity Campaign in the United States, and Leonid Ilderkin from the Union of Political Refugees and Political Prisoners of Ukraine, who has recently moved back to Ukraine.

• Skwarkbox report
• La Lucha (USA) report