Harlow TUC calls for support for Cllr Forman

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Red Youth reproduces here the letter we have received from Harlow Trades Council and we call on our local comrades to attend the demonstration called in support of comrade Waida this week. Whilst perpetually frustrated that brave comrades like Waida choose to remain in the Labour Party (when they deserve much better; Labour is after all a Party which itself is guilty of the worst racism and criminality) – Red Youth stands shoulder to shoulder with Waida and Harlow TUC in calling for support for her in the face of these disgraceful attacks upon her person:

“Labour councillor Waida Forman has suffered many months of harassment and intimidation, which has affected her health, because she was the ONLY councillor who attended an SWP/UAF initiated protest in defence of Travellers.

Cllr Forman, also Chair of Harlow TUC, gave the SWP/UAF handsome support in the campaign to defend equality. She attended the public meetings at Park Inn hotel in September 2014 and at the Civic Centre on 17 March and spoke in defence of Travellers having a long-standing need for a secure place to live.

Cllr Forman also wrote letters to Harlow Star and spoke in debate in both Group and Full council meetings to defend a principle of equal rights and fair treatment of Travellers.

Cllr Forman has now, after many months of a concerted campaign to harass and intimidate her, been racially abused by Malcolm Mitchell, the self-appointed leader of the anti-Traveller campaign in Harlow. Mr Mitchell used his Facebook group to incite people to trespass upon Cllr Forman’s home, commit criminal damage including defecating everywhere and racially abused her by saying: “let’s see how the Nigger likes it.”

The motion condemning such racist abuse goes before full council meeting commencing at 7.30 on 24 September and can be seen at the bottom of this email.

If some of you are not prepared to support a Labour councillor who has been generous in giving support for your causes – including defending public services, stopping Blacklisting and the closure of HWRA – when they’ve been racially abused, then you will show your indifference to a valuable ally.

The consequences of this indifference will be to give confidence to racists and fascists to intimidate elected councillors and trade union officials in the certain knowledge that they will not get the support they deserve from the labour movement.

In the event of poor support on 24 September, Labour councillors and Harlow TUC will naturally have cause to reconsider their relationship with people who start something but who are unable to deliver visible support to a brave councillor who carried the greatest burden for them.”

Motion to Harlow Council:
CONDEMNATION FOR DISCRIMINATORY COMMENTS
“This Council condemns the racist language and incitement to aggression against Councillor Waida Forman by the leaders of the campaign against Travellers and offers the full support of the Council to any Councillor coming under such attacks.

We call on all local political leaders to disassociate their organisations from those indulging in discriminatory rhetoric that only serves as cover for such racist attitudes.”

Calais Migrants

The Refugee Crisis In Calais

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Part of the camp of the refugees and migrants near Calais
Part of the camp of the refugees and migrants near Calais
British newspapers have been screaming (or whatever the written equivalent is) and raging about the very fabric of our society being irredeemably destroyed by 3,000 or so immigrants in a camp known as the jungle in Calais. This is where people who have suffered great losses in terms of friends, family, lifestyle, their homes, even their homelands, and having travelled halfway around the world against bitter odds, have gathered for a final attempt to enter the UK in a bid to regain some of the aspirations and dignity that have been cruelly ripped from them. These people represent most warzones in the world where British and US imperialism have sent their ‘hero’ pilots to rain bombs indiscriminately from miles above ground or have used their proxy armies in the shape of IS, al-Nusra and others to terrorise, torture and murder those who won’t bow before the imperialist parasites. And it is these same imperialist parasites who are driving the planet towards world war three in an effort to solve, if only for a very short time, the contradictions of capitalism that are ravaging balance sheets and proving the unsuitability of their totally outdated system as an economic and political plan for furthering, or even maintaining, the current level of human development.

French authorities evicting refugee camps
French authorities are continuosly evicting refugee squats and camps
and harassing the migrants.

Continue reading “The Refugee Crisis In Calais” →

Workers Unite

Party for your Future

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In the aftermath of what was presented by many as a ‘Tory landslide’, a groundswell of dismay greeted the 2015 election result, and despite Labour’s anti-worker, warmongering, profiteer-enabling record in office – and its support for war and cuts in opposition – a significant minority still believe that a Labour government will enact pro-worker, anti-imperialist reforms.

Now we are being encouraged to believe that, with Labour’s leadership election, workers have everything to win or lose, and that the surprise possibility of a ‘left-wing’ candidate taking over the second party of imperialism is some kind of incredible opportunity that we would be crazy to ignore.

The working class needs to project its own demands and to refuse to cooperate with the British imperialist agenda – both with the implementation of cuts and with the drive to war.

Workers need secure homes, jobs, services and pensions, and the chance to live a decent and civilised life, free from poverty, exploitation and war, but imperialism is unable to meet these simple demands.

In light of all this, our most urgent task is to build up a strong communist party, capable of training and organising working-class fighters who are ready to challenge British imperialism – whether it is represented in parliament by Tory or Labour hirelings. Join us in building a bright future for humanity!

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Anarchism or Socialism?

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What are the beliefs of the Anarchists? How are they different from the socialists and communists? In particular: is capitalism the enemy, or is the state machine the enemy?

What do the anarchists think workers should do if they are successful in getting rid of exploitative capitalism? What are the anarchists’ criticisms of communism? What are the basic ideas and beliefs of the communists that make it a useful guide to action, and empower workers to overthrow the old system of exploitation and build a new, peaceful and truly representative society? In what way is socialism more ‘scientific’ and systematic?

Harpal Brar, chairman of the CPGB-ML gives a historical and contemporary look at anarchism, from its philosophical and organisational origins to the present day anarchists and their ‘activity’, and compares it to the Socialist views of Marx and Engels.

A must watch for every thinking person, every would be revolutionary, and every worker who wants to build a better world.

Continue reading “Anarchism or Socialism?” →

Weekend Mortality and the 7-day NHS

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Thoughtful article from a young doctor pointing out that Jeremy Hunt, Lord Prior, and the whole gang in government are not stupid, and not being incompetent, but are assiduously following the line of privatising the NHS:

“Lord Prior, the parliamentary under-secretary of state for NHS productivity, quietly announces an inquiry into private charges and insurance to fund the NHS. I.e to move the system from tax-funded to full charge-based private healthcare.”

Not untypically, the emphasis is put on the ideological line of the Tory government, rather than on the entire economic interest of capitalism, which is remained constant, in the face of dwindling working class organisation and political will, for decades, irrespective of the hand at the tiller (Labor, Liberal or Tory).

The real message of all of this: there is no such thing as Capitalism with a friendly face. Imperialism in its death throes is a viscous enough beast to take humanity down with it, unless we gain focus and courage and end this heartless, blood thirsty warmongering and profiteering system.

#iminworkjeremy must become #EndImperiaism

Stop playing games with our NHS

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The following letter was sent by a Proletarian reader to the British Medical Association journal BMA News.Save our NHS
“Readers of BMA News over the last couple of weeks cannot fail to have noticed the BMA’s conspicuous ‘No More Games’ campaign, designed – we are told – to appeal to the UK government to stop “playing games” with the NHS.

With all due respect to the leadership of our trade union, what UK governments – regardless of party political stripe – have done and continue to do to the NHS since 1979 is not a ‘game’, it is a pre-planned step-by-step programme to re-privatise healthcare in this country.

The first step in 1983 was to take NHS executive power away from doctors and place it instead in the hands of new business managers.

Step 2 in 1990 was to replace the old funding system of simple block budget allocation, with an artificial ‘internal market’ whereby ‘providers’ would henceforth compete for funding from ‘commissioners’.

Step 3, from 1997, was the expansion of the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), whereby NHS Trusts were encouraged to ‘solve’ their funding problems by – in effect – paying for new (and often unnecessary) infrastructure projects on a credit card.

Step 4 was the introduction of ‘Foundation Hospitals’ – in effect embryonic private hospitals – from 2002: since then the government has decreed that all NHS Trusts must ultimately become Foundation Trusts, or else be subsumed into existing Foundation Trusts.

The final step was the Health and Social Care Act 2011, which in fact formally abolished the NHS as a universal free healthcare system: ‘NHS’ is now little more than the name for a pot of taxpayer money that will increasingly be directed to the government’s friends on the boards of private healthcare providers.

And so you see, the government is not ‘playing games’ here, far from it. It is no more likely to be dissuaded from privatising the NHS by appeal to reason or kindness than it was to be dissuaded from invading Iraq. Or Afghanistan. Or Libya. Or Yugoslavia. Or Ukraine …

Perhaps if anyone needs to be told to stop ‘playing games’ here it’s the BMA?”

CPGB-ML at People’s Assembly demo June 20

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End Austerity Now Demo, London, 20th June 2015
End Austerity Now Demo, London, 20th June 2015

CPGB-ML and Red Youth comrades attended Saturday’s demonstration against austerity in London. Comrades cheered Sinn Fein leader Martin McGuiness when he declared that the Tory government were the “real spongers”, he said,

End Austerity Now Demo, London, 20th June 2015
End Austerity Now Demo, London, 20th June 2015

“Unlike the Tory millionaires, I live in the heart of the proud working class community of the Bogside in Derry,”

“The people the Tories are targeting are my friends, my neighbours, my family. They are fine, hard-working, proud and decent – just like our people in working class unionist communities.

“They are not parasites or spongers. It is Cameron’s cabinet of millionaires who are the real spongers given free rein to live out their Thatcherite fantasies at the expense of ordinary, decent communities throughout these islands.”

In the aftermath of what was presented by many as a ‘Tory landslide’, a groundswell of dismay greeted the 2015 election result. From quarters where well-meaning, better-off workers have been fooled into thinking that electing Labour will be Britain’s path out of austerity, much hand-wringing and agonising is now the order of the day.

Continue reading “CPGB-ML at People’s Assembly demo June 20” →

End Austerity Now: tens of thousands march

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Demo Panorama
It has been reported that the demonstration attracted 250,000 people.

The End Austerity Now national demonstration in London this Saturday (20 June 2015) attracted over 250,000 people, by far the biggest single showing of public anger against the British regime in over a decade. Unions, political parties, activist groups, and individuals came together under a single clear message – we won’t tolerate capitalist austerity that puts profit before people.

Continue reading “End Austerity Now: tens of thousands march” →

It seems that there’s no end to the tsunami of immigrants coming into this country, that is if you’re a reactionary imperialist stooge

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illegal immigrantDespite the racist anti-asylum seeker policies of consecutive British governments, Conservative and Labour, on April 1st ‘Russian dissident’ Vladimir Ashurkov was granted asylum in Britain. So, what makes him such a special case?  

Immigration

While the corporate media and bourgeois parties are always racist, hostility towards asylum seekers and economic migrants has been on the increase over the past years. British workers are bombarded daily by the bourgeois media message that the country is swamped with outsiders and that somehow there’s a connection between this process and the continuing decline of living standards (hush, nobody mention capitalist crisis).

Repressive legislation introduced (not for the first time) under Labour Continue reading “It seems that there’s no end to the tsunami of immigrants coming into this country, that is if you’re a reactionary imperialist stooge” →

Cuba-US Relations Update

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Josefina Vidal Ferreiro, Director General of the United States Division at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Josefina Vidal Ferreiro, Director General of the United States Division at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Imperialist resolve to punish and starve independent socialist states has continued to weaken in the face of Cuban perseverance against the US embargo.

Last week saw further talks between Cuba and the United States in which the US further retreated from it’s position of 54 years of illegal and unwarranted attacks upon the peaceful island nation.

Revolutionary Cuba has seen massive agrarian reforms and the nationalisation of industries, including former property of US capitalists, which led to the US not only cutting off diplomatic relations, but also imposing commercial, financial, economic war. Most famous are the notorious military and covert assaults (Bay of Pigs invasion, shooting down civilian Cuban airliners, assassinations, biological warfare, and incessant attacks on the revolutionary leadship of the Cuban people, including Fidel Castro.

The scale of the US climb-down must be viewed against this backdrop. Below we produce a statement passed to us by the revolutionary Cuban government.

“The third round of talks Between Delegations of Cuba and the United States on the process of re-establishment of diplomatic relations and the opening of embassies was held in Washington DC, on May 21 and 22, 2015.

The Cuban delegation was headed by Josefina Vidal Ferreiro, Director General of the United States Division at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; and the US delegation was headed by Roberta S. Jacobson, Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs of the State Department.

The Cuban representatives recognized the decision just adopted by President Obama to remove Cuba from the List of States Sponsors of Terrorism.

These were talks held after the US government, in compliance with its international legal obligations under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, issued a license to one bank to resume the banking services to the Cuban Interests Section in Washington under the conditions of the financial blockade in force.

Both delegations agreed to continue the exchanges on aspects related to the Functioning of the diplomatic missions.

During the talks, the Cuban delegation ratified its substantial willingness to address matters of the bilateral agenda, which would make it possible to move on to the normalization of relations between Cuba and the United States on the basis of respect, sovereign equality and reciprocity, eleven diplomatic relations are re-established.” 

– Cuban Embassy (with minor translation)