Activists in Birmingham staged a small demonstration today outside Selly Oak jobcentre where a Birmingham claimant this week set himself on fire in protest to changes to his benefits. According to The Guardian:
“A man has set himself on fire outside a Birmingham jobcentre after what reports suggest was an argument over benefit payments.
The 48-year-old unnamed man is understood to have doused himself in flammable liquid and tied himself to railings after a dispute inside the Jobcentre Plus in the Selly Oak area on Thursday.
Police arrived at the scene and extinguished the fire after the jobcentre was evacuated.
The man was later taken to hospital with burns to his legs.
A source with links to staff at the centre told the Guardian the man had been recognised by the staff as vulnerable with outstanding health issues but had recently been found fit to work precipitating a move from one benefit to another. This had caused payment delays.”
Whilst the imperialist media here in the UK is usually quick to praise such acts of self immolation when undertaken by reactionaries, fascists and medievalists in Tiananmen Square – our Police have decided that this individual needs a mental health assessment – and no doubt they’ll be quick to have him sectioned and away from the media spotlight! Its quite clear to us at Red Youth that it is this system of monopoly parasitism which needs to be treated urgently. An understanding of society (theory) and a way of uniting to change it (organisation) are the two things that we need to make the change necessary so that people aren’t driven to such acts of desperation. We need socialism now! Young people have everything to gain by getting involved in this process sooner rather than later. This world isn’t working for us and we deserve better!
Not only do we need to campaign against the bad conditions and lack of prospects for the youth in Britain today, but we need to work for a completely different type of society – one where people’s needs decide everything.
So many problems face this world: environmental catastrophe, poverty, disease, racism and war. They’ll never be solved while capitalism remains, but they could all be sorted if society was set up for the benefit of the majority rather than the private gain of a few billionaires.
Studying Marxism, organising the young people in your area and learning about how we fight for socialism is the only way we can defeat the ruling class.
This weeks edition of the Pyongyang Times is now available to download herePyongyang Times issue 25. If you want to know more about Korea the struggle for socialism in the east, and see Korean communists here in the UK, check out these videos:
According to reports from RT.com Kofi Annan, a miserable (but very willing) stooge of imperialism, today declared that “The longer we wait the darker Syria’s future becomes…the time to act is now”. Any anti-imperialist will know precisely what kind of action Annan and his backers will be prepared to unleash when their not-so-covert attempts at regime change in Syria fail. Thankfully the anti-imperialist Syrian government, headed by President Assad and backed by a number of communists and progressive forces inside Syria are also well prepared for any provocation.
In reports which worryingly point towards an escalation in the crisis and desperation on the part of imperialism, Russia Today writes that Syria has shot down a Turkish military jet. If these reports turn out to be true it would appear that Turkey, in connivance with imperialism, may be in the final stages of preparing for all out war with Syria. It is equally possible that such news is an ongoing part of the propaganda campaign waged by imperialism against Syria with the purpose of preparing western audiences for open intervention :
“The plane crashed into Syrian territorial waters earlier today, according to reports. A missile shattered it to pieces after which the missile plunged into the Mediterranean Sea. The two pilots were later saved off the shore of Hatay, a south eastern province bordering Syria.
Syrian vessels have joined a search operation, which was launched immediately after the Turkish military lost radar and radio contact with the jet. The planes took off from Erhac Airport in the eastern province of Malatya at 10 a.m. local time.
Unconfirmed reports suggest that Syrian defense forces had been shooting at two foreign planes.
“Witnesses spotted two jets flying in from Turkish territory. One of the planes went down in Syria’s territorial waters, while the other one made off,” says Ihab Sultan, a local correspondent in Syria, told RT.
Relations between Ankara and Damascus have been marred by Turkey’s open support of the Syrian opposition, which is seeking to topple the government of President Bashar Al-Assad. On Friday, Turkey denied the Syrian government’s accusations that it is supplying rebels with arms.
Still, Turkey remains a NATO member, which means that in the event of an attack it could summon the aid of all the alliance members. In April, Turkey already called on NATO to protect its borders as cross-border fire from Syria hit a refugee camp on Turkish territory. These statements were condemned as “provocative” by Assad’s government.
International relations expert Mark Almond says in the event of a NATO intervention scenario, Turkey might launch a probing flight to assess Syria’s capabilities.
“If the NATO countries were really thinking of some kind of intervention to assist the rebels against Assad’s regime, the first thing they’ll want to do is to knock out Syria’s air forces and defense systems. So some kind of a probing flight testing Syria’s responses would be possible. But it is also possible this is a tragic mishap,” Almond told RT from Bilkent University in Ankara.”
StW still not stopping any wars
Regardless of whether the latest news reports turn out to be true, support for Syria in its life-and-death confrontation with imperialism is an acid test for the working-class and anti-war movements. Yet in its call for an anti-Nato protest outside the US embassy, the ineffectual and rapidly declining Stop the War Coalition (StW) has once again avoided any mention of this frontline country.
This is because those who have hijacked the anti-war movement in this country – misleaders like ‘left’ Labourite Jeremy Corbyn and Trotskyite John Rees of Counterfire – actually support imperialism’s aim of ‘regime change’ for Syria, differing only in the methods that should be used to bring it about, and the revisionist CPB cravenly goes along with them.
A principled anti-war movement is desperately needed – one that will organise workers in a mass movement of non-cooperation with imperialist war crimes and call for:
It’s Queen Elizabeth II’s diamond Jubilee, the sun looks set to shine, and Britons have been given two days holiday – so who’s complaining? Up and down the country, our government officials, from the petty to the powerful, have been encouraging workers to ‘forget politics’, ‘forget their troubles’, hang out the union jack bunting (and Tim Henman hasn’t even won Wimbledon!), and re-create the ‘post war’, feel-good spirit with street and garden parties. OOOh! Who’s coming down to Greenwich to see the regatta?
But Britain is a ‘parliamentary democracy’, right? Didn’t Cromwell – God’s Englishman – cut off King Charles’ head in the English Civil war, winning the bourgeois revolution, like 400 years ago?
And why does it always seem to be “jam-tomorrow”, repossess your house, austerity for we, while the blinged-out Windsors pocket millions in land subsidies and live the conspicuous high life? So what’s it all about, and who’s really celebrating?
The present fawning coverage of the Queen’s diamond jubilee is but the latest example of an increasingly fever-pitched barrage of pro-royalist propaganda throughout the British media.
In one obsequious article written last year, the Guardian’s Dominic Sandbrook breathlessly noted that “the … striking thing [about the royal wedding was] … the almost total absence of anti-monarchical sentiment”. But as one online commenter put it: “How would we know? The only sentiment allowed to be expressed in the media was pro-monarchical.”
Despite the impression given by the media, however, opinion polls tell us that around 20 percent of Britons would like to abolish the monarchy. And since poor people aren’t generally polled, this is bound to be a gross underestimate.
At a time of savage cuts in services and benefits, with rising unemployment and increasing levels of overcrowded and slum housing, the sight of the Windsors in clothes and jewellery costing millions and paid for by the taxpayer is not calculated to endear them to those who are branded scroungers by the media while living hand-to-mouth and suffering the brunt of the economic crisis.
Moreover, while most of us are forced to pay extortionate rates of council tax for occupying postage-stamp-sized plots of land, the royals, like other big landowners, are quietly pocketing massive agricultural subsidies.
Who are they and what do they do?
Since the days of the English revolution, when Oliver Cromwell’s victorious government executed Charles I, no king or queen has exercised direct power in Britain. The ‘restoration’ of Charles II was not a reversal of that revolution, but rather the acceptance by the aristocracy that if it wanted to survive at all, it would have to do so on the capitalists’ terms.
These days, only a few archaic privileges and arcane rituals have been preserved for appearances’ sake. But while they may not be the venerated overlords of bygone days, today’s monarchy, with its mysterious ‘ancient rituals’ and much-discussed family tree, is a valuable weapon in the capitalist rulers’ arsenal.
We are taught to see the history of the nation and the history of the royal family as being the same, and to feel a superstitious awe towards the hereditary holders of the country’s highest office. How often are we told that ‘our’ Queen has so much more ‘dignity’, ‘grace’ etc than any mere elected head of state could ever have?
All our lives, we have all been learning carefully-selected ‘facts’ about her and her family to help us ‘identify’ with them. The idea is that, no matter how angry we might become with other representatives of bourgeois rule – governments, police, judiciary etc – we will continue to believe that the Queen and the armed forces are somehow above politics and there to ‘serve all the people’.
Which explains the strong and very visible connection between the royals and the forces. And the non-stop guff about the Queen’s ‘unifying’ presence in our lives.
And while she may not exercise power for herself, the Queen does have a real role to play on behalf of her class. It is not merely symbolic that a new prime minister has to ask the Queen for permission to form a government – that is the ruling class’s veto in case of an unacceptable election result. As is the Queen’s power to call a state of emergency and mobilise the armed forces. And she would not hesitate to use these powers if her class deemed it necessary.
So much for the daydreams of those who imagine that we could bring socialism to Britain through an elected majority in parliament!
The advantage of having a long-serving head of state is felt by the ruling class most particularly in times of crisis, as now. As society is becoming more and more fractured, relentless royalist propaganda is aimed at persuading us to forget about exploiters and exploited and buy into the myth of ‘one Britain’. When the Queen and her family ‘go amongst the people’, they, like Eton-boys Cameron and Osborne, are asking us to believe that we are ‘all in it together’.
Capitalism must go
For all the insidious role that they play in helping to maintain capitalist rule, though, it is not the royals alone who are the problem, but the capitalist system that they represent. After all, the Queen may live off our backs in a direct and obvious way, but we should never forget that all big businesses are leeching off the blood and sweat of others, and that all the super-rich of Britain vie with each other in tax avoidance scams.
She may be a particularly blatant example, but the monarch is just one of many capitalist parasites whose obscene wealth needs to be seized and used for the common good if we are to escape from the downward spiral of imperialist war and economic crisis.
As communists, we wish to see the end of the monarchy not because we have some burning desire to replace it with an elected man in a suit while the whole rotten system of bloodthirsty warmongering and ruthless exploitation remains intact, but because we are opposed to anything that perpetuates ordinary people’s faith in the status quo or helps to whitewash the crimes of the ruling class.
Moreover, we hold to the simple belief that for one person or family to own wealth running into the billions of pounds while millions starve and millions more go without homes, jobs, basic health care, education, and security in old age – is nothing short of a moral outrage. And that doesn’t just go for the Queen, but for the whole class of privileged multibillionaires whom she serves and helps to keep in place.
The Queen is not ‘ours’, but theirs. She is of and for that tiny handful of ruthless exploiters who keep the world’s people in poverty and servitude, and we must not be fooled by sentimental hogwash into imagining that she has any interest in seeing our children taken care of. If we want a fitting future for them, we must do away with privileged exploiters of every kind.
It is time to leave behind the blood-stained red, white and blue of our decadent, parasitic, imperial rulers and join the rising workers and peasants of the world under the red banner of the people’s hammer and sickle!
Red Youth members, comrades of the Communist Party and others helped to spread the truth about the ongoing imperialist inspired intervention in Syria on Saturday in Manchester. Talking about the war waged by imperialism and its hangers-on in Syria was a good opportunity for engaging with people on the streets of Manchester about the wider issues which working class people are concerned about. Comrades linked up all these problems and exposed the reactionary agenda behind government and mass media policy on immigration, the NHS and unemployment. If you want to get involved with Red Youth and fight for socialism – drop an email to info@redyouth.org today!
A meeting was held on Thursday 24 May in central Birmingham to address some of the key imperialist lies which are being spread within the anti-war movement with regards to Syria. The meeting was Chaired in a personal capacity by local NUJ activist and photographer Stalingrad O’Neill. Contributions from the Indian Workers Association (GB), AIWAA (Against imperialist wars in Africa and Asia) and the CPGB-ML will be posted shortly. We urge all anti-war activists and peace campaigners to host similar meetings and ensure that the truth about imperialist intervention in Syria is spread.
Make a start in finding out the truth by reading this excellent article from the latest Lalkar:
The steadfastness of the Syrian people in the face of every effort to divide and undermine them, coupled with the refusal of Russia and China to endorse the economic, diplomatic and military campaigns of aggression, continue to frustrate imperialist plans of conquest in the Middle East.
Whilst it cannot be doubted that Washington will carry on doing all possible to subvert the Annan plan, striving to transform an opportunity for reconciliation and dialogue into just one more cover for bullying and coercion, there is no disguising the humiliating reverse which has already been inflicted upon imperialist pretensions in the region.
What opened up the possibility of a negotiated solution in the beginning of April was the success with which the attempted putsch efforts in Homs, Idlib and elsewhere were faced down by Damascus, exposing for all to see the minimal support from within the country for the armed rebellion and its growing demoralisation. The refusal of China and Russia to allow the UN Security Council to impose sanctions had already created difficulties for the warmongers. Now, with the rebellion clearly on the back foot and even the Arab League growing dubious about the ability of the US to control events, Russia was able to initiate the diplomatic process which was taken under the wing of former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
For Syria, and for all who respect her sovereignty and desire a peaceful resolution of the conflict so maliciously cultivated by the West, this initiative was most welcome. However, for those who would wish to demolish her sovereignty, end her support for Palestine and Lebanon, loot her resources and reduce her to a pawn on the geopolitical chessboard, the threat of such an untimely outbreak of peace set alarm bells ringing. Such a peaceful outcome would not only cheat Washington out of its pretext for aggression, but would also redound enormously to the credit of Russia and China, the hostile encirclement of which countries is the strategic aim of imperialism. Such a fillip for the growing diplomatic influence of the BRICS countries, such a slap in the face for imperialist domination, is a nightmare for the West.
The West tries to sabotage the Annan Plan
The obvious solution to the West’s dilemma was to try and subvert the Russian initiative and subsequent Annan plan, transforming the genuine search for a peaceful resolution of the crisis into another stick for imperialism to wield against Syria’s national dignity. Imperialism tried to pull much the same stunt earlier in the year with the farce which played out over the Arab League’s observer mission. That mission had been pushed enthusiastically inside the League by the House of Saud, the King of Bahrain and other such “democratic” friends of America, all eager to send in the monitors. Their real agenda was twofold: to find or manufacture pretexts to justify further imperialist meddling, and to give the hard-pressed rebels a breathing space to consolidate their ragtag forces.
The propaganda end of the mission turned out to be a disaster for imperialism, with the mission’s official report producing damning evidence of rebel atrocities and giving a broadly positive account of the government’s compliance with the provisional requirement to withdraw heavy weaponry from major population centres. Needless to say, the contents of the report received scant coverage in the imperialist media, with all attention lavished instead upon the tantrums of Saudi Arabia and the other US satellites who denounced the report, slandered the Sudanese mission chief who authored it, submitted a fabricated report of their own and sabotaged the continuing mission by unilaterally withdrawing their monitors.
However, although the intended propaganda coup misfired so badly for the West, the mission’s second purpose, to interrupt the momentum of the government’s efforts to defend the country’s sovereignty and give the scattered rebels a chance to regroup, had more success, tragically extending this period of internecine strife and claiming yet more Syrian lives. Now, with the rebellion increasingly revealed to be a spent force within the country, its leadership riven by endless factions and its sole hope of salvation resting upon the West and its proxies (notably Turkey), imperialism sought to turn the Annan plan down the same blind alley. Washington paid lip service to the plan’s peaceful intentions, whilst in practice using it as a cover for the imposition of a series of impossible and ever-shiftingultimata upon the Syrian government.
The agreement to which the parties signed up required both sides to stop fighting, with the anticipation that international efforts would be made to ensure that the process goes forward on the basis of reciprocity. Yet it has throughout been clear from the belligerent tone of US leaders that imperialism is interested in only one outcome: the unilateral disarming of the country’s security forces. Under these circumstances, it would have been suicide for Damascus to completely stand down its forces on 10th April (as was ludicrously demanded) without at the very least guarantees in writing from the rebel bands that they plan to reciprocate. Syria’s entirely reasonable request for such written guarantees to be furnished was, predictably, trumpeted by Washington as a spoiling tactic, as if it were President Assad who sought to derail the process.
On 9 April, on the eve of the 10 April deadline, skirmishes were reported on the border between Syria and Turkey. BBC news that afternoon and evening headlined this skirmish as spectacular breaking news. Government forces, we were told, had opened fire on a refugee camp across the border in Turkey, slaughtering a number of refugees and wounding many others. In the context-free environment of BBC journalism, this was clearly intended to stack up as proof positive of the supposed bad faith and bloodthirsty disposition of the Syrian government, and ample reason for a Turkish government spokesman to strangle the Annan process at birth, declaring it “void”.
Yet even the BBC report could not avoid letting slip a “rumour” that armed rebels had somehow been involved. The RT news service was more forthcoming, reporting how armed Free Syrian Army thugs cross to and fro across the border without impediment from Turkish border guards. And it fell to Reuters to report on the account given by local Turkish officials on the ground, presumably before the official Ankara line had been handed down. Yusuf Odabas, the governor of Kilis province where the camp is situated, said simply that“The injuries are a result of clashes between Syrian soldiers and rebels. The bullets reached the camp.” Reuters reported that the stray bullets which hit the camp originated“from clashes between Syrian soldiers and rebel fighters”, and that the “gun battles occurred just inside Syria.” (9 April, ‘Fire from Syria border clashes hits refugee camp in Turkey, report says.’)
As one report followed another, often mutually contradictory (Three died, or two? They died in the camp or running to the border? They were refugees or armed rebels?), it became possible to piece together a much more plausible sequence of events. Imperialism, by doing its best to plunge Syria into civil war, has created a humanitarian nightmare on the country’s borders, with panicked civilians mistakenly crediting Turkish promises of a “safe haven” from the fighting. Instead of enjoying safety, they have found themselves used as pawns in a cynical game concocted by imperialism and played out by its Ottoman stooges. Reports suggesting that the gun battle was sparked as FSA thugs “helped refugees escape to Turkey” reinforce the suspicion that what was really at issue was the hot pursuit of terrorists towards the border, and the tragic consequences of the FSA using the refugees as camouflage for the continued subversion of the country.
Less well reported was the surrender to government forces in Idlib of at least 227 armed men at around the same time. With great magnanimity these terrorists were allowed to go free once they had given up their weapons and promised not to attack the government or their fellow citizens, hardly the action of the bloodthirsty tyranny portrayed in the West. Nor was this a one-off incident: back in November last year Syria offered amnesty to those who gave up their weapons. Victoria Nuland of the State Department then demonstrated her commitment to the cause of peace by encouraging the gangs to hang on to their guns and spurn the amnesty (Press TV: ‘Hundreds of armed men surrender to Syrian army in Idlib’, 9 April). From this we may judge who are the real peace lovers and whose hands are stained with the blood of innocents.
The West tries to torpedo the Annan Plan
Despite the worst efforts of the West, the Annan plan was not strangled at birth in mid-April, thanks in very large measure to the refusal of Damascus to abandon the ceasefire although under enormous provocation.
Whilst the imperialist media put itself entirely at the disposal of the rebels, maintaining a constant barrage of unsubstantiated allegations against the security forces, the routine counter-revolutionary violence on the ground was ramped up, supplemented now by a dirty war of assassinations of leading patriots, all with the clear intention of torpedoing the Annan plan. In the eastern province of Deir al-Zour assassins murdered Lieutenant Colonel Youssef Saqqe; in the central province of Hama terrorists slew Major Moussa Youssef and kidnapped Colonel Mohammad Eid. To demonstrate their respect for religion, the rebels shot Sayyed Nasser al-Allawi, the imam and preacher of al-Hossayniya Scientific Hawza on his own doorstep, in a suburb of Damascus. It seems that his “crime” was to have helped in relief efforts to help refugees uprooted from their homes by civil strife. And to demonstrate their respect for democracy, the self-styled “battalions of Mohammed” went onto YouTube to broadcast their intention to kill anybody who stands for office in the 7 May parliamentary elections (to be held in accord with the overwhelming mandate delivered in the February referendum). That such threats are to be taken seriously was underlined by the fate of one such candidate, Mohammad Ismail al-Ahmed, whose home in Idlib was stormed by an armed gang which dragged him off to an unknown destination. Even on the very day that the ceasefire was due to kick in, as if deliberately to sharpen the provocation and induce Damascus to walk away from the Annan plan, officials including a brigadier general in the Damascus suburb of Jaramana, a first lieutenant in the northern province of Aleppo, and the secretary of al-Baath Party’s office in al-Mazareeb town of the southern Daraa province were killed, and dozens of officers were wounded.
Thieves fall out as Syria stands firm
As frustration mounted in the West at the failure of all its stage-managed provocations to abort the peace process, the headlines screamed ever more incontinently about Syria’s “monstrous” government. Yet for the overwhelming majority of Syrians, including those raising legitimate demands for reform, the attempted demonization of President Assad and the progressive, secular coalition which he leads simply beggars belief.
Even in the West, despite all the efforts to downplay the thousands-strong pro-Assad demonstrations (all held at the point of a gun, we are assured), reality has a habit of breaking through from time to time. Thus it was that no less than The Telegraph ran a piece on 9 March by Matthew Schofield, gloomily entitled “U.S. officials: Assad could survive Syria revolt” in which it is revealed that “Months after the United States sided with rebels against Syrian President Bashar Assad, senior U.S. intelligence officials acknowledged Friday that not only could Assad survive the uprising, but also that they couldn’t say with confidence that the opposition represents a majority of the Syrian people.” The officials gave the lie to the repeated assertion that the governing coalition is driven by Alawite sectarianism, not only identifying support for President Assad amongst Christians, Kurds and Druze, but also admitting with puzzlement that, whilst most Syrian soldiers are from the Sunni majority, “Yet the military remains cohesive”. One official speaks truer than he knows when he says of the Syrian military, “This was an army built for a ground war with Israel. They have approached that level of commitment.” An army consisting of mercenaries rented by Doha and Riyadh is no match for the army of a progressive and independent nation committed to fighting Zionism and imperialism.
And whilst the Syrian military holds firm and the Syrian masses continue to rally behind the government, the rebel forces continue to split and buckle under the weight of their own treachery. The Telegraph quotes one member of the West-backed Syrian National Council bemoaning the fact that “There are internal divisions within the SNC… The main problem is SNC has gotten … bigger each and every day. We started with 80 people, now we are 340 people, and every high-ranking official defecting from the Syrian regime wants to have a big role” (Matthew Schofield, “U.S. officials: Assad could survive Syria revolt”, 9 March).
Whilst Syria’s strength and cohesion may remain a mystery to Telegraph readers, they pose no such conundrum to the millions of Syrian patriots for whom national pride, and pride in the nation’s anti-imperialist tradition, loom larger than any confessional or ethnic divisions.
Bahrain: a different story
A mystery that the capitalist media never does seem able to fully account for is why Hillary Clinton and David Cameron are not pestering the UN to pass resolutions imposing sanctions and threats of military intervention against the unelected feudal relics ruling over the population of Bahrain with teargas, sound bombs, birdshot and worse, calling in the Saudi army to murder demonstrators last year and celebrating the return of Formula One by shooting a protestor dead. Where are the diatribes against the bloodthirsty dictator killing his own people? Where is the international community’s outburst of moral indignation as Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, serving a life sentence for saying Bahrain should be a republic, slowly starves to death on hunger strike?
Yet the difference is not hard to grasp. Syria is a progressive, anti-imperialist country, and therefore deserving of the same campaign of calumny previously lavished upon other such countries, most recently Libya. Bahrain is an oil well with a flag, franchised out by imperialism to unelected local comprador stooges to run as a private fiefdom. In exchange, the US gets to park its Fifth Fleet there, ready to challenge any perceived threat to its exploitation interests. So really it is no mystery that the “Arab Spring”, invented and promoted by the West in Libya and Syria, must carve for itself in Bahrain. It will prosper the better without such “friends”.
Even the Mail on Sunday, in a rare burst of candour on 8 April, felt moved to comment as follows on the company which British imperialism’s own entirely bourgeoisified reigning monarch likes to keep (Katie Nicholl and Jonathan Petre, ‘Ruler of Bahrain’s bloody regime set for Windsor Castle’):
“The Queen has risked an international outcry by inviting the King of Bahrain to a Diamond Jubilee banquet despite widespread criticism of his bloody and repressive regime… He is also thought to be among those invited to a champagne dinner given by Prince Charles the same evening at Buckingham Palace… The king’s son, the Crown Prince of Bahrain, was last year invited to the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton but pulled out at the last minute… In January, the Countess of Wessex came under pressure to return lavish jewels given to her by the Bahrain royal family… The crown prince gave her a silver and pearl cup and her husband, the Earl of Wessex, received a silk rug…”
For good measure the Mail on Sunday recalls that in 2011, “At the height of the killings, David Cameron greeted the crown prince at No 10, and between July and September 2011 the Coalition reportedly authorised the sale of £2.2million of arms to the regime.”
Vain hopes that bringing Formula One back to Bahrain would help convince the world that everything had blown over were spectacularly dashed. Instead, two things were demonstrated: that the fascistic character of the state repression had in no wise abated; and that the revolt which began over a year ago is not over by a long chalk.
Syria is a working class issue
Trotskyites and revisionists of course will have no such trouble supporting in words the popular revolt in Bahrain – but only in order then to muddle up the anti-imperialist essence of the Bahraini revolt with the pro-imperialist essence of the armed Islamic rebellion in Syria. Such muddle must be uprooted in the labour movement.
Without a doubt Washington and its stooges will continue to take every opportunity to sabotage the Annan plan and regain the warmongering initiative, and we cannot underestimate the threat to Syria’s sovereignty that still exists.
Crucially, workers need to understand that it is the anti-imperialist steadfastness of the Syrian nation and its leadership which has opened up the possibility of a peaceful resolution to the conflict. By contrast, those on the “left” who have joined in with the demonization of Assad and the progressive coalition government which he leads, however much they may protest their opposition to military intervention in Syria’s affairs, have done more than most to grease the wheels for precisely such an outcome. Now more than ever it is time for workers to give heartfelt support to the Syrian nation in its struggle against imperialist meddling.
The Revolutionary Communist Group have produced an excellent, concise piece on our rights in the UK to demonstrate and carry out political work. Its aimed at their activists and cadres but Red Youth encourages all young people in the movement to read and understand the essence of the document. We’ve added it as a page on the Red Youth Blog and the original can be viewed on the website of the RCG here. Good work comrades!
A demonstration was held outside the Royal Courts of Justice on 25 April by members of the NUJ and PCS unions. Inside, a judicial review was being sought of a court decision which required journalists, media organisations and broadcasters to hand over footage taken by journalists during the ‘disturbances’ at Dale Farm to the police. Despite this militant, assertive and inspired leadership from the NUJ the courts keep NUJ members (and the rest of civil society) waiting!
Confusion reigned in the minds of some members of the NUJ who turned up outside the High Court and considered their three or four-minute participation in a photo-op feeding frenzy of toothless piranhas as synonymous with union solidarity! They were surprised when, on trying to induce those members taking part in the event into a favorable pictorial arrangement to further enhance the ‘newsworthy’ commercial viability of their shoot, they were treated with contempt and derision.
Years of covering union events as observers and never as players has dulled their minds to the fact their own union protest requires something more of a contribution from their person besides the usual cynical exploitation!
The appellant, Jason Parkinson, who was also one of the demo participants, is probably correct in surmising that since 2010 the news industry has seen a dramatic increase in production orders by the police.
Although journalists’ ‘right to silence’ has been enshrined in European law since 1996, the domestic production order situation exists and will continue to exist precisely because the bourgeoisie has no intention of allowing a precedent to be set in regards to the ‘defense of press freedom’.
It matters not a jot that the John McDonnells and Austin Mitchells of this world stand up in Parliament to repeatedly table parliamentary questions to the Secretary of State; the response is always the same: deflection!
A few good apples in a barrel full of rotten ones can’t reverse the process of decay, whether one is an ‘honest’ member of the perfidious Labour Party or not.
No one doubts the union’s commitment to legally defending the vital principle: “the protection of journalistic sources and material”. One can believe Michelle Stanistreet, NUJ general secretary, when she states:
“The media played a critical public interest role in reporting on Dale Farm and the case will have significant implications for the whole of our industry. Journalists are put in danger if footage gathered whilst reporting events is seized and used by the police. The NUJ’s code of conduct compels the union – and our members – to defend a vital principle, the protection of journalistic sources and material.”
Still, the union’s acceptance of the law as it stands, including a raft of other anti-union laws, means this principle has to be fought for time and time again! The seeming reliance exclusively on the ‘NUJ Parliamentary Group’ to act as a guarantor of journalistic freedom is no defining strategy for defense; nor are parliamentary questions likely to induce media-group managements to have second thoughts about a title’s viability and sustainability.
What’s more, having bought into the Leveson inquiry and offered evidence against Murdoch on the condition of anonymity for NUJ members, the union now finds itself in a quandary, since it was revealed during proceedings that Murdoch’s ‘Management and Standards Committee’ at News International handed over hundreds of emails from journalists to police investigating News International, with the likelihood of betraying the journalists’ confidential sources and outing whistleblowers’ identities.
Police have 171 officers on the case – more than they had on Milly Dowler’s murder or the Lockerbie plane crash!
The NUJ is now reduced to begging Murdoch not to hand over any more journalists’ emails, threatening that “unless satisfactory assurances that similar investigations will not take place on the Times and Sunday Times, the union will seek a legal injunction”, whilst somewhat lamely producing sound bites demanding the resignation of culture secretary Jeremy Hunt.
Meanwhile, the prospect of the Dale Farm production order review finding in favour of journalistic freedom, and against the UK police state looks ever more remote.
Not a good day for the working class, it would seem. But all the anti-democratic, anti-working class and repressive legislation they can heap on their books will not safeguard the capitalist state from the mounting anger of the working class, once they learn to direct, channel and focus it in a revolutionary manner. In the last analysis, they are few, and we are many.
Capitalism fears revolutionary consciousness and organized mass action of the working class as medieval townsfolk fear the plague. That is why they set such draconian sentences for boys posting “lets riot”, or “I support the Afghan resistance” on facebook. And that is why they constantly seek to enlist the people to spy on themselves and each other. The sooner the journalistic fraternity realize this, identify themselves with the interests of the working people, and lend a bit of backbone to the struggle, the better.
