Harpal Brar debates the British Road to Socialism and other issues with CPB social democrat Jim Whyte at a Stalin Society meeting held in Glasgow.
You can listen to more social democratic drivel from the CPB here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DzrKtBZHPk
Press release of the CJC (www.cjc.es) reads:
As young people that we are, our generation is living through a historical regression as for the working conquests obtained after years of struggle. If in times of “ economic fair weather ” the things were already badly for the youth: precarious works, inability to become emancipated because of the price of the flats (the so-called “ real estate bubble ”) and impossible rents … now are worse. Earlier they have been stealing us by means of instability and mortgages (and we do not see a dime and now, when they have got tired of stealing us, they go against our basic rights as working young people. First, with the Plan Bologna, they gave the university to the banking. Thanks to this now we have to pay astronomical prices for studying a master. Then they introduced numerous social clippings that harm the most disadvantaged. Later they approve a labor reform that lows the price of the dismissal and commits an outrage against the collective negotiation. They have already eliminated the help of 426 euros to long-time unemployed people that there have exhausted all the services (labor unemployment and subsidize for unemployment). And now they go for the pensions; they want us going from the center of work (for the one that is not in unemployment) to the morgue. All this directed against the workers and the youth. Since one usually says, whatever happens, you lose, “ it gains the banking ”. And it is going to keep on winning while we do not plant them face, while we do not say to them that they can not play with our righs and that we do not spend to them not a any more.
In view of the future of misery that they want to make us spend, we only can organize ourselves and fight. Because all these measurements against the workers and the youth only could have been approved after years of apathy and absence of struggle. It is with the struggle as the working conquests have been reached. Without it, the banking and the employers order, as it happens now. Thus, every day is more the young people belonging to working families that see that the future is not obtained studying a career or an competitive examination (contrary to what they had promised), the future only is constructed fighting, because in this capitalist system, despite what they try to deny systematically, the social classes exist. On one side, a handful of families that form the oligarchy, on the other the popular sectors. The Spanish oligarchy – with the management of his political representatives – will keep on exploiting the people and especially to the working class and the youth, who are the immense majority of the population; that’s why we can only fight to construct the future that they try to deny to us. And, for fighting, it is necessary to join with the others, because together we are stronger. The CJC we treat to forge this unit.
Next January 27 a general strike is organized in Galicia, Euskal Herria and Catalunya to fight against the social clippings of the badly called socialist government, representative of the employers and the banking, and against the workers. In the rest of the State, if there is no strike, a day of working struggle must be impelled. For the working young people, this is an excellent occasion to demonstrate the government, banking and management, that we do not want the future that they want to impose on us, and that we are not going to allow it. On January 27 we will demonstrate them that we do not spend to them not a any more and that from this date we are going hit them hard.
There is future for the youth, and it is built by fighting!
The only exit from the capitalist crisis is Socialism!
Organize yourself and fight with the CJC!
(for more info see www.wpb.be) 
Affirming our engagement in the revolution of our people which fought for its right to freedom and national dignity and made great sacrifices, including dozens of martyrs and thousands of wounded and prisoners, and in order to complete the victory against interior and external enemies and to oppose any attempts to crush the fruits of these sacrifices, we constituted “the 14th of January Front” as a political framework which will apply itself to the advancement of the revolution of our people towards the achievement of its objectives and to oppose the forces of counter-revolution. The Front consists of national democratic and progressive parties, forces, and organizations.
The urgent tasks of this Front are:
To bring down the current Ghannouchi government or any government containing symbols of the old regime which applies an anti-national and anti-popular policy and serves the interests of the deposed president.
To dissolve the RCD and to confiscate its headquarters, its property, its financial assets and funds, since they belong to the people.
To form an interim government which enjoys the confidence of the people, of the militant progressive political, social, and trade-union forces, and of the youth.
To dissolve the House of Representatives and the Senate, all the existing artificial bodies, and the High Council of the Judiciary; to dismantle the political structure of the old regime; and to prepare the election of a constituent assembly within a maximum of one year in order to formulate a new democratic constitution and to found a new legal system to frame the public life which guarantees the political, economic, and cultural rights of the people.
To dissolve the political police and to adopt a new policy of security based on respect for human rights and the rule of the law.
To bring to justice all those who are guilty of stealing the people’s money, all those who committed crimes against the people like repression, imprisonment, torture, and humiliation, whether in the decision-making or in the execution, and finally all those who are convinced of corruption and diversion of public goods.
To expropriate the former ruling family, their close relations and associates, and all the civil servants who used their positions to grow rich at the expense of the people.
To create jobs for the unemployed; to take urgent measures to grant unemployment benefits and provide greater social security and health care coverage; and to improve the purchasing power for the employed.
To build a national economy in the service of the people where the vital and strategic sectors are under the supervision of the State; to renationalize those institutions which have been privatized; and to formulate an economic and social policy which breaks with the liberal capitalist approach.
To guarantee public and individual freedoms, especially freedom of expression, freedom of association, freedom of the press, information, and thought; and to release prisoners and to promulgate a law of amnesty.
The Front hails the support of the popular masses and the progressive forces in the Arab world and the whole world for the revolution in Tunisia and invites them to continue their support by all possible means.
Resistance to normalization with the Zionist entity, its penalization, and the support for the national liberation movements in the Arab world and the whole world.
The Front calls on all the popular masses and nationalist forces and progressives to continue the mobilization and the struggle in all forms of legitimate protest, particularly in the streets, until the proposed objectives are achieved.
The Front hails all the committees, associations, and forms of popular self-organization and invites them to widen their sphere of intervention to all that concerns the conduct of public affairs and various aspects of everyday life.
Glory to the martyrs of the Intifada, and Victory to the revolutionary masses of our people!
Tunisia, 20 January 2011
League of the Labor Left
Movement of Nasserist Unionists
Movement of Democratic Nationalists
Democratic Nationalists (Al-Watad)
Baasist Current
Independent Left
Tunisian Communist Workers Party
Patriotic and Democratic Labour Party
In developments of great magnitude, wrote Marx, “twenty years are no more than a day – though later on days may come again in which twenty years are embodied”. (Letter to Engels, 9 April 1863) 
The current revolutionary upsurge in Tunisia furnishes yet another proof of the correctness of the above profound observation. Even as late as the beginning of December last year, Tunisia presented an outward image of calm serenity. The dictatorial regime felt secure, and the Tunisian masses gave the appearance of having reconciled themselves to their fate under its suffocating dispensation.
The movement of the Tunisian people for a truly democratic revolutionary regime, their resistance against the dictatorship of the Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD), which was first headed by Habib Bourguiba and then, for the past 23 years by Zein al-Abidine Ben Ali, has had a near-subterranean existence ever since the independence of the country in 1956 from French colonial rule. It appeared as though the regime could do anything.
Confining ourselves to the period since 1987, when Ben Ali, having pushed aside Bourguiba, became the president, the Tunisian regime has been notorious for the application of brutality and medieval torture in its attempt to crush all opposition and destroy physically, morally and intellectually all those who presented the slightest danger to it. Torture, beatings, show trials and imprisonment in tiny isolation cells, which can only be described as dungeons, was the lot of the opponents of the regime.
All political, trade-union, progressive thought or cultural manifestation was repressed. From the Tunisian Communist Workers Party (PCOT) to the Islamists, even liberals, who at the beginning were Ben Ali’s allies, were all subjected to harsh repression. In an effort to bolster the Ben Ali dictatorship and wipe out the remnants of the social, economic and cultural gains of the Tunisian working class, even human-rights advocates, such as the Tunisian League for the Defence of the Rights of Man, as well as the members of the General Union of Students of Tunisia, became the targets of draconian suppression.
All this was in response to the demand of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – one of the chief instruments of international finance capital – for the application of its Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), which produced massive redundancies, wage cuts and enormous extra burdens on the working class. It also translated into privatisation of large sectors of the economy to the benefit of international monopolies and a few families or relatives close to the Palace of Carthage.
The programme, while allowing imperialist corporations and the Tunisian agents of imperialism to grab the Tunisian people’s wealth, was accompanied by the imposition of unbearable burdens on the working class, and thus aroused discontent and resentment among vast swathes of Tunisian society, going far beyond the ranks of the working class – youth, women, lawyers, writers, artists and other progressive intelligentsia.
A family concern
In true mafia style, Ben Ali’s regime became a family concern, with corruption penetrating every corner of society at all levels, from the lowest state functionaries to the highest echelons of the state apparatus.
Although nominally Tunisia had a democratic façade, with regular elections contested by some opposition parties tolerated by the regime, in practice it was a single-party state in which the RCD spread its tentacles into every neighbourhood, business and government department.
The RCD boasted a membership of 2 million – a fifth of the country’s population. This is hardly surprising, considering that without an RCD membership card a farmer could not secure animal feed, a borrower could have no access to bank credit, and an employee could gain no promotion. Businesses were asked to make donations to the party – a request they would have been unwise not to comply with. During the elections, the RCD commandeered state resources, from transport to civil servants, to dragoon people into voting for it.
The RCD operated in the overall context of a police state in which the security services outnumbered the national army by three times – 120,000 to 40,000. As a crucial element to the machinery of repression, the RCD instituted ‘vigilance committees’ in neighbourhoods, whose remit it was to keep a sharp eye on residents and inform on those inclined to express dissent. The entire state apparatus became so suffocating that people were afraid to speak in coffee shops for fear of who might be listening.
Repression and the denial of basic civil liberties in Tunisia went hand in hand with rampant corruption. Ben Ali’s cronies and family, especially the family of his second wife, Leila Trabelsi, built vast business empires spanning aviation, hostels, insurance, banking, media, telecommunications, publishing, car dealerships, supermarkets, tourism and foreign trade.
According to US diplomats, as revealed by WikiLeaks cables last year, “seemingly half” of the Tunisian business community could claim a Ben Ali connection through marriage. Ben Ali’s family and friends, far from being ordinary businessmen, were simply a collection of thieves and looters of the state treasury and public assets, who were guilty of mafia-like practices, including coercion of competitors and compelling successful enterprises to hand over a portion of their profits. Unless connected to the family of the president, the ability of other businessmen to grow hit a ceiling, such was the greed of the Ben Alis and Trabelsis.
The Trabelsis are the most reviled and hated family in Tunisia. Belhassen, Leila’s brother, has a controlling interest in the Karthago Group, which is a big player in tourism, air transport, finance and travel services, and has expanded further into insurance and car dealerships – capturing the Ford, Jaguar and Land Rover licenses. Shaker-el-Materi, Ben Ali’s son-in-law, is the chief of Princess al-Materi Holding, a consortium with interests in banking, publishing, car dealerships and telecommunications.
The Mabrouks, a traditionally wealthy Tunisian family, one member of which, Marouane Mabrouk, married a Ben Ali daughter from a previous marriage, apart from having a big interest in the telecoms industry and a partnership with the French hypermarket Géant, have a large stake in Tunisia’s leading bank, the Banque Internationale Arabe de Tunisie (Biat).
During their 23 years’ reign, Ben Ali and his wife Leila had managed to bring under their control large areas of the Tunisian economy, manipulating the country’s political structures and using the state security apparatus to repress all opposition while they busied themselves with self-enrichment through theft, fraud, intimidation and such other dubious practices. And until very recently, everything appeared to by hunky-dory for both them and their imperialist backers.
The collapse
Then, all of a sudden, as it were, events unfolded with the speed of an avalanche, as resistance to this thoroughly corrupt and brutally repressive regime burst through to the surface. No one – neither the regime nor its opponents, neither Tunisians nor foreigners – had the faintest idea that the seemingly impregnable regime of Ben Ali, which had stifled and repressed the Tunisian masses for a whole 23 years and ruled over them with a rod of iron, was so brittle and vulnerable.
The regime began to unravel on Friday 17 December 2010, when Mohammed Bouazizi, a young man from the village of Lsouda near the central Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid, set himself on fire following the police refusal to let him sell fruit and vegetables without a permit and their confiscation of his stall.
The news of Bouazizi’s self-immolation quickly reached his neighbourhood, and the angry Bouzizis and their supporters descended on the prefecture. Hundreds of people thronged the streets during 18-20 December to vent their anger against unemployment and miserable economic conditions, while demanding the release of people arrested during the weekend protests. Mohammed’s suicide in protest against unemployment soon turned into a veritable revolt against exclusion, grinding poverty and the cost of living, as well as the Ben Ali regime’s shameless exploitation, corruption, injustice and tyranny.
Like wildfire, the news spread far and wide. Beginning with Sidi Bouzid, the revolt spread to all parts of the country in quick succession, since deprivation and tyranny, and the rage and indignation against them, were by no means confined to this town alone, being the common experience of Tunisian people the length and breadth of the country. By 27 December, the protests had spread to Tunis, the capital, where labour activists clashed with security forces.
Ben Ali’s regime attempted to crush the Tunisian people’s uprising through a mixture of disinformation and brutal repression, with the police firing on, and killing, demonstrators. This attempt at nipping the revolt in the bud and preventing its spread met with total failure, however. Its effect, on the contrary, was to give impetus to the rolling uprising and help it spread to all parts of the country, helping to turn what began as a protest against poverty and unemployment into a political movement for freedom and power through the overthrow of the Ben Ali clique.
On 27 December, Ben Ali made his first public statement since the beginning of the protests, saying that he “understood” the people’s anger, but adding that violence would not be tolerated. This barely veiled threat of violent suppression cowed no one, however, as was soon made clear by the determined response of the masses in continuing with their protests.
The slogans inscribed on the placards and banners the people carried were clear testimony to the awareness and understanding gained over the previous two decades of Ben Ali’s rule. Slogans such as ‘Work is a right, band of thieves’, ‘Hands off the country, corrupt band’, ‘Work, freedom, dignity’, ‘Down with the party of thieves’, and ‘Down with the torturers of the people’ were clear proof of the realisation by the masses that the regime by no means represented them. They understood that, on the contrary, it represented ‘a band of thieves’, a tiny handful of closely knit families, who had plundered the country, mortgaged parts of the economy to foreign capital, robbed the people of their liberty, subdued and humiliated them with the use of barbaric force and intimidation, and turned the country into a national prison and torture chamber for terrorising the people.
These slogans were expressive of the people’s aspirations for freedom, democracy and social justice – freedom from hunger, exploitation and tyranny – all of which could only be achieved through the overthrow, and on the ruins, of Ben Ali’s dictatorial regime, its constitution, laws and institutions, through a constituent assembly elected by the people in conditions of liberty and transparency.
Faced with the determined resistance of the masses, Ben Ali, the threatening bully of the early days of the revolt, quickly became a pale, quivering old man, pleading with the masses in his televised addresses to let him stay in the Carthage Palace a little longer – first for three years, then for just six months. Each time, the Tunisian masses thundered in response: ‘Not a day longer’.
On 12 January, in an effort to appease the masses, Ben Ali even sacked Rafik Belhaj Kacem, his much-hated interior minister, and called for the release of detained protesters, with his government promising to establish committees to inquire into corruption charges. But these belated actions and promises also proved futile.
In the end, having declared a state of emergency and dismissed his government, the 74-year-old executioner of the Tunisian people’s liberty, and his wife Leila, finally fled the country in the dead of night on 14 January, carrying with them £35m in gold. Having been denied entry into France, the pair found refuge in Saudi Arabia, while Ben Ali’s daughters sought sanctuary in Disneyland Paris hotels.
Imperialist support for Ben Ali
The Ben Ali dictatorship was an amalgam of internal suppression and imperialist support. For years, his imperialist backers armed him and gave him political support. He was portrayed as a guarantor of ‘stability’, a fighter against ‘Islamic fundamentalism’, and a fine student of the IMF. Tunisia under his rule was advertised as a shining example of ‘modernisation’.
With Ben Ali’s downfall, a model of stability that rests on wholesale repression, denial of the most basic liberties, heaps of corpses, and thousands of prisoners languishing in dungeons and torture chambers can no longer be openly defended and propagated. As a result, imperialist statesmen and media have changed their tune, almost giving the impression of supporting the Tunisian people’s uprising, partly to hide imperialism’s dirty role in providing succour to the Ben Ali dictatorship while blubbering about human rights and democracy, and partly in the hope of influencing future Tunisian developments in a direction favourable to imperialist interests. It is, therefore, worth remembering that imperialism and its institutions gave every possible help to the ousted Ben Ali regime.
Regarding Ben Ali as a bulwark against Islamism, the French government offered savoir faire (knowhow) to his security forces just three days before he fled, then performed a diplomatic volte face (about turn) by denying the fleeing dictator entry into France.
In 2008, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, spoke of Ben Ali’s Tunisia in the following glowing terms: “Certainly not everything is perfect in Tunisia. Not everything is perfect in France either … but … what country can be proud of having advanced in half a century on the path of progress, on the path of tolerance, and on the path of reason?”
Sarkozy’s predecessor, Jacques Chirac, spoke of the Tunisian “economic miracle” and praised its human rights record.
French governments – both conservative and ‘socialist’ (ie, social democratic) – gave consistent support to Ben Ali’s police-state regime.
Ben Ali was a star in Europe, admired for developing the country and maintaining stability in a volatile part of the world. The EU ignored concern for human rights and democratisation, enshrined in Article 2 of its trade agreement with Tunisia, which was the first to sign an association agreement with it.
This agreement, signed in 1995, was the product of the ‘Barcelona process’, aimed at enhancing cooperation with the countries of the southern Mediterranean. In the 14 years to 2009, Tunisia received €1.7bn in EU financial assistance and €2.8bn in loans from the European Investment Bank, aimed at encouraging ‘reform and modernisation’. During this period, the EU turned a blind eye to the Ben Ali police state and the corruption of his family, whose motto was “What is yours is mine”, in the language of the leaked US cables.
The US, for its part, appreciated Tunisian assistance in the fight against ‘terrorism’. David Welch, US assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs, spoke in these lyrical terms in praise of Ben Ali’s Tunisia in 2006: “Tunisia has much to be proud of, and we are honoured to have been a partner with this country for 50 years of achievement and development that is highlighted by the impressive economy and social structure of this nation.”
Also in 2006, Welch’s colleague Donald Rumsfeld, then US defence secretary, described Tunisia as a “successful” country, which had created an “environment that is hospitable to investment, enterprise and opportunity for their people”. (All quotations above cited in ‘France regrets misjudgement over Ben Ali’ by Roula Khalaf and Scheherazade Daneshkhu, Financial Times, 18 January 2011)
Translated into ordinary language, Rumsfeld’s words simply meant that as Tunisian authorities had crushed all labour and political opposition, as they had opened the Tunisian economy to imperialist exploitation and plunder, and as they had deregulated the labour market and suppressed political parties that might question all of this, Tunisia had become “safe” for investment and unhindered plunder by imperialism – and by its favourite Tunisian family, the Ben Alis.
As long as Ben Ali had created an environment “hospitable to investment”, it was a matter of small inconvenience that he was running a police state, and that his coterie of corrupt family members and close associates were amassing enormous amounts of wealth at the cost of the Tunisian people.
The recent history of Tunisia furnishes yet another proof of Lenin’s observation that imperialism strives for domination, not freedom. (V I Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, 1917)
As is to be expected, the World Bank (WB) and the IMF consistently applauded Tunisia, praising its “success” in alleviating poverty, its sound economic management and, unbelievably, its “good governance”, demonstration of the “rule of law” and its “control of corruption”. Even the Financial Times was belatedly obliged to observe that the 2010 World Bank Country brief on Tunisia “looks surreal today”.
It would be more accurate to say that it was always surreal; only the Financial Times, like the leaders and ideologues of the US and EU generally, as well as those of the IMF and the WB, chose to ignore Tunisian reality in the interests of imperialism’s never-ceasing chase after maximum profit and domination.
The first sentence of the World Bank brief states that “Tunisia has made remarkable progress on equitable growth, fighting poverty and achieving good social indicators.”
It goes on: “Tunisia has consistently scored above its income category and the Middle East and North Africa average on most dimensions of comparative governance rankings and development indexes … Tunisia is far ahead in terms of government effectiveness, rule of law, control of corruption and regulatory quality.” (‘World Bank country brief’, 2010)
Tunisians have launched a Ben Ali “Wall of shame” group on Facebook, which includes, among others, a video clip of Ban Ki-Moon, UN Secretary General, praising Ben Ali for a presidential initiative that declared last year as the ‘International year of youth’. This was at a time when unemployment among young Tunisian graduates topped 20 percent.
“A more striking example of … decay of the entire European [and American] bourgeoisie”, observed Lenin, “can scarcely be cited than the support it is lending to reaction in Asia [and everywhere else] for the sake of the selfish aims of the financial manipulators and capitalist swindlers.” (‘Backward Europe and advanced Asia’, 18 May 1913)
The proletariat in Europe has a duty to join the Tunisian masses in exposing the decadence and hypocrisy of the statesmen and hired hacks of imperialism, who, in the service of the selfish aims of finance capital, lend support to reactionary, dictatorial, medieval and autocratic regimes the world over.
Attempt to steal the revolution
On 17 January, following the flight of Ben Ali, prime minister Mohammed Ghannouchi announced the formation of the so-called new National Unity Government (NUG), promising political and economic reforms. That this new government was a ploy to continue the Ben Ali dictatorship without Ben Ali was evident from the fact that it was stuffed full of ministers from the old regime.
The announcement of the new government, containing eight ministers from the RCD and in which all the important portfolios, including that of defence, foreign affairs and finance, were allotted to the same persons who had held them under Ben Ali, shocked the Tunisian people, who, seeing through this attempt to steal the people’s revolution, vented their fury in vigorous demonstrations.
When the police used tear gas to disperse demonstrators protesting against the NUG, four ministers resigned from the new cabinet within a day of its formation. On 18 January, in a desperate bid to stop a total collapse, the interim prime minister, Mohammed Ghannouchi, and president, Fouad Mebazaa (until recently the parliamentary speaker), both of them long-term loyal servants of Ben Ali and prominent members of the RCD, announced that they were resigning their membership of the RCD.
Following them, other RCD ministers serving in the NUG withdrew from the party, and the Central Committee of the RCD was dissolved. Although the RCD is being wound up and its prominent members are busy renouncing Ben Ali, these actions are meaningless if the same figures occupy positions of power in the new government.
The NUG has been forced by the masses to recognise all banned political parties, and to free all political prisoners. Tunisian television was obliged to host a live programme within hours of Ben Ali’s departure, and has since been staging phone-in programmes, with citizens expressing joy at the downfall and forced exile of Ben Ali and members of his much-despised family.
The authorities have arrested 33 members of Ben Ali’s family, with the state television announcing that they were suspected of “crimes against Tunisia” and showing footage of vast amounts of gold and jewellery found in their possession. The arrests came hours after the Swiss authorities announced that they were taking steps to freeze the bank accounts and assets of Ben Ali and his family. Tunisian lobby groups based in Paris have filed a complaint with the public prosecutor there and asked for the assets held by the Ben Ali and Trabelsi families to be frozen.
Tunisia’s state television has also stated that Ali Seriati, the head of the special presidential police force that protected Ben Ali, is to face charges for threatening national security and provoking “armed violence among Tunisians”, in a reference to the wave of attacks on property and shootings that terrorised Tunisians following Ben Ali’s departure for Saudi Arabia.
These attacks were the work of Seriati’s force, which was intent upon causing chaos. Its actions prompted young Tunisians, armed with knives, sticks and metal bars, to form defence committees and take upon themselves the protection of their neighbourhoods.
In an even more dramatic development, Tunisia’s once-dreaded police, who put into effect the repressive policies of Ben Ali, joined forces with the protesters on Saturday 22 January as they marched through the streets of the capital. Some non-uniformed officers, who wore red armbands to distinguish themselves from civilians, led a protest on Saturday and called for the creation of a police union and greater rights and pay.
The Tunisian government has issued an international warrant for the arrest of Ben Ali, accusing him of taking money out of the country illegally, and has asked Interpol, the French-based international police organisation, to arrest him and his wife and bring them back to Tunisia. The couple are also being charged with illegally acquiring real estate and other assets.
Such has been the extent of the revolt that 11,029 prisoners, about a third of the prison population of Tunisia, were able to escape their jails in the conditions created by the uprising.
Despite these welcome developments, the Tunisian masses are rightfully sceptical, that the actions of the new government and the discourse of the mass media is merely aimed at absorbing, and assuaging, the public anger of the people. In the words of Mutaa al-Waer, a student: “It [the media discourse] focuses on Ben Ali and his wife Leila, as if now that they are gone, all the problems have departed with them. The same people are in office and the same institutions are in control” (Quoted in ‘Media enjoy their new-found freedom’ by Heba Saleh, Financial Times, 19 January 2011)
Following the downfall of Ben Ali, angry masses have ransacked and torched properties belonging to Ben Ali, his wife, and their cronies. As members of the Trabelsi family fled the country over the weekend of 15-16 January, angry crowds moved into their homes, stripping away all furniture and fittings and setting fire to debris-filled interiors.
On Saturday 15 January, in the upmarket district of La Marsa, on the outskirts of Tunis, neighbours entered the house of Imed Trabelsi, Leila Ben Ali’s favourite nephew, surveying the charred remains and taking pictures. Current reports vary over whether Imed died in hospital of knife wounds or has managed to flee the country with his skin still intact.
“All this was bought with our money, with the money and blood of the Tunisian people,” said Samira, a health worker, adding “whoever comes next, for sure, will not steal as much as they did”. (Quoted in ‘Looters strip homes of Ben Ali’s relatives’ by Roula Khalaf and Heba Saleh, Financial Times, 17 January 2011)
The masses have targeted their wrath on the symbols of corruption – businesses owned by Ben Ali and Leila’s family, and by their close associates. On Saturday 17 January, the Géant store just outside of Tunis was pillaged and torched. Meanwhile, the main road into the town of Kasserine bears scars from the revolt of the people sweeping the country, with a large furniture store and the petrol station burnt and looted, the front windows of bank branches smashed, and government buildings and RCD offices torched.
The task ahead
Having overthrown Ben Ali, the Tunisian people have only partly realised their aspirations for genuine freedom and reform. The despot has gone, but the huge despotic state machine, which has grown monstrously since the country gained independence from French colonial in 1956, rule is still intact.
This apparatus of repression, whose foundations were laid by Habib Bourguiba, were perfected by Ben Ali, the general who inherited it. Smashing this monstrous machinery of repression will not be accomplished easily, but accomplished it must be if the Tunisian people are not to emerge empty-handed from their revolutionary struggle. This is the most urgent task facing them today.
Tunisia, though a small country with a population of only 10 million and few resources, is better placed than many an Arab country to complete a successful democratic revolution. Its people are largely urbanised and, compared with its neighbours, are highly educated.
Since Ben Ali was ousted, two opposing camps have emerged. The first of these aims at continuing the old regime under a new façade – basically recycling Ben Ali’s hated regime with a few cosmetic changes. This is the strategy of Ghannouchi’s NUG, whose interim government does not include any of the real forces representing the Tunisian people – communists, socialists, Islamists and liberals.
By including so many loathed figures from the RCD, the NUG gives the impression that it is oblivious to the revolutionary movement in the streets of towns and cities up and down the country. Ben Ali’s security apparatus is still in place, and the NUG is obviously intent on continuing the old order and stealing the revolution of the people with a few democratic-sounding phrases and a modicum of tinkering to the existing institutions.
Opposed to Ghannouchi’s strategy is the plan of the opposition to smash the legacy of Ben Ali and all the institutions of his regime, including the security apparatus and the RCD, and on its ruins build a truly democratic state.
This is the plan that is being striven for by, among others, the Communist Party of the Workers of Tunisia (PCOT), led by Hamma al-Hammami. In its striving to guarantee the victory of the revolution against internal and external enemies, who are attempting to deprive the Tunisian people of the fruits of the revolution, PCOT has initiated the formation of the 14th January Front, composed of several political parties and progressive and democratic organisations.
This front has set itself, among others, the following tasks:
• The bringing down of Ghannouchi’s NUG, or any government that includes figures from the erstwhile regime.
• The dissolution of the RCD and the confiscation of its assets.
• The dissolution of the House of Representatives, the Advisors’ Council and the Higher Council of the Judiciary, and the dismantlement of the political structure of the former regime.
• The trials of those who have been guilty of repression, imprisonment, torture and killings, as well as of those who have looted the people’s wealth.
• The confiscation of the property of the former ruling family, their close associates and officials who abused their position to amass wealth at the expense of the masses.
• The provision of employment, social benefits and medical services for all, as well as measures to increase the purchasing power of the masses.
• The construction of the national economy in a way which serves the interests of the masses, and the renationalisation of all those enterprises that were privatised by the previous regime to comply with the IMF’s neo-liberal agenda.
• The guaranteeing of basic liberties, such as the freedom of association, freedom of expression, freedom of belief, and freedom of the press.
• Opposition to normalisation of relations with the zionist state of Israel and support for all the national-liberation movements in the Arab lands and the wider world.
• Preparation for the election of a constituent assembly within a period of one year, the enactment of a new democratic constitution and the institution of a legal system that will regulate public life and ensure the political, economic and cultural rights of the people.
Ramifications
The reverberations of the Tunisian revolution are sweeping across the entire Arab world – from large cities to tiny hamlets and villages. A sense of euphoria is felt by the masses, for this is the first time in an Arab country that a despotic ruler has been overthrown by the popular masses without foreign intervention or a coup d’état.
While the Tunisian events have brought joy to the Arab street, they have stunned their reactionary rulers and brought them face to face with their worst nightmare. They are petrified at the thought of the Tunisian disease infecting their subjects.
Arabs under the age of 30 years comprise nearly 65 percent of the entire population of the 22 Arab countries. The convergence of the Arab youth bulge with economic deprivation and brutal exploitation across the region, with shared humiliation at the hands of imperialism and its zionist stooges, as well as at the hands of autocratic and repressive regimes, have combined with the introduction of modern communications, including the internet, and particularly social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, to become an explosive and potent mix, which threatens the rule of the reactionary Arab autocracies and dictatorships.
In Tunisia, Twitter provided second-by-second updates of events on the ground and acted as a medium of agitation and organisation. Facebook is enormously popular in Tunisia and was a major instrument for organising protests and uploading videos. Al-Jazeera, the popular Arab television channel, broadcast powerful images of the unrest and police brutality to millions of people who are not on Facebook and have never heard of Twitter. This combination of new and old media has shaken the Arab world to its foundations.
The rulers of Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Algeria and Saudi Arabia must be shaking in their shoes, for once the fear is gone, the machinery of state repression is powerless in the face of mass fury. The Tunisian revolution has knocked the stuffing out of the assumption about the durability of the middle-eastern rulers.
Equally, the modern Arab security state – so beloved of US and European imperialism for over half a century – has been punctured and deflated in Tunisia by the power of its own people. Similar events are bound to overwhelm the rest of the Arab world.
The Tunisian events have served to shatter two long-standing myths about the Arab world. First, that the power of the people is irrelevant to any change in the region. Second, that young Arabs will put up with autocratic rule and colossal corruption provided they are financially looked after. Tunisia’s revolution, though sparked by anger at unemployment, gained its momentum from the stifling of all opposition and freedom of expression, and from anger at the greed of the Ben Alis and Trabesis. The old assumptions, according to which economic development hand-in-hand with a powerful security apparatus could guarantee the safety of the rulers, has been seriously undermined.
Foreign banks released research in the third week of January that portrays the changing perceptions of the Arab world. The powerful Citigroup characterised Tunisia’s uprising as a wake-up call for investors and a “game-changing event”. In a report it said: “The Jasmine revolution … could be the match that starts a slow-burning fire of change.” (See ‘Tunisia’s ‘air of liberty’ wafts through Mideast’ by Roula Khalaf and Heba Saleh, Financial Times, 21 January 2011)
Indeed, following demonstrations in Cairo and other cities, investors’ concerns have pushed down the Egyptian stock market to its lowest point since November of last year. It plummeted by a massive 10 percent on Thursday 27 January alone.
After the Tunisian uprising, everything is possible; things will never be the same again. The events in Tunisia have clearly resonated in several other Arab countries, where people are similarly frustrated and have been made equally desperate by grinding poverty, unemployment, corruption and state brutality. There have been copycat acts of self-immolation in Mauritania, Algeria and Egypt. Huge demonstrations are lighting the powder kegs of Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Algeria and Mauritania.
On Tuesday 25 January, inspired by the Tunisian revolution, tens of thousands of protestors seized control of parts of Cairo as mass protests broke out in Alexandria, the Nile Delta cities of Mansura and Tanta, the southern cities of Aswan and Assuit, and the rural Nile village of Mahalla, a centre of political and labour activism.
The government employed 30,000 riot police, who used tear gas, water cannon, batons and live ammunition to disperse demonstrators. However, the protestors took control of central Tahrir Square, close to parliament, threw stones at the police, chased them down streets and, in one case, commandeered an armoured vehicle.
In these protests, hailed as a national ‘Day of Rage’, the main demand of the demonstrators was an end to the nearly 30-year-old corrupt and autocratic rule of Hosni Mubarak, who has presided over an Egypt that does the bidding of US imperialism while most of its people live in dire poverty. As we go to press, these protests are continuing, and, although the regime initially tried to ban the demonstrations, the latest news from Cairo is that Hosni Mubarak has performed a u-turn and announced his intention to hold discussions with the demonstrators,
Meanwhile, on Thursday 27 January, tens of thousands of Yemenis took to the streets of Sanaa (the country’s capital) to demand a change of government there too. Ali Abdullah Saleh, the president of 30 years’ standing, has been another faithful servant to US imperialism while half of Yemen’s 23 million people have to try and live on $2 a day. A third of Yemenis suffer from chronic hunger. Given the above bare facts, it is hardly surprising that a rival ‘demonstration’ organised as a face-saving measure by the government attracted just a few hundred people.
All over the Arab world, nervous rulers have hurried in with financial handouts in a bid to stave off the Tunisian malaise. Kuwait, for example, has given each of its citizens a $3,500 grant and free food staples. They are, however, bound to discover that the demands for change go far beyond the calls for economic betterment. The people are demonstrating that they will tolerate corrupt, arrogant and autocratic rulers no more; and no repressive state machine has the power to control the people’s fury once it is unleashed. This is the lesson of Tunisia.
In the light of the foregoing, it is clear that the Tunisian revolution is destined to serve as a harbinger of a wider Arab revolt against despotic, feudal, repressive and autocratic regimes and their US and European imperialist masters.
Victory to the intifada!
The seventeenth World Festival of Youth and Students took place in Pretoria at the close of last year.
Last December, 65,000 young people and students gathered from all over the world to share ideas and information under the slogan ‘Let’s defeat imperialism, for a world of peace, solidarity and social transformation!’ The CPGB-ML and its youth section Red Youth sent comrades to participate in these important discussions.
A lively and varied programme of events had been arranged, with each day’s seminars, workshops and forums devoted to a particular continent. Britain, as the world’s oldest imperialist power, was in one way or another represented on each day! Indeed, not a day passed where Britain’s role in oppressing, humiliating, exploiting or colonising various parts of the world was not discussed.
Indeed, whether it is Britain’s interference in Zimbabwe, its maintenance of military bases in South America (most notably the Falklands), its colonial legacy throughout Asia, or its support for the loyal ‘jewish Ulster’ in the Middle East; everywhere one struggles against imperialism, it seems as though one has to deal with British imperialism!
And the entire period spent in South Africa was, of course, a reminder of British imperialism’s continuing insidious involvement in that continent too, as well as of its support for the Apartheid regime and the legacy of racism and brutality.
Even today, the dead hand of British social democracy seems able to stretch across the oceans and continents; according to the CPB’s Robert Griffiths, writing in the Morning Star on 20 November, the new programme of the South African Communist Party (SACP) is entitled The South African Road to Socialism! If the text is modelled on its British counterpart, the South African masses may not have too much truck with the programme’s contents!
Opening of the festival
Our comrades arrived on the morning of the opening day of the festival, 13 December. The programme for the day included an address by Tiago Viera the President of WFDY (World Federation of Youth and Students) and Julius Malema of the ANC Youth League. Later that day, President of South Africa Jacob Zuma delivered a speech of welcome that was widely reported in the South African media that evening and in the newspapers the following day.
With a huge number of events taking place over a short space of time, the CPGB-ML delegates were careful to pick out those forums where the presence of an anti-imperialist delegation from Britain would be most welcomed, and where we could demonstrate our solidarity with existing struggles and exchange information with good comrades from all over the world.
Time was spent with comrades from Europe, especially with members of the Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain, the Communist Party of Sweden, the Workers’ Party of Belgium and the Socialist Party of Latvia. Our comrades also spent time with friends from the Workers Party of Korea, the Communist Party of Syria and with many comrades from Turkey, India, Laos and even the USA.
Our delegates were somewhat taken aback upon arrival to find that a few ‘comrades’ from America were passing themselves off as the British delegation! These rascals emphatically declared that the Young Communist League in Britain (YCL – the youth wing of the CPB) had facilitated their attendance; but as these comrades were from the ultra-Trotskyist newspaper The Militant, their story seemed somewhat unlikely! Apparently, since their return, these ‘delegates’ have been reporting not only upon the festival but also on the “lines of illegal Zimbabwean immigrants” forced to find work in South Africa “because of the much more desperate situation in their own country”!
Judging by the Militant clique’s online reports of the festival, it seems that their representatives busied themselves speaking up and interjecting on the wrong side of all manner of debates, recording their support for, among others, the Kurdish quislings in northern Iraq! Apparently “the right of nations to self-determination is a pillar in the fight against imperialism”, regardless of the context! Proletarian would suggest that when a reactionary bunch of toe-rags, led by the likes of Jalal Talabani, welcome in the Anglo-American imperialist occupation forces and are happy to assist them in their maraudering, this is nothing more or less than collusion with imperialism and participation in some of the most heinous war crimes committed in recent history!
It seemed to us bizarre indeed that an outfit like The Militant could gain access to a festival of progressive youth, occupy the British stand and spout this kind of tripe, while Red Youth and the CPGB-ML had to do things the hard way, having had little or no response from the British Preparatory Committee organisers of the CPB/YCL. Comrades, whatever our political differences may be, please heed our advice and cease communication with all these Icelandic and American rascals operating out of London!
Zimbabwe solidarity
Since Zimbabwe and Zanu-PF have regularly to repel repeated attacks from imperialists, social democrats and Trotskyists alike, we were pleased that our party had sent some real anti-imperialists to the festival who were ready to counter the lies presented as facts by these renegades and outright enemies of the people.
In numerous meetings and discussions, the counter-arguments were put by our comrades, and Zim TV reported on our solidarity work. At a meeting of some 400 delegates discussing Zimbabwe’s land redistribution programme on the second day of the festival, our comrades delivered a short message of solidarity to the Zimbabwean masses, and to their revolutionary leadership in Zanu-PF. Our delegate told the meeting:
“Thank you, comrades. I bring greetings to the festival and to Zanu-PF from Britain as a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist). I can assure the meeting that we continue our solidarity work through our party and the Zimbabwe Solidarity Front in Britain, and we stand with you still.
“Comrades, Britain’s role in Zimbabwe has been thoroughly disgraceful, stretching right back to the days of Cecil Rhodes and the Victorian colonisers of the 19th century. When these thieves took the land from the Zimbabwean people, they didn’t take just any old land; no, they took the very best land, the most fertile land in Zimbabwe! [Applause and loud agreement!]
“… And comrades, there is a myth being perpetrated by the imperialists. Indeed, it is much worse than a myth, for it is a giant lie. The lie which these thieves are spreading is that the economic problems Zimbabwe has suffered have been as a result of the mismanagement of their land! But we know that the economic problems that Zimbabwe has suffered have been the direct result of imperialism! [Loud applause and cheering]
“To stand in solidarity with Zimbabwe and Zanu is not an easy task in Britain, but we will continue to stand on the side of justice, on the side of Zimbabwe, on the side of Zanu. [Applause] The work you are doing is helping us in our struggle back home against our common enemy, the British ruling class. The conditions of the British workers deteriorate day by day, and we are aided in our struggle by movements such as yours, which rain down blows upon the British ruling class which exploits us both. Comrades, we thank you for helping us in our task by kicking British imperialism out of your country once and for all! [Stormy applause]
“I would like to end with our common slogans: Down with imperialism! Viva Chimurenga! Viva Comrade Mugabe! Viva Zanu!”
As a small but growing party, the CPGB-ML’s resources are limited, as is our ability to communicate with the masses of British workers and anti-imperialists. We recognise these shortcomings and we aim to overcome them.
To contribute in this work, our party has produced a number of interviews, presentations and educational materials, which are available on the internet, specifically through our YouTube page. While in South Africa, our delegates took the opportunity to interview various comrades from around the world, and an excellent interview with Zimbabwe’s youngest Member of Parliament, Anastancia Ndhlovu, is now available to watch at youtube.com/user/ProletarianCPGBML.
Looking ahead
Our party’s internationalist work, which started in Gaza in January, was rounded off nicely by the WFDY festival at the close of 2010. The challenges for 2011 are greater than ever, as are our ambitions.
We take heart from the shared struggle that we are engaged in, and also from the ranks of new and dedicated youngsters who have joined Red Youth and the party. We hope that by the time of the next festival we will be better prepared to make a still greater contribution, and are determined that our political intervention shall be as solid as ever, based as it is on the principals of scientific socialism, Marxism Leninism.
Excerpts from the final declaration of the festival
We, the delegates to the 17th Festival of Youth and Students, gathered from 126 countries, more than 15,000 in numbers, have met under the theme ‘Let’s defeat imperialism for a world of peace, solidarity and social transformation’ on the shore of the majestic, dynamic and vibrant South Africa. Here we have fought for decades, side by side, from all walks of life to bring down the tyranny of the Apartheid system, fostered to increase the hold of imperialism on our people.
We fought with the people of South Africa and today we meet here to further our struggle against all injustices and discriminations. We meet in South Africa on the eve of the centenary of the liberation movement the ANC, in 2012 …
The crisis of the capitalist system is inherent to the deepening of its inner contradictions, unveiling its historical incapacity to achieve progress for mankind. This crisis provides the ground for emerging imperialist forces that in the past have either clashed with the USA or EU, or have been their allies, to use the different timing in the manifestation of the crisis to increase their influence in the imperialist pyramid, to hold a bigger piece in the capitalist struggle for markets and exploitation.
It is not a result of the administration models of the economy or the corruption of the system; it is now expressed all around the capitalist world in both neo-liberal and social-democrat led countries. We are in a phase of deepening of the crisis; the recuperation in the following years will be minuscule: the rights of the youth will continue to be attacked at social, economical and cultural level every day.
It demonstrates the historical limits and the failure of the capitalist system to answer to the peoples’ needs and aspirations; it highlights the need for the creation of a society and a mode of development that will strive to fulfil the youth’s and the peoples’ needs and rights …
The ‘external debts and deficits’ that have become a reality for many countries are results of the policies followed by the capitalist forces in all countries, independently of their position in the correlation of forces. They reflect the unequal development and the division of work in the capitalist system. They are utilised so that the dominant class in both loaner and loaning countries becomes more potent while the people suffer from the load of the crisis on their backs.
In the international imperialist system there is no place for equal and respectful relationships between the states and the peoples; it is another proof of the need for revolutionary social transformation of the system that bears inequality and misery.
Imperialist warmongering policies produce such crises as refugees, millions of people who are compelled to leave their homes, lands, jobs and families. We strongly condemn the imperialist economic policies, interventions and occupations that have produced millions of immigrants, we uptake the struggle in the defence of the rights of the immigrants in work, education, social services. No human being can be illegal.
We, the youth and students of the world gathered in this historical festival, raised our voices against all the illnesses generated by imperialism, which is undergoing its greatest global crisis. The imperialist world order is driving humanity to the verge of a global confrontation, with the ever-present danger of a nuclear war, through its hegemonic policy that will determine the present and the future of mankind.
It is time to continue the struggle for youth development and our economic, social and cultural values and not those of a decadent system they are trying to impose on us. We shall build a future of justice, equality, peace, hope and joy for humanity. The future of a new stage of history is in our hands and it depends on the peoples, working masses and world youth and their power of transformation, to build a world of peace and solidarity, where the power and the produced wealth will belong to the peoples and the youth of the world.
We thank the people of South Africa for welcoming us to their country and celebrating with us the opportunity to see South Africa change. We commit to you that we, the youth of the world, will never let our guard down in pursuance of a world free of imperialism. Let us start getting ready for the 18th World Festival of Youth and Students! (wfdy.org, 7 January 2011)
Red Youth was very happy to attend the 17th World Festival of Youth and Students in Pretoria, South Africa this December 2010 along with comrades of the CPGB-ML.
Amongst the many comrades we met and spoke with, Red Youth made sure that we spent time with comrades from Zanu-PF Youth League, who are an integral part of the WFDY and had send more than 2,000 delegates to South Africa. As part of our solidarity work with Zimbabwe’s anti-imperialist movement we conducted an interview with Zanu MP Anastasia Nhudlovu. In an interview for Proletarian Comrade Anastasia explains the role of China in Africa, the ongoing sanctions, comrade Mugabe’s leadership and the failure of the MDC to hand the country back over to British imperialism. Watch the video and explore some of the links at the bottom of the post for further information:
Chimurenga! The liberation struggle in Zimbabwe.
Statement of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) on the events on the Korean peninsula follows two video links. The first is part one of a debate held on Presstv where our Party Vice-Chair Ella Rule defends the DPRK from the provocations of imperialism. The second is the first in a series of short films which present the reality of life in Peoples Korea with photographs taken by a comrade who visited in September 2010. Watch and read, and then spread around! Each one, teach one!
A dangerous situation is now prevailing on the Korean peninsula, posing risks not only to the peace of that country, but also of the region and the wider world, as a result of the incessant provocations and military moves of US imperialism and its south Korean puppets.
In a military exercise codenamed Hoguk, the south Korean reactionary regime mobilised 70,000 troops, 50 warships, 90 helicopters, 500 warplanes and 600 tanks, joined by the US Marine Corps and the US Seventh Air Force, in what the socialist Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) aptly described as a “rehearsal for an invasion” of their country.
Moreover, the United States and south Korea chose to centre this provocative exercise on Yeonpyeong island, which, in the words of the New York Times, “sits just two miles from the Northern Limit Line, the disputed sea border which the north does not recognise, and only eight miles from the north Korean coast”.
Under such circumstances, missiles fired into the sea from this island cannot fail to enter and land in the sovereign, territorial waters of the DPRK, an act of aggression, indeed of war, in international law.
Faced with this act of aggression, and after issuing several warnings, the revolutionary armed forces of the DPRK finally took self-defensive military actions on 23 November, launching a powerful strike at the enemy’s military positions.
The Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) (CPGB-ML) strongly denounces the heightened aggression and threats against the DPRK by imperialism and its stooges and resolutely supports all the measures taken by the DPRK to defend its sovereignty, independence and socialist system by military and other means.
Even a careful study of the bourgeois press shows without any doubt that it was the DPRK that was the victim of aggression, rather than the other way round.
According to an Associated Press report:
“The skirmish began Tuesday when north Korea warned the south to halt military drills near their sea border…When Seoul refused and began firing artillery into disputed waters…the north retaliated by shelling the small island of Yeonpyeong…”
The south Korean newspaper, The Hankyoreh, carried a similar report:
“Prior to the incident the south Korean military carried out a firing exercise…in the (disputed) area around Yeonpyeong Island and Baengnyeong Island…North Korea sent a message Tuesday morning that it would not tolerate firing in its territorial waters.”
The New York Times noted that south Korean “artillery units had been firing from a battery on the south Korean island of Baeknyeongdo, close to the north Korean coast” and that “the south acknowledged firing test shots in the (disputed) area”.
Yet despite the clear evidence presented by their own media, the imperialist powers are unanimous in seeking to pin the blame on the DPRK and in using this incident to increase military, diplomatic and economic pressure on the country.
British imperialism is also playing a criminal role in this regard. Foreign Secretary William Hague, fully supported by his Labour opposite number Yvette Cooper, accused the DPRK of an “unprovoked attack”. This is no different from the Hitlerian logic, according to which nazi Germany was the victim of an “unprovoked attack” by Czechoslovakia.
Against this venal stand of British imperialism, the CPGB-ML calls on the working class movement, the anti-war movement and all progressive people to support fully the just stand of the DPRK for an end to aggression and threats against the country and, in particular, to support its consistent, just and reasonable stand that the armistice agreement, that ended the fighting in Korea in July 1953, be finally replaced by a peace treaty, to be concluded between the DPRK and the United States as sovereign countries, so that the Korean people might finally have the dark clouds of war and nuclear holocaust lifted from their skies and be free to solve their own problems by themselves.
Firmly support the just stand of the DPRK!
Hands off Korea!
On its 93rd anniversary, CPGB-ML Chairman Harpal Brar gives a lecture on the significance of the Great Socialist October Revolution, and why it is still relevant to workers of Britain and the world today.
As capitalism spirals ever deeper into crisis and tries to enforce all its miseries on the peoples of the world, whether by genocidal colonial war, or ever more severe austerity measures and cuts in the heartlands of imperialism, never has the task of winning workers to socialism been a more relevant, urgent and pressing task.
Join us!!
Go to our youtube page to see the whole talk!
Read the article in Lalkar
Zimbabwe has long been the target of a campaign of hate; British imperialism was maddened by the Third Chimurenga , and Zimababwe’s desire to solve its land problems once and for all. Since the latest land reforms we’ve seen all the black arts deployed against ZANU(PF) and Robert Mugabe, and the BBC has played its role in stirring up decent in Zimbabwe and meddling from Europe and America. But a recent report has rubbished many of the claims made over the last decade by the BBC and the British Government. Such claims about the corrupt distribution of the land, the total failure of Chimurenga, and the imminent collapse of Zimbabwe’s economy (that never actually happened – much to imperialism dismay).
A 10 year investigation by Ian Scoones (Sussex University) goes some way (however imperfectly) to putting the record straight. Below is the link to the BBC Report:
In a magnificent response to the government’s declared intention to raise the cap on university tuition fees to a new ceiling of £9,000, as many as 52,000 students and lecturers supported a national demonstration in London on 10 November, vastly exceeding the expectations of the organisers, the National Union of Students (NUS) and University and College Lecturers Union (UCU). The NUS had at first predicted a turn out of 5,000 and even later only revised this figure up to 15,000. The turn out was also a shock to the police, who found themselves on the back foot.
The capitalist media and the police have reacted with apoplexy, pretending that an excess of caution in the wake of the murder by police of Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protest had made the police a soft touch. The reality was rather that the state failed to anticipate and deal with the overwhelming scale of popular fury, despite the Met’s unquenched en-thusiasm for breaking heads. In a vindictive reaction to the humiliation inflicted at Millbank, the police and supporting tabloid press have gone into overdrive, with 50 arrested on the day, photos of numerous other “suspects” splashed across the papers, and Cameron puffing that the “full force of the law will be used”. The state is jumpy enough now to resort to direct censorship. A website called Fitwatch, described as a “street-level response to intimidation and har-assment from the forward intelligence teams (Fits) ” (i.e. police spies), reported to the Guardian that the Met had succeeded in getting the site shut down for a year for “attempting to pervert the course of justice”. The offending post was simply offering advice to students in the aftermath of the Millbank occupation.
Social democracy terrified of success
The size and the ferocity of the protest caught the organisers off-guard too, with the top leadership of both the UCU and the NUS shamefully rushing to dissociate themselves from the scale and character of the affair. Of particular concern to these gentry was the very effective mass occupation of the Conservative Party headquarters in Millbank. It was only to be expected that the capitalist media should denounce this bold step as “mindless violence” led by “hooligans”: defending capitalism is after all their primary function. However, many who were on the march, and many others who supported it, will have been confused to hear the same song being sung by the very people who are supposed to be leading the resistance to the cuts in education and other public services.
The general secretary of UCU, Sally Hunt at once shot off a letter to her members denouncing the occupation as an “attack on offices in Millbank by a tiny minority” which “must have been terrifying for the hundreds of ordinary office workers – people like you and me – unlucky enough to be at work in the building on that day”. This disgusting nonsense was rapidly contradicted by lecturers at Metropolitan and Goldsmiths, who hastened to give their support to the direct action. Meanwhile the Labour-supporting careerist president of the NUS, Aaron Porter, parroted the same line as Hunt, spluttering: “I absolutely condemn the actions of a small minority who have used violent means to hijack the protest . . . if some people think it’s appropriate to use violence, it’s a total disgrace, and they have completely hijacked this opportunity to make a serious point.”
Those in attendance, and those countless others who have seen the video rushes, will know that this is simply a lie. John Harris nailed it nicely (Guardian, 12 November 2010): “On the BBC, there was a particularly priceless moment. When Porter once again talked about ‘hijacking’, the coverage cut to the mass of people outside Tory HQ, the presenter made the point that this was not what ‘a small minority’ would look like – and Porter seemed momentarily lost for words. You had only to look at the crowd to know that the vast majority of them were not anarchists, but reasonably regular twentysomethings”. Contrary to some reports, most of the protestors were neither wild-eyed anarchists nor Cambridge students (though it’s good to hear that Kings College has a hammer and sickle flag hanging in the student bar) but ordinary people driven to extraordinary measures by an unprecedented assault on their futures.
Cuts: state violence against the working class
The truth is that by letting universities jack up tuition fees into the stratosphere whilst simultaneously pulling the plug on the education maintenance allowances (EMAs), the government has blighted the education and career prospects of a whole generation of youth. These attacks on the working class are the real violence, not a few broken windows in Milbank, and the youth are a thousand times right to come out fighting against this class oppression. As the Cambridge students involved in the occupation told the press, “All the talk about damage to public property – it’s kind of a pittance compared to the kind of cuts that lots of people at the march are going to experience … what the Con-Dems are doing is violence against ordinary people. Raising tuition fees is a kind of violence. Rehousing people and putting them in segregated areas is a kind of violence.”
Porter’s sectarian attack upon his fellow students has not gone unchallenged. Whilst the official thrust of NUS cam-paigning focuses on the LibDems’ broken promises over tuition fees (helping distract from Labour’s efforts to play down its earlier support for fees and line up behind a graduate tax), Porter is having trouble making his social democratic writ run in a student body which has been convulsed with anger over the cuts.
Break the link with Labour
Just in the few days following the Milbank occupation, there was further direct action by students, including the occu-pation of the finance block in Manchester Uni by 80 students and of the Fulton building at Sussex Uni by over 170. In a statement from Sussex, students declared: “We reject the media manipulation of the occupation of Millbank. The cost of the damage to 30 Millbank is less than insignificant when set against the damage of lost livelihoods and destruction of public services for future generations. This occupation recognises that Aaron Porter’s statements condemning the demonstration are counter-productive and serve only to divide and segregate the movement.”
The presidents of a number of student unions have also signed up to a statement which rejects “any attempt to char-acterise the Millbank protest as small, ‘extremist’ or unrepresentative of our movement”, and goes on to “celebrate the fact that thousands of students were willing to send a message to the Tories that we will fight to win. Occupations are a long established tradition in the student movement that should be defended.”
The divisive leadership in the upper reaches of the NUS is a direct consequence of the stranglehold exercised over the union by the Labour party. Not only was disgraced racist and former Labour minister Phil Woolas once sitting where Porter sits today, but also Charles Clarke and Jack Straw. Reclaiming the NUS for the students will not just be a battle to get rid of Porter, but to uproot the whole rotten social democratic tradition which keeps the NUS tied to the Labour party and capitalism.
Workers and students unite
As the student protests roll forward, we need not busy ourselves with abstract debates about the relative merits of “peaceful” versus “violent” tactics, or of “discipline” versus “anarchy”. The power of the working class and its allies lies in organisation, so we would surely agree with Hunt when she tells UCU members, “If we are disciplined and work together I am convinced we can win,” – IF the discipline in question were one rooted in a united struggle against capitalism, not one imposed by the guard dogs of social democracy. And there’s the rub.
The burning question is this: behind what perspective are we asking people to fight? Are we saying that the cuts are inevitable and that we need to put pressure on the powers that be to administer the cuts as fairly as possible? Or do we recognise that capitalism is deep in a crisis of its own making, and that we need by any means necessary to prevent them making workers pay for that crisis? Comrades, we must choose this latter path.
By their spirited resistance, students are making a dramatic intervention in the class struggle, setting a bold example worthy of emulation by workers in and out of trade unions. However, whilst such student actions can set the ball rolling, students need to link with the might of the working class for them to make real headway. The inspiring examples of worker-student unity in the recent struggles in France give just a taste of what could be achieved in the future, once the disuniting and disorganising ideas of social democracy have been beaten down.
No to tuition fees!
Free education for all!
“Fair” cuts? NO cuts!
Cut capitalism, Cut imperialism, Build socialism!
