Communist Archives - Page 3 of 5

Leila Khaled

Posted on 3rd March 2014 by Red Youth Red Youth

Red Youth salutes the revolutionary women of the world! Our young cadre will be publishing short pieces all this week to celebrate our revolutionary heroines in the run up to International Women’s Day. Today, Comrade Adam, aged 12, discusses Leila Khaled.

Red Youth will be meeting to celebrate International Women’s Day on 9 March, at 1.00pm, at the CPGB-ML party centre 274 Moseley Road, Highgate, Birmingham.

In the beginning, all women had to prove that we could be equal to men in armed struggle. So we wanted to be like men – even in our appearance … I no longer think it’s necessary to prove ourselves as women by imitating men.

I have learned that a woman can be a fighter, a freedom fighter, a political activist, and that she can fall in love, and be loved, she can be married, have children, be a mother … Revolution must mean life also; every aspect of life.

– Leila Khaled

Leila Khaled is a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). She was born on 9 April 1944 in Haifa, Palestine. She and her family fled to Lebanon during the 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe), leaving her father behind.

At the age of 15, following in the footsteps of her brother, Leila joined the radical Arab Left Nationalist Movement, originally started in the late 1940s by Comrade George Habash. The Palestinian branch of this movement became the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine after the 1967 Six-Day War.

Leila Khaled with portrait — Leila Khaled with a portrait of her younger self

Comrade Khaled came to public attention for her role in a 1969 hijacking of the TWA Flight 840, which aimed to publicise Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians. On its way from Rome to Athens, she and her comrades diverted a plane to Damascus. She ordered the pilot to fly over Haifa, so she could see her birth place, which she could not return to. No one was injured, but the aircraft was blown up after all the hostages had disembarked.

After this high-profile operation, Leila underwent six plastic surgery operations on her nose and chin to conceal her identity and allow her to take part in a future hijacking – and because she did not want to wear the face of an icon.

On 6 September 1970, Leila and Patrick Arguello, a Nicaraguan, attempted the hijack of Israeli El-al flight 219 from Amsterdam to New York as part of the Dawson Field hijackings – a series of almost simultaneous hijackings carried out by the PLFP. The attack was foiled when Israeli sky marshals killed Arguello and overpowered Khaled. Although she was carrying two hand grenades at the time, Khaled had received very strict instructions not to threaten passengers on the civilian flight.

The pilot diverted the aircraft to Heathrow airport in London, where Leila was delivered to Ealing police station. On 1 October, the British government released her as part of a prisoner exchange. The next year, the PFLP abandoned the tactic of hijacking, although splinter movements continued to hijack airplanes.

Leila Khaled in Damascus — Leila Khaled, defiant, in Damascus

Speaking about Palestinian freedom fighters such as comrade Khaled, and the many martyrs and soldiers of the PFLP and PLO, the legendary George Habash said these words:

I remember each of the martyrs, one by one, and without exception – those martyrs to whom we are indebted, for whom we must continue the struggle, holding fast to the dream and holding fast to hope, and protecting the rights of the people for whom they shed their blood. Their children and their families have a right to be honoured and cared for. This is the least we can do for those blazing stars in the skies of our homeland.

I also remember now the heroic prisoners in the jails of the occupation and the prisons of the Palestinian Authority – those militants who remind us morning and night of our patriotic duty by the fact that they are still there behind bars and by the fact that the occupation still squats on our chests. Each prisoner deserves the noblest signs of respect …

Now permit me to express my gratitude to all the comrades who have worked with me and helped me, whether in the Arab Nationalist Movement or in the Popular Front. They stood beside me during the hardest conditions and the darkest of times, and they were a great help and support for me. Without them I would not have been able to carry out my responsibilities. They have been true comrades, in all that the word implies.

Those comrades helped to create a congenial atmosphere, an environment of political, theoretical, and intellectual interaction that enabled me to do all that was required. Those comrades have a big place in my heart and mind. I offer all my thanks and appreciation to each one of them by name. In addition, to the comrades who vigilantly guarded me, looking out for my safety, all these long years, I offer my gratitude …

As a last word, I feel it necessary to say that I know well that the goals for which I worked and struggled have not yet been attained. And I cannot say how or when they will be attained. But on the other hand, I know in light of my study of the march of history in general, and of Arab and Palestinian history in particular, that they will be attained.

In spite of this bitter truth, I leave my task as General Secretary of the Front with a contented mind and conscience. My conscience is content because I did my duty and worked with the greatest possible effort and with complete and deep sincerity. My mind is content because throughout my working years, I continually based myself on the practice of self-criticism.

It is important to say also that I will pay close attention to all your observations and assessments of the course taken by the Popular Front while I was its General Secretary. I must emphasise that with the same close attention, if not with greater attention, I will follow and take to heart the observations and assessments of the Palestinian and Arab people on this course and my role in it.

My aim in this closing speech has been to say to you – and not only to you, but to all the detainees, or those who experienced detention, to the families of the martyrs, to the children of the martyrs, to those who were wounded, to all who sacrificed and gave for the cause – that your sacrifice has not been in vain. The just goals and legitimate rights which they have struggled and given their lives for will be attained, sooner or later. I say again that I don’t know when, but they will be attained.

And my aim, again and again, is to emphasise the need for you to persist in the struggle to serve our people, for the good of all Palestinians and Arabs – the good that lies in a just and legitimate cause, as it does in the realisation of the good for all those who are oppressed and wronged.

You must always be of calm mind, and of contented conscience, with a strong resolve and a steel will, for you have been and still are in the camp of justice and progress, the camp whose just goals will be attained and which will inevitably attain its legitimate rights. For these are the lessons of history and reality, and no right is lost as long as there is someone fighting for it.

Khaled continued to return to Britain for speaking engagements until as late as 2002, although she was refused a visa by the British embassy in 2005 to address a meeting at the Féile an Phobail in Belfast, where she was invited as a speaker.

She is now married to the physician Fayez Rashid Hilal, and today lives with their two sons Bader and Bashar in Gaza, Palestine, where she currently serves on the Palestinian National Council.

Leila Khaled on the PNC — Leila Khaled currently serves on the Palestinian National Council, the legislative body of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation

Comrade Leila was the subject of a film entitled Leila Khaled, Hijacker. The documentary film Hijacker – The Life of Leila Khaled was directed by Palestinian filmmaker, Lina Makboul.

Laila Khaled will always be remembered as a freedom fighter who stood up against the oppression of her country’s people. She fought against Israel and imperialism and for the liberation of Palestine.

Clara Zetkin

Posted on 2nd March 2014 by Red Youth Red Youth

Red Youth salutes the revolutionary women of the world! Our young cadre will be publishing short pieces all this week to celebrate our revolutionary heroines in the run up to International Womens Day. Today Birmingham comrade Phil, aged 22, discusses Clara Zetkin.

Red Youth will be meeting to celebrate International Women’s Day on 9 March, at 1.00pm, at the CPGB-ML party centre 274 Moseley Road, Highgate, Birmingham.

Women’s propaganda must touch upon all those questions which are of great importance to the general proletarian movement. The main task is, indeed, to awaken the women’s class consciousness and to incorporate them into the class struggle.

– Clara Zetkin

Born as Clara Eißner, the eldest of three children in Saxony, Germany in 1857, Clara Zetkin lived a life of struggle – for socialism, for women’s rights and against fascism.

Her mother already had contacts with the emerging bourgeois women’s movement at the time and Clara herself became politically active from 1874, joining the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1878. However, Bismarck’s draconian ‘Socialist Law’, which banned extra-parliamentary political activities, forced her into exile in 1882, first to Zurich and then to Paris.

During her time in the French capital, she adopted the name of her life partner, the Russian Marxist Ossip Zetkin, with whom she had two children. There she also played a significant role in the founding of the Second International in 1889, which would two-and-a-half decades later so disgracefully collapse over the question of the first world war – splitting the socialist movement and for the first time clearly showing the reactionary and chauvinist nature of what we now know as social democracy.

From early on in their time with the SPD, Clara Zetkin and comrade Rosa Luxemburg were part of the inner-party opposition, which came to be known as the Spartacus League (Spartakusbund) and consisted of fierce critics of Eduard Bernstein’s reformist views. She was among those consistently arguing against Bernstein and his followers in the revisionism debate.

Having returned to Germany in 1890, Zetkin worked as editor and publisher of The Equality (Die Gleichheit), a proletarian women’s magazine. She proved to be a brilliant journalist, increasing the paper’s circulation from 11,000 to 67,000 between 1903 and 1906.

When she joined the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) in 1917, she was ‘relieved’ of her duties at the publication for petty political reasons. In 1919, she finally joined the newly-formed Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and started to publish a new magazine, called Die Kommunistin, meaning ‘the female communist’.

In addition to her publications work, Clara Zetkin was one of the first few women deputies at both regional and national parliaments, taking advantage of the small concessions made by the bourgeoisie to advance women’s rights in practice and push towards their representation in public life.

Nevertheless, she also was a staunch critic of the bourgeois women’s movement. In a speech in 1899 at the founding congress of the Second International, Comrade Zetkin criticised demands for formal political rights such as that of access to the professions and equal education for women (while perfectly legitimate and important) as not going far enough, and argued that full social and economic emancipation would only be possible under socialism.

In 1911, Comrade Zetkin was also heavily involved in the birth of International Women’s Day – the day we will soon be celebrating. After an encouraging start in central Europe, especially in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Germany, Women’s Day spread around the world. Indeed, demonstrations marking Women’s Day were instrumental in sparking the February Revolution in Russia in 1917.

In 1932, after being re-elected to the German parliament (Reichstag) at the age of 75, Comrade Clara used her speech at the opening of parliament to passionately denounce the policies of Hitler and his thugs. After the National Socialists came to power in 1933 and banned the KPD (having blamed the Reichstag fire on them), Comrade Zetkin was forced into exile once again – this time choosing to live in the Soviet Union.

Comrade Clara died soon after, on 20 July 1933, at the age of 76, and the urn containing her ashes was personally carried to the Kremlin Wall Necropolis by Josef Stalin.

National Union of Syrian Students – video footage showing terrorists at work in Syria

Posted on 10th January 2014 by Red Youth Red Youth

The following short video is from the National Union of Syrian Students and was distributed by them at the World Festival of Youth and Students, held in Quito, Ecuador, December 2013.

The National Union of Syrian Students is an anti-imperialist youth organisation inside Syria struggling alongside the forces opposed to western backed intervention and terrorism. The video details the carnage being caused by booby trapped vehicles and car bombs – methods used by terrorists inside Syria who have no social base or local support. The only support such mercenaries receive is from the imperialists and their Trotskyite chums in the anti-war movement. The film shows scenes with which we are all familiar, hospitalised victims and terrifying bombings. The difference for those of us in “the west” is that when our televisions screens show these horrendous injuries they do so from the make shift tents of the occupiers, set up by imperialism and its lackey’s to treat the invaders and terrorists. This footage shows the terrible carnage being wreaked by the running dogs of imperialism, the vile scum trained in Saudi Arabia by Queen Lizzies royal pals to behead, slaughter and eat human flesh. These rats are being put to the sword by the brave Syrian people and their anti-imperialist government, led by President Assad and the Ba’ath Party and supported by the patriot forces.

National Union of Syrian Students facebook page

Red Youth was part of the British delegation to the World Festival of Youth and Students last month. Whilst there we were able to have meetings with Syrian’s including the NAtional Union of Syrian Students and members of the Communist Party of Syria – Bagdash. For more information about the festival please see our earlier posts:

Red Youth interview TKP

A few more photographs from Ecudor

Interview with the Syrian delegation

British-delegation-promotes-strong-anti-imperialist-line-on-europe-day-at-quito-festival

Antisocial behaviour, crime and policing bill

Posted on 9th January 2014 by Red Youth Red Youth

Another inch of liberty is in the process of being clawed away. It seems the Oligarchs are securing their position for the long haul, and it is a long haul, as shown by the Tories proposed cuts for the next term they are confident of winning. They plan to implement deeper cuts to the benefits of the most vulnerable in society, when they are at their most vulnerable and sinking deeper and deeper into despair, destitution and poverty. And to safeguard this utopia of the bourgeoisie they are introducing laws with ever more vague parameters to criminalize the malcontents who will inevitably rise up against such oppression, because to paraphrase Karl Marx, the bourgeoisie creates its own gravediggers.

Red Youth reproduces here the article written by George Monbiot in the Guardian:

Until the late 19th century much of our city space was owned by private landlords. Squares were gated, streets were controlled by turnpikes. The great unwashed, many of whom had been expelled from the countryside by acts of enclosure, were also excluded from desirable parts of town.

Social reformers and democratic movements tore down the barriers, and public space became a right, not a privilege. But social exclusion follows inequality as night follows day, and now, with little public debate, our city centres are again being privatised or semi-privatised. They are being turned by the companies that run them into soulless, cheerless, pasteurised piazzas, in which plastic policemen harry anyone loitering without intent to shop.

Street life in these places is reduced to a trance-world of consumerism, of conformity and atomisation in which nothing unpredictable or disconcerting happens, a world made safe for selling mountains of pointless junk to tranquillised shoppers. Spontaneous gatherings of any other kind – unruly, exuberant, open-ended, oppositional – are banned. Young, homeless and eccentric people are, in the eyes of those upholding this dead-eyed, sanitised version of public order, guilty until proven innocent.

Now this dreary ethos is creeping into places that are not, ostensibly, owned or controlled by corporations. It is enforced less by gates and barriers (though plenty of these are reappearing) than by legal instruments, used to exclude or control the ever widening class of undesirables.

The existing rules are bad enough. Introduced by the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act, antisocial behaviour orders (asbos) have criminalised an apparently endless range of activities, subjecting thousands – mostly young and poor – to bespoke laws. They have been used to enforce a kind of caste prohibition: personalised rules which prevent the untouchables from intruding into the lives of others.

You get an asbo for behaving in a manner deemed by a magistrate as likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress to other people. Under this injunction, the proscribed behaviour becomes a criminal offence. Asbos have been granted which forbid the carrying of condoms by a prostitute, homeless alcoholics from possessing alcohol in a public place, a soup kitchen from giving food to the poor, a young man from walking down any road other than his own, children from playing football in the street. They were used to ban peaceful protests against the Olympic clearances.

Inevitably, more than half the people subject to asbos break them. As Liberty says, these injunctions “set the young, vulnerable or mentally ill up to fail”, and fast-track them into the criminal justice system. They allow the courts to imprison people for offences which are not otherwise imprisonable. One homeless young man was sentenced to five years in jail for begging: an offence for which no custodial sentence exists. Asbos permit the police and courts to create their own laws and their own penal codes.

All this is about to get much worse. On Wednesday the Antisocial Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill reaches its report stage (close to the end of the process) in the House of Lords. It is remarkable how little fuss has been made about it, and how little we know of what is about to hit us.

The bill would permit injunctions against anyone of 10 or older who “has engaged or threatens to engage in conduct capable of causing nuisance or annoyance to any person”. It would replace asbos with ipnas (injunctions to prevent nuisance and annoyance), which would not only forbid certain forms of behaviour, but also force the recipient to discharge positive obligations. In other words, they can impose a kind of community service order on people who have committed no crime, which could, the law proposes, remain in force for the rest of their lives.

The bill also introduces public space protection orders, which can prevent either everybody or particular kinds of people from doing certain things in certain places. It creates new dispersal powers, which can be used by the police to exclude people from an area (there is no size limit), whether or not they have done anything wrong.

While, as a result of a successful legal challenge, asbos can be granted only if a court is satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that antisocial behaviour took place, ipnas can be granted on the balance of probabilities. Breaching them will not be classed as a criminal offence, but can still carry a custodial sentence: without committing a crime, you can be imprisoned for up to two years. Children, who cannot currently be detained for contempt of court, will be subject to an inspiring new range of punishments for breaking an ipna, including three months in a young offenders’ centre.

Lord Macdonald, formerly the director of public prosecutions, points out that “it is difficult to imagine a broader concept than causing ‘nuisance’ or ‘annoyance'”. The phrase is apt to catch a vast range of everyday behaviours to an extent that may have serious implications for the rule of law”. Protesters, buskers, preachers: all, he argues, could end up with ipnas.

The Home Office minister, Norman Baker, once a defender of civil liberties, now the architect of the most oppressive bill pushed through any recent parliament, claims that the amendments he offered in December will “reassure people that basic liberties will not be affected”. But Liberty describes them as “a little bit of window-dressing: nothing substantial has changed.”

The new injunctions and the new dispersal orders create a system in which the authorities can prevent anyone from doing more or less anything. But they won’t be deployed against anyone. Advertisers, who cause plenty of nuisance and annoyance, have nothing to fear; nor do opera lovers hogging the pavements of Covent Garden. Annoyance and nuisance are what young people cause; they are inflicted by oddballs, the underclass, those who dispute the claims of power.

These laws will be used to stamp out plurality and difference, to douse the exuberance of youth, to pursue children for the crime of being young and together in a public place, to help turn this nation into a money-making monoculture, controlled, homogenised, lifeless, strifeless and bland. For a government which represents the old and the rich, that must sound like paradise.

Syrian delegation speaks to British Delegate at 18th WFYS in Quito, Ecuador

Posted on 10th December 2013 by Red Youth Red Youth

The head of the Syrian delegation Dr Saleh Al Rashed (President of the Syrian Revolutionary Youth Union) speaks at the world festival of youth and students to the British delegation.

Despite the brutal and bloody campaign which has been unleashed against the Syrian people by imperialism the Syrians understand and continue to draw the distinction between the mass of ordinary British workers and the thoroughly corrupt and wicked parasite class that rules on behalf of finance capital.

Since the very first days of this conflict the CPGB-ML were the only organisation in Britain to stand squarely behind the Ba’ath Party, the National Patriotic Front and the Syrian Communist Party (Bagdash), as well as all the other progressive and anti-imperialist organisations united in Syria against the imperialist inspired war of intervention.

As Dr Al Rashed confirms, the Syrian people, much to the dismay of the revisionist and Trotskyite pigs who tie our anti-war movement to imperialism, have only strengthened their resolve and friendship during these hard years of life-and-death struggle, despite all personal hardship and loss. As Mao Zedong said long ago, “the imperialists pick up a rock only to drop it upon their own feet”!

The imperialists they have funded and equipped cannibals, maniacs and fundamentalists who’s sole mission inside Syria has been carnage, mayhem and destruction. Yet despite all their crimes, including the stomach-churning and cynical ‘propaganda stunt’ of gassing kidnapped children in attempt to stir up direct US military intervention, have only succeeded in bringing the Syrian people together in resistnace, forging an un-breakable bond between the radical and patriotic forces inside Syria.

British delegation promotes strong anti-imperialist line on "Europe Day" at Quito festival

Posted on 9th December 2013 by Red Youth Red Youth

Comrades from Red Youth and RCG, who make up the socialist contingent on the British delegation to Quito, distribute tonnes of literature and speak to hundreds of revolutionaries from across the world.

Hundreds of progressive youth came to speak with the British delegation all through “Europe day” at this years WFDY Festival. Comrades from the RCG distributed copies of their newspaper Fight Racism, Fight Imperialism and conducted interviews with foreign delegations, and also kindly assisted Red Youth with translation from Spanish.

Delegate Tatjana from the Socialist Party of Latvia

Many copies of Lalkar and Proletarian were sold and given away to comrades new and old. Friends from the Syrian Baath Party were delighted to catch up with CPGB-ML central committee members Ranjeet Brar and Paul Cannon and to meet Dan and Angela for the first time. Our support for the brave resistance of the Syrian people to the bloody war waged by imperialism has strengthened our friendship with both the Baath Party and the Syrian Communist Party (Bagdash) who also met privately with our delegation.

As the degenerates and warmongers, trotskyites and revisionists, conspire to keep brave peace-loving people like Mother Agnes from the anti-war platform, it is increasingly clear that only the Marxist-Leninists can provide clear anti-war political leadership. Only communists clearly come out in defence of the weak against the attacks of the strong; the trotskyists always end up assisting their imperialist puppet masters, and the spineless revisionists long ago abandoned the struggle in favour of the easy life.

Even the Ecuadorean police seem to be on our side!

The most cursory glance at the contemporary international situation shows that imperialism’s inherent tendency to wage wars of aggression has not in any way disappeared. If anything it has become enhanced, notably after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist countries of central and eastern Europe, since when we have seen numerous wars of colonial reconquest, such as those against Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and, most recently, Libya and Syria.

Moreover, faced with what is emerging as the gravest economic crisis in the history of capitalism, the pace and intensity of imperialism’s inexorable drive to war is increasing yet further. The imperialist powers are presently at war in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. They are also waging unofficial and proxy wars in Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen and other countries. They are abetting and bankrolling the Israeli zionists’ war against the Palestinian people.

Marxism Leninism is not a dogma but a guide to action. Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao, the great revolutionary teachers, laid out with complete clarity the attitude of the revolutionary proletariat to the struggle against imperialism and towards the national movements of the oppressed. With imperialism convulsed with crisis and hurtling towards new and ever more dangerous wars of aggression, the work of reuniting and reinvigorating the entire international communist movement on this principled and revolutionary basis is one which will brook no further delay.

It is in this spirit that many many comrades and friends purchased copies of not only our newspapers, but also our books, notably Harpal Brar and Ella Rule’s latest book Imperialism and the worst-ever crisis of overproduction. Red Youth’s slogan “Each one, teach one!” has never been more relevant.

Long live proletarian internationalism!

Comrade Paulus Mbangu from SWAPO buys HB's latest book on imperialism — Comrade Paulus Mbangu from SWAPO buys HB’s latest book on imperialism

Puerto Rican communists from the Federacion Universitaria Pro Independencia take copies for their library

Delegates from across Latin America socialising with comrades from around the world

Italian Marxist Leninists poster — Italian Marxist Leninist poster: NATO Hands off Syria! No to Imperialism!

Film show this Sunday in London: The Road to Life

Posted on 15th November 2013 by Red Youth Red Youth

‘The Road to Life’
1931 Soviet feature film, directed by Nikolai Ekk, with English subtitles.
Sunday, 17 November, 2 – 5 pm
Marchmont Centre, 62 Marchmont Street, London WC1N 1AB

Followed by discussion

A vivid and humorous portrayal of one aspect of what the building of socialism meant to the peoples of the USSR.
Based on the book of the same title, written by the Soviet educationist Anton Makarenko, the film gives a fictional account of Makarenko working with the children under his care, who had been orphaned by the Russian Civil War and the resulting famine. It shows the transformation of the street children from their involvement with petty crime to their achievements in socialist construction.

Video – Great October Socialist Revolution

Posted on 13th November 2013 by Red Youth Red Youth

Thursday 7th November 2013 marked the 96th Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, and this little introductory video is just to give you a flavour of the celebration that was held by the CPGB-ML at a packed meeting in Saklatvala hall, Southall on Saturday 9th November 2013.

Great speeches from the representatives of Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea, as well a Katt Cremer from the Party and Angela and Dan from Red Youth.

This video explains why we celebrate, what we are trying to achieve and why we have every reason to be optimistic about the future.

Harlow trades council defending workers terms and conditions

Posted on 30th July 2013 by Red Youth Red Youth

We reproduce below a letter to Harlow council Labour group leader Mark Wilkinson from the Harlow trades council, and the reply from the local Labour group leaders…

“Dear Mark,

From the link below you will see that Kier Services in Harlow intend to delay the pay for monthly paid workers by 2 weeks without agreement with the recognised union UCATT.

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/135939

I recall that when Cllr Forman introduced her Kier blacklisting motion to the Labour Group earlier this year, much was made of the partnership deal with Kier Services where Harlow Council retained 10% of the shares.

So, naturally, I request that the Labour Group use it’s 10% stake to demand that Kier Services negotiate with UCATT on the pay issue to defend workers’ interests just as vigourously as it did to defend Kier’s over blacklisting.”

In response to the request on behalf of the interests and rights of workers, Mark Wilkinson responded,

” I am sure the labour group will do everything possible to support this issue.”

Red Youth supports wholeheartedly the actions of Harlow Trades Council in bringing this matter to the attention of local trade unionists. What is to be seen yet again is the willingness of the Labour party to serve big business interests rather than the working class! If all trades council’s were as quick to challenge such behaviour the movement would be in a much better place!

The comments of Mark Wilkinson are a clear indication of how little regard the Labour group leaders have towards workers’ interests. Red Youth rejects the words of ‘reassurance’, and suggests that any affiliation with Labour is one for the benefit of the capitalists rather than the workers.

Keep our NHS public

Posted on 2nd July 2013 by Red Youth Red Youth

Yorkshire red youth helped out at the Leeds Keep Our NHS Public over the weekend and a fantastic demonstration was held outside Virgin media (just one of the companies looking to benefit from the privatisation of the NHS). Further demonstrations will be taking place this coming weekend and the national conference is in London on 13 July. Check out http://www.keepournhspublic.com and be sure to support the campaigns!

Friday 5 July – Coventry “happy birthday NHS” Upper Precinct (by Costa) 12.30pm
Friday 5th July – “hands around the Trafford” demo outside Trafford General 1pm www.savetraffordgeneral.com
Saturday 6 July – “happy birthday NHS” demo Bolton @ 11.30-12.30pm Fred Dibnah statue
and many many more here

Privatisation and profiteering

Those who attempt to defend the last Labour government’s record on the NHS typically point to the increase in funding from 1999. But while some of that money did go to frontline care, this actually occurred only as an accidental and temporary trickle-down side effect of the real policies driving increased spending at that time: the likes of the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) that sought easy profit opportunities for big business by mortgaging NHS assets to private banking consortia.

While the huge increase in public funding for the NHS (from £49bn in 1999/2000 to £119bn in 2009/10) that this covert privatisation process entailed was temporarily sustainable during the last decade’s cheap credit boom, the capitalist economy’s catastrophic tailspin into global recession means this is quite clearly no longer the case.

This is the rationale behind the ongoing so-called ‘Nicholson Challenge’ for the NHS to make £20bn-worth of cuts in ‘efficiency savings’ by 2015. And let us remember that this target of £20bn was announced to leading NHS doctors before the ConDem government was elected – ie, by the last Labour government.

If decency and common sense governed political decisions in Britain, these savings and more could easily be made by targeting the obvious source of the gross inefficiency that has caused NHS spending to spiral out of control in the first place: ie, by cancelling PFI debt and removing all private-sector involvement in the running of the NHS.

But capitalism does not quite work that way; and so wards and whole hospitals are closed and clinical staff thrown out of work so that corporate interests can continue to profit out of the NHS.

The media spin that persists in its weasel attempts to invert this reality, blaming spiralling NHS spending on an ageing population, or rising patient expectations, or the mythical ‘inherent inefficiency of the public sector’ should fool no-one. The US healthcare system is entirely privately-owned, and is the most expensive and inefficient in the developed world, costing $6,719 per person per year while leaving 50+ million Americans uninsured and millions more seriously underinsured.

The socialist alternative

In stark contrast, socialist Cuba’s health system, entirely publicly-owned, is able to provide free comprehensive health care for all at a cost of only $362 per person per year, achieving population health statistics rivalling and even surpassing those of developed countries.

The difference? At no point in the Cuban system is there anybody who is driving up costs by making a profit. Moreover, the fact that the state is the sole provider of health care avoids the obscenely wasteful duplication, cherry-picking, and poor coordination of services that inevitably arise when multiple inter-competing private providers are involved.

Though Cuba’s healthcare achievements are relatively well-known these days, it is less widely recognised that the inspiration for the Cuban system was that of the Soviet Union; still less that the Soviet system – as the world’s first free universal healthcare system – also served as the model for Britain’s NHS itself.

Though Labour are invariably credited as the benefactors of the NHS, the fact is that the NHS was effectively a concession made by British capitalism due to the relative strength of the working class in the aftermath of the triumph of Soviet socialism in the second world war.

Many things have changed since then. The collapse of the USSR has meant that British capitalism no longer feels compelled to make such concessions to workers to deter them from revolution. Moreover, the profits from reconstruction of industry that fuelled the post-war boom have long since dried up, with capitalists increasingly turning to the option of easy taxpayer-funded bonanzas arising from the privatisation of public services: utilities, railways, education … and the NHS.

Since the end of the post-war boom, Labour governments have been just as complicit as the Tories in the slow liquidation of the NHS. It was the Callaghan administration of 1976-79 that began the process of hospital closures, while the Blair government not only kept the Tories’ internal market but further accelerated NHS privatisation by transforming NHS Trusts into ‘Foundation’ Trusts – embryonic private hospitals.

The lesson of history is clear: the problem is not merely the HASC Bill and subsequent regulations, to be resolved simply by getting rid of Lansley, Hunt or Cameron, or – God forbid – by voting Labour at the next election, but the whole rotten capitalist system, which, in its insatiable desire for profit, will continue its merciless attack on the living standards of working-class people until it itself is overthrown.

Join us now and help us make it happen!