A Christmas letter to Amnesty International

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Amnesty International

A 14 year old cadre of Red Youth has written and posted the following letter to his school who have instituted an Amnesty International club for the students. Our comrade, in a short and precise letter exposes the sheer hypocrisy of AI and delivers a challenge to his school, peers and the local AI Club to justify their peddling of imperialist propaganda. The letter is reproduced exactly as it was composed save the name of the school and comrade:

“Dear TGS Amnesty International Club,

I am writing this letter in sheer disgust at the ignorance of xxxx Schools Amnesty International club portrays. Presentations were carried out throughout the school promoting the club and issuing out awareness material to other students. Students were intimidated into signing cards and letters expressing their support for the supposed ‘political prisoners’ locked up in certain nations across the world. The information given to the students about the prisoners was extremely limited and bias. However, my argument is for the millions of oppressed people across the world suffering at the behest of the rich and powerful nations on whose behalf A. I. operates and from where it is based. Why focus on a few individuals and then ignore all the crimes committed by these powerful states? I will be expressing points which will hopefully be answered by the group.

I have no doubt that Amnesty International contains a great number of well-meaning supporters, people with genuine compassion. It is from this standpoint that I express my outrage at the continual stream of lies, hypocrisy and war propaganda that emanates from publications and spokespersons of Amnesty International, hood-winking its members, volunteers and the general public alike into supporting acts of genocide, ethnic cleansing and regime change throughout the world.

We all remember the horrendous war on Libya which resulted in thousands of innocent civilians being killed, beautiful infrastructure being smashed (including the Sahara Aquifers) and blown up and a secular and progressive regime being expunged. And let’s not forget how we all witnessed the rape and lynching by mercenaries and foreign terrorists of the much loved Leader of that country, Colonel Gaddafi, on our computers, mobiles and television screens like some kind of sadistic game that would be familiar to see on horror films like Saw and Hostel. And which ‘Human Rights’ organization really pushed for regime change in that country? Of course, Amnesty International.

Now, several months on, cases are emerging of Libyan cities and towns such as Tawergha, Bani Waled and Sirte being persecuted and violently terrorised due to the fact that the majority of people living there were black. In one town, Tawergha, some 40,000 plus black people were force to flee in one day as they were butchered and terrorised by the rebel militias and gangs provided with NATO air cover. On the 25th February this year, a man was reported on the BBC news saying:

“We had 70-80 people from Chad working for our company. They were cut dead with pruning shears and axes, attackers saying: ‘You are providing troops for Gaddafi.’ The Sudanese were also massacred. We saw it for ourselves.”

This is just one of the hundreds of cases being released clearly showing, with great and detailed evidence, that the rebels, supported by Amnesty International, NATO, etc, were human rights abusers on a massive scale. Surely that can’t be right? A Human Rights defender siding with NATO, a Military Alliance which has killed, massacred and terrorised millions in its time, to help bring about regime change for a handful of racist thugs. So exposed was the stance of Amnesty on the Libyan massacre that its spokesperson retracted her earlier statements about Gadaffi using foreign mercenaries to fight for him. However this confession of course was never broadcasted by the mass media which is in the service of this same NATO war machine. But the lies spouted at the time about the Libyan army were enough to provide the cover and false legitimacy for the NATO saturation bombing which brought the war lords and racist terrorist gangs to power and massacred thousands of Libyan troops and civilians. You might argue that this is just one lonely example which can’t prove anything but try telling millions of Libyans that. Moving on.

Now, the organisation has moved onto Syria, another target of the West. What a coincidence. Amnesty International is constantly promoting the rebels there (which have very close links to Al-Qaida and other Islamic extremist groups) to topple another progressive, developing and secular state. Their excuse, very much like the excuse they used in Libya, is that the President, Basher Al Assad, is a ‘dictator murdering his own people’. Is Assad just meant to let a group of local and foreign terrorists, funded and armed by real dictators in the region, namely Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain, to come and attack his people? And if Assad was such an evil tyrant with no desire but wealth and exploitation of his people, why would over 15 million Syrians, over 90% of the electorate, vote for his new reform plans earlier this year? The Bathe party in Syria heads a broad coalition of all the very many ethnic groups and confessions of the nation, defending them all against an array of extremist Sunni terrorist gangs seeking succour from rich and powerful foreign nations.

Many human rights abuses are being carried out slyly right here under our noses in Britain and other Western ‘democratic’ countries.
Many Muslim immigrants and asylum seekers, escaping from the very war zones created by western military interventions, are inhumanely harassed and molested as soon as they pass through the border crossings, on spurious claims of suspicion of terrorism or other crimes even though most are women and young children. They are made to live in very harsh conditions, including internment camps, insufficient for raising a family. They are given ill-paid jobs which require long hours of work for a minimum wage. They often resort to crime to survive, which lands them in jail.

Can it be just that 50% of the USA’s prison population is black, and that Native Americans have never been compensated for the massive genocide perpetrated against them? Can it be just that the US, the richest nation in the World, has a bigger prison population than any other country, both proportionately and absolutely? The American penal system incarcerated over 5 million of its citizens during the 1930’s and over 2.5 million today. Why were there no cards for these victims? Why were there no cards for today’s tens of millions of the descendents of tens of millions of African slaves who form the vast majority of the impoverished in the USA and to this day have no rights to medicare and many of whom end up languishing in the Jails of the USA?

Police brutality and oppression is a regular experience for black people in the US, as well as national minorities throughout Europe. Earlier last week, on December 13th, Chicago police killed 38 year old Phillip Coleman, who was, according to family members and neighbours, having a nervous breakdown and behaving erratically. Police subdued him with a taser when he was arrested and again after he arrived at Roseland Hospital. He died later on that day in Roseland. Phillip Coleman’s sister, Jacqueline, told the Sun-Times,

“Phillip was not treated justly, he was treated like an insect!”

This is just one example of the cruel acts the American state perpetrates on its own citizens, whilst claiming to be a father figure of democracy and freedom.

I recall that one of the cards which was given to us to sign, was for a prisoner in China called Chen Guangcheng, who was locked up for being too ‘outspoken’ in his beliefs. It is now reported that he has fled to the USA with his family. Say no more. However, my point is that even after all the evidence lying on the table, proving how the West, namely the USA and its puppets or lap dogs including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Israel, etc commit the most atrocious crimes against humanity and act like ‘police of the world’, Amnesty International still points its longest finger at the People’s Republic of China for being an abuser of human rights. But as I already explained, it is the USA that has the largest prison population in the world, both absolutely and as a percentage of its population. Where’s the card for Bradley Manning? Wheres the card for Mumia Abu Jamal? Where’s the card for Julian Assange? Where are all the cards for the inmates of Guantanamo Bay? Where all the cards for the thousands of black people being imprisoned in America and being lynched in Libya as we speak by these supposed ‘Freedom Fighters’?

China is one of the two nations to veto a war on Syria at the UN Security council. It can see how regime change there will lead to a catastrophe even greater than the one in Libya. And for this reason and others it is attacked extensively by the West, using any means necessary, including Human Rights organisations like Amnesty International to pick out mole hills there and to make them into mountains.

At the Nuremburg Trials after World War 2, it was made very clear that the highest crime of all was an unprovoked war waged by one country against another. For good reason you might say. There can be no greater denial of human rights than War itself: millions are terrorised, displaced, killed violently or by secondary causes, wrongfully imprisoned, denied the means of sustenance and any security. Yet it is Western countries that have been the main instigators and protagonists of these wars yet all the claimed justifications for them from holding WMD’s to humanitarian intervention, stopping massacres, fighting terrorism, supporting democracy, removing dictators, protecting women, fighting drugs etc etc etc etc have all been exposed to progressive humanity as massive lies: Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza, Libya, Syria, the Congo are the most well known and deadly. Where are the cards for the millions of the victims of these wars, the millions who have been denied the most basic human rights of all? To Life? To Peace? To Security? To a Home? To Food? To the very basic needs for sustaining life? Surely, if Amnesty International was a real fighter for human rights these matters would be at the top of the agenda and determine the cards we would be signing? Instead, so as to prepare the unsuspecting public for the next criminal war, it selectively chooses only the countries to be targeted, demonising their systems so that the public at worse will turn their heads the other way after the start of the military aggression. It is no surprise therefore that the “human rights” victims highlighted by A. I. are those working under the auspices of Western powers, selling out their countries’ independence to them. However, in the West we have no qualms about locking up and throwing away the key in those cases of betrayal to foreign countries.

As a student who researches extensively on world events trying to see society’s big picture, I cannot help but be infuriated at how openly supporters of Amnesty International operate within the school community, spreading bias propaganda and promoting ill-minded teachings, without being adequately challenged. They ignore the fact that A.I. promotes a cruel system, providing it with the legitimacy required for its criminal wars, global economic inequality and for the exploitation of 99% of world’s people. Surely the largest denial of human rights is that over 2 billion people (1/3 of the world’s population) have to survive on less than $2 a day? As a consequence the World health Organisation has stated that over 5 million children below the age of 5 die every year from malnutrition alone. Where are the cards for these lost souls?

I really do hope you can come back on the points I have raised.

Yours Sincerely,

AC (Year 9)”

Report from a meeting of the Green Party at the University of Manchester

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In early December the Greens held a meeting at the University of Manchester attended by Red Youth. The intention of the Green Party on this evening was to reach out to students, and to persuade them to join the Greens in a fight for a better future both environmentally and economically. What they Green Partydidn’t tell you is that you have to be RED to be GREEN!

The evening began with a brief introduction from the leader of the Manchester Young Greens, introducing their deputy leader and MP for Dudley, Will Duckworth, and the newly elected party leader, Natalie Bennett.

As expected, the speaker’s comments were guided not by values of honesty and truth but by the typical opportunism of bourgeois politicians– say what the audience wants to hear. For the opening period, one may have even mistaken the Green Party for a socialist party (!), talking of abolishing tuition fees and giving everyone an opportunity at higher education, talking of the abolishment of poverty, talking of the need to tackle the agenda put forward by the coalition government, as well as Labour, and stressing the importance of renationalising the railways.

Behind the honeyed words that most left-wingers would agree with, there remains the fact that the Green Party is not that much different in outlook than the ‘old’ Labour Party of 20 to 30 years ago. The Green Party still adopts the system that has caused countless lives to be lost through poverty, neglect, war and oppression – namely capitalism. Just like the Labour Party of the past, they make endless promises to the masses; but the system upon which these promises rest is the very system of imperialism which gives a few crumbs to the workers in the imperialist countries whilst savagely looting the workers in the colonies. What the Green Party has not realised is that capitalism is in profound crisis and the ability of the system to hand down these crumbs is now over.

It is true that many of the policies spoken of, such as electoral reform, opposing the “oil-wars” and the abolishment of poverty, are the policies that we’d all like to see enacted. But these policies can never bring lasting social justice and can never be achieved for the majority of society, and sustained into the future, if we rely upon capitalist economics and private ownership of the means of production. It is for this reason that the Green Party should break its ties with social democracy, and instead should join the resistance against imperialism and unite with the working class and oppressed masses of the world – but don’t hold your breath! They claim to be the only viable alternative – but the rights that they seek to protect are not merely the rights of the planet, critically the Greens defend the right of private property – that is the right of individuals to own land and the natural resources which are bestowed upon individuals by mere flukes of birth or are captured, colonised stolen or forced from the hands of their indigenous people violently expropriated by capitalists, “developers” and “entrepreneurs”, as they run rampage across the planet, poisoning our soil, air and water in their pursuit of maximum profit!

After the meeting, I had a chance to have a few minutes with Will Duckworth. With time being pushed, I decided to opt for questioning him over the imperialist system and its never ending inherent rive for profit and war. He went on to say that war was not the answer, and that “selling arms and weapons to countries isn’t going to create any peace”. But after I elaborated, in the case that if it weren’t for Russian supplies to the Syrian government then the western imperialist predatory takeover may have already happened, he was unable to disagree. Ultimately its not weapons that are the problem, its in who’s hands these weapons are wielded! Based on his reaction, I would say that the Green Party is no different than a liberal-do-gooder party, saying things that they know the public will want to hear. The Greens are too afraid to stand against those real enemies of the people and the planet – the robber barons of finance capital!.

Sincerely, I hope that the Greens and many of their more progressive members make a decisive turn towards socialism, but with the fact that they still base their philosophy on the capitalist system– which is totally dependent on turning man into wage slaves – only reaffirms my conviction that the abolition of private property, the socialisation of the means of production and the taking into common ownership of the natural resources of our planet presents the only long-term sustainable future for our species and our planet!

School essay – a youths appraisal of Marxism in the 21st century

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A Red Youth and cpgb-ml candidate from Stafford gave his teacher a shock with this appraisal of Marxism which the class was asked to complete as an assignment!

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Defending communism and the question of communism in the 21st Century

It is a popular trend amongst British society to slander and regurgitate various statements and “arguments” against Communism and its history. Undoubtedly, one of the most popular arguments that is regurgitate by the people, from the bourgeois press, is the argument: “Communism is outdated”. Little do they know, this is completely wrong and you can see it for yourself with just a little bit of Marxist-Leninist analysis.

The fundamental of Marxism-Leninism is class struggle. Class struggle is more than a belief though; it is a direct result of Capitalism and the massive inequality it breeds in every corner. The concept of class struggle is still totally relevant to 21st Century Britain. There is still workers and bosses, rich and poor, exploiters and exploited. The working classes and the upper classes still fight one another for their specific interests, although it may seem less physical right now, it is still represented through various political and social struggles on an almost monthly basis. Since all this is happening, the concept of Class struggle is still relevant to 21st Century Britain.

We have witnessed constant examples of class struggle throughout our lives living in the 21st Century. We have witnessed the public spending cuts, leaving thousands, if not millions of working class people unemployed and left on the brink of poverty. We have witnessed their struggle to protect what little wealth they own. While this was and still is happening, the capitalists were sitting in their luxury houses, with their firm control over 90% of Britain’s wealth, earned through the blood of imperialism and the exploitation of the working classes of Britain.

People will also argue that Marxism-Leninism has lost it’s relevance because of the improvement of living standards in the past 100 years. They say because public services such as education have been made free, opportunity of success has risen and now anyone can go from “rags to riches”. But this simply isn’t true. Statistics have shown that only 4% of Britain’s upper classes have gone from “rags to riches”. Meaning the other 96% of the upper class have basically had some form of help in order to attain their wealthy status. Meaning the poor working classes have little chance of ever becoming wealthy millionaires. Not to mention that further education still requires us to pay ludicrous amounts of money just to gain a qualification. So services like education technically are still not fully provided for. Meaning Marxism-Leninism is still needed to provide our working classes with much needed opportunity.

Another fundamental teaching of Marxism-Leninism concerns imperialism. Imperialism is just as relevant now as it was 100 years ago. We see the constant effects of NATO backed invasions, specifically in the middle-east, in which nations are invaded and plundered by the multi-national capitalist monopolies. Iraq and Afghanistan have both fell victims of imperialism. Invaded and then plundered by various monopolies, expanding their empire of capital even further. Imperialism for profit, at the expense of potentially millions of innocent lives.

We have also witnessed many examples of imperialism across the globe and the destruction and suffering it creates. We have seen the invasion of Iraq, supposedly in the name of “freedom” and finding “weapons of mass-destruction”. The invasion has brought nothing to the Iraqi people but suffering, extreme poverty, violence and death. Thousands of Iraqis have died and millions of Iraqis lives have been destroyed, all because of the NATO invasion. While this has happened, conveniently, many monopolies have shown up not long after in Iraq. Companies like KBR, making $8 billion from both oil and private security. Or Dyncorp, making $50 million from providing “law enforcement” for the Iraqi people.

It’s time for the people of Britain to face the truth, Capitalism must go! It has exploited and caused enough pain, suffering, war and death! We must not fall for the bourgeoisie’s lies, instead we must develop class consciousness once more! We must use Marxism-Leninism, still as relevant as 100 years ago, as our weapon for liberation!

JOIN THE REVOLUTION! JOIN THE CPGB-ML!

Syria: United States imperialism on the path to World War Three

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The Anglo-American imperialists are attacking Syria, as they attack all independent and progressive nations in the Middle East and the wider world, precisely to shore up their failing system of world domination.

The crisis of overproduction being experienced by monopoly capitalism is more profound that it has ever known. US and their ‘allied’ NATO capitalist economic power is slumping, and their answer is a policy of ever-increasing diplomatic, financial and military stranglehold on the the nations and peoples of the world. This attempt to maintain their faltering monopoly on the worlds productive wealth, although ultimately futile, is of the greatest danger to humanity, and is really driving the entire world into a conflagration of horrific proportions. Truly the imperialists are our implacable enemies – if we don’t finish them first, they threaten to destroy human civilisation itself!

London riots vs London Olympics

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Not necessarily what they seemed.

The following essay was written as a school homework assignment by a member of Red Youth and was published as the editorial to issue 50 of the magazine Proletarian.

This summer, we witnessed the spectacular event of the Olympic Games in our very own capital city. However, at the same time last year, London and Britain were shocked by the London riots, when the youth in poverty-stricken areas expressed their anger towards the state.

Exciting, wonderful, immense – all these words could describe the London Olympics. But we could also call them corrupt and hypocritical. Mo Farah and Jessica Ennis were all over the front pages of all the newspapers posing proudly with their gold medals. There was no outcry about one of the world’s largest monopoly corporations, which has contributed greatly to the western world’s obesity pandemic, being a major sponsor of the games.

And what about ATOS, a company which has stripped thousands of people of their needed benefits and humiliated many more in their benefit-stripping tribunals? Whilst many of us were watching the mainstream media promoting the Olympic Games enthusiastically, the needy people of Britain were fighting to keep their benefits from being cut back owing to a financial crisis they have not contributed to. You might think the Olympic Games were amazing and have left a fantastic legacy, thanks to the fanatic promotion job done by the media, yet, behind the scenes, a major struggle between the working class and the ruling class of Britain was going on!

In the 2011 London riots, you might have been thinking how disgracefully these lunatic rioters were behaving – stealing bottles of water and breaking shop windows down – but you were probably just regurgitating what the media were saying. Remember, media corporations such as the BBC and the Murdoch press have all been directed into stating what the ruling class wants them to say.

This was proved by the Leveson inquiry, which showed how the politicians and the mainstream media work hand in hand to mislead the public and to promote monstrosities around the world such as war. During the London riots, there was also a riot going on in Libya. But the differences were that the rioters in Libya were armed and supported from the start by the West, ie, by the USA, France and Britain. Some even called it a ‘revolution’!

But when it comes closer to home, Britain will do anything to stop the riots. They were even considering using rubber bullets. When it doesn’t suit their interests, they will do anything to stop it! People were told that all the looting would affect the economy, but it was nothing compared to all the looting done by the ruling class, which has left the country in a state of emergency and crisis.

The real trouble is caused by the oppressors, and you can’t compare their violence with that of the oppressed. For centuries, the British ruling class has perpetrated disgraceful crimes against humanity, such as the slave trade, and it still seeks to dominate today. But when, for a few days, the British working class expresses its deepest anger by rioting and looting, it is treated like a mass murderer.

You might have been thinking that this article is turning truth on its head, but all it’s really doing is contradicting the media’s propaganda, which has been used to disparage the rioters and to promote the Olympic Games. We should always look at both sides of a situation before we make up our minds about it.

Labour, Tory same old story – fight all the cuts!

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Red Youth and cpgb-ml comrades attended an anti-cuts demo outside the Labour Party Conference on Sunday. Comrades were there to highlight the role played by all the main parties who’re in service to big business, and to argue that a simple changing of the guard is not going to get us out of the mess we’re in.

In June, a 48-year-old man tied himself to the railings of a Jobcentre, doused himself in flammable liquid and set himself ablaze. (See Guardian, 29 June 2012)

This desperate act reveals, in the most brutal of terms, that poverty in Britain is not only material deprivation, in which sky scrapers are erected and social housing bulldozed, but a multi-dimensional assault – physical and psychological – on working-class people.

Indeed, research published last month by the Centre for the Modern Family showed that one in five British families are ‘living on the edge’. (See Independent, 26 June 2012)

As retail food prices have increased by 25 percent since 2008, and the price of child care and average household bills have sky-rocketed, so too have levels of stress and mental ill health. (See Economist, 23 June 2012)

This reality is worse still in the north of England, Wales and Scotland. And, throughout the country, young people are bearing the brunt of British austerity.

Since last year’s youth uprisings, dubbed criminal rioting by bourgeois commentators, no serious attempt to tackle youth poverty has occurred. In fact, changes to benefit entitlement have pushed thousands more into deprivation; implanting feelings of failure, shame and psychological distress upon an entire generation of young people. (See BBC News Online, 11 October 2011)

It is only logical, therefore, that – with a diminutive job market, an education system that is being progressively commodified, and a vanishing NHS – class antagonisms will intensify and uprisings may become as much a part of the British summertime as corporate-sponsored sporting events.

From the student activist to the unemployed youth, in the classroom and in the street, young people are awakening to discover that our political and economic system is not designed to help realise their potential but only to exploit the labour of some and utterly discard the rest.

They are also discovering that our system is designed to enrich a tiny handful of financiers. It was revealed this month that the super-rich have between $21tr and $32tr stashed away in tax havens. (Seecnn.com, 25 July 2012)

This is not a charge from radical opponents of capitalism, but the findings of bourgeois investigation. Nor are these the dealings of shadowy businesses but the recognised and admitted practice of the world’s largest financial institutions. It is an astonishing figure, greater than the GDP of any imperialist nation, and it is the kind of wealth that could eradicate poverty for vast swathes of humanity.

There could not be a clearer example of how income disparity and material and psychological deprivation is becoming more acute in modern Britain. As welfare safety nets disappear, and government oppression increases, we should not only expect greater incidence of civil unrest but prepare to inject it with ideological direction.

Communists must seek to build and lead popular mass movements for real change; for a mere change of government will not suffice. Only an entirely new system can offer our youth a positive future.

Unemployment and the fight back

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Unemployment in Britain is now over 2.5 million, with young people being especially hit; people under 25 account for about 40 percent of the unemployed and according to latest figures youth unemployment stands in excess of 1 million. Any day you visit the jobcentre it is literally bursting with people competing for jobs and the chances of finding work are getting less and less. In our region so many factories, pits and traditional heavy industries have closed down that the only places to look for work appear to be Tesco, Asda and McDonald’s. This entire experience is depressing and degrading, how many times must you apply for a job and never even receive a response?!

Wales

Unemployment in Wales has been a serious problem for some years, but recent reports by the Office for National Statistics and subsequent work by University researchers show that the scale of the problem is huge. Two Welsh Council’s Blaenau Gwent and Merthyr Tydfil now rank in the top ten of Britain’s worst hit areas with a study by Sheffield Hallam University claiming unemployment rates of 17% and 14.9%. The report claims that Wales is hit much harder by unemployment than official statistics for those claiming jobseekers allowance suggest. With thousands of school leavers entering the jobs market and thousands more being thrown off Incapacity Benefit by bonus hungry health ‘professionals’ at private company Atos; it leads any sensible and thinking person to ask, how are people in Wales supposed to find work?

How to fight back

In days gone by when the British working class had a strong militant communist party, mass marches, riots and street fighting with the police and state forces forced from local poor committee’s money and food to keep people from starving. All we remember of these days is the Jarrow March. But the reality of the fight for jobs back in the 1920’s and 30’s is much different from the toned down sanitised history we’ve been fed. A starting point for young workers must be to read Wal Hannington’s book Unemployed Struggles. Hannington was a leading member of the Communist Party of the time and led the National Unemployed Workers Movement. Radio 4 recently broadcast a biased history of these struggles, but the first hand accounts contained in the programme are well worth listening to and learning from. Listen to the unemployed struggles of the 20’s and 30’s.

Read Red Youth – Who stole our Future?
Watch Red Youth – Remember October!

Journalists and NUJ membership still waiting on High Court judgement

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A demonstration was held outside the Royal Courts of Justice on 25 April by members of the NUJ and PCS unions. Inside, a judicial review was being sought of a court decision which required journalists, media organisations and broadcasters to hand over footage taken by journalists during the ‘disturbances’ at Dale Farm to the police. Despite this militant, assertive and inspired leadership from the NUJ the courts keep NUJ members (and the rest of civil society) waiting!

Click this link to read the NUJ news report.

Confusion reigned in the minds of some members of the NUJ who turned up outside the High Court and considered their three or four-minute participation in a photo-op feeding frenzy of toothless piranhas as synonymous with union solidarity! They were surprised when, on trying to induce those members taking part in the event into a favorable pictorial arrangement to further enhance the ‘newsworthy’ commercial viability of their shoot, they were treated with contempt and derision.

Years of covering union events as observers and never as players has dulled their minds to the fact their own union protest requires something more of a contribution from their person besides the usual cynical exploitation!

The appellant, Jason Parkinson, who was also one of the demo participants, is probably correct in surmising that since 2010 the news industry has seen a dramatic increase in production orders by the police.

Although journalists’ ‘right to silence’ has been enshrined in European law since 1996, the domestic production order situation exists and will continue to exist precisely because the bourgeoisie has no intention of allowing a precedent to be set in regards to the ‘defense of press freedom’.

It matters not a jot that the John McDonnells and Austin Mitchells of this world stand up in Parliament to repeatedly table parliamentary questions to the Secretary of State; the response is always the same: deflection!

A few good apples in a barrel full of rotten ones can’t reverse the process of decay, whether one is an ‘honest’ member of the perfidious Labour Party or not.

No one doubts the union’s commitment to legally defending the vital principle: “the protection of journalistic sources and material”. One can believe Michelle Stanistreet, NUJ general secretary, when she states:

“The media played a critical public interest role in reporting on Dale Farm and the case will have significant implications for the whole of our industry. Journalists are put in danger if footage gathered whilst reporting events is seized and used by the police. The NUJ’s code of conduct compels the union – and our members – to defend a vital principle, the protection of journalistic sources and material.”

Still, the union’s acceptance of the law as it stands, including a raft of other anti-union laws, means this principle has to be fought for time and time again! The seeming reliance exclusively on the ‘NUJ Parliamentary Group’ to act as a guarantor of journalistic freedom is no defining strategy for defense; nor are parliamentary questions likely to induce media-group managements to have second thoughts about a title’s viability and sustainability.

What’s more, having bought into the Leveson inquiry and offered evidence against Murdoch on the condition of anonymity for NUJ members, the union now finds itself in a quandary, since it was revealed during proceedings that Murdoch’s ‘Management and Standards Committee’ at News International handed over hundreds of emails from journalists to police investigating News International, with the likelihood of betraying the journalists’ confidential sources and outing whistleblowers’ identities.

Police have 171 officers on the case – more than they had on Milly Dowler’s murder or the Lockerbie plane crash!

The NUJ is now reduced to begging Murdoch not to hand over any more journalists’ emails, threatening that “unless satisfactory assurances that similar investigations will not take place on the Times and Sunday Times, the union will seek a legal injunction”, whilst somewhat lamely producing sound bites demanding the resignation of culture secretary Jeremy Hunt.

Meanwhile, the prospect of the Dale Farm production order review finding in favour of journalistic freedom, and against the UK police state looks ever more remote.

Not a good day for the working class, it would seem. But all the anti-democratic, anti-working class and repressive legislation they can heap on their books will not safeguard the capitalist state from the mounting anger of the working class, once they learn to direct, channel and focus it in a revolutionary manner. In the last analysis, they are few, and we are many.

Capitalism fears revolutionary consciousness and organized mass action of the working class as medieval townsfolk fear the plague. That is why they set such draconian sentences for boys posting “lets riot”, or “I support the Afghan resistance” on facebook. And that is why they constantly seek to enlist the people to spy on themselves and each other. The sooner the journalistic fraternity realize this, identify themselves with the interests of the working people, and lend a bit of backbone to the struggle, the better.