Comrade Harpal returns from visit to Chinese Academy of Social Science and a meeting with the CPGB-ML Honorary President

Comrade Harpal speaking at the Chinese Academy of Social Science
Comrade Harpal speaking at the Chinese Academy of Social Science

CASS

Comrade Harpal Brar, Chair of the Communist Party, has returned to Britain after his recent trip to China. Comrade Harpal was invited by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (which encompasses the former Institute of Marxism Leninism, Mao-Zedong Thought) to address this years Third World Socialism Forum. Comrade Harpal was able to address the delegates on the contemporary struggle for socialism, the crisis of imperialism and a great many other questions. A full report will appear in the new year edition of Lalkar.

In the meantime, watch the video below featuring the CPGB-ML Honorary President Isabel Crook. Comrade Crook is a lifetime revolutionary, Marxist Leninist and fierce anti-revisionist. Isabel’s late husband David fought in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War and both were loyal members of the CPGB during its revolutionary years. After the collapse of the old Party many comrades were left without a political home, but many like Jack Shapiro and Isabel were delighted to witness the reemergence and growth of a revolutionary Party in Britain. You can read a review of her famous book Ten Mile Inn written jointly with David in this months edition of Proletarian.

Join Red Youth!

If you’re tired of conducting all your political struggle from behind a computer screen, or if you’ve had enough of being told to just get out and sell copies of the Morning Star or Socialist Worker – then you need to think about joining Red Youth.

Our members prioritise their own education and rather than spend all their time engaged in online gossip or enduring excruciatingly dull meetings of

Red Youth out in Lancashire
Red Youth out in Lancashire
the rest of the ‘left’ we encourage our comrades to take our socialist message out onto the streets. Members in the North West today spent the afternoon putting our line on saving the NHS to the general public and regularly set aside time for political discussion and study. Many other Red Youth members in some of the other major cities in the UK were doing similar work and if you’re thinking about finding out more about us then drop an email to info@redyouth.org and we can put you in touch with a local group.

Better to be out on the streets than stuck at a Morning Star jumble sale or listening to Ree's,, German and Co drivel on trying to justify war in Syria!
Better to be out on the streets than stuck at a Morning Star jumble sale or listening to Ree’s,, German and Co drivel on trying to justify war in Syria!

An understanding of society (theory) and a way of uniting to change it (organisation) are the two things that we need to make a socialist revolution. Ordinary people in Britain have everything to gain by getting involved in this process sooner rather than later. This world isn’t working for us and we deserve better! Not only do we need to campaign against the bad conditions and lack of prospects for working-class people in Britain today, but we need to work for a completely different type of society – one where people’s needs decide everything. So many problems face this world: environmental catastrophe, poverty, disease, racism and war. They’ll never be solved while capitalism remains, but they could all be sorted if society was set up for the benefit of the majority rather than the private gain of a few billionaires. Our party is different because we consistently apply Marxist science to all areas of our work, and we’re not scared to tell it how it is. We refuse to be intimidated by the barrage of lying propaganda that fills Britain’s mainstream media. It is the capitalists’ job to try to stop us from building a socialist society; it is our job to do it anyway!

Challenge your ideas – challenge their propaganda – seek the truth – serve the people – change the world!

A school trip to learn about war

The following is written by a Wigan Red Youth comrade after a trip to the Imperial War Museum

A history trip to the Imperial War Museum in Manchester, I was expecting the typical British war museum glorifying the British and its allies imperialist wars. I was not disappointed! The stuff on display would tie in with my college work that we are about to get started on, its called “Britain at war” mostly focusing on world war one.

Within minutes while I was walking round I reached the section about World War 2, and I overheard a women tell her child that Joseph Stalin was a “Evil man who killed millions”. My initial response to this was pitiful laughter, but sadly this is the “truth” that a lot of our youth are fed, this is the “truth” that the media, schools, universities, academics, writers and filmmakers desire to push. It not surprising since they all operate within the capitalist system – and you don’t get on very well if you don’t toe the line. Bourgeois historians perpetually reinvent lies that are passed on to the children in schools during history class. When I was home and looking back at a photo that I had taken of the picture of Stalin today I noticed the text below it read “A ruthless and paranoid dictator, his regime was responsible for the deaths of millions”. This was typical of over-simplistic and childish explanations for events of world historic significance which involved the activities of hundreds upon hundreds of millions of people. The war museum and society as a whole just accept what they are told in school and don’t go and research or investigate the truth. I have had the same experience with friends who repeat the lies often told about Stalin having made no independent investigation at all, but when you provide them with the material that proves otherwise they are simply no long interested! Such are people attitudes when you challenge their ideas in this society!

The museum was not all doom and gloom for a young communist; the horrors of war was shown in one part of the museum where there were pictures of the effects of war (Casualties etc). I noticed within the group of students a shock at the wounds of the soldiers who go and fight these imperialist wars, in which our soldiers are used as cannon fodder. Many say we should learn from history, but we continue to send working class men and women to fight the ruling elite’s wars, but every step of the way we shall oppose this and through soldiers and workers refusing to fight and abet the designs of the imperialists these wars can come to an end and the proletarian revolution come to fruition!

Each one, teach one!

More info here:

Guardian article

Lies concerning the history of the USSR

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

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.

Rising anger with the profit driven murder of our sick and disabled

A protester against ATOS profit driven murder in Birmingham, courtesy of Stalingrad O’Neill

Amongst the many cuts being made to jobs, pensions, public services and welfare provision in Britain today, the cuts to benefits generally and the benefits of the disabled in particular are perhaps the easiest to recognise as heartless targeting of ‘soft’ (ie, largely defenceless) groups to protect the profits of the rich and powerful.

Disabled people on benefits are stuck in a ‘Catch 22’ situation: do nothing and they hit you with cuts, take to the streets in protest and in all likelihood someone will try to use the fact to prove that you could be working! Yet the disabled have finally taken to the streets, as last year’s series of ‘Hardest hit’ rallies around the country showed. Unfortunately, these demonstrations and rallies were all guided and addressed by social democrats, and to have the likes of Hilary Benn talking about early-day motions is neither inspirational nor of any practical use to those under attack.

Attacking society’s most disadvantaged

Incapacity Benefit (IB) was meant to compensate people for lack of earnings if illness prevented them from working. At the end of the last Labour government, IB was rebranded the ‘Employment and Support Allowance’ (ESA), and an independent medical assessment was introduced.

Hundreds of thousands of disabled claimants have lost around £70.00 per week in the move from IB to the new ESA as private firms who were employed to ‘assess’ claimants during the move from one to the other (presumably on a bonus system) have been declaring virtually everyone fit for some work based on a short examination from a ‘medical professional’ (usually a nurse of some undisclosed type).

According to Nick Sommerland, “The work capability assessments are carried out by private firm Atos, on a £100m a year contract.

“The firm made a £42m profit in 2010 and paid boss Keith Wilman £800,000, a 22 percent pay rise on the previous year.” (‘Thirty-two die in a week after failing test for new incapacity benefit’, Daily Mirror, 5 April 2012)

This ‘professional’ assessor ticks boxes on a form, and in very many cases the outcome is 0 points. This has the effect of putting many claimants off even trying to appeal against the adverse decision, as the required 15 points seems so far out of reach. Yet of those who have appealed, some 40 percent have been successful.

For those who win their claim, however, it is a long and arduous slog to get their money back. The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) shamelessly claims in this age of computers that it cannot be done instantly because of the backlog, and 8-10 weeks is now around the average time it takes to change a claimant’s rate to the appropriate one having worked out the difference between what they have been getting and what they should have been getting and multiplying that by the number of weeks/months that they have been underpaid!

Meanwhile, the government carries on enjoying what is in reality an interest-free loan from hundreds of thousands of the poorest and most disadvantaged people in the country for as long as it can. Of course, that is still better for people than having that money taken away permanently and having then to submit to interviews to explain why they haven’t got a job, even though it is glaringly obvious that very few employers are interested in employing anyone who is not fully fit.

The disabled are then herded into what are mostly completely useless ‘retraining’ courses under threat of losing even more of their benefits if they fail to attend. For the chronically ill, who often are in extreme pain for much of the time, this is a nightmare without end, as jobs are few and no one will employ someone who is obviously incapable of work or even of turning up every day.

An independent website that offers advice and help to claimants trying to retain or regain their benefits pointed out two cases in its latest newsletter of people caught in this trap:

“Paul Mickleburgh, one of the world’s longest-surviving kidney dialysis patients is hooked up to a dialysis machine for five hours, three days a week. He’s also had cancer and pneumonia and suffers from spontaneous internal bleeding, brittle bones, a twisted bowel and agonising joint pains as a result of his renal treatment. He’s had four failed kidney donations. To top it all off, Paul has had 14 heart attacks in the last five years and believes his last attack was caused in part by the stress of trying to deal with the DWP.

“Sadly, patients with chronic kidney disease are actually more likely to die from associated heart disease than from kidney failure itself. In spite of this, Paul has been placed in the work-related activity group meaning that he is someone who is expected to return to the workplace in the reasonably near future. Paul’s request for this dreadful decision to be looked at again came back with the same result – he should be moving towards a return to work.

“Karen Sherlock, a disability activist whose kidneys were failing, was waiting to be put on dialysis. In spite of her very serious condition, Karen was placed in the work-related activity group, meaning that her benefit would soon stop altogether because of the time limit on contribution-based ESA. Karen spent many months fighting that decision. Two weeks ago she finally won her exhausting battle with the DWP and was placed in the support group. This week she died of a heart attack.

“One of her friends noted: ‘She was terrified. Beside herself with fear. She lived her last months desperately scared that her family would not survive the onslaught it faced … She spent her last months fighting for the ‘security’ of £96 a week and the reassurance that it couldn’t be taken away.’”

According to Nick Somerland, “More than a thousand sickness benefit claimants died last year after being told to get a job.” These include 53-year-old Derbyshire resident Stephen Hill,who “died of a heart attack in December, one month after being told he was ‘fit to work’, even though he was waiting for major heart surgery”. (Op cit)

The Benefits and Work newsletter also commented on a recent speech by the employment minister:

“Last month, in a speech to work programme providers at the Institute of Economic Affairs, Chris Grayling the employment minister explained why the Work Programme is not making the profits for the private sector that had been hoped for. His explanation as to why the much-prized incapacity benefit to ESA transfer claimants – for whom providers get paid £14,000 when they place them in work – are in short supply, touches directly on the fate of Karen Sherlock and others like her:

“‘We have more people fit for work, and moving to JSA. We have more people needing long-term unconditional support than expected. And those in the middle [work-related activity] group, who would expect before too long to be mandated to the Work Programme, have proved to be sicker and further from the workplace than we expected. So it will take far more time than we predicted for them to be ready to make a return to work.’

“In other words, providers will have to be patient, but eventually those £14,000-a-time claimants will be handed over to them … unless, like Karen Sherlock and an increasing number of other seriously sick people, they die before the bounty can be claimed.” (Benefits and Work, PO Box 4352, Warminster, BA12 2AF, campaign@benefitsandwork.co.uk)

This takes us right to the nub of the issue: under the capitalist system even the robbing of the chronically ill by the government can be turned into a profit-making business for private companies – and in times of crisis like these, such opportunities are too lucrative to be missed!

For the disabled in Britain today, meanwhile, the attacks on living standards have not yet ended. The Disabled Living Allowance (DLA), which helps with extra living costs and transport for the disabled, is the next target.

Neil O’Brien reported recently that Iain Duncan Smith has pledged to “introduce an independent medical assessment, so that only those who really need the benefit get it”. For anyone who has gone through the process of moving from IB to ESA described above there will undoubtedly be a feeling of déjà vu.

“The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) thinks a new, independent medical assessment might reduce the number of people awarded the benefit by around half a million. It will even get a friendly-sounding new name: the Personal Independence Payment (PIP).” (Daily Telegraph, 14 May 2012)

Meanwhile, the Guardian has reported that “Some long-term sick and disabled people face being forced to work unpaid for an unlimited amount of time or have their benefits cut under plans being drawn up by the Department for Work and Pensions.

“Mental health professionals and charities have said they fear those deemed fit to undertake limited amounts of work under a controversial assessment process could suffer further harm to their health if the plans go ahead.

“The new policy, outlined by DWP officials in meetings with disabilities groups, is due to be announced after legal changes contained in clause 54 of the Welfare Reform Bill have made their way through parliament.

“The policy could mean that those on employment and support allowance who have been placed in the work-related activity group (Wrag) could be compelled to undertake work experience for charities, public bodies and high-street retailers. The Wrag group includes those who have been diagnosed with terminal cancer but have more than six months to live; accident and stroke victims; and some of those with mental health issues.” (16 February 2012)

The way forward

The plain fact is that all the provisions of the ‘welfare state’ under conditions of capitalism could only ever have been a temporaryconcession made to workers. After the second world war, when the tide of revolution was running high in the world, the imperialist ruling classes were much weakened – and they feared for the very survival of their system.

It was in that situation that our rulers agreed to allocate a portion of their superprofits (gained from intensified looting and suppression of colonial peoples abroad) to creating some of the facilities that had previously only been available to workers in the Soviet Union – free health care, free access to university education, guaranteed social housing, benefits for the sick and the unemployed, and so on.

In this way, workers were lulled into a false sense of security after these concessions had been made to them. They allowed themselves to believe (encouraged by the social-democratic leaders of the Labour party, trade unions etc) that perhaps capitalism really could deliver everything they needed after all. And so the working-class movement aimed at the overthrow of British imperialism was progressively decimated, as was the trade-union movement aimed at securing and protecting rights for workersunder the conditions of capitalism.

Add to that the collapse of the USSR and the east European socialist states, and, as far as our ruling class was concerned, the need for such expensive concessions for buying social peace was at an end. Moreover, the deepening crisis of capitalist overproduction, in which gigantic corporations are engaged in a ruthless struggle for survival and are desperately competing to find profitable activities for their bloated capital reserves, means that the ruling class’s ability to pay for such ‘optional extras’ is also disappearing.

It could not be more obvious that it will only be through the replacement of capitalism by a socialist system of production that the disabled and long-term sick will be permanently released from penury and insecurity. It is only under socialism that they and everyone else will be encouraged and supported in playing as much of a role as they are capable of in production for need (see for example the report of our delegation to Cuba, elsewhere in this issue, for information on the care of the disabled in a socialist society).

In such a society, the focus will not be on private accumulation of profit, but on all-round provision of necessities, as well as on education, development, care and support. As the exploitation of man by man is finally eliminated, a society truly fit for human beings will emerge – and all members of that society will finally start to be given opportunities to develop their true potential and make their unique contribution.

BBQ and social: International celebration of anti-imperialist resistance and solidarity!

Barbecue and social

Saturday 28 July, 1.00pm
Saklatvala Hall, Dominion Road, off Featherstone Road, Southall, UB2 5AA

Join party members and friends from around the world in celebrating two important anniversaries in the revolutionary calendar:
— the Korean victory in the Fatherland Liberation War
— the storming of the Moncada Barracks in Cuba

Honoured guests and speakers will include:
— representatives from the north Korean, Cuban and Venezuelan embassies
— delegates recently returned from both Korea and Cuba

Come and be inspired as we celebrate two historic achievements of the international working-class movement, and learn about the reality of building socialism under imperialist blockade today. In June 2012 our comrades, at the invitation of the Communist Party of Cuba toured the island, visiting Co=operative farms and hospitals, speaking with those who are leading the Party in its daily struggle against imperialism. Come along and here what they saw,

Touring a newly created Co-op farm in Cuba, June 2012
Mural at a school for the disabled in Havana, Cuba – June 2012

Plus cultural performances, tasty barbecue and a decent curry too – all in the company of good comrades.

– Day school on Marxism and Scottish nationalism –

Sunday 29 July, 10.30am-4.30pm
Saklatvala Hall, Dominion Road, off Featherstone Road, Southall, UB2 5AA

CPGB-ML comrades and supporters will be meeting for a day school focusing on the Marxist definition of a nation and how Marxists apply this understanding to arrive at a correct policy on any particular national struggle. This understanding is vital if we are to make sense of the various liberation struggles going on around the world, and should also help comrades formulate their attitude towards the question of Scottish independence.

The day will be held in two parts, with an introduction to the question given by Harpal Brar during the morning session followed by workshop discussion groups in the afternoon.

Please contact us if you are planning to attend both events and need accommodation over the weekend:
— rango@cpgb-ml.org

Summer BBQ this Saturday: International celebration of anti-imperialist resistance and solidarity!

Saturday 28 July, Saklatvala Hall, Southall, UB2 5AA. 1pm start

Come and hear speeches and contributions from the Venezuelan, Cuban and Korean embassies – and a report back from the CPGB-ML delegation to Havana where Party-to-Party talks were held with the Cuban Communist Party.

This is a social event to celebrate the anniversary of the victory of the Fatherland Liberation War in Korea and the anniversary of the storming of the Moncada Barracks in Cuba.

Followed by cultural performances along with a tasty barbecue and Indian curry!

Join the facebook group here

Durham Miners Gala; ditch Labour to fight the cuts!

This year’s Durham Miner’s Gala saw thousands upon thousands of ordinary working class men and women descend on Durham to celebrate working class history and culture. It was clear from the overall mood of many who attended that sections (a minority but conspicuous by it’s presence) of the labour movement are finally beginning to wake up to the reality that cuts must be opposed no matter who tries to introduce them, that the working class needs to move to promote it’s own interests and not those of a small aristocracy of labour who continue to try their very best to link the interests of the working class with those of imperialism.

Despite the organisational stranglehold still asserted by Labour Party bosses over the event – there were plenty of examples of working class people who would have no truck with Labour or Tory arguments for cuts. The appearance of Ed Milliband on the stage was met with an apt banner, provided by one of our most militant and class conscious unions the RMT, the banner was pulled by a small aircraft across the sky. Circling the old racecourse it read “No ConDem cuts – No Labour cuts”.

No ConDem cuts - No Labour cuts

Down on the racecourse itself others unveiled banners which exposed the hypocrisy of the likes of Miliband:

A major cause of disorganisation amongst workers has been the confusion spread by social democrats over the real nature of the capitalist crisis, which they present as a temporary blip to be sorted out by the next Labour government via ‘sensible’ cuts and some economic pump-priming. But nobody should doubt the scale of the crisis we are entering, or believe that it is just being ‘talked up’ by the Tories to scare us.

Behind the debt crisis that is undermining the US economy and tearing Europe apart lies a deep-seated overproduction crisis that has been brewing for over three decades. More commodities have been produced globally than can be sold at a profit on the market – not because the world’s needs have been met, but because people just cannot afford to buy them.

The problem is further aggravated when capitalists, desperate to beat the competition, slash wages and reduce the workforce, thereby further reducing the masses’ spending power and adding another twist to the spiralling crisis.

Break the link

The good news is that the same capitalist crisis is also chipping away at the material basis for opportunism, since the ruling class can no longer afford to spend so much on buying off its opponents. The time is ripe for the working class to move from cynical mistrust of the Labour traitors to a confident assault upon their stranglehold over organised labour.

While our unions are tied to the imperialist-affiliated Labour party, we will not be able even to fight the cuts, never mind organising to overthrow the whole rotten system that brings poverty and war in its train. This years Durham Miners Gala was the honourable exception to the usual TUC-inspired and controlled austerity protests. Protests that winge on about fighting the cuts but do everything in their power to ensure that working class people don’t lift a finger against the cause of the crisis and the leadership who protect the interests of the rich.There is one abiding slogan that should be embraced by every class-conscious worker as we enter the next stage of battle against the cuts:

Ditch Labour to fight the cuts!

A few other photos from the day:

Ditch Labour to fight the cuts! Leaflet of the cpgb-ml

Journalists and NUJ membership still waiting on High Court judgement

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.