Which way forward for the labour movement?

By New Worker

Correspondent

NEW COMMUNIST Party comrades joined a debate on the way forward for the labour movement at a conference in south London last Saturday organised by the RCPB (ML).  NCP leader Andy Brooks together with National Chair Alex Kempshall, Robert Laurie and Theo Russell from the Central Committee took part in the discussion that was kicked off by Michael Chant at the John Buckle Centre last Saturday.

 Comrades focused on what next after the success of the huge public sector strike in November, the struggle for peace and the building of the working class agenda throughout the country.

 The initiative of the RCPB (ML) follows the conclusions of their national consultative conference last November to develop the necessary organisation to resist the current bourgeois offensive against the working class. 

EDL attack East London Mosque

confronting the EDL in Barking

  by New Worker correspondent

MEMBERS of the violent Islamophobic English Defence League last Saturday evening attempted to attack the East London Mosque in Whitechapel after leaving an EDL rally in Barking earlier that afternoon.

 Police escorted them on to a train at Barking headed for central London, but a large number got off at Aldgate East and went into a local pub. According the reports, after drinking for some time EDL thugs barged into the pub kitchen and seized knives.

 They then went out on the street and made for the East London Mosque. But local residents turned out quickly and in large numbers to stop them.

 This led to a fight involving several hundred people, according to police reports. One man was seriously injured and taken to hospital and 15 people were arrested. All were later released on police bail.

 Rushanara Ali, MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, said she visited the area after she became aware of police being called.

 She said: "I was out visiting constituents when I saw the police cars. As far as I could see, the police were doing their job. There were a lot of young people around but the police are very adept at handling these situations.”

 Earlier that day over 150 EDL supporters had assembled from all over England near Barking Station in east London at the Barking Dog public house.

 As they became drunk and noisy, local people passing looked very concerned and hurried on their way. The EDL thugs chanted slogans, sang and claimed “We own these streets” and “You’re not English”.

 They then engaged in a short march past local shops. The marchers continually abused local shoppers and shopkeepers, especially those who looked as though they might be Asian.

 A group of around 50 members of United Against Fascism (UAF) mounted a spirited counter demonstration at very short notice.

 The march ended in a square beside the Town Hall with the very noisy EDL corralled by police at one end and the UAF at the other.

 Some local youths of mixed ethnicity wandered into the middle at one stage and observed the two groups for some time before turning and about a dozen of them joined the UAF group, joining in with the anti-fascist slogans and holding up UAF placards.

 Towards the end of the rally the EDL members suddenly decided to harass and intimidate press photographers present. Police then escorted them to Barking station.

 Gerry Gable, editor of the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight, told the New Worker, he was very concerned that the police had allowed a large number of them to leave the train together at Aldgate East, where they later tried to attack the East London Mosque.

Charity to take over Bexley library...

...at a price

THE SMALL LIBRARY in Bexley Village in south-east London is to be taken over and run by a charity, Greener Bexley, which will introduce charges for many services that are now free.

 Regular users are critical of this move, saying they already pay for it through their council tax and it will create a two-tier service and discourage young people from using the library. And many are wondering if this is the shape of things to come for other council services.

 Bexley Council has agreed the library will be managed by charity, Greener Bexley, through a community group called Bexley Village Community Library (BVCL), which will take over the library in spring, saving the council around £40,000 a year.

 It will continue to offer free membership of the library but people will also be able to pay for memberships that provide extra benefits, at annual rates of £24 or £75.

 All customers will pay to use the desktop IT facilities but wi-fi access will be free. BVCL will not loan CDs or DVDs, but instead it will sell them while encouraging their return after use so they can be re-sold.

 David Hinds, of Hill Crescent, Bexley, is a regular user of the library. The retired grandfather-of-three said: "The bare bones of the agreement seem to be not quite what I was anticipating at all. I think it's all fairly appalling. I feel it's introducing a two-tier system."

 BVCL will run the library independently of the council’s library network, though the council will supply some book stock on an annual basis and a part-time member of staff with experience of running a library.

 BVCL is planning to introduce three levels of membership to the library:

* Reader’s ticket – free membership and free loans of stock, with some limits to the numbers of items which can be borrowed. Due dates and fines will apply.

* Library member – a £24 annual fee will see people join as full members of the wider charity. Benefits will include being able to borrow a higher number of books, keeping books for an unlimited time, a free period of use on the public computers, discounts in the cafe and priority booking for events.

 * Gold membership – customers can join as a “patron” for a £75 annual subscription. Members would be making a donation to the running costs of the library and attracting additional funds to the charity through Gift Aid. BVCL will reinvest income earned through membership in new library stock.

 Meanwhile the public sector union Unison is campaigning to defend library services from closure or being hived off like Bexley Village Library.

 Unison, the National Federation of Women’s Institutes (NFWI), Voices for the Library, The Library Campaign, Campaign for the Book and the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) last week announced they will hold a joint lobby of Parliament calling on politicians to protect vital library services.

 During the lobby, on 13th March, the campaigning group will highlight the importance of libraries in providing access to learning and as a vital lifeline for many communities. The lobby will take place at midday, on 13th March, at central Hall, Westminster.

 Heather Wakefield, Unison head of local government, said: “Cutting libraries is not an easy solution for councils to save cash – it is a literacy time bomb for deprived communities.

 “Community groups are being held to ransom by Government plans to force them to take over the running of services, or lose them. These groups don’t have the time, skills and resources to take over the jobs of experienced library staff.”

Stephen Lawrence: Some Sense of Justice

by Daphne Liddle

GARY DOBSON and David Norris, two of the men involved of the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence on 22nd April 1993 in Eltham, were last Tuesday found guilty of the murder.

This follows a titanic struggle for justice by the Lawrence family, in particular Stephen’s mother Doreen Lawrence, in the face of police racism and hostility, presuming that Lawrence, being black and young, must also be a criminal.

The family were supported by a huge, spontaneous anti-fascist movement that mushroomed in south London after that murder and a spate of other racist killings, including Rolan Adams and Rohit Duggal, in the area at a time when the neo-Nazi British National Party had set up its headquarters in nearby Welling.

When the police and Crown Prosecution Service failed the Lawrences, the trade union movement funded a private prosecution against three of the five chief suspects.

But this collapsed because the evidence given by Stephen Lawrence’s best friend, Duwayne Brookes, the only eye-witness, was ruled inadmissible because a police officer had put Brookes in a position where he saw the suspects at the police station so that his identification evidence was deemed unreliable.

The suspects were released, believing that under the double jeopardy rules, they could never be charged again. They thought they had got off.

But the family did not give up. In 1997 the new Labour Home Secretary Jack Straw initiated the McPherson Inquiry into the police handling of the case.

shocked

What came out shocked the nation: the police contempt towards the bereaved family and suggestions of police corruption. The police force was found to be institutionally racist — meaning that black and ethnic minority people seeking justice usually had a worse outcome than white people in the same situation.

This state of affairs applied to many other institutions of the state and wide ranging changes were introduced to require these institutions to monitor themselves to make sure that black and ethnic minority people received equal treatment.

It did lead to some real changes in policing, particularly in London and especially when Ken Livingstone was mayor of London.

It also led to non-stop whingeing from sections of the bourgeois, covertly racist sections of the press about “political correctness gone mad”. The covert racists have not gone away and the struggles against institutional racism, especially in the police, are fought on shifting sands.

Dev Barrah who led the Race Attack Monitoring Unit of the Greenwich Council for Racial Equality for a couple of decades found that the new senior police officers at Plumstead were good and willing to get to grips with race awareness. And then they moved on.

Others came and the process had to begin all over again. Some senior officers were clearly doing the race awareness work as a box they had to tick on their way to a good career.

decline

Then came the “war on terror”, Islamophobia, the revival of the racist Stop-and-Search policy and Boris Johnson for mayor of London. Relations between the police and black and ethnic minority communities started to decline again — leading to last summer’s riots.

Cressida Dick, Acting Assistant Commissioner at the Metropolitan Police, in 2006 had set up a dedicated cold case forensic team to look again at all the evidence in the Lawrence case.

This resulted in last week’s convictions of Dobson, who will serve a minimum of 15 years and two months, and Norris, who will serve a minimum of 14 years and three months.

This has brought some relief for the family — partial justice. Doreen Lawrence made it quite clear she cannot celebrate while her son lies buried and there are still more perpetrators to bring to justice.

There is no new evidence at the moment. But Dobson and Norris will soon realise they could never get parole unless they express genuine remorse and regret — and that must include a full account of what went on that night implicating the other attackers.

Dev Barrah also commented|: “No justice, no peace, what about the other three?”

Gerry Gable, editor of Searchlight anti-fascist magazine, told the New Worker: “It was a great result,” and praised the efforts of Cressida Dick. But he also said it was only a partial victory so far — and that there are “bent coppers” still to be brought to justice.

But the most credit for the success so far has to go to Doreen Lawrence, whose single-minded determination has caused a sea change in policing in Britain. But, as she acknowledged the power of the “Stephen Lawrence legacy” she said: “I would rather have my son back and living his life than any legacy”.

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Please feel free to use this material provided the New Worker is informed and credited.

Cornelius Cardew: composer, musician and fighter for the people's cause

Kerry Yong

by Theo Russell

MUSICIANS and political activists gathered on 17^th  December at London’s Conway Hall to honour a great cultural figure, pioneering musician and fighter: Cornelius Cardew.

 Seven musicians – pianists and violinists – performed works celebrating working class, anti-fascist and anti-imperialist struggles, and the public premiere of Cornelius Cardew – TheContent of Our Song, a superb film by Stuart Monro (available on Youtube).

 By his early 20s Cardew’s talent was sufficiently recognised for the German modernist composer Karlheinz Stockhausen to employ him as an assistant. He said of Cardew:

 “As a musician he was outstanding because he was not only a good pianist but also a good improviser... I gave him work to do which I have never given to any other musician, which means to work with me on the score I was composing. He was one of the best examples that you can find among musicians because he was well informed about the latest theories of composition as well as being a performer.”

 Monro’s film provides further testimony to Cardew’s talent, in an interview with Sir Thomas Armstrong, then principal of the Royal Academy of Music (and hardly left-wing!). Armstrong explains his decision to give Cardew a post in spite of his left-wing views and activities, in the belief that would inspire a new generation of young musicians.

 Monro’s film shows Cardew’s complete integration of music with the political struggles of his time, with Cardew and fellow musicians performing from the back of a lorry on demonstrations.

 While teaching experimental music at Morley College in London 1968, Cardew helped launch the Scratch Orchestra, a large ensemble which anyone could join and for which he is probably best known. (A film by Monro of the orchestra, when he forgot to remove the lens cap, was described by one student as the “best avant-garde film ever”).

 The Scratch Orchestra pioneered a new style of participatory music involving music, ordinary sounds and day-to-day activities. It took music to the people, performing not just at concert venues but in village halls.

 In the early 1970s Cardew abandoned avant garde music and wrote the book entitled Stockhausen Serves Imperialism, which was critical of his own involvement with Stockhausen and avant garde music.

 He joined the People’s Liberation Music collective, which used culture to support the liberation struggle in Ireland, striking miners, and the fight against the revival of neo-Nazism

 Cardew became an admirer of Hardial Bains, the Canadian communist leader and leading anti-revisionist, who contributed the lyrics to the signature song of his later career We Sing for the Future. Cardew went on to be a member of the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist).

 He died in a hit-and-run car accident near his London home in East London on 13^th December 1981. The driver was never found, and some have suggested he was killed because of his political activities.

 The concert included revolutionary songs from Cardew’s Piano Albums, including the Thaelmann Variations, performed by Chisato Kusunoki, based on the theme of The Thaelmann Song (1934). It celebrates the German communist leader Ernst Thaelmann, who spent over 11 years in solitary confinement before being executed by the Nazis at Buchenwald in 1944.

 Two pieces were based on famous Irish patriotic songs from the 1798 United Irish Rising, Boolavogue, about Father Murphy who emerged as a leader of the rising and was tortured and executed by the British (performed by The Ivory Duo – Panayotis Archontides and Natalie Tsaldarakis), and The Croppy Boy describing the capture and execution of a young “croppy” (rebel), played by Haydn Dickenson.

 The Vietnam Sonata, celebrating the victories of the Vietnamese people, was played by David Griffiths. The Worker’s Song, an industrial folk tune which with new lyrics by the Progressive Cultural Association beginning with the words “I am a worker and I say it with pride”, was performed by Lesley Larkum on violin.

 The concert ended with We Sing for the Future a piano solo performed by Kerry Yong, which Cardew described as “for youth, who face bleak prospects in the world dominated by imperialism, and whose aspirations can only be realised through the victory of revolution and socialism”.

 Cardew may not be widely known today, but this event will contribute towards making Cardew’s unique contribution and ideals relevant to the struggles we face today.

 In the words of the concert programme: “Cardew was a leading figure in the struggle against racism and fascism, organising the youth to take control of their future, and rousing the workers in defence of their rights.”

• The Content of Our Song

• Stockhausen serves imperialism

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

NEPAL: The objective conditions still exist for the revolution

by Theo Russell

A member of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) politburo, Indra Mohan Sigdel or ‘Basanta’, addressed a meeting in London last week, organised  by Second Wave Publications, about the “line struggle” taking place in the party, following a series of setbacks to the cause of advancing to a national democratic revolution. Since the end of the war led by the UCPN (M) – formerly the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) - and the abolition of the monarchy in 2008, splits have appeared in the party over the implementation of peace agreements and Comrade Prachanda’s leadership of the UCPN (M).

 In his talk Indra Mohan Sigdel made these points:

 “Mao said that with a correct political line, you will have everything: you will have an army, and you will have state power, you will have all of these. But without the correct political line, you will lose all of them.

 “Today we see that whatever we had, we have lost. In this case Mao has been proved correct.

 “When we started our struggle we didn’t have a single rifle which worked. We had four rifles which didn’t work. But we were able to seize power in the countryside, organise mass support in the towns and cities, and get rid of the monarchy.

 “Our army has been dissolved in the name of integration, but this is in fact a surrender. Our fighters were about to defeat the Nepalese Army. But the revolutionary cause ten years of struggle has not been given up. The whole party has not surrendered. The whole party has not become revisionist.

 “Now the situation is very difficult, but there is still the possibility that the political struggle will continue until victory. It may take a few years, but the struggle will continue uninterrupted.

 “In 2008 our tactics were successful when the first meeting of the Constituent Assembly abolished the monarchy, and we got a democratic republic. But after this advance the leadership never thought of developing the national democratic revolution. What we have achieved is still a reactionary system.

 “At the Kharipati Convention held on November 2008 there were very sharp  divisions in the party. Prachanda proposed a ‘people’s federal democratic republic’, but the leadership never tried to implement this in practice, and the struggle started again. We developed our plan and had to develop new tactics to achieve the people’s democratic revolution.

 “At a three month-long CC meeting in mid-2009 Prachanda finally agreed that a people’s insurrection is a must to establish the people’s federal republic. Will this be peaceful? No, it can never be peaceful, it has to be armed insurrection. The theory that armed struggle is necessary is still valid.

 “At the Sukute standing committee last April 3 Bhattarai (now the UCPN(M) prime minister of Nepal) said we can’t make a revolution now, we need to stop and prepare the ground, to integrate the army and write the best possible constitution  and then move ahead.

 “Prachanda accused him of ‘right deviation’ and being a ‘national capitalist’, and pretended to be revolutionary. But history shows us that no party which has entered into bourgeois government has gone on to create a revolution.

 “Later Prachanda, Bhattarai and the other leaders agreed a four point programme: a constitution based on a ‘democratic republic’; an extradition treaty with India; an Indian military and air force presence in Nepal, to protect Indian projects; and ‘relief’ measures, which meant that land seized by the peasants was to be returned to the former landowners, with compensation.

 “The call was issued to resist and take the land back. So far land is being seized and seized back again with no violence, but when they commit to implementing the line, the police and army will be deployed.

 “We had built up a strong military force which was an inspiration to the people does not exist, actually it has been eliminated.

 “Under the agreement our fighters going into the army will have to undergo a ‘bridge’ course run by the army, and those who are unsuccessful will be sent home without a penny.

 “This shows that with a correct political line we gained so much, when we took the wrong political line, we lost everything.

 “From this point two lines of struggle and two opposed positions have emerged in the party. Now  we are in a situation where the people can see the contradictions, and those comrades taking a revolutionary line are gaining support, which is a good thing.

 “This will take a long time, but the objective conditions still exist for the revolution. We are now taking our political programme and political education to cadres across the entire country.

 “To ensure power, we have to create another PLA, and that PLA has to seize power. The question is how we can sustain our revolution. We are being encircled by imperialist powers, and there are no revolutionary countries nearby.

 “We agree with Lenin that it is possible to make a revolution in one country, but the question is can we sustain the revolution.

 “Armed insurrection is definitely the most important factor, but the question is how to bring this about. Overall conditions are increasingly favourable because the contradictions and class struggle are sharpening in the capitalist countries, but the question is how to deal with this situation.

 “If we eventually achieve the revolution, then definitely the state will be led by the proletariat, but until that time power will be held by all the people, as Mao said.

 “But the situation is very very difficult and very sensitive. This line struggle is going deep into class struggle, it will produce a result and show the way forward.

 In an article last September, Basanta provided further detail on the ideological struggle taking place in the UCPN(M).

 “The ideological struggle in our party has now been manifested in two lines, Marxism or reformism, and it has centred on ideological, political and organisational lines.

 “The Party did not have any tactics through a period of almost a year after the democratic republic of Nepal was declared. In the situation when the old tactics were over and the new ones was not taken up it was obvious the party had  no plan to go forward, except cycling around the parliamentary exercise.

 “Finally, elucidating that Nepal was still a semi-feudal and semi-colonial country and the federal democratic republic was a reactionary political system, the party adopted a new tactic, a people’s federal republic, to accomplish the new democratic revolution. This tactic is still valid and is awaiting its execution.

 “On May 1st  2010, the party declared from the stadium at Tundikhel, Kathmandu that an indefinite strike would be continued until it culminated in a people’s insurrection, through which Nepalese people become the masters of state power.

 “This brought about unprecedented enthusiasm among the broad masses. But strangely, after less than two weeks; the strike was suddenly brought to a stop, which did nothing other than bring about complete demoralisation among the people.

 “The ideological struggle that had started from Kharipati reached its climax after the indefinite strike was stopped. Everyone from our leaders to cadres, as well the Nepalese masses, is aware of the height of the Palungtar debate held in November 2010.

 “The two-line struggle being waged after Kharipati took a different turn after the standing committee meeting held at Sukute. Essentially, the contradiction between reform in essence and revolution in form that existed in our party leadership was resolved at Sukute.

 “It is clear that the new democratic revolution in Nepal is now on the threshold of counter-revolution. It is being manifested in the danger of surrendering the PLA in the name of army integration, and in writing document of compromise with the comprador, bureaucratic capitalists and feudalists, in the name of building consensus.

 “If army integration is carried out in a capitulationist way and if a document of compromise is adopted in the name of writing a constitution, it will be an outright counter-revolution.”

Justice for Joe Paraskeva

 

by New Worker correspondent

Joe's mother with Diane Abbott

LINDA MORGAN last Saturday, along with her MP Diane Abbott, led a demonstration to present a petition at Downing Street calling for justice for her mentally ill son, Joe Paraskeva, who has been given an indeterminate prison sentence.

 Joe was jailed after using an aerosol can and cigarette lighter to try to escape from a mental health unit in which he had been sectioned in October 2010.

 Even though Joe had no previous convictions and a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, he was sent to prison, and his family have no idea when he might be released.

 Joe was recently transferred to the John Howard Centre forensic unit in Hackney, but his mother fears he may be moved back to prison at any time.

 The 6,000-signature petition calls for Joe's case to be reviewed, for his conviction to be overturned and for him to receive proper care, as a mental health patient, within the NHS.

 Just before the event Ms Morgan said: "We are going to Downing Street today not only to campaign for Joe, but to address a huge injustice in both the NHS and the criminal justice system.

 These failings allow the most vulnerable in society to be punished rather than helped. Prison is not a safe or therapeutic environment for people suffering with mental health problems and should not be used as a dumping ground.

 Joe's case is only one example; there are many other families out there who have been through similar experiences. Anyone who has a mental illness deserves to be safely cared for, not thrown into prison."

 The Justice for Joe campaign is being supported by a number of major mental health and criminal justice organisations including, Sane, Mind, Rethink Mental Illness, The Manic Depressive Fellowship, YoungMinds, The Howard League for Penal Reform and The Prison Reform Trust.

Free Shaker Aamer!

  

by New Worker correspondent

DOZENS of people gathered in Whitehall, opposite Downing Street, last Saturday to demand action from the Government to take action to secure the release of Shaker Aamer, who is still held in the Guantánamo prison by the United States government.

 Shaker Aamer has been held in the Guantánamo Bay concentration camp since 2002. He is a legal permanent resident of Britain, married to a British national, with four British children living in London.

 Shaker has long been cleared for release by the United States, never been charged by the United States with a crime and has never received a trial.

 Reprieve Director Clive Stafford Smith visited Shaker in November 2011 and on departure, immediately penned a letter to Foreign Secretary William Hague listing numerous physical ailments that Shaker suffers – a list that had just been cleared through the US censorship process.

 The letter calls for Shaker's release and meanwhile Shaker waits alone in his cell, officially cleared of wrongdoing, but still paying the cruellest of costs for his kindness to others.

 Protesters at Saturday’s event read out the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, on the 63^rd  anniversary of its adoption by the United Nations.

Time to boot out Boris!

By a New Worker correspondent

London students demonstrated outside King’s College last week in protest at a “Back Boris Student Bootcamp” meeting called to support the Tory London Mayor’s campaign for another term next year. About twenty students, some wearing spoof Boris Johnson masks assembled outside the main university entrance in the Strand to show their opposition to the meeting organised by Conservative Future, the youth wing of the Tory party in a protest called by Occupy London protest movement that has led the tent protests in Finsbury Square and St Paul’s cathedral.

Emma Stanton, student and supporter of Occupy London said: “Boris Johnson is the Mayor of the one per cent, the privileged few. This bootcamp is an attempt to prettify and legitimise the brutal Tory agenda, which has having a devastating impact upon students and young Londoners. By pricing Londoners out of education, the Tories are taking away not only the opportunities and ability of an entire generation, but they are dealing a severe blow to the economy which grows with an educated workforce.”