Gaza – Yemen – Ukraine! Ceasefire Now!

by New Worker correspondent

Activists from the International Ukraine Anti Fascist Solidarity campaign (IUAFS) joined the national Palestine march in Central London on Saturday with placards making the connections between the wars waged by NATO imperialism in Gaza, Ukraine and Yemen. They received a warm welcome from the protesters and dozens of people took photos and videos.
Theo Russell, the IUAFS organiser, said that "only four states in Africa, Asia and Latin America, if we don't include small island territories, support the NATO-led sanctions against Russia or send weapons to the Zelensky regime in Ukraine. It is Britain and its allies from the minority of rich, powerful countries who have dominated the world since 1945, who are out of step with the global majority.
"Far from being an 'isolated pariah', as British mainstream politicians and the BBC love to claim, the Russian Federation enjoys wide support in the 'Global South', and it is the BRICS alliance which is leading a historic transformation towards a multipolar world. That alliance, including the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China, is rapidly expanding and pushing for a world based on development and growth rather than never-ending wars, and is firmly behind the cause of justice for the people of Palestine.
"One of the speakers from the protest platform near the Israeli Embassy made the same connections today, saying 'We have a new Labour government in Britain, but they are telling us there's no money to solve the massive problems our country faces. There's no more money for housing, there's no more money for hospitals, there's no more money for schools and no more money for prisons. But there's always enough money for Israel, and there's always enough money for Ukraine'.
"Since February 2022, according to official figures, the UK has promised £12.5 billion in military and economic support for Ukraine. That is roughly equivalent to 1.8 million desperately needed hospital beds.
"We are saying Enough is Enough! No more British weapons for Ukraine! No more economic, military and diplomatic support for Israel! Stop bombing the people of Yemen!"

Stop Banking on Genocide!

by New Worker correspondent

Activists from Palestine Solidarity Campaign branches in Camden and Islington marched from Camden Town to the Sadler's Wells Theatre in Islington, North London, to call on the theatre to stop taking sponsorship from Barclays Bank while a very small counter-demonstration of around ten Zionists was largely ignored by the public. Last weekend’s protest was part of the ongoing Boycott Barclays campaign which has targeted the bank for its major lending, investment and business interests which help to support the Israeli economy and its powerful military machine. The campaign slogans are "Stop Banking on Genocide – Stop Banking on Apartheid". Camden Palestine Solidarity Campaign stated "We do not have anything against the theatre, other than their sponsorship from Barclays". The date of the protest was changed at the request of the theatre as many disabled visitors were expected on the original date.

Stop the massacre in Gaza!

Around 800 people joined an emergency protest opposite Downing Street on Monday evening in response to the horrific Israeli triple missile strike on a school in Gaza City which killed at least 80 Palestinian civilians. The attack coincided with morning prayers and started a fire. About 6,000 people were sheltering in Tabeen school, all of whom have already moved several times to different parts of Gaza on the advice of the Israeli forces to avoid military operations. The director of al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City, Dr Fadel Naeem, described the situation at the hospital as catastrophic, with a severe shortage of medical supplies and resources. Al-Ahli hospital is managed by the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem  and it is the only Christian hospital in Gaza.

No arms for Israel!

photo: Rana Aria, Hammersmith & Fulham Unison

By New Worker correspondent

Hundreds of thousands of Palestine solidarity supporters took to the streets across the country on Saturday to demand an end to genocidal war in Gaza and an end to British arms sales to Israel. In London demonstrators marched through the heart of the capital to call on the new Labour government to stop arming the Zionist state.
The Starmer government has reportedly suspended the processing of arms export licences for sales to Israel pending an official review. But this is not enough.
Stop the War national convener Lindsey German said “a temporary suspension of the processing of arms export licences to Israel, while David Lammy ponders what to do that won’t hurt his friends in the defence industry or the UK’s relationship with the US and Israel, means little. There must be an immediate ban on all arms sales. Every hour this decision is delayed, more lives are lost. The government must stop facilitating genocide immediately”.
The UK’s deadly arms trade with Israel includes its contribution to the F-16 and F-35 warplanes that Israel is using in its bombardment of the Gaza Strip. 15 per cent of every F35 that Israel is using to bomb Gaza is made by British industry. 
The government’s own Strategic Export Licensing Criteria, under which all arms exports are assessed, states that export licences should not be issued if there is a “clear risk” arms exports might be used in a “serious violation of international humanitarian law”. The Arms Trade Treaty, to which Britain is a State Party, outlines that a State must not export arms if there is “potential” that they could be used to commit violations of international human rights or humanitarian law. It is inconceivable that after over 75 years of Israel’s regime of military occupation and apartheid, and nearly 10 months of Israel’s genocidal assault on Palestinians in Gaza, with over 40,000 killed, that the government’s legal advice has adjudged that such a risk does not exist.
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, together with the Campaign Against Arms Trade and War on Want is calling on the British government to abide by its domestic and international law obligations by immediately introducing a comprehensive military embargo to end the two-way arms trade with Israel and end all further military assistance to Israel, including through the RAF base in Cyprus.

End arms exports to Ukraine!

 

London anti-fascists were back in Whitehall demanding the release of all Ukrainian political prisoners at a picket by Downing Street last week. The protest called by the International Ukraine Anti-Fascist Solidarity campaign (IUAFS) called for the restoration of full political and media freedoms in Ukraine and an end toBritish arms exports to the Zelensky regime.

Free Ukrainian political prisoners!

By New Worker correspondent

Activists from International Ukraine Anti Fascist Solidarity (IUAFS) and the newly created Scotland Against NATO Action Committee (SANAC) held protests in Glasgow and London last week calling for the release of thousands of Ukrainian Political Prisoners, many of whom have been falsely convicted of acting on behalf of the Russian and Donbas forces, beaten or tortured, and sentenced to years in prison with confiscation of all property. The protesters also called for the restoration full political and media freedoms in Ukraine after almost all political parties and dozens of media outlets have been banned. The British government has routinely ignored this repression taking place on a massive scale and continues to send hundreds of millions of pounds in arms and other support to Ukraine, at a time of acute shortage of housing in Britain, a health service in deep crisis, prisons and schools in shocking condition, 30 per cent of UK children living in poverty and almost two million people suffering undernourishment.

Selling the Family Silver

 by New Worker correspondent

 London’s Great Russell Street is the address of two major institutions: the British Museum and the TUC HQ, Congress House. But not for much longer. While the classical nineteenth century Museum is staying put the 1950s modernist Congress House is up for sale. 
This little noticed decision is a damning reflection on the state of Britain’s trade unions which now represent less than a quarter (22 per cent to be precise) of the workforce. 
After the TUC’s Finance Committee decided it is no longer viable to keep the building its General Council agreed that point in early June. It is claimed that essential refurbishment will cost around £20 million.
Congress House was opened in 1958, some 14 years after the 1944 TUC called for a new building. It is the grandest purpose-built labour movement building in Britain, although the nearby British Medical Association’s Tavistock House and the National Education Union’s Hamilton House are equally impressive. 
 In 1946 David Du Roi Aberdeen won the design competition against 180 rivals, but it was not until 1958 the building finally opened.
 The competition brief was to provide a building which would be “fitting to the dignity and propagation of the great ideals for which the Movement stands”. 
 It is centred on a large semi-basement conference hall surrounded with offices, smaller meeting rooms, it had a library (now at the University of North London), a catering hall, with a well-lighted entrance hall. The panelled rooms are the result of timber donated by unions from across the globe. All the construction workers had to have a union card. As the TUC is very respectable the Royal Horse Guards played at the opening ceremony.
Modernist architecture is not to everybody’s taste, being rather plain, but the building has important unique features. Its internal courtyard is dominated by Sir Jacob Epstein’s 1957 sculpture of a mother carrying her dead son, a striking anti-war monument. This was designed specifically for the building. At the front the plain Cornish granite slabs frontage looks down the bronze “Spirit of Brotherhood” showing a strong man helping a weak one, by communist sculptor Bernard Meadows. Being a Grade II listed building such important features will have to be retained, which be certain to put off buyers. A mysterious Ministry of Defence building at the back enabled the spooks to know what was going on.  
The TUC claims it needs a “modern fit-for-purpose” building. But this is something which they already have. It is near three major railway stations connected the north of Britain. The building is used by other trade unionists. As a humble trades union council delegate this correspondent recalls sitting in the top floor council chamber listening to both fiery and long-winded speeches.
Parts of the building are already rented out to sympathetic bodies such as law firm Thompsons. Its large hall has been rented out to all and sundry including for large company AGMs, which bring in cash, albeit at the cost of generating controversy. 
Forty jobs, largely of catering workers are at risk from the TUC’s planned move. TUC General Secretary Paul Nowack said the decision was “an incredibly difficult one” but was as in the movement’s best interests. 
 In some respects this is like a twenty-strong congregation struggling to keep a Victorian church built for hundreds water-tight. But things are not as bad as that for the TUC. Given its location the TUC could clearly do more to exploit the building rather than simply throw in the towel, even if that meant hiring its soul for corporate AGMs. The  alternative will likely be a suite of offices occupying a couple of floors in an expensive nearby office block. 
The planned sell-off is definitely a retreat at a time when trade unions need to go on the offensive. There is a petition against the sale focusing on the risk of lost jobs at:   https://www.change.org/p/save-congress-house-jobs.

Camden Action for Palestine!

By New Worker correspondent

Activists from the Camden Palestine Solidarity Campaign marched from Camden Town to a Barclays Bank in Central London to demand it ceases its massive loans and investments to the criminal Israeli state. The protest came ten days or so after the then US president, Joe Biden, approved the resumption of deliveries of 500 pound bombs to Israel, followed shortly afterwards by Israeli attacks on two schools and a hospital in which dozens died. While Biden and Sir Keir Starmer reacted with outrage to Ukrainian lies about a Russian strike on a children's hospital in Kiev, promising more air defences for Ukraine, they had nothing to say about Israel's atrocities in Gaza in which hundreds of civilians are dying every week. On a more positive note, for the past three weeks the assortment of Zionist fanatics, EDL “football lads” types and Iranian monarchists have given up on their counter protests. 

Palestine – we will not be silenced!

By New Worker correspondent

Palestine Solidarity Campaign activists marched once again last Saturday from Camden Town to Barclays Bank in Tottenham Court Road, where the Barclays branch has been forced to close on Saturdays after weeks of protests.
Luca Salice from the Camden Palestine Solidarity Campaign urged the activists to join the national Gaza protest two days after the General Election, saying "It's very important that we tell the new government that we are here, that we are in solidarity with the Palestinians, that we are against genocide, that we are against the slaughter if children, of women, the destruction of schools, hospitals, universities and places of worship."
Sabi Sagal, a British Jew with family in Israel, said "I'm old enough to remember the Nakba in 1948, I was ten years old, and we were lied to. The Zionists put out the false narrative that the Arab armies had invaded Palestine to drive the Jews into the sea. The reality was the opposite – it was the Zionists who drove out three quarters of the Palestinian people into the desert. It was an Israeli professor, Benny Morant, who finally told the truth when he said ‘Yes, we drove the Palestinians out, we had to do so, otherwise we wouldn't have the state of Israel’. He was honest, he was an honest Zionist. What the Israelis are doing now is to complete the ethnic cleansing begun in 1948.
"We often hear the term Apartheid used in relation to Israel, but in fact Israel is much worse than Apartheid South Africa. But it's very important that we're protesting outside Barclays, it was when Barclays Bank was forced to withdraw their investments from South Africa that the Apartheid regime fell in the early 90s. Let's do the same again now, let's force Barclays to withdraw its financial support for Israel, and let's end all the arms that enable Israel to kill and murder Palestinians in their thousands".
Jonathan Fluxman, a health worker from South Africa, pointed out that "even if there are not many of us here today, it's still important that we're here outside Barclays, because all of these people around us can see and hear us."
The Camden protest was one of seven across London and 28 across Britain last Saturday, as far apart as Plymouth and the Orkney Islands. These weekly protests have now been taking place for 38 weeks. Palestine campaigners did not expect, or want, this campaign to be needed after so long. 
Until recently frenzied efforts were being made by government ministers and the media to label these actions as "pro-terrorist", and the police came under intense pressure to close them down.  But in the last few months the political establishment and mass media have tried a new tactic, erecting a 'wall of silence'  on the protest movement in an attempt to suffocate it. But there is no sign of the numbers taking to the streets for an end to the genocide in Gaza going down.
As one of the slogans coined during this incredible protest movement which millions have joined in Britain says: "We are the people – We won't be silenced!"

US out of Korea!

by New Worker correspondent

Korean solidarity activists were outside the US embassy in London on Saturday to demand an end to the American occupation of south Korea. London comrades, including NCP leader Andy Brooks, joined in the protest called by the Korean Friendship Association (KFA) in solidarity with the DPR Korea and all the Korean people campaigning to end the imperialist partition of their country. 
US imperialism and its south Korean lackeys attempted to invade Democratic Korea on 25th June 1950. Millions died in the war that ended with an armistice in 1953. But Korea remains partitioned with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) ringed by the nuclear arsenals of US imperialism and facing tens of thousands of American troops based in the south of the divided peninsula.
Every year the anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War is marked by the start of the month of solidarity with the Korean people. In Britain, and throughout the rest of the world, Korean solidarity campaigners meet to demand an end to the American occupation of south Korea and the reunification of the country that has been divided since the end of the Korean War.
“We are here today picketing the US embassy because a few days ago, on Tuesday 25th June, it was the 74th anniversary of the provocation of the Korean War which is known as the Fatherland Liberation War in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” said Dermot Hudson, the Chairman of the KFA. 
“The war was not a war between Koreans but between a small country, the DPRK, and the American empire. Indeed it was a war against Korea, against the Korean people.
“The US imperialists, the ringleader of world imperialism and international reactionaries, provoked a war in Korea on the 25th June 1950 by instigating their south Korean puppets to attack the young DPR Korea. The US imperialists were hungry for profits and conquest. The US imperialists fought an unjust, aggressive war against the Korean people. The US imperialists launched a war of conquest against the DPRK , a war to destroy the Juche-based people's democratic system in the DPRK as well as to destroy socialism in Asia and the world.
“We are here to defend the right of the DPRK to exist, to defend its independence, it is time to take a real stand and defend People's Korea from the threat of US aggression. The US is quite openly threatening the DPRK with annihilation, with being "eliminated" from the face of the globe.
“All the time, the US, even as we stand here, the US imperialists are planning regime change in People’s Korea and to overthrow the socialist system”.

Welcoming visitors from Tibet!

by New Worker correspondent

NCP leader Andy Brooks joined friends and comrades to meet a delegation from Xizang, the modern term for Tibet, this week. The reception at the Chinese embassy’s Science Section in north London revolved around the theme of "A Beautiful and Happy Xizang" with a screening of a film about traditional Tibetan medicine and the new life that the people enjoy in the autonomous region on the roof of the world. This was followed by greetings from the Xizang delegation in a room decorated with traditional Tibetan scroll paintings.
Since the peaceful liberation of Xizang in 1951 and the suppression of the Dalai Lama’s imperialist inspire rebellion in 1959 the democratic reforms under the leadership of the Communist Party of China have led to earth-shaking changes in Xizang. The people – poverty-stricken serfs under the feudal regime of the Dalai Lama – now enjoy their fundamental rights in all spheres. 
Public health services have been elevated to a higher level in Xizang. The region provides a comprehensive public health-care system covering regular basic medical services, maternity and childcare, disease prevention and control, and Tibetan medicine and therapies.
Xizang is home to 49 public institutions of Tibetan medicine, and 94.4 per cent of township health centres and 42.4 per cent of village health clinics in the autonomous region offer Tibetan medicine services. Tibetan medicines are now being produced on a commercial basis, and the production of the medicine has been standardised and regulated.
The online Chinese Tibetan Medicine Database Platform was officially launched last year. It aims to combine, preserve and utilise the Tibetan medicine resources through modern technology. Tibetan medicine is a part of the Tibetan culture and a pearl in the traditional Chinese medicine. The digitisation of these resources is significant in standardising Tibetan medicine and preserving Tibetan culture. 

Starmer wins as Tories crash!

by New Worker correspondent

Rishi Sunak has resigned. Tory biggies, including Grant Shapps, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Liz Truss, have lost their seats. Plaid Cymru surges forward but the Scottish nationalist vote slumps. The Liberal-Democrats bounce back with 71 seats – their best result for a hundred years. The Greens are up from one to four. Jeremy Corbyn successfully staves off the Starmer machine. George Galloway doesn’t. Four other independents from the Muslim community take seats from Labour on Palestine solidarity platforms and Reform enters parliament for the first time with Nigel Farage at the helm.
Tory grandees are now scrabbling around to look for a new leader as Labour prepares for the Starmer era following a landslide victory of Blairite proportions in the general election.
Labour trounced the Tories this week winning 412 seats in the House of Commons that gives a huge parliamentary majority of 174. But Labour’s triumphant return owes much more to the Tory collapse than to anything Sir Keir Starmer had to offer. The turn-out was down – possibly the lowest since the Second World War and Labour’s share was only around 36 per cent – much lower than Tony Blair’s victory in 1997. And if Starmer & Co refuse to change course over Palestine the rift with the younger generation, the Muslim community and the left as a whole will only widen.
Labour lost four seats to pro-Palestinian independent candidates and faced serious challenges in several others including Starmer’s own London seat where a pro-Palestinian activist came second with 18.9 per cent of the vote. “Labour need to take the votes lost over Gaza as seriously as we took the loss of red wall” said Blair’s former adviser John McTernan as the results came in on Friday morning. 
"The work of change begins immediately" Starmer said soon after he moved into Downing Street though this would not be as simple as "flicking a switch". Platitudes come easy to a man like Starmer who spoke of the need for schools and affordable homes and vowed to "rebuild" the country's "infrastructure of opportunity...brick by brick" to meet the "challenges of an insecure world".
Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader who defeated a Starmer stooge to keep his Islington seat as an independent,  said Starmer “will have a very large majority in parliament, he has put forward a manifesto that is thin to put it mildly and doesn’t offer a serious economic alternative to what the Conservative government is doing. And so the demands on him are going to be huge, the demands from the people are going to be huge.
“If you don’t give yourself space, to increase spending on the desperate social needs, I mentioned the two-child policy, but there are plenty of others, then I think there are going to be political problems. He must have known this when he agreed this manifesto which is a bit of a straitjacket around any proposals he may want to push forward.
“If the government ends the two-child benefit cap for example, hallelujah! I will be delighted. But if they don’t, I’ll be there, saying: why haven’t you done it? If they bring in rent controls in the private sector, well done. If they don’t, I’ll be there. Because this is a vote to show that people do want a true and independent voice in parliament to speak up for social justice”.