IN LONDON Tibetan exiles and their dupes have been demonstrating outside the Chinese embassy in support of the separatist gangs that plunged parts of the Tibetan capital into violence last weekend. There can be no doubt that the London protests and similar demonstrations taking place across the world have been organised by the Dalai Lama clique and his “Free Tibet” movement and there are ample facts and plenty of evidence to prove that the recent riot in Lhasa was organised, premeditated, masterminded and incited by the Dalai Lama clique.
Tibet became part of China in the 13th century and this was recognised by all the local Tibetan feudal leaders down the ages, including the current Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso. This was recognised by the Dalai Lama after China’s liberation and the establishment of the people’s republic in 1949. But in 1959 the feudal landlords and reactionary religious leaders fearful of democratic reforms launched an armed rebellion, backed by the CIA and India, to preserve the serf system. It was crushed and the “god-king” of Tibet fled to India where he still holds court in exile.
The Tibetan people swept the reactionaries and feudalists aside and established a people’s government in Tibet. The million serfs and slaves stood up for themselves, no longer the property of their masters to be traded, transferred or used to pay a debt in kind or by labour.
But in India the Dalai Lama clique has constantly sought to sabotage and disrupt the forward march of the Tibet Autonomous Region. The Dalai Lama wants his throne back and the reactionaries want to restore the wretched feudal system that held the Tibetan people in thrall for centuries. Behind them are the sinister forces of imperialism working to undermine and destabilise the People’s Republic of China, the economic giant of Asia.
The Dalai Lama is a hypocrite who claims he stands for the Buddhist teachings of peace and harmony. Last weekend’s violence, led by his agents, has torn the mask from his face. But the days of serfdom and slavery are long gone in China and they will never come back. We stand with the Chinese and Tibetan people defending their people’s government.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Friday, March 21, 2008
London fight for asbestos victims
THE CONSTRUCTION union Ucatt is backing a campaign to overturn a Law Lords’ ruling that prevents the victims of asbestos-related illnesses from claiming thousands of pounds in compensation.
The campaign is also backed by Dagenham MP Jon Cruddas, who attended an event at Barking Town Hall, along with union activists last week to launch a campaign to restore payments to workers exposed to dust from the Cape Asbestos factory in Harts Lane, Barking, which closed in 1968.
The campaign involves people sending postcards to justice secretary Jack Straw asking him to reintroduce payments to people suffering from scarring of the lungs, known as pleural plaques, caused by exposure to asbestos. Their protest follows a legal ruling last year that pleural plaques would no longer be a compensatable illness.
Cruddas said: “This is vital for this area. The local incidence of asbestos-related diseases is the highest in London.
Mesothelioma is the highest for women in the country and in the top 10 for men. That’s why it’s so important.
“The Law Lords’ decision has saved billions for insurance companies. It’s a working class disease of which people sitting in the Lords know very little about.”
Health statistics reveal Barking and Dagenham has one of the highest rates of asbestos-related diseases in the country, and up to 25 people die from diseases associated with exposure to it every year.
The campaign is also backed by Dagenham MP Jon Cruddas, who attended an event at Barking Town Hall, along with union activists last week to launch a campaign to restore payments to workers exposed to dust from the Cape Asbestos factory in Harts Lane, Barking, which closed in 1968.
The campaign involves people sending postcards to justice secretary Jack Straw asking him to reintroduce payments to people suffering from scarring of the lungs, known as pleural plaques, caused by exposure to asbestos. Their protest follows a legal ruling last year that pleural plaques would no longer be a compensatable illness.
Cruddas said: “This is vital for this area. The local incidence of asbestos-related diseases is the highest in London.
Mesothelioma is the highest for women in the country and in the top 10 for men. That’s why it’s so important.
“The Law Lords’ decision has saved billions for insurance companies. It’s a working class disease of which people sitting in the Lords know very little about.”
Health statistics reveal Barking and Dagenham has one of the highest rates of asbestos-related diseases in the country, and up to 25 people die from diseases associated with exposure to it every year.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
NEW COMMUNIST Party comrades and friends gathered at Party centre on Saturday 8th March for a social to commemorate the life and works of Karl Marx.
As usual at these events there was plenty of good food and drink and on this occasion Cuban music.
Guests included Comrade Jong In Song from the Embassy of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, who gave an inspiring account of the way in which young Koreans are taught and encouraged to become fighters and campaigners for socialist advance and progress.
And he offered to address any schools or seminars on Marxism and on the Juché philosophy that the NCP might have planned. Comrades told him he would be certain to be taken up on that offer sometime later this year.
NCP general secretary Andy Brooks also spoke on the difficulties and privations that Marx faced while he was doing most of his writings in London and the impact of those works on today’s world.
A collection raised £1,300 for the New Worker.
photo: Comrade Jong In Song and Alex Kempshall
Honouring Marx
THE PROMISED rain held off last Friday as a large group of people from all corners of the world gathered in Highgate Cemetery, north London, to mark the 125th anniversary of the death of Karl Marx.
Those gathered included ambassadors and diplomats from People’s China, Vietnam, South Africa and Cuba together with Danish and German communists, a large party of Chinese students from Westminster College and the regular London-based communist stalwarts of the struggle.
Flowers were laid at the base of the huge tomb, including red roses laid by New Communist Party central committee member Robert Laurie.
Professor John Callow gave a short speech, in which he mentioned the recently published book Marx in London that he has co-authored.
He said his work was an attempt to rescue the real Marx from a welter of tradition and ritual and promote the content of Marx’s writings. “Marxism is not a rigid dogma but a living way of interpreting the political, social and economic processes that are happening all around us,” he said.
photo: Robert Laurie from the NCP at the tomb
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
BNP police infiltrator convicted
THE BRITISH National Party’s efforts to try to pass itself off as a normal respectable party took a severe blow last week after a south London BNP member who had infiltrated the police was convicted on weapons charges. Searchlight anti-fascist magazine has reported that at the turn of the year officers from the Post Office Security Team based at London’s main sorting office at Mount Pleasant intercepted a package from the United States that contained a Tazer gun, known as a stun gun, now in widening use by the Metropolitan Police Service.
The addressee was a 23-year-old man, Ellis Hammond. The PO security team passed on the address and details of the contents of the package to the police in southeast London. It took them only minutes to realise that Hammond was a serving officer in the Police Community Safety Unit based in their command area.
In no time they were at his family home detaining him and carrying out what was said to be a very thorough search. They found the following: one CS tear gas canister, one police-style ASP retractable baton, one pair of Metropolitan Police issue Handcuffs, one knuckle duster and eight combat knives.
They also found DVDs containing hate material, various items of BNP literature, some obscene material, 25-30 mainly imported T-shirts from the US bearing Nazi and white power group symbols and hardline racist and Nazi slogans, four BB guns, one replica AK47 assault rifle and one copy of The Turner Diaries.
This is the US publication that has served as a blueprint for Nazi terrorism in the US, written by the late William Pearce, a close friend of the BNP who has played host to them at his National Alliance HQ in the US and was guest of honour at a BNP annual meeting in east London some years ago.
And finally, to top it off, they found a BNP membership card.
By sheer coincidence Hammond had left his mobile phone on a table in the canteen at the police station where he was stationed. A police officer turned it on hoping to find the identity of the owner but instead found a message from the BNP to Hammond. The officer acted with haste and sensibly reported it to one of his senior officers, who were already in the picture about the Tazer gun.
Hammond must have lied about his BNP connections to be eligible to join the Police Community Safety Unit and he appears to have had ambitions to become a full police officer.
He was not active in any of his nearest three BNP branches and appears not to have acted in a racist or fascist way or drawn attention to himself as a member of the unit.
Last week he appeared at Bexley Magistrates’ Court and pleaded guilty to two charges under the Firearms Act for possession and purchase of prohibited weapons relating to the Tazer gun and the CS gas spray, both of which carry prison sentences.
One would have expected the magistrates to send him to the Crown Court with a view to custody of longer than six months, the limit of magistrates’ powers, particularly as he had lied to join the Police Service and was a member of a banned organisation as far as the police and prison service go.
We were astonished to hear that the case had been dealt with there and then and that he got a conditional discharge for 12 months. At the time of writing his name still appears on a police service website as a community beat officer.
In a separate case a suspected neo-Nazi accused of hoarding bomb-making materials at his Grimsby home has appeared in court to face terrorist charges.
Nathan Worrell, 34, appeared at City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court via video link from Blakenhurst Prison, Worcestershire, for a short hearing.
Police allegedly found bomb-making manuals, weed killer and dismantled fireworks at his Cromwell Road flat, which was raided on 24th January.
Unemployed Worrell is also accused of possessing a collection of far-right wing political literature and propaganda. He is charged with possessing material for terrorist purposes and information useful for an act of terrorism.
He also faces a third charge of waging a racist campaign of harassment against an Asian man and his partner.
The addressee was a 23-year-old man, Ellis Hammond. The PO security team passed on the address and details of the contents of the package to the police in southeast London. It took them only minutes to realise that Hammond was a serving officer in the Police Community Safety Unit based in their command area.
In no time they were at his family home detaining him and carrying out what was said to be a very thorough search. They found the following: one CS tear gas canister, one police-style ASP retractable baton, one pair of Metropolitan Police issue Handcuffs, one knuckle duster and eight combat knives.
They also found DVDs containing hate material, various items of BNP literature, some obscene material, 25-30 mainly imported T-shirts from the US bearing Nazi and white power group symbols and hardline racist and Nazi slogans, four BB guns, one replica AK47 assault rifle and one copy of The Turner Diaries.
This is the US publication that has served as a blueprint for Nazi terrorism in the US, written by the late William Pearce, a close friend of the BNP who has played host to them at his National Alliance HQ in the US and was guest of honour at a BNP annual meeting in east London some years ago.
And finally, to top it off, they found a BNP membership card.
By sheer coincidence Hammond had left his mobile phone on a table in the canteen at the police station where he was stationed. A police officer turned it on hoping to find the identity of the owner but instead found a message from the BNP to Hammond. The officer acted with haste and sensibly reported it to one of his senior officers, who were already in the picture about the Tazer gun.
Hammond must have lied about his BNP connections to be eligible to join the Police Community Safety Unit and he appears to have had ambitions to become a full police officer.
He was not active in any of his nearest three BNP branches and appears not to have acted in a racist or fascist way or drawn attention to himself as a member of the unit.
Last week he appeared at Bexley Magistrates’ Court and pleaded guilty to two charges under the Firearms Act for possession and purchase of prohibited weapons relating to the Tazer gun and the CS gas spray, both of which carry prison sentences.
One would have expected the magistrates to send him to the Crown Court with a view to custody of longer than six months, the limit of magistrates’ powers, particularly as he had lied to join the Police Service and was a member of a banned organisation as far as the police and prison service go.
We were astonished to hear that the case had been dealt with there and then and that he got a conditional discharge for 12 months. At the time of writing his name still appears on a police service website as a community beat officer.
In a separate case a suspected neo-Nazi accused of hoarding bomb-making materials at his Grimsby home has appeared in court to face terrorist charges.
Nathan Worrell, 34, appeared at City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court via video link from Blakenhurst Prison, Worcestershire, for a short hearing.
Police allegedly found bomb-making manuals, weed killer and dismantled fireworks at his Cromwell Road flat, which was raided on 24th January.
Unemployed Worrell is also accused of possessing a collection of far-right wing political literature and propaganda. He is charged with possessing material for terrorist purposes and information useful for an act of terrorism.
He also faces a third charge of waging a racist campaign of harassment against an Asian man and his partner.
Livingstone for London
London elects its Mayor in May. Ken Livingstone is the official Labour candidate. The leadership of that party may have been hi-jacked by scoundrels but it is still the only mass political party in Britain that has any potential whatever to giving a voice to Britain’s organised working class. And Livingstone’s record has been one of measures that have been of some benefit to London’s working class.
The Labour Party machine originally skewed its selection process to pick Yorkshireman Frank Dobson as its choice of candidate for the job. Livingstone quit the party to stand as an independent – though still holding the support of most of London’s Labour Party rank and file. He stood on a policy of opposing Tube privatisation. Though the Government imposed part privatisation of the Tube before handing control of it over to Livingstone, his stance has been more than vindicated in the dire performance and eventual collapse of Metronet, one of the two private companies involved in the part privatisation.
Livingstone has vastly improved the bus services. By and large the congestion charge has worked in lessening the gridlock in central London, though we would argue it weighs more heavily on low income drivers. Leading Green activists and campaigners acknowledge he is one of the very few elected mayors in the world with enough courage to take on the motor and oil industry lobbies in trying to reduce pollution in the capital.
And when it comes to the position of London Mayor, the alternative really is very much worse than Livingstone. Boris Johnson affects the public persona of a posh buffoon but he is really very reactionary and set on removing all barriers to his very rich class friends making as much profit as they can at the expense of ordinary Londoners.
All the advances made by Livingstone would be undone; the Tube would probably be fully privatised; travel concessions for children and the pensioners’ Freedom Pass would be under threat and developers would be allowed to run riot with no planning checks.
But the poll is likely to be a tight-run thing. People considering voting for alternative candidates or not voting at all should be aware that Boris is the only alternative to Ken and that a few votes going elsewhere could make all the difference and help Boris get in. Livingstone is not perfect but don’t wish a nightmare future on London. Save the Mayor, save London.
The Labour Party machine originally skewed its selection process to pick Yorkshireman Frank Dobson as its choice of candidate for the job. Livingstone quit the party to stand as an independent – though still holding the support of most of London’s Labour Party rank and file. He stood on a policy of opposing Tube privatisation. Though the Government imposed part privatisation of the Tube before handing control of it over to Livingstone, his stance has been more than vindicated in the dire performance and eventual collapse of Metronet, one of the two private companies involved in the part privatisation.
Livingstone has vastly improved the bus services. By and large the congestion charge has worked in lessening the gridlock in central London, though we would argue it weighs more heavily on low income drivers. Leading Green activists and campaigners acknowledge he is one of the very few elected mayors in the world with enough courage to take on the motor and oil industry lobbies in trying to reduce pollution in the capital.
And when it comes to the position of London Mayor, the alternative really is very much worse than Livingstone. Boris Johnson affects the public persona of a posh buffoon but he is really very reactionary and set on removing all barriers to his very rich class friends making as much profit as they can at the expense of ordinary Londoners.
All the advances made by Livingstone would be undone; the Tube would probably be fully privatised; travel concessions for children and the pensioners’ Freedom Pass would be under threat and developers would be allowed to run riot with no planning checks.
But the poll is likely to be a tight-run thing. People considering voting for alternative candidates or not voting at all should be aware that Boris is the only alternative to Ken and that a few votes going elsewhere could make all the difference and help Boris get in. Livingstone is not perfect but don’t wish a nightmare future on London. Save the Mayor, save London.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Campaigning against the BNP in London
THIS month the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight launched its campaign to stop the British National Party from winning seats in the London Assembly.
Searchlight editor Nick Lowles wrote: “Our objectives are simple. We need to prevent the BNP from gaining the five per cent in the London list vote that would give it one seat, the eight per cent which would gain it two and the 11 per cent which would see the party win three.
“Over the next three months we will undertake our largest, most targeted and sophisticated campaign to date.
“We will adapt the lessons from recent campaigns across the country and bring in new techniques that have been pioneered in the United States.
“Given the size of the London constituency, with around 5.3 million potential voters, there will be a much bigger emphasis on internet and email campaigning, though this will not come at the expense of community work, especially the enthusing of minority communities and the mobilisation of faith communities.”
“There must be no pretending that our task is straightforward. In last May’s local elections the BNP polled 14.7 per cent in the 742 wards it contested across the country. The highest average regional vote was in the Eastern region where the party achieved 19 per cent of the vote in the 65 wards contested.
“The BNP is hopeful of success. In the 2006 local elections the party polled 41 per cent in the wards it contested in Barking and Dagenham. It gained councillors in Havering and Redbridge, and overall it averaged 25 per cent of the vote in the 27 wards it contested.
“Its prospects will also be boosted by the virtual collapse of the UK Independence Party, whose London Assembly representatives now sit as the One London party.
“The election will also be an important dry run for next year’s all-important European elections. Victory here, rather than in London on its own, would take the BNP out of the political margins.
“Each MEP would receive at least £200,000 a year in salary and allowances, so would be able to employ several BNP members as staff, but just as importantly MEPs would give the fascists a credibility they currently do not have.
“So, given all of the above, is it certain the BNP will win? Absolutely not, but we will only be successful in preventing a BNP victory if we can launch the biggest anti-BNP campaign to date. And that means people getting active and increasing turnout".
To find out more please visit our campaign site http://www.hopenothate.org.uk
Searchlight editor Nick Lowles wrote: “Our objectives are simple. We need to prevent the BNP from gaining the five per cent in the London list vote that would give it one seat, the eight per cent which would gain it two and the 11 per cent which would see the party win three.
“Over the next three months we will undertake our largest, most targeted and sophisticated campaign to date.
“We will adapt the lessons from recent campaigns across the country and bring in new techniques that have been pioneered in the United States.
“Given the size of the London constituency, with around 5.3 million potential voters, there will be a much bigger emphasis on internet and email campaigning, though this will not come at the expense of community work, especially the enthusing of minority communities and the mobilisation of faith communities.”
“There must be no pretending that our task is straightforward. In last May’s local elections the BNP polled 14.7 per cent in the 742 wards it contested across the country. The highest average regional vote was in the Eastern region where the party achieved 19 per cent of the vote in the 65 wards contested.
“The BNP is hopeful of success. In the 2006 local elections the party polled 41 per cent in the wards it contested in Barking and Dagenham. It gained councillors in Havering and Redbridge, and overall it averaged 25 per cent of the vote in the 27 wards it contested.
“Its prospects will also be boosted by the virtual collapse of the UK Independence Party, whose London Assembly representatives now sit as the One London party.
“The election will also be an important dry run for next year’s all-important European elections. Victory here, rather than in London on its own, would take the BNP out of the political margins.
“Each MEP would receive at least £200,000 a year in salary and allowances, so would be able to employ several BNP members as staff, but just as importantly MEPs would give the fascists a credibility they currently do not have.
“So, given all of the above, is it certain the BNP will win? Absolutely not, but we will only be successful in preventing a BNP victory if we can launch the biggest anti-BNP campaign to date. And that means people getting active and increasing turnout".
To find out more please visit our campaign site http://www.hopenothate.org.uk
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