NF Undead leader haunts Clapton

by New Worker correspondent

MORE than 100 local residents and anti-fascists turned out at short notice to bar the progress of a short march by a tiny but toxic group of hard core Nazis in Clapton, East London, on  Saturday 18th April. Former National Front leader Martin Webster was among them.

The Nazi march was organised by Eddie Stampton, a man recently photographed by New Worker journalists brandishing a large swastika flag in Whitehall.

He had invited a collection of individuals from an assortment of fascist and racist groups: Britain First, the British National Party, the National Front, the English Defence League and others. But altogether they numbered just 22.

They claimed to be marching in protest at the local Jewish community in Stamford Hill being allowed their own “police force” – mainly to protect the community from anti-Semitic attacks from the friends and associates of Messrs Stampton and Webster.

Stampton had wanted his rally in a park in Stamford Hill right in the middle of the local Jewish community but police redirected their march from Clapton station in the opposite direction to a corner beside the Lea Bridge Roundabout.

The walk was only a couple of hundred metres but it was long and slow as energetic and noisy young anti-fascists blocked the way and had to be forced back inch by inch by police while the Nazis were surround by scores of police to protect them from angry local residents.

Martin Webster launched a vitriolic attack on Jewish community defence organisations – while standing almost on the spot where, in the 1960s, a synagogue was destroyed by arson perpetrated by members of the Greater Britain Movement – of which Martin Webster and his colleague John Tyndall were members at the time.

A group of six Polish fascists invited by Stampton arrived just as the Nazi meeting was finishing.

Solidarity with Greek anti-fascists

By New Worker correspondent

 AROUND 100 anti-fascists assembled in Front of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square on Sunday 19th April to send a message of solidarity to anti-fascists in Greece fighting the Nazi Golden Dawn movement.

The event was on the day before up to 70 members of Golden Dawn were to be tried in a Greek court on charges relating to their criminal activities.

Golden Dawn, like other fascist parties, has an electoral wing trying to win votes and a street fighting wing attacking and trying to intimidate communists, socialists, trade unionists and immigrants.

It has 17 MPs, despite an unashamedly hard-core Nazi image and swastika style party logo. Its street thugs are murderous.

The trial, which began on Monday in Athens, comes after massive mobilisations by antifascists in protest at the murder of antifascist hip hop artist Pavlos Fyssas. The killing was the latest of a string of horrific attacks linked to the fascist party, including the racist murder of Shehzad Luqman and an attack on the militant PAME trade union front.

The rally in Trafalgar Square on Sunday was organised jointly by Unite Against Fascism, Anti-Fascist Action for Greece, the Greek Solidarity Campaign, and the Greek antifascist organisation KEERFA.

UAF joint general secretary Weyman Bennett read out a solidarity message to be sent to anti-fascists in Greece: “We send solidarity from London to antifascists in Greece who have campaigned against Golden Dawn. We hope to see its leaders jailed next week. This is not just an important matter for people in Greece, but for all over Europe.

“Over the past few years we have seen the rise of Golden Dawn in Greece, and also of the fascist Front National in France. Other racist and fascist organisations across the continent have taken encouragement from their gains.

“It is important in Greece, in Britain and elsewhere to organise against these racist and fascist groups. They are trying to feed off austerity, to create hatred and division.

“In Greece, we have seen the murderous results of the fascists’ successes. We congratulate antifascists in Greece on the long campaign that has brought about next week’s trial but we must all stay vigilant and continue to oppose the fascists whenever and wherever they try to organise.”

There were speeches in English and Greek, and everyone joined in a chant of “poteh xana fasismosa” meaning “fascism, never again!”

The Day of the Sun in London

 By New Worker correspondent

Millions of Koreans recalled the life and times of great leader Kim Il Sung this week. Kim Il Sung was born on 15^th April 1912 and his birthday has long been celebrated as the Day of the Sun in the DPR Korea and by everyone who stands by the DPRK .

The Day of the Sun is the biggest public holiday of the year in the DPRK, the culmination of a series of sporting events and arts festivals that are held annually to celebrate the outstanding achievements of the founder of the Korean communist movement.  Democratic Korean leader Kim Jong Un headed the tributes at the great leader’s mausoleum in Pyongyang and across the country millions of workers took part in cultural and sports events held to mark the 103^rd anniversary of the birth of Kim Il Sung.

Across the world communists and friends of the Korean revolution  took part in similar events or held their own commemorations  of the Day of the Sun and London was no exception.

The first was at the Democratic Korean embassy where comrades, including Daphne Liddle from the New Communist Party, brought floral tributes at the opening of a reception to honour the  country’s eternal president and heard Hyon Hak Bong, the ambassador, made a brief but passionate speech about the life and achievements of Kim Il Sung.

Hyong Hak Bong at the embassy tributes

Kim Il Sung was born when the Koreans were under the heel of the brutal Japanese colonialists.  His father, a patriot, had already been arrested by the Japanese. When Kim Il Sung formed the Down with Imperialism Union at the age of 14 no one, least of all the Japanese imperialists, could have dreamt that within 20 years Korea would be free.

 Kim Il Sung saw the hopelessness of the sectarians, flunkeyists, dogmatists and factionalists who called themselves communists in the 1920s. So he decided to form a communist movement from the youth and the grass-roots of the villages and factories, and surprised everyone with the emergence of the mighty Korean communist movement that led the people to victory in 1945.

When Kim Il Sung gathered a small band of heroes to form the first guerrilla units to take on the Japanese Army no one could have imagined that this would become the People’s Army that brought the American imperialists to their knees begging for an armistice in 1953.

Kim Il Sung developed and advanced Marxist-Leninist theory and led the struggle against Japanese colonialism and US aggression. He was a fighter, a thinker and a leader, Kim Il Sung was an outstanding communist of the 20th century whose name will forever be remembered as the founder of the modern Korean communist movement that began amongst the patriotic youth of Korea when he was a student in the 1920s.

 Kim Il Sung founded the communist movement that liberated the country from Japanese colonialism, defeated the might of US-led imperialism in the Korean War and led the drive to build the modern, socialist republic that exists today in the north of the divided peninsula.

Kim Il Sung was a great commander in war and a great leader in peace. In the north of Korea, so brutally partitioned by imperialism, he built a modern communist movement dedicated to serving the working people of Korea and he led the people in the mass struggle to build a new life after they had won their freedom in 1945.

The Workers’ Party of Korea, with Kim Il Sung at the helm, led the battle for land reform, education and socialist construction in the 1950s and 60s and then pushed forward on the engineering, technical and scientific fronts to raise living standards and the quality of life for the millions of workers and peasants who had fought for a better tomorrow.

Over the weekend friends and comrades took part in a lively and upbeat meeting in central London called by Korean Friendship Association and the Juche Idea Study Group to hear openings by Dermot Hudson and Shaun Pickford on socialist construction in the DPRK and the essence of the  Juché Idea that is the ultimate expression of Kim Il Sung’s thinking.

       

Dermot Hudson and Yu Kwang Song

     Daphne Liddle said that the NCP remembered and respected great leader  Kim Il Sung and recalled the meetings between the great Korean leader and Andy Brooks and the late Eric Trevett while Yu Kwang Song from the DPRK embassy reported on the latest developments on the peninsula and thanked  all the activists who had taken part in the recent picket of the south Korean puppet embassy in March.

In western Europe communists understood the economic case for scientific socialism but ignored the philosophical aspects of the teachings of Marx and Engels. Though the role of mass action was clearly understood, the role of the individual was often ignored. Though the achievements of the Soviet Union led by Lenin and Stalin were studied, they were often not properly understood.

Kim Il Sung not only grasped Marxism-Leninism but he applied it to the concrete conditions of the Korean people. He knew that once the masses realised their own strength they would become unstoppable. He knew that serving the people was the be-all and end-all for the Korean communists and for the Workers’ Party of Korea that he launched in 1945. He developed Korean style socialism and the Juché idea – which elevates the philosophical principles of Marxism-Leninism as well as its economic theories – and focuses on the development of each individual worker, who can only be truly free as part of the collective will of the masses.

In the western world Juché is simply described as “self-reliance” but it is much more than that. Kim Il Sung said that working people could only become genuinely emancipated if they stood on their own feet. But the Juché idea doesn’t negate proletarian internationalism. The Soviet Union, People’s China and the people’s democracies of eastern Europe all closed ranks behind Democratic Korea during the Korean war.

The Korean people responded with their trade and assistance whenever they could, while Korean experts and advisers helped the Vietnamese, the Arabs and the Africans struggling to break the chains of colonialism and they continue to do so today. And Kim Il Sung’s successors, dear leader Kim Jong Il and leader Kim Jong Un have followed his footsteps to build a modern socialist republic, where every individual worker is master of his or her own life.

the platform at the Friends of Korea meeting

Finally on Monday the leaders of all the major Korean solidarity movements in Britain met for a celebration called by the Friends of Korea committee at the John Buckle Centre in south London. NCP leader Andy Brooks opened the formal part of the meeting which heard brief tributes from Dermot Hudson and Michael Chant of the RCPB (ML) and guest of honour Ambassador. Hyon Hak Bong before adjourning for a film on the Spring Festival in Korea and refreshments  to drink to the health  of the DPRK’s leaders and the country’s heroic people.

Hands off Yemen!

by New Worker correspondent

AROUND 100 people gathered in Curzon Street, London, opposite the Saudi Arabian embassy, to protest at Saudi Arabia’ bombing of Yemen, resulting in deaths and horrific injuries to hundreds of innocent men, women and children.

The rally, on Saturday 11th April, included many Yemeni nationals who condemned the Saudis loudly and the imperialist leaders behind Saudi Arabia’s unprovoked and aggressive action. They also attacked United Nations general secretary Ban Ki Moon for his failure to condemn the attacks.

Speakers at the rally included Andrew Murray and John Rees from Stop the War, Maz Saleem and STW student organiser Shadia Edwards-Dashti 

The Saudi-led attack on Yemen has killed more than 540 people, of which at least 74 are children, and has left 1,700 wounded.

Supported and directed by the United States, using arms supplied by Britain, Saudi Arabia is waging a war that can bring nothing but more death and destruction for the people of Yemen.

The main message from Stop the War was that Saudi Arabia has no business intervening in internal differences within Yemen – the Yemenis must be allowed to resolve these differences themselves.

John Rees said: “The United States and Britain are up to their ears in this.” He went on to say that Saudi Arabia is Britain’s number one customer for weapons and that is ever a deal is in doubt, one of the royal family is sent to ease it through.

He said that the bombs, drones and guns that are raining death and terror on innocent Yemenis are falling with the blessing of the British government and were supplied by British arms companies.

The US has a central role in all of this. As US officials told the Wall Street Journal: “American military planners are using live intelligence feeds from surveillance flights over Yemen to help Saudi Arabia decide what and where to bomb.”

And Yemen has for a long time suffered repeated drone strikes from the US, killing innocent civilians.

Maz Saleem told the rally that western-backed attacks on Arab countries add to Islamophobia in this country. Her father, aged 82, was stabbed and murdered by a fascist terrorist two years ago while walking home from his local mosque simply because he was a Muslim.

Racists outnumbered in London and Oxford

By New Worker correspondent

THE GERMAN based Islamophobic organisation Pegida joined forces with English racists and fascists held a small static rally in Whitehall, London, while the English Defence League staged a march in Oxford attended by just over 100 supporters.

In both cases the racists were well outnumbered by around 300 anti-fascists.

In London a handful of Pegida supporters and friends assembled behind a banner while about 100 metres away around 100 supporters of Unite Against Fascism assembled with banners, placards, and literature stalls.

The Pegida group were joined by a group of Nepalese Ghurkhas. This rally had been organised for four o’clock, some said in the hope that some of the Oxford EDL supporters could get back to London to cover both events. But weekend rail repairs put an end to that plan.

But the Pegida event did swell a little when a group of serious hard core English Nazis, including Eddie Stampton, left their pub and arrived pursued by around 200 young Anti-Fascist Action members who exploded noisily into Whitehall and made some serious efforts to breach the police lines that separated fascists from anti-fascists.

These young anti-fascists had been waiting for a couple of hours in Trafalgar Square and indulging in a pillow fight to pass the time.

Police were forced to close Whitehall to traffic completely for a long time as they struggled to keep the fascists and anti-fascists apart.

So far Pegida attempts to raise support in Britain have been pathetic failures, with just four of their supporters turning up to one planned even in Edinburgh last month.

Meanwhile in Oxford more than 300 anti-fascists mostly locals and supported by the Oxford Students’ Union and local trade unions, came out to oppose the EDL march.

There were some scuffles as some EDL supporters tried to attack the anti-fascists. One police officer was slightly injured by a flying missile and there were two arrests.