By New Worker correspondent
COMMUNISTS and militant trade unionists
picketed the Ukrainian Embassy in Holland Park, London on Saturday 25th
July to protest at a law passed in May by the puppet government in Kiev
outlawing the communist party in Ukraine and banning all communist symbols and
symbols of that country’s Soviet history.
No legislation has been introduced to
ban the use of Nazi and other fascist symbols by the fascist militias that prop
up the Kiev regime. But criticism of historical Ukrainian Nazi collaborators
has been banned in Ukraine.
Many comrades turned up wearing red and hammer-and-sickle
and other communist emblems and badges, to make their point.
The protest was jointly organised by the
Communist Party of Britain and the Solidarity with Anti-Fascist Resistance in
Ukraine campaign. A similar picket was organised in Edinburgh on the same day
outside the Ukrainian consulate there.
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| Andy Brooks addressing the crowd |
The event was entitled: “First they came
for the communists…” in memory of Pastor Martin Niemöller’s well-known poem:-
“First they came for the Communists, and
I did not speak out because I was not a Communist. “Then they came for the
Socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist.
“Then they came for the Trade Unionists,
and I did not speak out because I was not a Trade Unionist.
“Then they came for the Jews, and I did
not speak out because I was not a Jew.
“Then they came for me and there was no
one left to speak for me.”
The picket was supported by the New
Communist Party, the London section of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), the
Progressive Party of the Working People of Cyprus (Akel) and the Communist
Party of Iraq as well as members of Unite, RMT, NUJ and other unions.
Alex Gordon of SARU and the RMT
introduced speakers Steve Johnson of the CPB, Andy Brooks, general secretary of
the NCP, Marina from the KKE, Dave Ayrton who spoke on behalf of SARU and
others.
Steve Johnson warned that the Kiev
regime, like the Nazis before them will not stop at banning the communists but
all left wing and progressive parties and trade unions are at risk.
Andy Brooks spoke about the millions of
people around the world engaged in combatting fascism and colonialism and the
need to take the message of what is really going on in Ukraine to the thousands
of anti-fascists in Britain.
Marina from the KKE denounced Kiev’s
anti-communist law 2558. She said: “The Soviet Union lost 20 million people in
the struggle to defeat fascist Germany and its allies. The Red Army raised the
red flag over the Reichstag and this cannot be cancelled out by the Ukrainian
authorities or by the EU that has anti-communism as its official ideology…
“The KKE from the very first moment
condemned the intervention of the EU and US in the internal affairs of Ukraine,
which contributed to the outbreak of was in the Donbas region. It denounced the
activity of fascist forces, anti-communism, the vandalisms against the statue
of Lenin and other anti-fascist Soviet memorials.”
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