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.