No British arms for Ukraine!

 By New Worker correspondent

London comrades joined other peace campaigners and anti-fascists outside the Defence Ministry in London last weekend to call on the British government to end all military and economic support for the corrupt Zelensky regime in Kiev and withdraw all British military personnel from Ukraine. The protest picket in Whitehall, the heart of London, was organised by a coalition of anti-fascist and anti-war movements including the NCP, the International Ukraine Anti Fascist Solidarity campaign (IUAFS), No2Nato-No2war and the Workers Party of Britain. The protest, that highlighted the Labour government's hypocrisy, censorship, the waste of billions of pounds, and the rocketing cost of living caused by sanctions, was covered by the Canary, the new left daily as well as a number of international news agencies including the Times of India and the Russian communist (CPRF) YouTube channel.

Fidel at 100: A Centenary of Legacy and Solidarity

Corbyn calls for solidarity

by New Worker correspondent

NCP leader Andy Brooks joined over 200 diplomats, union leaders, parliamentarians, academics, and long-standing friends of Cuba to reflect on Fidel Castro’s  legacy and enduring international solidarity on the anniversary of his birth on 13th August 1926. Mander Hall, at the headquarters of the NEU, the largest education union in Europe, was packed on that Thursday morning last week. By the time the lights dimmed, there wasn't a spare seat left.
The morning opened with a short tribute film tracing Fidel's life, his legacy, the achievements of the Cuban Revolution he led, and the international solidarity he built across the world. Woven through it were brief contributions from doctors, trade unionists, academics, filmmakers, campaigners and politicians, each speaking to what that legacy means in their own corner of society. Some of them had actually known Fidel in person. Friends speaking about a legacy. Friends remembering a man.
Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Independent Alliance group in the House of Commons, took the platform next and spoke with real feeling about what Fidel built for every corner of Cuban society and for the cause of international solidarity, then went further, calling on Britain to deepen its solidarity with Cuba at every level, including government to government. Coming from someone who, this March, rode in the Nuestra América aid convoy into Havana and stood inside a cancer hospital struggling to keep its machines running through a blackout, with Richard Burgon MP alongside him, those words carried weight.
The Cuban ambassador, Ismara Vargas Walter, closed the event and the room went still. She took us back to the beginning: a twenty-six-year-old leading the assault on the Moncada barracks, captured, standing alone at his own trial to say the words that outlived every judge in that courtroom: "Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me." Prison. Exile in Mexico. Eighty-two men on a leaking yacht called Granma, scattered on a beach under fire, barely a dozen reaching the Sierra Maestra alive. From that dozen, in under two years, a country and a Revolution.
She reminded us what he did with that victory: over one hundred thousand volunteer teachers, many of them teenagers, walking into the mountains until Cuba could declare itself free of illiteracy. Cuban doctors in Chile and Algeria by 1961 and 1963. Cuban internationalists at Cuito Cuanavale, standing with a nation fighting apartheid — the same struggle Nelson Mandela himself later called a turning point in the liberation of his continent.
And then she brought us to the present: a naval armada in the Caribbean, oil tankers tracked and seized on the high seas, a total fuel blockade, "a profound breach of the equality of states and sovereignty," in her words, not a bilateral dispute. Families cooking over firewood. Blackouts lasting entire days. Eleven thousand children among more than one hundred thousand people waiting for surgeries that cannot be safely scheduled. Survival for a Cuban child with cancer and infant mortality, fallen. "When a hospital in Havana loses power tonight," she said, "it is not the weather. It is policy, arriving exactly as designed."
And still, 300 Palestinian students are training as doctors in Cuba right now, free of charge, because Fidel taught his country that internationalism is a debt paid, not a favour granted. And to be internationalist is to pay our own debt to humanity. 
She thanked the National Education Union for opening Hamilton House's doors to us once again, the 117 MPs who backed this year's Early Day Motion against these illegal unprecedented sanctions, and six decades of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign's unwavering friendship. Fidel is a hundred years old today, she told the room. Cuba is still standing!

Solidarity with the Ukrainian people!

outside the Ukrainian embassy in London

by New Worker correspondent

An unprecedented international protest involving dozens of Ukrainian political prisoners and supporters in many countries took place last week, to expose and protest the inhuman conditions, torture and killings of political prisoners in Ukraine.  A total of 425 people from 16 countries took part in a one-day hunger strike on 5 August, including 162 prisoners in Ukraine itself, 92 of whom were political prisoners. This was the first ever collective one-day hunger strike by Ukrainian political prisoners, and the first time actions in Ukraine and abroad were coordinated – a historic event.
At Vinnytsia Correctional Colony No. 86 13 prisoners joined the hunger strike; 12 prisoners at Pyatikhatka Penal Colony No. 122; four prisoners at the Nikolaev and Lviv Pre-Trial detention Centres; seven prisoners at the Lukyanivskiy Pre-Trial detention Centre in Kiev, and four political prisoners under house arrest in Kiev. Around 50 relatives and anti-fascists in Ukraine also took part.
This incredible action was organised by the Ukrainian Association for the Protection of the Rights of Political Prisoners and Human Rights, founded by the Mikhail Alexander  Kononovich, and the Platform of International Solidarity for Political Prisoners.
Outside Ukraine, the Anti-Imperialist Front (AIF) and the Turkish People’s Front supported the call of the Ukrainian political prisoners, mobilising hundreds of people to participate to join the one-day hunger strike and other solidarity actions.
260 people from 15 countries joined the one-day hunger strike, including 117 in Greece (of which 14 were political prisoners), 66 in France, 25 in Turkey (including nine political prisoners), eight in Belarus, seven in Britain, five in Russia, five in the Basque Country and 18 others in Europe.
In the words of the AIF, “The voice of Ukrainian political prisoners was widely heard throughout the world and caused a great wave of solidarity”. Nearly 40 organisations from a dozen countries supported the action of Ukrainian political prisoners, including Borotba (Ukraine) and the Union of Communists of
Ukraine, along with the New Communist Party and International Ukraine Anti-Fascist
Solidarity in Britain (IUAFS). Many solidarity were also held, as far away as Paraguay, and in Britain a protest was held at the Ukrainian Embassy in London with activists from the AIF and IUAFS.
Meanwhile the latest bout of sanctions imposed by the British government against Russia demonstrates that the recent change of political leadership has done nothing to alter the United Kingdom’s anti-Russian policy.
“Since the start of the special military operation, Britain has been waging a full-scale economic war against our country, churning out ever more restrictions in pursuit of an illusory goal” says the Russian embassy in London. “More than 3,400 measures, aimed at inflicting a "strategic defeat" on Russia, have failed to produce the desired outcome. Each new round of sanctions merely confirms the futility of this campaign.
“Moreover, they are deepening the erosion of international trade, freedom of navigation and financial stability. Ordinary consumers, including British citizens, are paying the price.
“The lasting and just peace that London claims to seek will not be achieved by ramping up military supplies to the Kiev regime and tightening sanctions pressure. It requires addressing the root causes of the crisis”.

No more Hiroshimas!

by New Worker correspondent

The victims of the criminal nuclear attack on Japan in 1945 were honoured at a moving ceremony in the heart of London for the annual London Region CND Hiroshima Day ceremony in Tavistock Square on Thursday 6th August. With nuclear dangers growing it's crucial that we continue to campaign and raise awareness about the human suffering that has been already caused by nuclear weapons and in the decades of nuclear testing that followed. We vow: Never Again!

Defend our Juries!

another defiant protester arrested

By New Worker correspondent

The Met police arrested over a hundred anti-genocide supporters outside Westminster Magistrates Court at the Defend Our Juries Graduation Day which began at midday on 30th July. Sir Jonathon Porritt, advisor to King Charles for 30 years before he was crowned, was one of them. As police escorted him away he said “I am a supporter of Palestine Action. Trying to save lives is not terrorism. Exposing this Governments complicity in genocide is not terrorism”.
They were protesting outside the Court where the hearings relating to 1855 people charged under the Terrorism Act for holding paper signs were proceeding. The court is refusing to explain why these hearings are listed, when many of those to whom the hearings relate have been told that it would be adjourned. 
Two campaigners were arrested while trying to access the court area for the listed hearing, and two others were held under an unspecified charge while they were setting up a small stage for the event. Others were arrested under the terrorism act for “addressing a crowd” and, separately, for declaring their support for Palestine Action.
This is all the result of Labour’s absurd ban on Palestine Action, a direct action group whose only purpose was to dismantle weapons used in Israel’s genocide.

Another year of struggle

Andy Brooks recalls the past

by New Worker correspondent
 
Despite sweltering global-warming heat supporters rallied in London last weekend to mark the founding of the New Communist Party in July 1977. Friends and comrades, old and new, marked the struggle of the NCP to keep the banner of Marx and Lenin flying against all odds for the past 49 years at a reception at the Party Centre celebrating the anniversary with speeches, food and drink.
Our National Chair, Richard Bos MC’d the social and welcomed guests that included comrades from People’s Korea and Socialist Vietnam as well as representatives from the labour movement that have long worked alongside us in London and other parts of the country. 
These included Marie Lynam of the British Posadist movement, Ian Donovan from the Consistent Democrats, Dermot Hudson from the Korean Friendship Association and Theo Russell from the International Ukraine Anti-Fascist Solidarity campaign. Other tributes came from the embassies of the DPR Korea and Socialist Vietnam while NCP leader Andy Brooks, recalled the heady days of the past year that’s seen the end of Starmer, the growing campaigns in solidarity with Cuba and Venezuela and increasing calls for an end to NATO’s proxy war against Russia while London’s rocked every month by hundreds of thousands of protesters in support of the Palestinians and the defiant Iranian people resisting American aggression. 
No NCP event can ever end without an appeal for the New Worker and this one was no exception. Richard Bos called on everyone to dig deep to boost our August fighting fund. They did with a collection that raised £461 for our communist weekly!