Thousands gather for Notting Hill parade

This year the Notting Hill Carnival celebrated its 60th anniversary, with hundreds of thousands of people flocking to the iconic London neighbourhood to enjoy the traditional and colourful parade of floats.
The Notting Hill Carnival is one of the world’s largest street festivals and a major celebration of Caribbean culture in London. Held annually during the August bank holiday weekend, it traces its roots to the postwar arrival of Caribbean migrants, many of whom settled in Notting Hill and faced widespread racism, discrimination and violence.
The carnival emerged from efforts to strengthen community solidarity following the racial tensions and riots that affected the area in the late 1950s. A key precursor was the indoor Caribbean Carnival organized in London in 1959 by Trinidadian-born activist Claudia Jones, founder and editor of the West Indian Gazette. The event promoted Caribbean culture and unity in the aftermath of racial unrest.
The modern street carnival developed in 1966, when community activist Rhaune Laslett organised a multicultural festival in Notting Hill and invited Trinidadian musician Russell Henderson and his steel band, prompting a spontaneous procession through the streets.
Over subsequent decades, the carnival developed into a major expression of Caribbean heritage, featuring elaborate masquerade costumes, steel bands, calypso, soca, reggae and sound systems as well as Caribbean food and dance.
It has retained its historical association with cultural identity, resistance and community while becoming a central event in London’s multicultural calendar, attracting around two million visitors over the holiday weekend.
In recent years, this massive influx has forced the police to deploy about 7,000 officers to increase security during the event. Some 242 arrests were made on Sunday and 394 on Monday. Offences included drug possession and supply, assaults, weapons possession, sex offences and public order offences.
Telesur

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!

Marching for Palestine!

by New Worker correspondent

Thousands of protesters marched  through central London last weekend to demand that the new Prime Minister take real action to pressure to end its genocide against the Palestinian people. Almost three years into Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, Britain’s incoming Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, has been forced to apologise and admit that the government got it wrong. As we have always known – it was the people, the millions who have steadfastly stood with Palestine, who got it right.
Millions of us have taken to the streets, joined campaigns for boycott and divestment, and piled pressure on politicians. We have done so despite attempts to demonise and stigmatise our marches and all those protesting against genocide and for Palestinian rights. We have been standing on the right side of history. We must continue to do so.
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, one of the main organisers of the protests that have rocked London over the past two years, says “we march in London with a clear message for Andy Burnham. If he really wants to break with Starmer’s shameful legacy, he must start by imposing wide ranging sanctions against Israel including a full arms embargo, an end to all military cooperation and diplomatic support, and a total ban on all trade that aids or assists Israel’s atrocities and violations of international law. He must also reverse the spiteful use of repressive public order and anti-terror legislation to target those speaking out for Palestinian rights”.
Burnham clearly wants to distance himself from Keir Starmer’s moral bankruptcy, but in this respect, his statement remains totally inadequate. As the Palestinian people continue to confront Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and escalating colonial violence and apartheid across their homeland, we demand meaningful action. Mass pressure by our solidarity movement has forced this apology. It is clear that only ongoing action will deliver real change. 

South African campaigner condemns Israel

by Theo Russell

Ronnie Kasrils, a veteran South African freedom-fighter, denounced Israel at a showing of  Oliver Tambo’s London Recruits docudrama at Palestine House in London last week. The former South African Minister for Intelligence and a founding member of Umkhonto we Sizwe (the ANC’s armed wing during the struggle against Apartheid) focused on the global struggle against Israeli genocide. And he recalled that “in 1961, as apartheid South Africa responded to worldwide criticism for the 1960 Sharpeville massacre, prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd, the architect of the apartheid system, declared that ‘Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state’, and that, in fact, Israel was ‘far worse than us’.
“When I visited the West Bank in 2004 and 2007” Kasrils said “I was immediately taken back to apartheid South Africa, but I could see that the violence was actually far worse than what we saw in South Africa. The treatment of political prisoners is beyond description. Even Nazi Germany, unlike the Israeli Zionists, didn't boast and brag about its genocidal actions”.
“Genocide was practised in South Africa by the Dutch settlers, who massacred thousands of indigenous San people in the late 18th century” Kasrils said referring to the VOC, the Dutch East India Company, that officially endorsed the total eradication of the San, who it classed as an inferior category of humans who were already doomed to extinction. But later on, particularly under the British, the African population was converted into a proletariat to provide cheap labour for the mines and the farms. Under this system, the blacks were kept down and repressed, but as they were needed as workers, they weren't indiscriminately or systematically killed. That's what makes Israel by comparison such a depraved, morally bankrupt state”.
Kasrils was confident that the global struggle against the genocidal Israeli state can be won.
“Make no mistake, we can win this fight through international solidarity in support of Palestine, just as the international boycott and sanctions helped the South African people to win their freedom.
“Israel is an artificial state created by Britain, where the Zionist ideology emerged and the Balfour Declaration was issued. This state has to be dismantled and restored to the Palestinian people”.
He described the Palestinian Authority as a “sell-out” and said “they made a major error by entering into the Oslo Peace Process”.
The struggle for Palestine was a global struggle, as evidenced by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s Munich Security Conference speech in February denouncing the “godless communist revolutions and anti-colonial uprisings which had rolled back 500 years of the great Western empires”. 
“The aim now” said Kasrils “is to put the clocks back on the liberation struggles of the past century, and to restore complete hegemony for the US, Britain and France. Their eyes are on the Congo and Sudan, for their minerals, and on Iran and Cuba for their regional importance”.
Kasrils said “What is the commonality between Iran and Cuba, and why should we defend them? It is that just as Cuba stands by Venezuela in spite of its own difficulties, Iran stands by its solidarity with the people of Palestine and Lebanon”.
On South Africa Kasrils said “The key objective for the South African people was a non-racial unitary state. “However while we overcame apartheid, in its place we failed to demand economic power and control. That's where the compromise was made – you can have your own vote per person, but we have the capital”.
Referring to the recent wave of xenophobia against foreign migrant workers from other African states, he said “There were two elements involved to: firstly, corrupt rule by those more interested their own wealth rather than solving the problems of their own people, and secondly, internal political forces seeking to destabilise South Africa. We also need to struggle against those who have taken power seeking their own advancement, and we've had our own in South Africa”.

Show Israel the Red Card!

by New Worker correspondent

Activists from the London Irish Brigade protested outside the Irish embassy in London's Belgravia against planned football matches between Ireland last week. But Ireland’s home game against Israel in the Nations League will now be behind closed doors in Serbia in October. The UEFA Nations League games are scheduled for October this year with the Irish Football Association's consent, and are planned to take place in Hungary and Serbia. There have already been many protests by Irish football fans in Ireland itself. Days after the London protest, teenage Palestinian footballer Fadi al-Nassan died a week after being shot in his West Bank village in an Israeli settler attack. A spokesperson for the London Irish Brigade declared at the protest "Israel should be as isolated, in sport and in every other way, as apartheid South Africa ever was. Shame on the cowardly officials and bodies who are refusing to do it"! 

Drop the sanctions, Return the gold!

by New Worker correspondent

Venezuela was struck by two back-to-back earthquakes last week. La Guaira – a densely populated coastal strip just north of Caracas has been declared a disaster zone. The death toll stands at over 2,250, with 40,000 feared missing. In the face of this catastrophe protesters called for the return of Venezuela’s gold at a picket outside the Bank of England last week. They were demanding that the British government return the 31 tonnes of gold stolen from the Venezuelan people and hoarded in the coffers of the Bank of England.
The Venezuelans were frozen out of their own gold deposits when the British government refused to recognise the legitimacy of the elections that returned Nicolas Maduro to the president’s office in Caracas in 2018. Today this is valued at three billion pounds.

Boycott Barclays Bank!

by New Worker correspondent

Palestinian rights campaigners have plastered tube trains in London to make sure that tennis fans travelling to Wimbledon this week know the truth about Barclays, the tournament’s sponsor. Campaign poster ads are going up across the London Underground faster than the authorities can take them down. And the message is ‘Boycott Barclays’! 
A number of British companies have seedy and nefarious financial ties with Zionist Israel. The ongoing genocide in Palestine has intensified calls for an immediate ceasefire and sparked an international campaign supporting Palestinians in their fight against oppression. Campaigners have been raising awareness on the economic ties a vast number of UK institutions have with companies that are providing Israel with the military and technological equipment to facilitate its oppressive regime. Barclays is one of them.
Barclays Bank is bankrolling Israel’s genocide and apartheid against Palestinians. Barclays provides investment and loans worth more than eight billion pounds to arms companies supplying Israel with weapons used in its genocide in Gaza, and military assaults across the West Bank. Barclays took over Tesco Bank on 1st November 2024 so campaigners are calling on all Tesco Bank customers to shut their accounts as part of the boycott of Barclays. 
The Boycott Barclays campaign began in 1969 when the bank was exposed as a major investor in racist, apartheid South Africa. In recent years the focus has been on the bank’s colossal investments in Zionist Israel. 
 It works. Recently, data revealed that the bank has stopped underwriting Israeli government bonds under pressure from our boycott and protests.  
We must continue our campaigning to force the bank to permanently and publicly withdraw as a primary dealer of Israeli government bonds, and to divest from all companies arming Israel’s genocide and apartheid against Palestinians.
The Boycott Barclays campaign want as many people as possible to close their account on a single day, to send a clear message to the bank that its complicity in Israeli apartheid has a cost – it will lose a sizeable number of its customers who stand with Palestine, and this will have a greater impact if it is on a single day.
So if you’re still a Barclays or Tesco Bank customer, join the next mass account closure day on Thursday 30th July!

Defend People’s Korea!

by New Worker correspondent

NCP leader Andy Brooks joined other comrades at a protest picket outside the American embassy in London last weekend. Braving the abnormally hot weather to show solidarity with People’s Korea the protesters were marking the 76th anniversary of the Korean war and demanded an end to the American occupation of south Korea.
The demonstration was called by the Korean Friendship Association (KFA), whose chairman, Dermot Hudson said “We are here today picketing the US embassy because a few days ago on Tuesday 25th of June, it was the 76th anniversary of the provocation of the Korean War which is known as the Fatherland Liberation War in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The was not a war between Koreans but between a small country, the DPR Korea, and the American empire. Indeed it was a war against Korea, against the Korean people. 
“Let’s remember that the United States is not some wonderful land of ‘freedom and democracy ‘ but the head of a giant corrupt empire that gave you Jeffrey Epstein and has military bases in every corner of the globe”.
A message of solidarity from KFA Germany was read out by KFA organisation secretary Alan Bolon which stated “The US-imperialists threw 600 000 tons of bombs and napalm on the DPRK. 600 000 tons. Almost four times as much as on Japan during the Pacific war. An unimaginably high number. One ton is 1,000 kilograms. So the US-imperialists threw 600 million kilos of bombs and napalm bombs on Korea. Those bombs did not just hit military targets. These bombs destroyed over 50,000 industrial facilities, over 4,500 school buildings, almost 600 scientific facilities, over 8000 cultural and media facilities and over two million dwelling houses. That´s a two with six zeros. 
“But has there been any reparation? Any apology? No, to the contrary! The US imperialists still try to destroy the DPRK. Until this day the ‘United Nations Command’ troops, including soldiers from Germany and the United Kingdom are stationed in south Korea... Until this day the US imperialists threaten the DPRK with aggressive military manoeuvres and try to economically destroy the DPRK with sanctions”.

Remember their sacrifice!

by New Worker correspondent

In Russia the 22nd June is the Day of Remembrance and Sorrow. On that day in 1941 Nazi Germany and its allies launched a treacherous attack on the Soviet Union. This marked the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, one of the most tragic chapters in our history. It claimed the lives of 27 million Soviet citizens and left millions more wounded, bereaved and scarred by its devastation.

On that day Vasili Tsyganov, Minister-Counsellor of the Russian Embassy in London, laid flowers at the Soviet War Memorial in the gardens by the Imperial War Museum in Lambeth.
Unveiled in 1999, the monument stands as a symbol of the British respect for the heroism and self-sacrifice of the Soviet citizens and soldiers who lost their lives during the Second World War in the struggle against Nazism. It serves as a reminder of the price of victory and the enduring importance of preserving historical memory.

Stop arming the Zelensky regime!

by New Worker correspondent

NCP leader Andy Brooks joined fellow anti-fascists demanding an end to British support for the Zelensky regime at a protest picket in London last weekend. Members of seven different organisations joined activists from International Ukraine Anti Fascist Solidarity (IUAFS) in central London to demand that the British government stop sending missiles, shells, tanks, planes and bullets to the racist, corrupt, Bandera-worshipping NATO puppet government in Ukraine. They received a positive welcome from many passers by in Britain's political heart, Whitehall, only hours after a major ceremony marking the King's birthday, with some people even stopping to join the protestors. 
This was probably the largest protest organised by the IUAFS in the nine years since the campaign was launched. We know from many sources that our campaign is becoming more and more widely known throughout Britain, mainly through circulation of photos and videos of the dozens of protests in solidarity with Ukrainian anti fascists in the past. Millions here in Britain have seen videos of the brutal kidnapping of men on the streets of Ukraine's towns and cities, along with the people courageously fighting back against the military recruitment gangs.  
In addition more and more people in Britain are realising that the Zelensky mafia is essentially deeply corrupt and immoral, and that the people of Ukraine – the ones who haven't already left the country – don't support the war against the Russian, Donetsk and Lugansk military forces. 
A flower-laying ceremony also took place at the protest in memory of the 21 young students deliberately murdered by the Ukrainian military in the multiple wave drone attack on the Starobilsk student dormitory. Many of the protesters brought their own home-made placards, one of which declared that the tragic murders in Starobilsk were carried out by NATO's "Coalition of the Killing".
The Zelensky regime is an alliance of big capital and the state bureaucracy, relying on criminal and fascist elements under the political and financial control of the United States.
It is an alliance of neo-Nazis and Ukrainian oligarchs. Vladimir Zelensky's Jewish heritage has not prevented him from allying with the Banderite gangs in Ukraine who use him as a cover to mask their openly fascist ideology.
The Banderas, like the SS in Hitler’s Third Reich, serve as a shock detachment of big business. The only difference is that the Banderites, who worship those who collaborated with the Nazis in the Second World War, refrain from outright anti-Semitism having established a national front with the Ukrainian oligarchy. Banderas tightly control every move of state power, constantly blackmailing it with the threat of a coup while the policy of Ukraine is determined by the US Embassy in Kiev.
International Ukraine Anti-Fascist Solidarity has been campaigning for nine years in solidarity with anti-fascists in Ukraine, thousands of whom have paid with their lives, torture or prison for resisting the regime installed in 2014 with the support of Britain, the USA and the European Union. Its activists have taken part in every protest since 7th October 2023 in solidarity with the people of Palestine and the Gaza Strip.

.Courts endorse Palestine Action ban

by New Worker correspondent

On Monday, the Court of Appeal ruled that the Government’s decision to ban Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation was lawful. In February the High Court ruled that the proscription of Palestine Action was unlawful, but the Starmer government decided to appeal. Now, the Court of Appeal has ruled in favour of the Government. This means that the banning order remains in place, making it a criminal offence to belong to or express support for the group.
Liberty, the human rights campaign,  intervened in the case because the UK’s definition of terrorism is so wide-ranging that it captures behaviours most people would never consider terrorism. This case has already had, and will continue to have, a chilling effect on protest and free speech – leaving many people too afraid to protest or say the wrong thing.
Monday’s judgment risks paving the way for current and future governments to use counter-terror powers against groups no one would consider to be terrorists, as we have seen in other countries to silence activists, minorities and opponents.
Last week four Palestine Action activists were jailed after causing £1.2m of damage at a UK site of an Israel-based defence firm. Charlotte Head, 30, Samuel Corner, 23, Leona Kamio, 30, and Fatema Rajwani, 21, were convicted of criminal damage in a retrial after they broke into the Elbit Systems factory near Bristol in August 2024. Corner got seven years and eight months, Charlotte Head and Kamio got five and Rajwani was jailed for four years and eight months.
Left social-democratic Labour MP John McDonnell said the scale of the sentences was "truly shocking" while Green Party leader Zack Polanski said it was "gut-wrenching to see four young people jailed for direct action against an arms supplier to Israel". He added that the sentence was a "truly dangerous attack on the right to protest".
Angry scenes at the Palestine Action trial led to the arrest of 72 protesters outside Woolwich Crown Court. Some 500 demonstrators had gathered outside the south London court for the trial that ended in the conviction and stiff sentencing of the four activists accused of criminal damage and violence against the security guards at the Elbit plant.
The demonstrators chanted “Free Palestine”  and waved Palestinian flags and banners bearing messages such as “Saving lives is not terrorism. Support Palestine Action”. One of them was carried by a middle-aged man who was among the first people to be arrested.

Strengthening ties with China

by New Worker correspondent

On 5th  June the Chinese Ambassador, Zheng Zeguang, met with Director Stephen Barter and Chief Executive Oliver Shiell of the UK National Committee on China. The two sides exchanged views on promoting China-UK economic and trade co-operation and educational and cultural exchanges as well as on other issues of mutual interest.
Founded in 2020 the UK National Committee on China (UKNCC) is Britain’s leading independent educational non-profit focused on strengthening decision-making and dialogue on China-related issues. Based in London, the Committee operates as a non-profit organisation dedicated to improving understanding of China through education, dialogue and research. It is Britain’s only China-focused organisation legally prohibited from lobbying, ensuring that its work remains educational and impartial. The committee is led by Ollie Shiell, its founding director and CEO, and supported by a distinguished advisory board including figures such as Sir Malcolm Rifkind, Sir Victor Blank, Sir Andrew Cahn and Mark Clayton, who provides on-the-ground business insights from China. 

KFA pickets Foreign Office!

 

by New Worker correspondent

NCP leader Andy Brooks joined other Korean solidarity campaigners outside the Foreign Office in London last weekend to protest against the unjust sanctions imposed by the British government on the Songdowon International Children's Camp in the DPR Korea.
Picketers held placards denouncing the sanctions and demanded that they be rescinded at once in Whitehall on Saturday at the protest called by the Korean Friendship Association (KFA). On the line KFA Chairman  Dermot Hudson stressed that the sanctions against the camp  are totally unfair as it is a children’s camp not a missile base or a nuclear complex. Leaflets denouncing the sanctions were given out while a journalist interviewed Dermot and some of the other protesters.

A Palestinian Day!

by Carole Barclay

The reality of resistance was brought to the stage of the Theatre503 on the first floor of the Latchmere pub in south London last week in an evening that reflects the death and destruction and the drama and determination of the Palestinian Arabs in Gaza today. Bet’n Lev Theatre, the White Kite Collective and the PalArt Collective brought together an incredible line-up of brand new short plays for a week of Palestinian theatre in a studio theatre known for promoting the work of independent writers.
Performed by an entirely Palestinian cast, Tomorrow Will Be a Palestinian Day takes us on a journey from Santa Claus holidaying in Gaza; through the struggle of undeliverable mail symbolically addressed to the houses at numbers ‘48, ‘67 and ‘23; via stories of beauty, loss, hope and dreams for the future.
Nine vignettes tell the story of the Palestinians from the tragedy of 1948 to the latest upsurge of resistance that began in 2023. All written and performed by Palestinians on a bleak stage that captures the essence of life in the Gaza Strip in these dark days.
This avant-guard theatre, just 64 seats above a Battersea pub just a stone’s throw from the Party Centre, has been around since 1982. It doesn’t receive a guaranteed annual statutory grant from the Arts Council England and relies on donations to help it provide a stage for new writers and creatives around the world. 
It certainly was a week to remember at Theatre503. Check it out on the web for future events!

Defend Mark Bonnick!

by New Worker correspondent

 Mark Bonnick, the Arsenal kitman who had worked for the club for 22 years, was sacked for posting on social media in support of Palestine. He broke no FA rules. Arsenal's own appeal decision admitted his posts were never found to be antisemitic. They fired him anyway, because Zionists complained and the media picked it up. Mark, who is now working as a labourer on a construction site, is taking the club to a tribunal to try and get his job back. 
Arsenal has denied that it suspended Bonnick for antisemitism, instead claiming it was because he brought the club “into disrepute”. Bonnick maintains that the club discriminated against him due to his anti-Zionist beliefs. “Israel is an apartheid state,” he told Novara Media last year. “I was sacked not for misconduct, but for expressing grief and outrage over genocide”. 
Arsenal fans are rallying behind Mark and have organised a petition calling on the club to reinstate him, apologise, and compensate him for unfair dismissal. They say "on Christmas Eve 2024 Arsenal Football Club sacked Mark Bonnick, their kitman of 22 years, for posting on social media in support of Palestine.
“His dismissal followed a coordinated online smear campaign by pro-Israel accounts falsely accusing him of antisemitism.
“Arsenal's own appeal decision admitted the club had never found his posts to be antisemitic. The FA told Arsenal he had broken none of their rules. They fired him anyway, on the grounds that the media coverage had damaged the club's reputation.
Mark Bonnick broke no rules. He was targeted by a smear campaign, abandoned by the club he gave his life to, and left to work on a building site weeks before what should have been his retirement.
“This is the same club that publicly backed Black Lives Matter. That showed solidarity with Ukraine. That wraps itself in the language of equality and inclusion, then hands a dedicated employee his notice on Christmas Eve because pro-Israel accounts complained.
“And it goes deeper than just one worker. Arsenal sit second in War on Want's league table of complicity in Israel's genocide. Four of Arsenal's sponsors, Google/Alphabet, Meta, Coca-Cola and Expedia, are involved in Israel's atrocities. Senior executives of Deel, whose logo appears on Arsenal's shirts, have given supplies to Israel's armed forces during the genocide.
“A club that profits from sponsors embedded in Israel's military machine, then fires a man for opposing that machine, is not making a neutral employment decision. It is making a political one, on the wrong side".