Stand with Diane!

by Theo Russell

Diane Abbott received a rapturous welcome from around 900 people at a rally outside Hackney Town Hall in east London last week to protest against the vile attack on the MP by multi-millionaire Tory donor Frank Hester. The chant repeated again and again was "We stand with Diane!".
A speaker from the local black women's group, Sistah Space, told the crowd that Diane's parents endured the racism of the Windrush generation. “Diane was the first black woman elected to parliament and is the longest serving black MP. She's a living legend...we are under attack and we have to be vigilant!”
Criticising Labour leader Keir Starmer's suspension of Diane Abbott from the Parliamentary Labour Party, the singer and rapper Lowkey said “the Labour Party has come to power in the past with the support of black voters, and we want our money's worth!” and former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, whose parliamentary seat is in neighbouring Islington, said “I'm proud to be here. We are here to celebrate Diane. We ain't disappearing and we ain't going nowhere!”
Diane Abbott herself said “it is the people of Hackney who selected me, who worked hard to get me elected, and who have stood by me for so many years. We need to stand up for the young generation so that they don't have to go through what our parents experienced. Thank you for your support and help. Now we need to go forward”.
Diane Abbott is immensely popular in Hackney and enjoys massive respect from the local community as their representative, but she also has a magnificent track record of anti-colonialism and opposing imperialist wars from Ireland to Africa and Palestine to Afghanistan.
While some MPs have been given police protection against threats and Rishi Sunak warns that extremists are “threatening our democracy” Tory business minister Kemi Badenoch has dismissed Hester's comment that Diane Abbott should be shot as "trivia" while the black community feel that the Labour leadership has also failed to stand up for Dianne.
While parliament debated the very subject of Hester's outright racism, the Speaker –  a Labour MP –  disgracefully failed to call Diane Abbott to speak even though she stood to be called 49 times.
After Rishi Sunak's shameful failure to return Hester's millions his popularity has sunk to new lows, but Labour also has to realise that the feelings of black British voters can't be trampled on, that they need to feel fully respected, and that includes bringing Diane Abbott back into Labour’s parliamentary party.

Windrush: Repeal the 2014 Immigration Act!

by New Worker correspondent

HUNDREDS of protesters gathered in Whitehall, opposite Downing Street, last Saturday to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Theresa May and the repeal of the 2014 Immigration and Asylum Act that was the main cause of the “hostile environment” to immigrants and the Windrush catastrophe.

May has apologised in Parliament for the outrageous deportations, threats of deportation and denial of jobs, housing, NHS care and other services to elderly people who came to Britain from the West Indies as children with their parents in the 1950s, ‘60s and early ‘70s by invitation to help post-war reconstruction here.

They came as British subjects, before their home islands were given independence. When Jamaica and the other islands were made independent a law was passed in the early 1970s granting people who had come from the West Indies full rights to continue living and working here without limitation.

But the 2014 Act, drawn up by May as Home Secretary at the time, took away those rights and made it conditional on these people having full documentation for every year they had lived and worked here – after she, in 2010, had ordered the shredding of archived landing passes that could have proved every one of these people came here legally.

But in spite of May’s apologies the Act is still being used to threaten more of the Windrush generation with the loss of their right to stay here. May claims to have set up a task force to put things right but this seems to consist of help and guidance for these people to be able to obtain the right identification documentation to comply with the Act – and it will cost them heavily. The hostile environment to immigrants remains very much in place.

Furthermore, last week May ordered her MPs to vote down a parliamentary motion to reveal all the documents connected to the Act and its implementation.

Protesters chanted for the repeal of the Act and for May to be deported, and for an immediate end to deportations and detention of Commonwealth citizens. They also demanded that compensation be awarded to those who had been deported, threatened with deportation or detained, and those who lost housing, jobs, benefits and were denied NHS treatment because of the Government's policy.

The Windrush caseload last week hit 3,000 and is increasing daily.

Speaking on Saturday, Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott said: "Comrades, I’m here to show my solidarity with the Windrush generation. And say how pleased I am that I was the first person to call for [former Home Secretary] Amber Rudd’s resignation. And then she resigned.

"And you know why she had to resign, not because of what she said in a committee but because somebody had to take responsibility for what was done to the Windrush generation. And it happened on her watch.

“I am not under any illusion, when it comes to the Windrush scandal all roads lead back to Theresa May."

She added: "The Windrush scandal doesn’t end here. We need to know how many people were deported, we know to know how many were detained. We need to know how many weren’t allowed to come back into this country.

“But above all, we have to continue fighting for fairness and humane treatment of migrants.”

In the crowd, Yvonne Williams, 58, who was released from Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre just last week, said she was “screaming” with joy.

Ms Williams’ mother was part of the Windrush generation and came to the UK from Jamaica. Ms Williams said she joined her mother in Britain in 2001 after her grandmother died in Jamaica.

She said her applications to stay were repeatedly refused by the Home Office and that despite her release she is still concerned about what her future holds.

Describing her eight months in detention, Ms Williams said it was “torture” and that it left people “traumatised”.

“It is very hard, every day you’re thinking, oh, they’re going to come and take me,” she said.

Weyman Bennett, joint general secretary of Unite Against Fascism and Stand Up To Racism – the organisers of the protest – also spoke. His family travelled from Jamaica between 1958 and 1966. His mother worked in the NHS and his father joined the British Army.

“Amber Rudd took the blame, but I believe that Theresa May is responsible for it, and she should go,” he said. “I hope she is held accountable for what she did, because the people’s voices have to be heard."

No More Cuts!

Caroline Lucas, Diane Abbott and Len McCluskey at the front

 by New Worker correspondent

THOUSANDS took to the streets of London on Saturday 20th June to protest against  more austerity. Around 250,000 people marched through central London to demonstrate against the renewed ruling class offensive of the Cameron government.

Every major trade union was well represented along with many of the minor ones, community groups and peace movemtns like Stop the War and CND, anti-fascist campaigns like UAF, freedom and justice campaigns, NHS and housing campaigns, religious and pensioner groups, phalanxes of people in wheelchairs and thousands and thousands of noisy and colourful students – all together and all with one message: “No more cuts!”

The march from the Bank of England to Parliament Square was tiring for many but they packed the square to listen to speeches from Green Party leader Caroline Lucas, singer Charlotte Church, Diane Abbott MP and of course Jeremy Corbyn MP, who is standing for the Labour leadership.

He spoke of the ruin that the banking crisis had caused and the increasing inequality with a million depending on food banks and people sleeping in the streets.

He also spoke of the 1850s rallies in the same spot for the People’s Charter, whose demands were described as “out of date and irrelevant” at the time but were all achieved within a century. “They were the real visionaries,” he said. “We are standing on the shoulders of giants.”

“We want a state that takes responsibility for everybody… where we each care for all and no one is destitute. I think it’s called socialism,” he added.