Boycott Barclays now!

by New Worker correspondent

Palestine solidarity activists were out on the streets of Lewisham in south London last weekend  to demand Barclays stop financing Israel's genocide against Palestinians. Barclays bank provides £8.1 billion to companies supplying Israel with weapons used to kill Palestinians. 
Barclays also has an agreement with Israel to act as a “primary dealer” for its government bonds. This means Barclays helps Israel directly to raise money to fund its crimes against Palestinians.
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) is calling on all concerned people to boycott all Barclays services. In 2024 5,000 people closed their Barclays accounts as part of our mass account closure days. Barclays has acquired ownership of Tesco Bank. PSC are therefore calling on all Tesco Bank customers to shut their accounts, and join the next mass account closure day.
Palestine Solidarity is asking everyone who holds a Barclays account to pledge to close it on the next mass account closure day, Thursday 19th February 2026, to have the most impact. 

Welfare not Warfare – Stop the War in Ukraine

by Theo Russell

At a public meeting on Thursday 7th August hosted by Lewisham and Greenwich CND, Lewisham Stop the War and Lewisham Trades Council the audience rejected “the Labour Government’s policy of lowering living standards and cutting public services and benefits in order to fund an unending war that has already killed hundreds of thousands of people and brought the world to the brink of nuclear Armageddon”.
They called on the government “to end its financial and military support for war in Ukraine, and commit to working for a diplomatic, negotiated, lasting peace settlement, and encourage local peace organisations and trade unions to do the same”.
Cheryl McLeod from Lewisham Trades Council opened the meeting, saying “we’re here tonight with a message that cuts through the lies, the spin, and the silence. Let’s be honest: Britain has become a puppet of US foreign policy Whether it’s backing Nato’s endless wars, or supporting the Gaza genocide,
“Our leaders do as they’re told even if it means fuelling death abroad while slashing support at home.Meanwhile, councils across the UK are going bankrupt, over 14 million people now live in poverty, the number of people using food banks has tripled since 2010, and the NHS is short of over 100,000 staff.
“And here’s the truth no one in Westminster will say out loud: Ukraine has no chance of winning this war, even US military officials are now admitting it: Ukraine is outgunned, outmanned, and out of time.
“So what’s the plan? To keep sending billions in weapons, to prolong the bloodshed, so NATO can “save face”? This isn’t helping the Ukrainian people. It’s sacrificing them.
“And as if that weren’t enough, let’s remember: President Zelenskyy, the so-called Hero of the West, chose to shut down Ukraine’s anti-corruption agency. He banned opposition parties. He postponed elections. 
“This is the democracy we’re funding? This is the government we’re pouring billions into while children here go to school hungry?
“We say: Enough. We need peace not posturing, diplomacy not destruction, welfare not warfare.
“No more weapons for unwinnable wars, no more billions for corrupt foreign regimes, no more silence on Gaza’s genocide, no more acting as America’s puppet. And we say: Yes to housing, yes to healthcare, yes to food, education, and dignity”.
Alfie Howls from CodePink UK gave a detailed account of the causes of the war in Ukraine: the US involvement in the 2014 coup d’etat and Nato’s continual eastward expansion. "Ukraine is not a democracy, and many parties and trade unions have been banned. It is intervening against progressive governments in Africa. NATO’s ultimate aim is to destabilise Russia and divide it into small states” he said.
Alex Gordon,  the vice-president of CND, said it was “high time Ukraine was discussed in the trade unions and peace movement, because until now anyone raising this has been accused of being a ‘Russian influencer’...
“...our media, academia and politicians are in grip of a highly influential ‘Military-Industrial-Media-Academic-Complex’ (MIMAC), which is behind such official warnings that ‘we are no longer in a postwar world, we are now living in a pre-war world’ – in other words that war with Russia is inevitable.
“The latest UK defence strategy says that because of the Ukraine war massive spending is needed on digital warfare, new munitions factories, and 12 new nuclear submarines. But this spending is not actual 'investment', it is at the cost of domestic welfare and foreign aid.
“Western governments and the media have blatantly lied about nuclear weapons in Iran, and it was Donald Trump who took the US out of the Iran nuclear deal in his first term as US president.”
Another CND leader, Kate Hudson, said that the majority of young people in Britain now see Nato as a greater threat to peace than Russia, and described how Nato suppresses opposition from member states.
“In July, US B61-12 nuclear bombs returned to RAF Lakenheath for the first time since 2008, as well as to Belgium, the Netherlands and Turkey. But when Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands demanded their removal, the US refused because the deployment was agreed by consensus. So if a majority of Nato states are in favour, the rest have to accept the decision, overriding their national sovereignty.
“The war in Ukraine is ultimately the result of Nato’s relentless eastward expansion. Nato officials have discussed deploying ‘tactical’ or ‘mini’ nuclear missiles in Europe, in fact their warheads are three times more powerful than those used in August 1945. The Russian responses to such moves mean that the threat of nuclear war is increasing.
“Nato now has partners in Asia, Latin America and Africa and spends $22 trillion a year compared to Russia’s $140 billion military budget. Nato is a blight on humanity in every conceivable way”.
Asked about the motion adopted at RMT’s conference in Manchester last month calling for Britain to end military aid to Ukraine, Alex Gordon said “the RMT has launched a drive to challenge the UK’s massive spending on support for Ukraine. In the past trade unions wrongly supported sending weapons to Ukraine. The RMT wants to challenge that position, and urges other unions to follow our example”.
Members of International Ukraine Anti Fascist Solidarity (IUAFS) received a friendly response from the meeting, and two spoke from the floor. The meeting appears to be part of a new campaign and a marked change in Stop the War’s policy on Ukraine after years of appearing to lay all the blame on Russia and perceived open hostility towards IUAFS activists.

Stop the Slaughter in Gaza!

Marching through Camden

by New Worker correspondent

The first Saturday of December saw the latest round of pro-Palestine solidarity events calling for a ceasefire, with unions joining the protests for the first time. Local protests were held all around the country and all over London. London comrades joined demonstrators at two of them.  

In North London, protesters marched down to a rally outside Camden Town Hall in Bloomsbury sending a vocal message to the Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, the local MP who still refuses to back calls for a ceasefire.

RMT President Alex Gordon addressed the rally, speaking of the need for union representation at these events, and pledged his union’s ongoing support and solidarity while Liz Wheatley, from Camden Unison, spoke of the overwhelming support for a ceasefire among the Camden Council workers that her branch represents, and how no Camden Labour councillors have called for a ceasefire.

Sabby Sagall, of Camden PSC, and Sam Weinstein of IJAN (International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network) both spoke of how their Jewishness informed their support for the Palestinian cause and people, and that to them, being Jewish meant always being on the side of the oppressed and not the oppressor, echoing the words of Warsaw Ghetto Uprising leader Marek Edelman.

There were also speakers representing predominantly Bangladeshi Muslim local Community Groups. Among the points they made were opinion polls in Camden suggest 90% local support for a ceasefire, even higher than the 74 per cent national average, and that our local representatives, at local and national level, do not represent the communities they are supposed to serve.

South of the river supporters of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign along with the South East London People’s Assembly gathered outside Lewisham Library to demand an immediate ceasefire in Gaza as well as to mobilise support for the big rally on the 9th of December and to support the boycott of Puma.

Speakers said that the oppression of Palestinians did not start on the 7th of October but existed long before that. The local Labour MP Ms Janet Daby was notable by her absence  and was denounced by one speaker for not supporting the motion in parliament for an immediate ceasefire.

Protesters demand justice in Lewisham

by Daphne Liddle

Protesters took action outside Lewisham police station in south London on Saturday to express outrage at a police sergeant who brutally beat up a black youth who resisted when the officer tried to take his bike away. The police say the bike was stolen but no evidence has emerged on that. There was a large crowd at the protest which included two local neighbours who witnessed and filmed the incident and passers by on foot and in cars gave noisy support.
    Police inside the station came out to assure the protesters they would not interfere with the sit-down and to let them know if anyone needed anything. Since they are now under Sadiq Khan’s special measures they seem a bit sheepish when one of their own just does not get the message. The boy who was assaulted was injured and an ambulance was called but the wait for it was so long he gave up and went home when he started to feel a bit better.

The Lewisham Train Fiasco

By Dermot Hudson

On Friday 2nd March I boarded the 17:39 train from Waterloo East to Orpington to get home. The train was operated by the South Eastern Railway, a privatised rail company owned by the Go Ahead Group, a capitalist monopoly.

The train actually arrived at 17:41. Not too bad I thought to myself, only two minutes late. Commuting on South Eastern Trains is a negative experience because they are continually late. “Signalling difficulties“, “broken down train“, “engineering works“, “weather”, you name it, there is always an excuse for the fact that they cannot do the basic thing and run the trains on time or nearly on time. I did not know what was in store for me!

It had been snowing that afternoon and there was still a bit of snow coming. There had been snow on and off for the past two or three days. It had not been the dire reports of 20cm of snow but just a few centimetres of snow, which should not have posed any problem. The DPRK and socialist countries never have these problems with snow.

The train pulled out of Waterloo East. It was crowded because there was no Sidcup train and they had told passengers for Sidcup to join the train and change at Lewisham. The train trundled into London Bridge and left London Bridge, however it got slower and slower. Eventually it came to a halt about half a mile or so from New Cross. This was at about 17:53. The train just sat there. After about 15 minutes or maybe longer the driver spoke to the passengers over the PA system. He basically said he did not know what was what and was “speaking to two signal boxes“ to find out. About another 15 or 20 minutes later the driver informed us that a train in front had stuck on a gradient on the approach to Lewisham. Later the driver said it was because it was a 12 car train. This announcement was met with derision by some passengers.

Time dragged on. We had been on the train over an hour. The driver appealed for a paramedic because someone in one of the carriages had suffered a fit (not surprising being stuck on a train). Meanwhile the heating and air conditioning went off because of no power, there were emergency lights only. Worse still, the only toilet on the train became blocked.

Meanwhile more excuses offered were offered and a great deal of conflicting information. At one point we were told that the train would be reversed back into London Bridge. It was learned that people on the first train had been evacuated and those on the second train had opened the doors and jumped off. Some people decided to take matters in their own hands and pressed the emergency door release and jumped out. This did not look a good choice however: firstly, on jumping out one risked landing on the third rail (600 volts at least); secondly, trying to walk along icy tracks in the darkness; thirdly, one would have to scramble down a snow covered bank in darkness. I also realised that I would need to walk to a bus route to get home. So myself and a number of other passengers stayed put.

The train eventually moved at 22:35, nearly five hours after it had left Waterloo East. What a disgrace! The privatised rail companies have a real ‘do not care’ attitude towards passengers. It is not simply a case of people having their evenings and weekends messed up by this kind of nonsense, but there are cases of people who have lost jobs due to train delays (which seem to be permanent and perennial on South Eastern Trains rather than the odd occurrence). In the days of British Rail (BR) generally problems like this incident did not occur because BR had their own shunting engines and locos that could move broken-down or stuck trains, but the toy-town privatised railways do not have their own locos only electric units. The BBC, taking the side of South Eastern Trains, blamed the incident on passengers escaping the train – but it was down to pure and simple incompetence by South Eastern Trains, who could not could not run a bath let alone a railway!

Bring back British Rail!

 Nationalise the railways without compensation!

Remembering the Battle of Lewisham

by New Worker correspondent

ANTI-FASCISTS gathered outside the New Cross Inn, close to Clifton Rise, last Saturday to commemorate the 40^th anniversary of the historic battle between local communities and the National Front, who were supported by thousands of police, that saw the fascists forced to turn back and marked the beginning of the decline of the National Front (NF).

Last Saturday’s rally, followed by a march, was attended by dozens of veterans of the original battle and many gave an account of the battle.

The NF was founded in the late 1960s as a movement against immigration, especially from the West Indies, Asia and Africa, into Britain. It won ignorant white supporters by scapegoating immigrants for a shortage of decent housing, for unemployment, for high crime levels and for many other ills that were growing after the post-war economic boom had run out of steam.

But at its roots the NF was run by fascists and neo-Nazis, and was the enemy of all the working class.

The NF had been growing steadily for nearly a decade and was on the verge of becoming a mass party. In Deptford, a ward of the London Borough of Lewisham, in a local by election it had almost beaten Labour and polled votes more than the Tories.

In May 1977 police had arrested 21 young black people in Lewisham in dawn raids, claiming this “gang” was responsible for 90 per cent of street crime in London.

The local community rallied round and formed a committee to defend the “Lewisham 21”, and a protest march was held to demand justice for the “Lewisham 21”. It was attacked by a group of around 200 NF supporters, who threw rotten fruit and bags of caustic soda at the marchers.

The NF decided Lewisham was a good place to march to intimidate the local black population.

Before the NF march was due to start there was a mass rally in a local park addressed by local councillors, a bishop and other dignitaries whilst others went to block the route the NF were due to take.

Once the NF arrived and set off from their assembly point at Clifton Rise in New Cross, most of those at the rally in the park began to join those trying to block the route.

The NF were headed by their ‘honour guard’ carrying banners and flags with sharp pointed metal finials on the flag and banner poles.

The 500 NF were surrounded by three rows of police and mounted police were out in force. Most of the fighting was between the anti-fascists and the police as the police, using utmost brutality, tried to clear a path for the NF.

Members of the local community, black and white, came out of their homes and started picking up anything and everything they could lay their hands on to lob at the NF marchers.

Meanwhile another group of anti-fascists had occupied Lewisham town centre, around the clock tower.

The NF never made it to the clock tower. Police were forced to divert them into a side street to have their rally and then bundled them on to waiting trains.

But the anti-fascist protesters were unaware the fascists had gone and continued to fight with the police – who, in spite of their huge numbers, totally lost control of the town centre for a while as “the People’s Republic of Lewisham Clock Tower” was declared briefly.

Two hundred and fourteen people were arrested and at least 111 injured, including 56 police officers.

One black veteran told the crowd last Saturday: “Once we had seen the ‘master race’ running away in terror that was the end of their power to intimidate us.”

The Battle of Lewisham led to the foundation of the Anti-Nazi League and the decline of the NF.