Force the Tories Out!

 Two weeks after the election and Theresa May continues to cling to power on the strength of a promise of support from the sectarian bigots of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which has yet to be delivered, to give the Tories a wafer-thin majority in the House of Commons. But most of the reactionary Tory agenda has been culled from the Queen’s Speech, which Tory grandees concede was “her first and last”.

            Mrs May’s rivals are openly debating whether to depose her now or wait until she loses the next election before making a bid for the leadership amidst rumours that Conservative Campaign Headquarters has already been told to prepare for a late autumn re-run. Meanwhile the struggle between the two poles of the ruling class divided over Brexit continue within the corridors of power, with the Europhiles determined to create the conditions for another referendum before the conclusion of the Brexit talks.

            Communists have no say, nor indeed any interest, in who should lead the Tory party. Nor are we interested in the divisions within the ruling class except to exploit them for the benefit of the working class. The immediate priority is to bring this government down.

            The incompetence, greed and indifference that led to the Grenfell Tower fire sums up all that is rotten within the British ruling class.

Getting rid of capitalism and replacing it with socialism is the ultimate objective of working people. Getting rid of austerity and replacing it with social justice is the immediate objective of the working class and the Labour Party.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has vowed to oppose the May government in every way in Parliament and Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has called for a million people to take to the streets to bring this government down.

But when the next general election comes we must mobilise to ensure that Labour gets a clear working majority. We don’t want the ‘austerity-lite’ of the Blairites who still remain within the Labour Party. We don’t want a mealy-mouthed compromise with the worthless Liberal-Democrats or the Scottish Nationalists that the liberal bourgeois pundits who pose as friends of the working class are now advocating. We don’t want any retreat from the decision of the British people in 2016 to leave the European Union.

What we want is an end to austerity and the restoration of trade union rights. Saving the NHS, capping rents and building cheap council homes, raising wages, getting rid of the need for foodbanks, saving our schools, restoring the right to independence for the disabled, restoring proper care for the elderly and restoring legal aid to bring justice for all – these are the issues that Labour’s manifesto addresses. Restoring at least part of the public sector, cutting the defence budget and taxing the rich to make them pay for the crisis of their own creation will pay for all of this and more.

There’s new militancy in parliament. There’s anger on the streets. One way or another the May government will fall. The sooner the better.

The root cause of terrorism

WHILE no one yet knows the precise motives of the two Islamic fanatics who killed an off-duty soldier in London last week there is no doubt that the wave of racist attacks on Muslims across the country has been fired by the hysteria in the bourgeois media. The fascist British National Party and the rabble that follow the English Defence League have done their best to incite race hatred against the British Muslim community whose secular and religious leaders have all unequivocally condemned the Woolwich killing.

Working people have long rejected the openly racist and fascist calls of the neo-Nazi movements that seek to divide and split the working class along ethnic lines to pave the way for the reactionary dictatorship of their dreams. But they can be swept along into accepting more and more restrictions on basic freedoms and rights as the ruling class clamps down in the name of the “war on terror”.

The Tory led Coalition Government has predictably responded in the usual way with the promise of a further tranche of repressive legislation to give the security services even more surveillance powers. They claim these are needed to counter the terrorist threat in Britain but they are an attack on the civil liberties of every British citizen.

But others, including the Stop the War Coalition, have been quick to point out that the Woolwich attack appears to confirm British intelligence warnings that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq would lead to terror attacks at home. Outspoken Respect MP George Galloway, who described the London murder as an “indefensible crime” went one further by pointing out that “this sickening atrocity in London is exactly what we are paying the same kind of people to do in Syria”.

“We’ve given hundreds of millions of pounds to the Syrian rebels and demanded the EU ends the arms embargo so we can give them guns too” Galloway declared. And he is quite right. This is precisely what President Assad and his Baathist-led popular front government are up against in Syria.

The man who publicly ate the heart and liver from the body of a dead Syrian soldier and the others who maim and butcher Syrian civilians are members of fanatical Muslim sects armed and funded by imperialism via their feudal Arab lackeys in Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

We have to ask ourselves why has Britain become a haven for Islamic fundamentalist movements that seem to operate with impunity, despite the fact that many of them are wanted in their own countries for inciting sectarian violence? The answer is that many of them have served the interests of British imperialism and many of them still do.

We also have to ask ourselves why Britain and its imperialist allies are seen as the enemy by millions of Muslims across the world. The answer is simply that Anglo-American and Franco-German imperialism is waging open and covert war against a number of Muslim countries for strategic and economic reasons, not least to get their greedy hands on the immense oil and gas fields under their sands and new fields under the Mediterranean to give the big oil corporations a global monopoly on energy resources.

This is what the “war on terror” is all about and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, Afghans, Libyans and Syrians have died at the hands of US-led imperialism and their local lackeys.

The best way, and indeed the only way, to stop the “terror” is to end the root cause of it all — the imperialist occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, the end to the Nato protectorate over Libya and an end to the support of the reactionary Islamic terror gangs that are fighting to overthrow the Assad government in Syria.

Increase the struggle

THE THOUSANDS upon thousands who took part in the TUC protests in London, Glasgow and Belfast on Saturday clearly reflected the mounting opposition to the Cameron government’s austerity programme.

The march of over 150,000 people through the capital clearly demonstrated the ability of the TUC to mobilise large numbers of working people behind the banner of resistance. And the serried ranks of speakers at the London rally who included Labour leader Ed Miliband and the general secretaries of all our major unions showed that the movers and shakers of the union movement were eager to be seen heading the struggle against the cuts.

But the numbers in London were down compared to the half a million who took to the streets in the March 2011 anti-cuts protest. Though this was partly due to the decision to hold regional rallies on the same day, many others stayed at home because they didn’t think it would go beyond yet another union parade that the Government would simply ignore and carry on regardless.

That, of course, depends on what happens next and the fight-back certainly has to be taken well beyond marching through the streets on a weekend if it is to have any hope of seriously derailing the Tories and their Liberal Democrat collaborators. Ed Miliband, who heads the Labour Party that claims to represent organised labour, clearly saw the rally as little more than a pre-election campaign rally. The Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition is deeply unpopular with voters at the moment.

Labour is nine points ahead of the Tories in the opinion polls and Miliband & Co clearly believe Labour is going to be swept back to power on an anti-Tory wave fired by the collapse of the Liberal Democrats. The Labour leader is still committed to austerity and he thinks that a promise to return to the alternative “soft landing” neo-Keynesian reforms that were practised by the last Labour government is enough to get him into Downing Street.

The TUC’s own call for a “Future that Works”, on the other hand, consists of supporting another national co-ordinated national public sector one-day strike on pay in the New Year and a tentative call for a one-day “general strike” if and when the European Court of Justice rules against the existing anti-union legislation.

A joint public sector one day strike, like last year’s mass stoppage over pension rights, has to be fought for in the unions concerned and the call for a general strike has to be fought for throughout the movement, regardless of what the European Court says or does.

The Tory-led Coalition is unstable and can be brought down whenever the Liberal Democrats decide it’s time to jump ship. But workers can’t wait for Nick Clegg to make his mind up or simply sit it out until 2015 when the next election has to take place whatever happens.

The fight-back that started in Greece has spread to Spain, Portugal and France and now the unions are fighting the cuts right across the European Union.

Last November around two-and-a-half million public sector workers took strike action, the biggest strike in terms of numbers our country has ever seen.

That strike sent a clear message to the Coalition Government that pension and public service cuts were unacceptable. That campaign failed because the vacillators who still control some of our unions, more concerned with preserving their immense salaries and perks than taking up the legitimate demands of their members, headed off demands for a follow-up campaign.

That must never happen again. Appeasement doesn’t work. The only way the Cameron Government can be stopped in its tracks is by determined action by the organised working class united around the basic demands charted by the TUC this year.

Support Assange

AN INTENSE debate has broken out among people who claim to be progressive and “lefties”, on the internet and in the pages of many left-wing publications about Julian Assange, the fugitive founder of Wikileaks.

 He is currently staying put inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London after the Government of Ecuador, after careful consideration, has granted him political asylum. But our Foreign Secretary, William Hague, has categorically refused him safe passage from the embassy to leave Britain for Ecuador.

 A year or so ago most of the Left in Britain and throughout the world were hailing Assange as a hero for publishing on the web details of secret communications between the United States government and its embassies and military bases around the world.

 These were extremely embarrassing to the US and other imperialist powers as their underhanded dealings, machinations and manipulations were revealed – along with the casual cruelties in the various imperialist wars in the Middle East. The revelations also embarrassed other governments to a greater or lesser extent but the countries of the world divided and revealed their real position on human rights as they lined up, either to condemn Assange and the Wikileaks team as shameful traitors who should be tried and shot, and those like Venezuela, who praised him as a great hero and offered him sanctuary.

 Since then we have come to know Assange a little better. He seems to be not particularly left wing, rather something of an anarchist and a bit of an egotist.

 Predictably the imperialist powers reacted at first furiously and then with a campaign to try to discredit him and to get him into a position where the government of the United States could put him on trial.

 He has been accused of rape by two women in Sweden, where he used to live. Sweden has asked for his extradition to face trial and, after several lengthy court battles, the British government has assented and was prepared to send him to Sweden before he took refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy.

 There is little doubt that heavy pressure on both Britain and Sweden is being wielded behind the scenes by the US government and that the ultimate aim, once he is in custody, is to send him to the US, where he could face the death penalty. He has never lived in the US and that country has no jurisdiction over him but that sort of thing never bothered the country that built the concentration camp at Guantánamo or that has secret torture bases – not so secret after Wikileaks – around the world.

  It should be natural for all progressives to support him but the imperialists are using their infiltrators to darken his name and divide the Left in a war of words for and against Assange.

 We cannot prove the rape allegations are untrue but we hold him innocent until proven guilty. And he has publicly declared he would agree to go to Sweden if that government could guarantee he would not then be sent to the US. They will not guarantee that.

 But we do know that the CIA, MI5, MI6 and the rest have a long history of framing and smearing individuals who are bold enough to challenge their power. They seriously want to discourage anyone doing anything like that again by making a horrible example of him – as they are already doing to his alleged source, the former US soldier Bradley Manning.

 Bradley Manning has been incarcerated in the US under the most inhumane conditions and is unlikely to see freedom again unless there is a workers revolution in the US. He as much in need of public support as Assange.

 In the process of traducing Assange, his smearers are also attacking Ecuador, making it out to be some sort of banana republic or petty dictatorship. Ecuador is part of the strong, left-wing Bolivarian Alliance that includes Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Cuba.

 And the imperialists’ desperation is shown by the British government’s attempt to arrest Assange inside the Ecuadorean embassy and threat to breach it by force. This is absolutely contrary to all international law and the diplomatic repercussions against Britain from other countries could be serious. The police forces of Britain do not usually put this much effort into chasing alleged rapists.

 Assange is not a saint but he doesn’t have to be. His work has done a lot of damage to imperialism by exposing its ugly, deceitful, cruel and greedy underbelly. Genuine left-wing workers’ and communist parties around the world recognise this and will rally to defend him and Bradley Manning.

Bread and Circuses in London

FEW OF US have been able to afford a seat at the London Olympics and those who do and then manage to struggle through the queues face another fleecing from the corporate caterers, determined to make the most of the monopolies they’ve paid for in the grounds.

            The opening ceremony was certainly an entertaining tableau of history which made a passing nod to working people in a romp that spanned the centuries. Whether this makes the year’s sporting spectacular the “People’s Olympics” is another matter.

            The Soviet Spartakiads and the great sporting festivals of the old people’s democracies in eastern Europe were genuine People’s Olympics with sporting champions and mass games drawn from the factories, farms and offices of socialism. But those days are sadly long gone except in China and Democratic Korea.

Today we can still admire the efforts of the British teams competing against the finest athletes in the world and we can also take some comfort in watching the achievements of the sportsmen and sportswomen from People’s China and the other people’s democracies this week. China has predictably taken an early lead in the medals stakes but even Democratic Korea has bagged three gold medals so far  – a remarkable achievement for the land of Juché that demonstrates the DPR Korea’s long-standing commitment to health and sport under socialism.

            A Zionist attempt to politicise the Games, by lobbying for a minute’s silence at the opening ceremony to honour the Israeli athletes killed during a Palestinian Black September attack at the Munich Olympics in 1972, was rejected as inappropriate by the International Olympic Committee. This was also the view of Prime Minister, David Cameron and Tory London Mayor Boris Johnson.

            Cameron, who attended a commemorative event for the Israeli athletes at the Guildhall, said while it was important to remember what happened in 1972 planned memorial events were the proper way to do that. This was echoed by the head of the Palestinian Olympic Committee that is fielding four athletes in the London Games. Jibril Rajoub said: "Sport is a bridge for love, unification and for spreading peace among the nations. It must not be a cause for divisiveness and for the spreading of racism.”

            That’s certainly the modern Olympic ideal that claims to inherit the tradition of the Greco-Roman Olympiads. Whether it was true then, in an age when slavery was the considered the norm and when the “games”, at least in Roman days, had a different meaning in the Colosseum, is a matter of opinion.

            How true it is today is also debatable. At least the games were free in Roman times along with the food scattered amongst the crowd to keep them happy. The Romans called it “bread and circuses” and they were sponsored by the Roman elite as a way of distracting the slaves and the poor from their woes.

 These days it’s the exact opposite. Nothing is free and the poor are virtually excluded by cost from all the live events. Seats cost an arm and a leg and the spectators pay through the nose for any food or drink available at the stadiums.

The Olympic ideal may still be true for many of the athletes and the millions who watch the events on TV in Britain and the rest of the world. But today there is little doubt that the Olympiad is seen as nothing more than a cash cow and a global trade fair by corporate business and the politicians who serve them.