Voices of Novorossiya heard in London

                                                                  

Andrew Murray addresses conference

by New Worker correspondent

SCORES of anti-fascists gathered in a basement lecture hall at University College London on Saturday 13th June for the annual general meeting of Solidarity with Anti-Fascist Resistance in Ukraine (SARU), and to hear from anti-fascists of Donetsk and Lugansk by computer link.

Among those present were comrades from Bristol, Newcastle and Southampton where other protest groups had sprung up spontaneously as SARU had done after the horrendous massacre when fascists set fire to the trade union building in Odessa where anti-fascists were sheltering.

The official death toll from that fire was 48 though local witnesses say the real death toll was more than 150. The Kiev regime put the figure at 48. Had the official number been over 50 it would have automatically sparked a United Nations inquiry and investigation.

The first speaker was Andrew Murray from the Communist Party of Britain and Stop the War. He spoke of the bitter and bloody war in East Ukraine and said that is was a country of diverse cultures that could only have been held together but recognition and mutual respect of all those cultures.

Now the current Kiev regime that came to power to try to drag the whole country into the European Union is a degraded regime where all languages are banned except Ukrainian and it is now forbidden to criticise Nazi collaborators and forbidden to display and communist symbols – in a country that for over 70 years was part of the communist Soviet Union.

Jorge Martin told the meeting that the United States House of Representatives has voted to ban the US government sending arms and assistance to the notorious openly pro-Nazi Azov Brigade. This has given Washington a headache because the Azov Brigade is totally integrated into the Ukrainian government army and is regarded as its spearhead.

Oleg Iourin, a Russian-born citizen, spoke of the corruption of the Kiev government, which calls for “European values” – and from their actions meaning by that acquiring Nazi values.

The meeting then heard by computer link from comrades in Donetsk and Lugansk and others who are currently in exile in Minsk.

Alexei Smetalkin, an MP in the Donetsk parliament representing trade unionists spoke via a mobile phone to tell the meeting that over the last 10 years the fascists have made a religion of nationalism. Now the Kiev government is set on trying to exterminate the people in the Donetsk and Lugansk republic.

He said they had to fight to create a road to Russia – a road of life from which they receive humanitarian aid from Russia – but it is not enough for the 7.5 million in the two republics.

The trade unions there are now trying to restart industrial and agricultural production – in spite of regular shelling and bombing from Kiev.

Victor Shapinov of the socialist movement Borotba, which is now working underground throughout Ukraine, said the two Minsk agreements were made between Russia and Kiev with no input at all from the people of Donetsk and Lugansk.

He also spoke of the appalling living conditions in west Ukraine: pensions cut to one third of their previous level while rents have doubled or tripled and there is no money for food. People are facing eviction for being unable to pay their rents. But the Kiev regime blames all the suffering on Russia and Putin.

Alex Markhov of the left-wing Ghost Battalion, which fights under the Red Flag and communist symbols, spoke of the current build-up of Kiev forces which is expected to end in a new attack.

He explained they were the only battalion in the Donetsk and Lugansk army that was also doing political work, raising working class consciousness and promoting Marxism Leninism. Alexei Musgovoy, the former leader of the Ghost battalion, was assassinated just a few weeks ago, after welcoming the Banda Bassotti multi-national caravan of anti-fascists bringing food and support via Moscow.

He warned that in Donetsk there were also powerful oligarchs. They and their colleagues in Moscow did not want to see these two republics return to socialism so that battalion was short of supplies except when it could capture them from fleeing or surrendering Kiev conscripts.

The last speaker in London was Dave Hopper, general secretary of the Durham Miners’ Association, who had links with the Donbas miners going back to the big strike of 1984/5.

He brought the support of the Durham NUM and invited SARU to the Durham Miners’ Gala on 11th July.

Confronting a World at War

 by New Worker correspondent

HUNDREDS of peace activists packed the main conference chamber of the TUC headquarters in Bloomsbury on Saturday 6th June for the Stop the War conference “Confronting a World at War”.

Topics debated included war and austerity, Palestine, civil liberties, Saudi Arabia, Latin America, the United States’ “Pivot to Asia”, Africa, scrapping Trident, Ukraine, imperialism and ISIS, the military industrial complex and migration and war.

A powerful array of speakers made presentations and led the debates. They included veteran peace campaigner Bruce Kent, Mustafa Barghouti, general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, Explo Nani-Kofi, a campaigner for African self-determination, leading US peace activist Medea Benjamin, Lindsey German, Kate Hudson, Andrew Murray, anti-racist activist Lee Jasper, Chris Nineham, writer David Edgar, Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell, journalist Seumas Milne, pro-Venezuela activist Matt Willgress, George Galloway and many more.

The conference was opened by Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn, who won a tremendous applause for his decision last week to stand for the leadership of the Labour Party on a promise to combat austerity.

In the opening plenary session Bruce Kent called on all peace activists in many different organisations to work together “in parallel” using a range of different tactics and strategies towards a common goal.

Lindsey German, who is the convenor of Stop the War, warned of the pernicious and dangerous measures taken by the Government in the “War on Terror” – now calling on primary schools to monitor what very young children are saying to each other. She recounted an instance where one child from a Muslim home was reported for telling fellow pupils that Father Christmas was not real – and thereby undermining British culture!

In the discussion session on Palestine Mustafa Barghouti spoke of the imperialist destruction of Middle Eastern states “one after another”.

And he spoke at length of the increasing success of the BDS – boycott, disinvest and sanction – campaign against the brutal and genocidal oppression of the Palestinian people by Israel.

He said the Israeli economy is now really being hit by this campaign as Israeli exporters lose contract after contract due to customer pressure through boycotting Israeli goods, especially those produced on occupied Palestinian land.

The Israeli government and its supporters are crying anti-Semitism but this is belied by the growing numbers of progressive Jewish people around the world who are supporting the BDS campaign.

In a session on “Zombie Imperialism: The Return of the Neocons” American peace campaigner Medea Benjamin spoke of the American police war against young Black people, the increasing numbers of war veterans joining the peace campaign and the new remote control weapons like drones that allow the US military to kill people by remote control.

Jeremy Corbyn spoke of the development of the role of Nato after the fall of the Soviet Union, when the ostensible reason for the existence of Nato had disappeared.

He said the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia rescued Nato by giving a new role and it has since gone on to intervene in the Middle east and all around the globe and is encircling Russia and China with hostile military bases.

In the session on the conflict in Ukraine writer David Edgar gave an account of the two conflicting left and right-wing narratives of what had happened there.

From the floor RMT member Alex Gordon, speaking on behalf of Solidarity with Antifascist Resistance in Ukraine, countered this, pointing out that there is an underlying objective reality of what is really happening – that open Nazis are now in positions of power in Kiev and that the people of Donbas and Lugansk are really being bombed and shelled by the Kiev regime.

Academic Richard Sakwa spoke against Nato intervention in Ukraine but claimed that membership of the European Union would bring economic stability to Ukraine and overcome the corruption of the ruling oligarchs.

From the floor, Daphne Liddle challenged this assertion, pointing out the effect of EU membership on another weak economy: Greece. She said the economic bail-out package offered by the EU and IMF would require even more drastic austerity measures than in Athens, measures that could not be forced on the population except with a fascist government – and that the population of Ukraine had been divided over EU membership with a small majority opposed to it, with good reason.

George Galloway addressed the final plenary session, along with Jeremy Corbyn, Mustafa Barghouti, Medea Benjamin, Lee Jasper and Chris Nineham. Galloway gave a rousing speech in which he warned the conference that US imperialism has “unleashed the Anti-Christ” on the modern world.

Bromley council workers’ stand against privatisation

BROMLEY council workers who are members of the giant union Unite last week urged local residents to join them in a mass rally against privatisation plans this Saturday 13th June at Norman Park, Bromley in south-east London.

The Conservative-run council’s mission to farm out most of its services to private companies, reducing the number of council employees from 4,000 to 300 is also being challenged by Unite members with a third wave of strikes.

With 14 of the council’s libraries among the services earmarked for privatisation, Bromley-based children’s author Sam Gayton said: “Libraries have given me so much – my imagination, my love of books, and my future career.

“I am so grateful to them, and so angry that they might be taken away from future generations. That is why I will be marching on Saturday 13th June. That is why I am standing up for Bromley public services."

Unite regional officer Onay Kasab, said: “Bromley council’s mission to shrink local services to vanishing point will be challenged every step of the way. We will not stand by and let Bromley council’s blinkered right-wing ideology destroy the services that generations of Bromley residents have depended on.

“We are urging Bromley residents to join the march on Saturday to support striking staff in their fight to stop the wholesale outsourcing of their services – the very future of their local services depends on it.”

In addition to the march, Unite members will be striking from 10th-20th June in a series of selective strikes. Unite members at adult services and transport workers will strike from 10th-15th June. Library staff will be on strike from 13th-20th June. Council workers will strike on 16th June.

Unite members voted by 87 per cent to take strike action in protest over the mass privatisation programme, cuts to pay and conditions and the withdrawal of facility time from the Unite trade union representative.

Campaigning for Democratic Korea

by New Worker correspondent

   THE UK Korean Friendship Association held a highly successful annual general meeting last Saturday in central London, at which UK KFA members, including a local councillor, were joined by members of the Spanish KFA and comrade Kwang Song Yu from the DPRK Embassy.

Messages of support were received from the worldwide KFA President, Alejandro Cao De Benos, and international KFA branches and sections including US, Belgium, Switzerland,  Austria, Poland, Singapore and Spain.

In his message Cao De Benos recalled that the KFA-UK “is our very first international branch”, and said: “Each person helping, even a little, is worth 100 who just remain idle. I want to encourage you to assist and suggest projects and action, to reach the biggest awareness in the general population.”

He said 2015 was a very important year for both the DPRK and the KFA itself, and invited comrades to join the Spanish KFA’s 15^th Anniversary celebration at the DPRK Embassy in Madrid in November.

Dermot Hudson, the UK KFA official delegate and chairperson, reported on the activities of the past year, which included protests at the US and puppet south Korean embassies, a public meeting in Liverpool, and a skype conference on the chemical weapons issue.

Theo Russell, UK KFA communications secretary, gave a report of work which highlighted several leaflets prepared for particular campaigns designed to provide information and education on Korea, and be used as a future resource.

He also delivered a message of solidarity from the New Communist Party in which he said that apart from general campaigns on Korea: “The Korean Friendship Association, and our party also work on a higher political level to encourage and help people in Britain to learn about and understand the teachings of Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un, and the Juché philosophy”. He said the KFA faced an enormous task in Britain: “But the hope is to convince people of all political persuasions in Britain of the justice of Korea’s struggle for complete independence, reunification and peace, and to build the strongest possible friendship between our countries.”

The meeting discussed a number of important campaign priorities. The 27^th June is  the start of the Month of Solidarity with the People of Korea, a tradition begun in 1960 by the Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Organisation, for which the UK KFA will hold a picket of the US embassy on June 25th.

Those present were also in agreement on the need to step up support and publicity on the work of the Anti-Imperialist National Democratic Front of south Korea, which is little known in Britain. A letter to dear respected Marshal Kim Jong Un was adopted, along with a resolution condemning the US stockpiling of anthrax toxins in south Korea.

Posadas Book Launch

By New Worker correspondent

COMRADES and friends returned to the Marx Memorial Library on Saturday 30th May  to discuss the problems of revolutionary struggle in the Third World in a seminar called by the Posadist movement as part of the launch of a book by Juan Posadas, the Argentinian Trotskyist union leader who later developed the distinct Marxist theories that now bear his name.

 Marie Lynam opened on the current relevance of Revolutionary State and Transition to Socialism, an analysis of the post-1945 anti-imperialist struggle that broke the chains of the old colonialist empires, first published in 1969, to the advances in Venezuela and other Latin American countries and the struggle against imperialism in Novorossiya.

New Commumist Party leader Andy Brooks spoke about Peronism in Argentina, which he said was: “In essence a social-democratic movement but unlike any that we are accustomed to in the heart-lands of European imperialism.”

And a Bolivian comrade opened on sweeping changes pioneered by the socialist movement led by Evo Morales today.

This was followed by a lively but friendly debate on what constitutes a “revolutionary” as opposed to simply an “anti-imperialist” state and the nature and need for the working class to build alliances for the defeat capitalism’s wars and the revolutionary transformation of the world.

Revolutionary State and Transition to Socialism by J Posadas costs £10, including postage and packing, from SCPE, Site 252, 61 Praed Street, Paddington, London w2 1NS.