Chinese workers unite on New Year!

By Adrian Chan-Wyles

LAST WEEKEND saw the annual Chinese New Year celebrations usher in the Year of Horse in and around Gerrard Street, that area of Soho known as London’s Chinatown.  In the Chinese lunar calendar the New Year is counted as the 4712^th since the rule of the legendary figure known as the Yellow Emperor (Huangdi).  Whatever the actual historicity of Chinese civilisation, archaeology confirms that it is ancient.

  The celebration of the Chinese New Year has spread out of China and into the international community, making it a truly multicultural affair.  It is a time of old ritual now used in a modern context to facilitate psychological and physical renewal.  Its widespread appeal is confirmed by the thousands who gathered before 10am on a cold Sunday morning at the beginning of February, to witness the parade that initiated the celebrations, to be followed by dragon, unicorn and lion dances up and down the streets.

 What used to be limited to Gerrard Street is now spread out into Soho proper, and from there into Trafalgar Square, and what used to take an hour or two, now takes up most of the day.  This is the general area of London lived in and frequented by Karl Marx in the latter half of the 19^th century. 

The police presence is always strong during Chinese New Year, but crime always remains small, despite the crowds.  People from every conceivable ethnic group attend and are brought together in the celebration of what amounts to the looking forward to prosperity and good fortune for the year ahead.  To this end, corporate business has its foot in the door.  When families arrive in the general area they are met by a bewildering array of stalls selling all kinds of articles from food and drink, to balloons and toy horses and so forth.

  A mobile telephone company was giving out colourful flags on wooden sticks to children who then ran around waving them.  The flags said in Chinese characters ‘Sun Lin Fai Lok!’, or ‘Happy and Joyous New Year’, and above this message was the name of the mobile telephone corporation in big letters!

  Small children ran around acting as free advertising for a brutal and ruthless capitalist business entity that does not care about their well being whatsoever.  The parents looked on seemingly mindless of the exploitation unfolding in the name of celebration, that was being perpetuated (with their agreement) by big businesses using their children as commercial fodder. 

The Labour Party was up to its usual tricks.  It had a stall with information in both English and Chinese, hoping to recruit British born Chinese people to the Labour cause.  Labour lurched dangerously to the right of the British political spectrum under Tony Blair and has never recovered.

  In London, however, and amongst ethnic minorities such as the Chinese, Labour presents a false image that implies that it is in political accordance with the Communist Party of China, which it certainly is not.  Labour has no intention of repealing the anti-union laws, or turning back the Tory cuts to the welfare State, the NHS, or the education system.  Toward the mainstream British electorate, the Labour Party panders to the Tory Press and treats the ordinary British Worker as some kind of error or illness in the system.  This is not surprising when it is considered that Clause Four has been removed from the Labour Party’s constitution, breaking the direct link with Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto.

 Chinese people are intelligent and should not fall for the Labour Party’s misleading political rhetoric.  Only the communists can lead the people and mirror the success of the Communist Party in China.  In this way Chinese New Year can be raised out of the feudal conditions that created it and used to create a truly progressive and advanced socialist society.             

WFTU in solidarity with the London Underground Workers

 The World Federation of Trade Unions representing 86 million workers in 126 countries around the world salutes the struggle of the London Underground workers in Britain who have joined forces in industrial action to stop cuts in jobs, services and security.
The 48-hours strike action that began last night has been rock solid and this has meant the London Underground network has effectively been closed down.
In a united voice transport workers say no to casualization, zero-hour contracts, poverty pay and bogus self-employment!
The WFTU greets the RMT and TSSA British unions for calling their members into a struggle to protect not only their fair labour rights but also the safety of the underground means of transport for all the passengers.
On the contrary, the authorities and the mass media have been engaged on a slandering campaign against the workers struggle aiming to tear the public apart from supporting their cause and enhance its dynamic.
These machinations, used in similar ways against workers struggles around the world, only prove the shallowness of their arguments in favor of the policy of privatization implemented in the transport sector as a strategy of the European Union in all European countries. The objective is none other than squeezing the workers and the passengers to produce as much profit as possible in burden of workers’ rights and safety.
We join our voices in solidarity with the transport workers’ struggle to demand safe, efficient and affordable public transport with the respect of workers’ rights.

Athens
 5th February 2014

Cold reception for visiting Hungarian neo-Nazi

By New Worker

Correspondent

HUNDREDS of anti-fascists turned out in the cold and rain last Saturday outside Holborn Tube Station in London to protest at the visit to Britain of Gabor Vona, leader of the racist and fascist Jobbik party in Hungary.

He had come, he claimed, to address Jobbik supporters among the Hungarian expat community in London, as part of his election campaign. But there were rumours that meeting members of the fascist British National Party and the Greek Golden Dawn might also be on his agenda.

Jobbik is accused of promoting strong anti-Semitic views and fuelling hatred against Jewish and Roma communities. It has been described as the most powerful openly fascist group in Europe.

Jobbik have done well in Hungary on an explicitly anti-Jewish and anti-Roma ticket – becoming the third biggest political party in Hungary.

A Channel Four News report into a Jobbik rally in Budapest last year found a paramilitary-style militia, organised with helmets, gas masks and vitriolic language against Jewish and Roma minorities.

Neither police nor anti-fascists knew the venue for Vona’s meeting but it did not take long before people wearing T-shirts with fascistic slogans and carrying flags with Hungarian nationalist insignia started to turn up around the Tube station.

The anti-fascists reacted noisily and soon around 50 Jobbik supporters became trapped inside the station, heavily guarded by police, as anti-fascists blocked the station exits.

Among the crowd were a number of Hungarian anti-fascists who had come to tell Vona to “Takarodj” (clear off!) from London.

Labour London Assembly Member Andrew Dismore told the anti-fascist rally of the real nature of Jobbik and of efforts to get Vonar’s visit banned.

And Weyman Bennett, joint leader of Unite Against Fascism, spoke at the outrage felt by many that a person such as Vonar should be allowed to organise a rally on the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day.

There was a long stand-off as other Jobbik supporters turned up on the opposite side of High Holborn to see what was delaying their colleagues.

The Jobbik organisers first had to delay the start of their meeting and then the hotel where it was scheduled to happen withdrew the booking and told them to leave.

Eventually the police escorted them to conduct their meeting in the open air – in the cold and rain near the tea-hut in Hyde Park.

Around 80 of them huddled round in a tight bunch encircling Vonar as he spoke without an amplifier under a sea of umbrellas.

They were heavily guarded by police but before long groups of anti-fascists arrived and they were in full voice.

By the time they finished their gathering Vona and his supporters were left in no doubt that fascists and racists are not welcome in Britain.

The Holocaust – We will remember

By New Worker correspondent

VETERANS of the Second World War joined schoolchildren, ambassadors from Eastern Europe, local dignitaries and communists for a double event in Southwark to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.

The first half of the event was hosted by the Mayor of Southwark, Councillor Abdul Mohamed, in the Amigo Hall, St George’s cathedral in Southwark.

It was opened by the entry of veterans in full uniform bearing their military standards and then the Mayor welcomed everyone.

Susan Pollack, born Zsuzsanna Biall on 9^th September 1930 in Felsögód, Hungary, and held in the Vac ghetto and Monor internment camp, gave an account of her experiences in the second would war.

In May 1944, with her mother and brother, she was moved to Auschwitz, in the last transport of Hungarians. "Day after day in a dark, closed wagon, no hygiene, no food or water, people dying".

Her mother was gassed on arrival; her brother survived a bit longer, in the squad moving bodies to the ovens.

Susan was transferred to the Gubben slave labour camp and finally force-marched to Bergen-Belsen. "On liberation, I was virtually a corpse, unable to walk, and would soon have died." The liberation of that camp came only just in time for her.

With other young people she was sent to Sweden and then to Canada, where she married fellow-Hungarian Abraham Pollack, a survivor of Mauthausen.

Many years later she worked for the Samaritans, saying that it helped her cope with her memories to be able to help other people in distress. And she also took up voluntary work in a hospice. “It is my therapy,” she said.

She also continues to speak out about her experiences: “"Because I was there, I speak for those who can’t. The great evil that pervaded so many minds in a civilised country destroyed more than 50 members of my family. It is a lesson for all time: will later generations stand up for the rights of others, or remain the silent majority?”

Susan’s testimony was followed by music from Southbank Sinfonia, the recital of [A small station of Treblinka] by Wladyslav Szlengel by pupils from Notre Dame Secondary School.

A film, Journeys, was shown, Labour MP Margaret Hodge gave an address about the impact of the Holocaust on her family and the memorial candle was lit by Susan Pollack and Avram and Vera Schaufeld – also Holocaust survivors.

Then the memorial prayer, Kaddish, was said by Rabbi the Reverend Alan Greenblatt.

People then left the hall and crossed the road for the second part of the event at the Soviet War Memorial and the Holocaust Memorial tree in Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park (the grounds of the Imperial War Museum).

The parade was led by the veterans carrying their standards.  Alexander Yakovenko, the Russian ambassador, told those assembled that the day was also the 70th anniversary of the lifting of the siege of Leningrad after 900 days – a feat of courage and endurance that helped to tip the balance of the Second World War against the Nazis.

Wreaths were then laid at the Holocaust tree and the Soviet War Memorial to remember the Red Army and the role it played, at great cost, in delivering the world from Nazism including a floral tribute laid by Daphne Liddle on behalf of the New Communist Party of Britain.

The Exhortation, ending with the pledge: “We will remember” was recited by Stan Ballard, a veteran of the Arctic Convoys, a two-minute silence and then the Last Post.

Community unites against fascists in Cricklewood

 

  By New Worker 

correspondent

ANTI-FASCISTS turned out is force in Cricklewood Broadway, north London, last Saturday to counter a demonstration planned by the Britain First movement.

Britain First is one of the fairly new Nazi splinter groups that has emerged from the decline and break-up of the British National Party and includes a number of well-known thugs who were considered too right-wing and too Nazi even for the BNP.

One of these is Jim Dowson, from the occupied north or Ireland – a wealthy business man with strong ties to Ulster loyalism who used to fund the BNP until he had a spectacular falling out with BNP leader Nick Griffin.

Britain First had planned a demonstration outside a building in Cricklewood Broadway which they claimed was an organising centre for the right-wing Muslim Brotherhood. But their aim was to intimidate local Muslims generally and to raise their profile.

According to police present on the day, Britain First had not sought permission for their demonstration.

Cricklewood is a very mixed area with large Muslim and Irish communities and the local traders and shoppers were aware something was going on as the anti-fascists assembled in front of the building targeted by Britain First.

Many members of the Labour Representation Committee were there as well as members on Unite, and PCS unions and Brent Trades Council with a couple of banners and members of the Irish community. They had come not as a gesture of support to the Muslim Brotherhood but in solidarity with the local Muslims in general and absolute opposition to the Nazis trying to establish their presence in the locality.

There was a long wait for the fascists to arrive – all 28 of them led by Britain First chair Paul Golding – carrying Union Jacks and being marched by police at high speed from the local station where they had assembled and singing Onward Christian Soldiers out of tune.

But as soon as they reached their small, designated police pen opposite the anti-fascist group, the anti-fascist numbers multiplied instantly as members of the local community crowded around to join in.

The anti-fascists filled the air with chants of: “Nazi scum, off our streets” and “Black and white, unite and fight, together we are dynamite”.

The fascists also chanted and shouted furiously and sang the National Anthem out of tune but they could in no way match the anti-fascists either in number or sound. And their numbers soon started to dwindle as they realised there was no useful point to their action.

One of the fascists became so angry and excited the police had to separate him from the rest and put him on a “naughty step” to calm down.

Meanwhile from the anti-fascists, local Muslim youths, using the Brent Trades council megaphone, also urged the fascists to calm down: “You’re supposed to be a peaceful demonstration,” they said.

If anything the presence of the fascists prompted the local community, in all its wide ethnic diversity, to come together as one in opposing them.

Dowson himself did not appear, possibly because of bail conditions imposed on him as he is facing charges in relation to Ulster Loyalist violence over a change in policy about flying the Union Jack on civic buildings.