Remembrance Sunday at the Soviet War Memorial

by New Worker correspondent

VETERANS, diplomats, local dignitaries and communists assembled last Sunday at the Soviet war Memorial in Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park, next to the Imperial War Museum, in Southwark to pay their respects to the Soviet soldiers, sailors air force and civilians who died fighting Nazi fascism in the Second World War.

There were brief speeches from Philip Wilkinson of the Soviet Memorial Trust Fund, the Mayor of Southwark Councillor Sunil Chopra and the Russian ambassador to Britain Alexander Yakovenko.

As usual the veterans of the Arctic Convoy Club were there in force.

 Wreaths were laid by ambassadors and military attachés from Azerbaijan, Belarus, Moldova, Russia, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

Veterans’ organisations and then other organisations, including the New Communist Party also laid wreaths.

The ceremony ended with the exhortation spoken by Russian Convoy Club veteran Stanley Ballard; there was two minutes silence and then reveille.

LRC divided over Ukraine

 by New Worker correspondent

  NUMBERS were down at this year’s annual conference of the Labour Representation Committee in London last Saturday, where a heated debate showed a clear division of views over what is happening in Ukraine.

John McDonnell centre joins in the Internationale

The conference began with John McDonnell MP welcoming delegates and individual members followed by Matt Wrack, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union.

He gave a run-down on the long dispute currently raging as firefighters battle to keep their pension rights against the Coalition government, which wants to raise retirement age to 60 – an age at which few people are fit enough for the strenuous and dangerous job of fighting fire – or to lose their pensions if they have to retire before that age for health reasons.

He also called on the Labour leadership to improve its chances in next year’s general election by promising an emergency budget as soon as they are in power to end the harsh austerity policies of the Coalition.

And he called for a “rebirth” of socialist values and for demands to taking privatised utilities and companies back into public ownership.

John McDonnell, in moving the LRC national committee statement, spoke of the urgent need to bring the working class back to Labour or risk the danger of a new Tory dominated government.

“It’s not so much that the working class has deserted Labour but that Labour has deserted the working class,” he said.

He also spoke on the sorry state of the Labour Party in Scotland, where both the Labour leader, Johann Lamont, and her deputy, Anas Sarwar, have recently resigned following the Scottish referendum on independence.

Other speakers included Liz French from Betteshangar Women Against Pit Closure, Darren Williams of the Welsh Grassroots Alliance, Adrian Weir from the union Unite, Leticia Bernues Caudillo from the Spanish left-wing party Podemos and Cagdas Canbolat from the Daymer Turkish and Kurdish Community Centre.

The morning session saw debate on resolutions about housing, campaigning for Labour, justice for Irish victims of state collusion in terror, saving the NHS, about trade union structures and about the LRC itself.

But the most controversial debate, on Ukraine, came in the afternoon session. The LRC leadership had already committed itself to supporting the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign (USC), which claims to "organise solidarity and provide information in support of Ukrainian socialists and trade unionists" but opposes  the anti-fascist resistance in Novorossiya and what it calls the "Russian invasion".

One resolution from Noel Park Labour Party branch supported the continuance of this line.

Two opposing resolutions, one from the New Communist Party and one from Brent and Harrow LRC, called for support for Solidarity with Anti-Fascist Resistance in Ukraine (SARU), recognising the current illegal Kiev regime as fascist and a tool of Nato imperialism against Russia.

These resolutions recognised the rights of the people of Lugansk and Donbass to break away from the Kiev regime following brutal fascist attacks on left-wingers and Russian speakers and the Odessa fire massacre last May as a measure of urgent self-defence.

But after a long and heated debate the supporters of the status quo won the vote.

Clearly the narrative propagated by the western media on the situation in Ukraine is misleading even left-wing social democrats and there is much work to do to combat imperialist lies.

The conference ended with the singing of the Internationale.

Victory for St Mungo’s strikers

 STAFF at the homeless charity St Mungo’s Broadway (SMB) have called off a 10-day strike after a climb down by management during talks at the conciliation service Acas, their union Unite announced last Wednesday 5th November.

SMB management reversed their decision to change pay, terms and conditions for frontline workers after 10 hours of talks and pledged to work with the union Unite to find a productive way forward in a challenging financial environment.

The breakthrough follows a seven-day strike by nearly 680 Unite members at SMB which saw 19 picket lines and dozens of protests at the town halls of councils responsible for commissioning SMB services.

An early day motion in the House of Commons and donors threatening to withdraw funding further intensified the political pressure on the charity.

Among the changes management sought to impose were pay cuts of 19 per cent for new project workers, the removal of pay from collective bargaining and draconian changes to policies and procedures. At the same time, Howard Sinclair the chief executive of SMB took a £34,000 pay rise.

St Mungo’s Broadway was formed when Broadway, a “struggling” organisation of 200 employees making year on year deficits, merged with the highly successful 1,000 strong St Mungo’s.

Through talks at Acas management agreed to what the SMB shop stewards referred to as “99.9 per cent of our demands”. This included an agreement to pay new starters nationally agreed St Mungo’s terms and conditions and an agreement to upwardly harmonise former Broadway workers to St Mungo’s terms by 1st April 2015.

Management also agreed to honour the existing recognition agreement and all collective agreements made with Unite prior to the merger.

Unite regional officer Nicky Marcus said: “This is a significant victory not just for staff, but for the service users our members work so tirelessly to help. It is a testament to what can be achieved when workers stand shoulder to shoulder and say enough is enough.

“Going forward we will be working with the management of St Mungo’s Broadway to ensure that the charity honours its commitments and that the workforce is treated with the respect it deserves.”

Anti-fascist Resistance in Ukraine meeting in London

Korean artists come to London

David Heather speaking with the DPRK ambassador 

 by New Worker correspondent

FOUR top DPRK painters have spent the past two weeks touring London, capturing glimpses of the spirit of the people in their art which was displayed for the first time at an exhibition at the DPRK embassy last week.

The Korean people’s artists painted their way round the capital, visiting the South Bank, the National Gallery, Covent Garden and the Tower and their impressions, along with many other examples of their skills have been delighting art-lovers and friends of the DPRK all week.

            The artists work at the Mansudae Art Studio in Pyongyang. The studio, which was founded in 1959, is the national fine arts centre of the DPR Korea with specialised units covering sculpture, ceramics, murals, paintings, embroidery and social and political posters. The studio employs nearly 5,000 workers including 700 artists whose works have been displayed throughout Democratic Korea and across the world.

Happy Day

 The vast majority of the major art works of the DPRK have been produced by Mansudae Art Studio artists. Their ages go from mid-20s to mid-60s and almost all are graduates of the very demanding Pyongyang University. Over half the Merit Artists and the People’s Artists, the two highest awards an artist can receive in DPRK, are or have been associated with the Mansudae Art Studio.

Traditionally Koreans painted in ink and it remains the most popular genre in the DPRK. Oil painting was introduced to Korea in the 19^th century and for a long time it was seen as a foreign technique. But in the 1960s it was taken up by the Studio with the specific approval of great leader Kim Il Sung. It is now used mainly for landscapes, wild-life studies and portraits.

            At the launch on Monday the DPRK ambassador, Hyong Hak Bong, paid tribute to all those who made the exhibition possible including the Foreign Office, the British Council and the organiser, David Heather, a Surrey art dealer who has written a number of books on the posters of the German Democratic Republic, Vietnam and the DPRK.

The Ambassador said he hoped the exhibition would contribute greatly to cultural exchange between Britain and the DPRK.

            Communists and friends of Korea rubbed shoulders with art-dealers, art critics, diplomats and journalists at the reception for the exhibition in the main hall of the embassy in west London. Guests included New Communist Party leader Andy Brooks, Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) general secretary Michael Chant, Dermot Hudson from the Korean Friendship Association and American Hip Hop artist and campaigner Marcel Cartier, who recently visited the DPRK.

                        The Mansudae artists had never been to London before and we saw London through the freshness of their eyes as they caught the autumn crowds in oil. These included a painting of a snapshot one of them took of two smiling teenage girls on the South Bank and the ceramic poppy installation at the Tower of London. It was also a first for many of the guests looking at examples of contemporary and traditional Korean painting, wood-cuts and sketches.

            Widely reported in the bourgeois press the exhibition was also covered by the BBC, ITN, Channel Four and Central China TV (CCTV).    Over 100 guests attended the launch and opening ceremony and thousands more came to the public exhibition which closed last weekend.

 

Solidarity with Kobane

by New Worker correspondent

THOUSANDS of Kurds living in London, along with their comrades and supporters, filled Trafalgar Square last Saturday to express solidarity with the Kurdish people of Kobane, on the border between Syria and Turkey, from the well-equipped army of ISIS, the brutal and fascist Islamic State army.

ISIS was created by rich and powerful allies of the United States in the Middle East to bring down the government of Bashar Assad in Syria, which has always resisted the power and influence of western imperialism in the region.

It quickly became notorious for its atrocities but the West continued to support it covertly until the Syrian army succeeded in driving it out of a large part of Syria.

It retreated into Iraq where it continued to rampage against the army of the puppet Iraqi state, which melted away in front of it. ISIS also began publicly beheading western hostages, journalists and aid workers and so came to the attention of the western media.

Currently ISIS is engaged in a prolonged battle to take the Kurdish town of Kobane.

The West was forced to condemn ISIS publicly and now is engaged in bombing and infiltrating its “advisers” into the region, ostensibly to combat ISIS but their main aim of overthrowing the Syrian government has not gone away.

Arms caches dropped by the United States “to help the resistance against ISIS” have “accidentally” fallen straight into ISIS hands.

The Turkish government has played a duplicitous role, refusing to allow Turkish Kurds to cross the border to help the Kurdish resistance against ISIS in Kobane.

Turkish President Erdogan recently described the battle in Kobane as: “One group of terrorists fighting another”.

The western media predicted that Kobane would fall to ISIS in a few days but the Kurdish fighters there, who are ill-equipped, have been holding out for six weeks and the battle continues to rage.

The Kurdish fighters of the People's Protection Units (YPG) and YPJ (the women’s fighting units), mainly young men and women, are proving to be courageous and successful fighters. They know a terrible fate awaits them if ISIS were to take their town.

Those gathered in Trafalgar Square last Saturday were in a positive and determined mood. A long list of speakers included comedian and activist Mark Thomas, veteran campaigner and friend of the Kurds Margaret Owen, Peter Tatchell, Steve Headley of the RMT transport union and many others.

They made unanimous demands:

•           Support and solidarity for the young fighters in Kobane;

•           Censure for the role of the Turkish government in giving tacit support to ISIS;

•           For the PKK – the communist party of Kurds in Turkey – to be removed from the British government’s list of banned “terrorist” organisations;

•           And for the release of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, held in a Turkish jail now for a decade.

The rally was part of a worldwide Day of Action for Kobane with rallies Brussels, Hamburg, London, Munich, Paris and other places.

In Istanbul thousands of people on took to the streets in a show of solidarity with Kobane which has been besieged by jihadists for six weeks.

The rallies in Turkey were largely peaceful, following deadly unrest in October pro-Kurdish protests and warnings from the authorities they would not tolerate any disorder.

The advance of ISIS jihadists on Kobane in mid-September forced some 200,000 refugees to flee across the border to Turkey.

YPG and YPJ commanders Mahmut Berxwedan and Roza Kobane saluted everyone that joined the "World Kobane Day" demonstrations across the world. The commanders said: "We promise victory in Kobane to the millions that have expressed their support and solidarity.”

The commanders also said that the scenes that came through from across the globe has boosted the morale of the YPG and YPJ fighters and that the resistance of the fighters in Kobane and the activities of the millions of supporters of the resistance were complimentary to each other.

YPJ commander Roza Kobane especially thanked all the women in the world who participated in the 1st November activities by saying: “We give our word to the women of the world to continue our struggle for the liberation of women.”