 |
| Chris Williamson speaks |
by Theo Russell
The launch of No2NATO – No2War last Saturday at the Bolivar Hall in London marked an historic new page in the British peace movement, with a new organisation challenging the domination of NATO in British and global politics and calling for an end to sending billions in arms to the Ukrainian government.
N2N-N2W is the initiative of George Galloway's Workers Party and expelled Labour MP Chris Williamson’s Socialist Labour Party.
In an atmosphere of censorship and demonisation of any criticism of the UK's unconditional support for the Kiev junta, two previous attempts to hold a N2N-N2W meeting were cancelled after the venues were deluged with threats and hate-mail. The venue for Saturday's meeting was withheld until the last minute.
But the enormous pent-up demand for a new organisation that understands the reality of the Ukraine conflict was proven when the event was fully booked weeks in advance, and even then each of the three separate sessions held on Saturday – with many unable to get a seat – had twice as many people as both the recent Stop the War Coalition meetings on Ukraine in London and many more would have attended had enough tickets been available.
This reflects the mealy-mouthed liberal position of the Stop the War Coalition, which held only one national meeting in eight years prior to the Russian intervention, and which instead of condemning the shocking repression and violence of the fascist-infested Zelensky regime calls for the Russian and Donbas forces to withdraw, leaving the people of the Donbas and many other parts of Ukraine at the mercy of fascists and Banderites who regard them as sub-human pro-Russian traitors.
Opening one of the sessions, Galloway said: "The talking tailor's dummy Jens Stoltenberg recently revealed that NATO had been actively involved in Ukraine for at least six years prior to the western-backed coup in 2014."
He described the current phase of the war as "a volcanic, tectonic shift which has accelerated by two decades the prize of a multipolar world", and said that in the West "the political dwarves we have elected are presiding over the rapid economic, cultural and social decline of their countries”.
Galloway lambasted Washington’s warnings to countries not supporting NATO in Ukraine, declaring: "The days when China could be ordered around by anybody are over, over, over!
“When South Africa was attacked for holding naval exercises with Russia and China, it responded by saying that the only countries which gave us weapons and bullets when we were fighting for our freedom were Russia and China."
"The world is not against Russia and China", he said, "the 'West' is only 13 per cent of the world's population, and even in the West there are millions and millions of us who reject your domination".
Fiona Edwards from No Cold War told the meeting: "Western governments want to silence and discredit us, but we want to say no to war and yes to peace." She condemned the incredible hypocrisy of governments which have fought wars in Asia and North Africa with huge civilian casualties, economic and social devastation.
"The greatest threat to humanity is the warmongers in Washington and their NATO allies. Having caused this war, they are now escalating it, and for them the people of Ukraine are nothing more than cannon fodder. We need peace, an end to sending billions in arms which we need for our hospitals, schools and public sector workers."
Fiona Edwards pointed out that a 50,000 strong demonstration in Denmark had succeeded in stopping savage cuts to finance higher defence spending, showing the potential strength of peace movements backed by working people.
Andy Hudd, ASLEF Vice President, said: "I'm a socialist, but I'm not a pacifist because unfortunately in this world workers have to defend themselves. I'm a socialist because it's only in a socialist world we will get peace, and an end to the bloodshed of the working class in the interests of the wealthy and privileged."
Hudd criticised the response of British trade unions and the Labour Party to the war in Ukraine, pointing to the GMB-backed TUC motion last year supporting increased military spending "on the back of food banks and overworked, underpaid nurses, poverty on a scale we've never seen before". He said the TUC had supported Stop the War resolutions and at the same time sending arms to Ukraine.
"Trade unionists should be calling for solutions which bring security for Russia and Ukraine, and supporting campaigns against NATO and for a negotiated end to the war in Ukraine."
Chris Williamson said that he had believed that being an MP “was a platform to achieve positive change, but I discovered that almost every Labour MP only cared about their careers".
"We are told that Zelensky is defending democracy, but he's banned any political opposition, and he's even going for the Orthodox church. The Labour Party is calling for more arms to be sent, while a Ukrainian woman received a 10-year sentence for posting communists on social media. This is the regime which burnt to death dozens of trade unionists in Odessa in 2014. We're told to support people like that – I say never, never, never!
"No2NATO has been attacked by toadying trolls and sycophantic media hacks who have pulled out all the stops to prevent this meeting today. But we can only go from strength to strength, because what we are asking for is pure common sense."
Chris Williamson's call for the immediate release of Julian Assange was met with a prolonged standing ovation by the entire audience.
Former British diplomat and now peace campaigner Craig Murray said that in the 1950s Russia's military arsenal was only 40 per cent of NATO estimates, and that: "Today we are being told that Russia is planning to march to Berlin, Brussels and even London. All this is designed to justify massive military spending by NATO members."
A motion backing the appointment of an interim leadership of No2NATO – No2War comprising George Galloway, Chris Williamson and Andy Hudd was adopted unanimously by the session.
Members of International Ukraine Anti-Fascist Solidarity distributed around 1,000 leaflets and received a warm welcome from all at the meeting, and the 25th March Whitehall protest against the fascist terror in Ukraine was announced from the platform several times.
We can only look forward to the future of N2N-N2W, and building a new peace movement that is genuinely against the all-powerful domination of NATO and US-led imperialism in the West.
by Theo Russell
London comrades returned to Whitehall on Saturday to bring the crimes of the Ukrainian government to the attention of the British people. Some 30 protesters joined the picket opposite Downing Street organised by the International Ukraine Anti-Fascist Solidarity (IUAFS) campaign, to let the people “know that the regime in Ukraine, to which the British Government has given billions of pounds in financial and military support, has been committing horrific crimes against its own people, including Russian speakers, opposition activists and campaigners, journalists and Roma people, under the cover of accusing them of treason”.
A IUAFS spokesman said: “Several mayors in eastern Ukraine have been summarily executed as well as local elected civilian officials for "crimes" such as negotiating humanitarian corridors with the Russian military. They should have been entitled to a due process of law, instead of being tortured, shot, and then dumped in the street.
“Hundreds of journalists, bloggers, politicians, elected representatives, activists, priests, sportspeople, and even Ukrainian negotiators and military officers have been arrested and beaten, and some tortured or murdered. Most were charged with treason simply for opposing Kiev's policies, and not brought to trial after many months.
“Alexander Matyuschenko, one of dozens of leftists arrested in Dnipro, central Ukraine, was an activist with the Livizta (Left) organisation, which campaigned against social spending cuts and right-wing propaganda. He was arrested by SBU (Ukrainian intelligence) and Azov members, tortured and forced to shout the nationalist salute, Slava Ukraini!, while his wife's hair was cut off with a knife. |
| NCP leader Andy Brooks |
"One of Ukraine’s most prominent human rights activists is Elena Berezhnaya, Director of the Institute of Legal Policy and Social Protection, who has spoken before the UN Security Council. She was arrested in March 2022 in Kiev. There has been no news of her since.
"We know about these crimes because Ukrainian ultra-rightists and even regular soldiers have bragged about them in social media posts, including one of a Russian soldier who had one of his eyes gouged before he was killed, with the caption 'One-eyed captured Russian pig'.
"We think it is essential to speak out about the actions of a government for whom the British government seems to have unlimited resources to support, at a time when millions here in Britain are facing a grim and uncertain future and our basic public services are chronically underfunded and understaffed”.
During the protest a woman waiving the flag of the Donetsk people’s republic was attacked by a reactionary, believed to be from the Caucasian republic of Georgia. But he was dragged away by a policewoman supported by an Iranian who left a nearby protest to chivalrously intervene on the picketer’s behalf.
Towards the end of the protest the demonstrators came under a torrent of abuse from a small group of Ukrainian and English supporters of the Nazi-infested regime in Kiev. They were, however, speedily warned off by the police.
The protest was supported by the Consistent Democrats, CPGB (ML), New Communist Party, Socialist Labour Party, Socialist Fight and the Posadists in Britain. Solidarity messages were received from former Labour MP Chris Williamson who is now a leading member of the Socialist Labour Party, Phil Wilayto of the Odessa Solidarity Campaign in the United States, and Leonid Ilderkin from the Union of Political Refugees and Political Prisoners of Ukraine, who has recently moved back to Ukraine.
When the chips are down not much if the latest saga involving George Galloway is anything to go by. The maverick Scottish politician who has been elected to Parliament six times – starting with Labour and then on independent platforms – is known throughout the labour movement for his support of the Cuban and Palestinian people and his defence of Iraq when it was invaded by US-led imperialism.
A master of the media Galloway was sacked by talkRADIO after sending an allegedly anti-Semitic tweet about Liverpool’s victory over Tottenham in the Champions League final in 2019. But he stayed in the limelight broadcasting on the international services of the Russian and Iranian media, and championing a variety of causes including the party he now leads – the Workers Party of Britain.
Galloway has learned to live with the wrath of the Zionists and Blairites. His politics have fired the anger of cranks and fanatics – he was even attacked in the street during the Gaza war in 2014. But he’s never faced a concerted effort to prevent him from arguing his corner for good or bad on the streets and at public meetings up and down the country. Until now…
Galloway clearly crossed a Rubicon when he embraced the cause of the people of the Donbas. And when he launched his NO2NATO NO2WARS movement the hidden hand went into action to stop it getting off the ground.
Speakers included Galloway and former Labour MP Chris Williamson, along with two Irish Members of the European Parliament and a number of other campaigners and journalists. Attempts to hold mass meetings in London have been sabotaged after St Pancras New Church and the Conway Hall cancelled bookings for his new campaign. Conway Hall says it had been subjected to unprecedented harassment – including a barrage of “intimidating emails and social media posts” which meant that “Conway Hall can no longer host your event as we are now unable to ensure the safety of our building and our staff on and offline”.
Williamson has joined Galloway in denouncing the “anti-democratic cancel culture” that’s being used to silence opposition to Nato. He accused “erstwhile liberals” of being complicit in a state crackdown on anti-Establishment views.
This is something new. We never saw this when British forces were actually fighting during the Falklands conflict and the Yugoslav, Iraqi and Afghan wars. So why now?
It’s clearly because the ruling class are afraid of anything that challenges the American narrative on Ukraine.
Galloway’s party puts it another way. Conjuring up the spirit of Chairman Mao they say “it is good if we are attacked by the warmongers and their online trolls, since it proves that we have drawn a clear line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves. The trolls attack us wildly, threaten the venues and harass staff, they paint us as utterly black and without a single virtue; it demonstrates that we have not only drawn a clear line of demarcation between them and ourselves but achieved a great deal in our work.
“Our slogan, “No to Nato, No to War” is more widely known and understood than before, more people buy tickets and await the announcement of the next venue. Other events purporting to speak against the war are allowed to go ahead in peace, precisely because they do not challenge the imperialist narrative that the Ukraine conflict began just 1 year ago. This is a lie, and one we are exposing”.
This we would wholeheartedly agree.
 |
| Alexei Albu |
by New Worker correspondent
A very successful online meeting to mobilise international support for the Free the Kononovich Brothers campaign took place on Thursday 25th August, with 50 participants from Ukraine, the Russian Federation, the USA, England and Scotland. Organised by the London-based International Ukraine Anti-Fascist Solidarity campaign (IUAFS), the seminar called for the release of the Kononovich brothers and all Ukrainian political prisoners, and for the restoration of all political and media freedoms.
Chaired by Theo Russell, the key speakers were: Chris Williamson, former Labour MP; Alexey Albu from Borotba (Struggle), a survivor of the 2014 Odessa Trade Union House Fire massacre; Steve Sweeney, Moscow-based investigative journalist and former Morning Star international editor; John Parker from Solidarity with Donbass and Antifascists in Ukraine (joining from Los Angeles); Phil Wilayto, Odessa Solidarity Campaign (Virginia USA); and members of the Young Communist League of the Russian Federation and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. Speakers from Ukraine and the Donbas were unable to take part due to interrupted internet connections.
Chris Williamson said that: "The imprisonment of the Kononovich brothers should have caused an outcry from the British left, but it has been met with a stony silence. We know the Zelensky regime is corrupt regime that came to power in a US-backed coup.” Speaking about the energy payments crisis currently shaking Britain, he commented that "most people aren’t making the connection between the sanctions on Russia and the soaring price of energy".
In a video message from Eastern Ukraine, Alexey Albu spoke of the large-scale persecution of dissidents in Ukraine and said "tens of thousands have been arrested by the SBU (Ukrainian secret service)”. He said that many were not as well-known as the Kononovich brothers, Alexander Matyushenko of the left Livitstya movement or the Vasily Volga of the Union of Left Forces, all of whom have been beaten and tortured by Nazis. He added that in newly liberated areas the graves of those murdered by Nazis since 2014 are being exhumed. He said: "I believe that we will win and that fascism will be defeated, but I would be very happy if you comrades could help us in this process. No Pasaran!"
Speaking from Moscow, Steve Sweeney spoke about the brutal crackdown on the opposition in Ukraine and said: "The entire Ukrainian left are either in prison, they’re dead or they’re in hiding.” He added that people in Moscow were "still reeling from the murder of Darya Dugina, who was killed in a cowardly attack" and compared the gloating in the western media over her assassination with their reaction to what they termed the "terrorist attack" on Salman Rushdie.
The IUAFS is a united front supported by the NCP, Socialist Fight, Consistent Democrats and the British Posadists as well as individual labour movement activists.Videos of the key speakers are now up on the new IUAFS YouTube Channel
