Stepping stones to the future

Andy Brooks pays tribute to the NCP

by New Worker correspondent
 
Comrades gathered at the Party Centre in London last weekend to celebrated the founding of the New Communist Party in July 1977. Friends and comrades, old and new, joined NCP leader Andy Brooks and Peter Hendy from the Central Committee in celebrating the anniversary with speeches, food and drink. Sadly our National Chair, Richard Bos, could not join us on this occasion so Peter MC’d the commemoration and welcomed guests that included diplomats from the Chinese and Democratic Korean embassies in London as well as representatives from the labour movement that have long worked alongside us in London and other parts of the country. 
A Korean diplomat read out his greetings at the social followed by solidarity speeches from Marie Lynam of the British Posadist movement, Ian Donovan from the Consistent Democrats, Dermot Hudson from the Korean Friendship Association and Theo Russell from the International Ukraine Anti-Fascist Solidarity campaign. Other tributes came from a member of the NCP Metropolitan Cell & Supporters group and Peter Hendy who read out Richard Bos’ greetings and a call for a new £10,000 New Worker appeal that starts next month. Peter also called on comrades to dig deep to boost our August fighting fund. They did with a collection that raised £460 for our communist weekly!

Gerald George Shaw

George Shaw

London comrades and friends were saddened to hear of the passing of George Shaw, a veteran campaigner who was a stalwart supporter of the people of the Donbas and often seen on protest pickets outside the American and south Korean embassy.
    Gerald George Shaw was born in November 1936. He grew into a young man interested in engineering. During his years in the car industry, he became a Labour Party member, a militant trade unionist and a supporter of the British Posadist movement in theTrotskyist Fourth International
He moved to London in the mid-1970s, settling in Wembley. He joined the Brent Trades Council, supported the striking Grunwick workers and helped the Kilburn Unemployed Working Group in their many campaigns against inhuman treatment by the DWP.
    George moved to Barnet in more recent years, where he died on 27 July 2023. He represented Unite on the Barnet Trades Council and as a Labour Party member, he defended the comrades of the Labour Against the Witch-hunt. He repudiated the fraudulent conflation between anti-Zionism and antisemitism.
    As a Republican, George helped present the thesis by Bruno Leipold: Citizen Marx and Republic. In later years he joined the International Ukraine Anti-Fascist Solidarity front (IUAFS) where he denounced NATO as the warmonger that uses Ukraine as a platform for its war on Russia, China and their allies. Despite his age and health issues he joined numerous protest auctions in solidarity with the victims of the fascist-backed coup in February 2014 and the tragic events which followed.
    George's communist confidence in humanity lives on through the continuation of our struggle for justice and equality without which there will never be peace.

British forces out of Ukraine and the Black Sea!

by New Worker correspondent

Anti-fascist campaigners were back in Whitehall last weekend, defying sub-zero temperatures to stand by the Donbas people’s republics and protest against the British government’s support for the puppet regime in Ukraine. British military advisers are training Ukrainian army units and Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has recently given the go-ahead to an arms deal to boost Ukraine's naval capabilities in the Black Sea.
    NCP leader Andy Brooks joined other anti-fascist activists on Saturday demanding Britain pull its military and naval forces out of Ukraine and the Black Sea after evidence emerged that Canadian, and possibly also British, forces are training members of Ukrainian Nazi battalions.
    London comrades joined the picketers, which included members of Socialist Fight and the Consistent Democrats and British Posadists, opposite the Prime Minister’s home in Downing Street. Solidarity with the Anti-Fascist Resistance in Ukraine (SARU), International Ukraine Anti-Fascist Solidarity and other labour movement organisations also took part in the protest.
    Members of the Centuria battalion, who use Nazi salutes and praise Nazi German SS units, brag about “co-operation with foreign colleagues”. Ukraine’s fascist militias played an important part in the coup that overthrew the legitimate government in 2014 and were incorporated into Ukraine's National Guard the following year, and the fact that Centuria gunmen are now serving as Ukrainian army officers suggests they are being increasingly integrated into the regular armed forces.
    Amidst Western mass media hysteria about a planned "Russian invasion", with senior US and British officials claiming Vladimir Putin is preparing to invade Ukraine, the Kiev regime has deployed weapons banned under the Minsk-2 agreement including attack drones, tanks, heavy artillery and rocket systems, against the anti-fascist Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics that drove the fascists out of the Donbas in 2014.
    The Russians have dismissed talk of a Russian invasion as “baseless” and "absurd". But sending NATO military advisers to Ukraine could potentially lead to an escalation of tension across the “line of contact” or ceasefire line between the Donbas republics and Ukraine.
    Kremlin spokesman Dimitry Peskov said: "We are deeply concerned about the provocative actions of the Ukrainian armed forces on the line of contact and preparations for a possible military solution, an attempt to resolve the Donbas problem by force," adding that nothing provocative has been done by the Donbas republics in the region.
    Meanwhile Alexei Reznikov, who says the Donbas rebels are "a cancerous tumour on Ukraine's body which needs to be surgically removed”, has been appointed as Ukraine's Defence Minister. His top adviser is the notorious Dmitry Yarosh, the former leader of the neo-Nazi ‘Right Sector’ militia that led the armed coup in Ukraine in February 2014 and is modelled on the Ukrainian collaborators who served the Nazis during the German occupation during the Second World War.
    The truth is that Ukraine has become the world epicentre of fascism and white supremacy, with networks across Europe and North America. The western mass media – and sadly many on the international left – turn their blind eye to this glaring reality. Shame on them!

• Report in the Donbas communist media

Solidarity with Ukrainian and Donbass anti-fascists

The following letter was sent on the 3rd April  2020

We send solidarity greetings from the UK to all those living under a fascist-infested illegitimate government in Ukraine, defending and building the anti-fascist people’s republics in the Donbas, and to the hundreds of thousands forced into exile by political repression, attacks by fascist gangs and economic austerity.

Although we have had no recent Ukraine anti-fascist solidarity actions, we have by no means forgotten your struggle and the sacrifices you are making.

We were intending to begin organising another Ukraine anti-fascist solidarity protest in London in the near future, but unfortunately events in the form of the Covid-19 pandemic have overtaken us.

All of us have been working hard on other political issues, including helping to organise a very successful meeting attended by 400 people in central London on March 3^rd  which exposed the lies, tampered and falsified evidence being presented at the current MH17 trial in The Hague.

Ever since the February 22 2014 Ukraine coup we have been aware of the illiegal nature of that regime change, the open involvement of actual fascists in the government, police and armed forces, the complete suppression of democratic rights and freedoms in Ukraine, and the physical attacks on political parties, trade unions and even the courts.

We have not forgotten the heinous crime at the Odessa Trade Union House on 2^nd  May 2014 and the many other outrages perpetrated by the fascist bands, and we have not forgotten the criminal, barbaric ‘Anti-Terrorist Operation’ launched in April 2014, unleashing all-out war against civilian anti-fascist protestors in Donetsk and Lugansk.

We know that the fighters of the people’s Donbas and Lugansk People's Militias are making daily sacrifices in the front-line trenches, and that civilians – women and men, children and the elderly – are being killed and injured every day in attacks by the Ukraine armed forces and the fascist brigades.

In our solidarity work for the anti-fascists in Ukraine we are also faced with confronting the lies and whipped up hysteria against the Russian Federation and Vladimir Putin, which have continued for almost a decade.

We have no illusions about the capitalist, oligargic nature of the Russian Federation, but we reject the attempts to portray it as totally undemocratic, and we call for an end to the trade sanctions the constant western interference designed to economic instability and provoke protests. And this coming from governments which kiss the feet of the reactionary fuedal monarchs of the Middle East, and instigate coups and regime change from Brazil and Bolivia to Hong Kong.

Above all we are aware of the vital support given by the Russian Federation to the Donbas people’s republics, the generous hospitality extended to large numbers of Ukrainian exiles, and its open condemnation of the fascists in Ukraine.

We also applaud the the sacrifices made by the Russian volunteer fighters in the Donbas, by the Russian Federation’s armed forces to defend the popular front government in Syria, and the strong support the Russian Federation has extended to Cuba and Venezuela.

This anti-Russian hysteria has created a poisonous atmosphere in which anyone challenging the lies and false flag operations of of US-EU-NATO imperialism risks being labelled as a Russian asset, in a repeat of the anti-communiist witch-hunts of the 1950s.

Unfortunately many progressives, social democrats, trade unionists, and even the anti-fascist and anti-racist organisations on Britain, have fallen for this demonisation, even though it is clearly a repeat of the lies and fake news used against Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gadaffi and Hafez al Assad. This has prevented them from even discussing the most dangerous revival of fascism in the whole of Europe.

Once again we renew our support and solidarity with your organisations, which will continue as long as it takes until democracy has been restored throughout Ukraine, and communists, socialists and anti-fascists are allowed to operate freely again.

Andy Brooks

New Communist Party of Britain

Ian Donavan

Trotskyist Faction of Socialist Fight.

Gerry Downing

Socialist Fight

Bridget Dunne

Solidarity with the Anti-Fascist Resistance in Ukraine (SARU)

George Shaw

Posadists in Britain

As well as:

Frente Comunista Dos Trabalhadores (Brazil)

Tendencia Militante Bolchevique (Argentina)

Socialist Workers League (USA)

The letter was sent to the Communist Party of the Donetsk People’s Republic; Borotba, the underground Ukrainian anti-fascist resistance movement and the Union of Ukrainian Political Refugees

• Report in the Donbas communist media 
• Report by the Communist and Workers Front of Brazil
  

The way forward in 2020

by New Worker correspondent

 

Members of the New Communist Party, Socialist Fight, Posadists in Britain and Second Wave Publications met last month at the Cock Tavern in Euston for an informal discussion about the 2019 election. The participants looked at the various factors behind Labour’s unexpectedly poor result, including possibly the most blatant and sustained state interference in any British general election (such as Integrity Initiative, the secret army propaganda unit), Labour’s election campaign and manifesto, particularly the lack of clarity and a clear lead on public ownership and taxation, and of course the Brexit factor. Widely differing views were exchanged, especially over Brexit and the EU, but the debate was held in a thoroughly comradely atmosphere. It was a useful exercise for all who took part as we prepare to take on the difficult challenges ahead in our political and trade union organisations.