Trumped by the Greens the Faragists put their failure down to the “Muslim vote” while the Starmer crowd blame left “extremists” for making the common course with the Greens that led to Labour’s downfall in Manchester. But at the end of the day Starmer & Co got the kicking they so richly deserved because voters were sick of the lies of the false prophets of all the mainstream bourgeois parties in Britain today.
Jeremy Corbyn, one of those “extremists” that Starmer doubtless had in mind, welcomed the Greens’ stunning victory and said his supporters “will work constructively with the Greens, because there is only one way we can bring about real change: together”.
On the other hand Richard Burgon, one of the few left social-democrats still in the Parliamentary Labour Party says the “blame for Labour’s defeat lies squarely with Keir Starmer and his clique”.
He says “they put factional interests over having the candidate best placed to win, Andy Burnham. If Labour is to be the “Stop Reform” party, then the leadership must stop treating progressive voters with contempt - and start appealing to them.
“That means a return to real Labour values - through policies like a Wealth Tax, public ownership of energy and water, and an ethical foreign policy that are all popular with the public. And it means ditching the approach of trying to ape Reform and kicking the left, that has alienated so many people who have voted Labour previously”.
We’ll see. The Greens deservedly got a massive protest vote this time round but their “eco-socialism” is only a rehash of the stale left social-democracy we see time and time again within the European Union that the Greens much admire.
Angela Rayner and Andy Burnham wait in the wings to pick up the pieces when Starmer inevitably goes. They uphold the NHS. They talk about public ownership. They pay lip-service to the old Bennite social-democratic tradition. They support the union bureaucrats at the helm of the labour movement. But that’s as far as it goes – and as far as it will ever go as long as the careerists and time-servers remain in charge. We, as communists, want real change. We have to put socialism back on the working-class agenda.
We must keep up the fight against the whole capitalist system in Britain and throughout the world. The struggle for peace and socialism must begin anew – in the unions, amongst the rank and file and on the street. It must start now...
The
Second Coming of Donald Trump has come as no surprise to many on the
American left who warned that the Harris camp ignored their
traditional core voters at their peril. Workers and the ethnic
minority communities that had long supported the Democrats in the
past wanted to see plans to curb unemployment, halt the slump in
living standards and an end to the slaughter in Gaza. All they got
were the usual platitudes – the dismal tune of the dying Biden
administration that had nothing to offer apart from more misery and
more war. Some just sat on their hands or voted for protest
candidates on Tuesday. Some even voted for Trump.
Not
that we can expect much from Trump judging by the people who surround
him. More tax breaks for the rich, more curbs on the unions and civil
rights in general and sweeping tariffs that could plunge the rest of
the capitalist world into deeper recession.
Much
of this will be approved by the ruling circles in the United States.
Most are not at all troubled by the return of the maverick property
speculator turned politician who wiil be back in the White House in
January. Some, however, are concerned at Trump’s “transactional”
foreign policy stand which they call “isolationism” even though
this reflects a long-standing trend within the Republican party.
During the Nixon era this type of diplomatic bargaining was called
“reciprocity” at Soviet-American summits that traded-off nuclear
arms limitations with spheres of influence in what was then called
the “Third World”. The Soviet Union and its allies were the
“Second World” but the “First World” was never actually
called that. It was the “Free World” led by the United States,
the “land of the free” and the home of the “American dream”
that we were all supposed to aspire to.
The
real American dream, world domination, was only spelt out after the
fall of the Soviet Union. The most venal and aggressive sections of
the American ruling class called it the “new world order”. The
deep state that pulls the strings across party lines in the United
States launched a series of “regime change” wars and “colour
revolutions” to bring down all those who stood in their way. But it
didn’t quite work out the way that they planned.
Yugoslavia
has gone, Libya is in ruins but the American attempt to overthrow the
popular front government in Syria has failed. The Americans have been
driven out of Afghanistan and they’ve lost control of Iraq. The
wars in Palestine and Ukraine are going against them and the BRICs
group, which includes Russia and People’s China, is fast becoming
the new focus for economic development throughout the Global South.
Kamala
Harris’ Democrats still believe in the ‘new world order’,
though they now prefer to call it “globalisation”. Trump, on the
other hand, represents circles in the Republican Party who want to
cut back US military expenditure in Europe and north-east Asia so
that they can concentrate on controlling the global energy market by
taking over the entire Middle East and restoring US imperialism’s
hegemony over south and central America,
Trump
says he’ll end the war in Ukraine at a stroke when he’s back at
the helm. But we’ve heard it all before over Korea. Though he
promised much when he was last in the White House he still remained a
prisoner of the most aggressive elements of the American ruling
class. No one knows if it’s going to be different this time round.
The deadly Hamas raid into Israel last weekend that killed over a thousand Israelis and wounded thousands more reflected the pent-up fury of the Palestinian masses in the Gaza Strip who have endured a brutal and often bloody Israeli siege for years. Ignored by the West which has armed Israel to the teeth and betrayed by the feudal Arab oil princes who crawl to the imperialists whose guns prop up their thrones the Palestinians in Gaza have closed ranks behind the Hamas leadership and the other resistance movements that believe that confrontation is the only way forward.
While the Israelis pound the densely populated settlements in the Gaza Strip they are amassing their forces for a new onslaught. Many thousands of Palestinians will die in the carnage that will inevitably follow.
Assured of blanket Western support the Israelis are clearly out to crush all Palestinian resistance to their occupation. But they never learn.
This seemingly endless cycle of violence started when the first Arab-Israeli war began in 1948. The Palestinians were driven from their homes and robbed of their land. But wherever there is oppression, there is resistance.
The refugees have the right to return or receive compensation, if they so want it, for their stolen land. The Palestinians have the right to self-determination; to establish their own independent state as was envisaged by the same United Nations that created the State of Israel in the first place.
The Palestinians remained determined to fight. They still are and they still will be no matter what the Israelis throw at them.
Russian and Chinese calls at the United Nations for a cease-fire and genuine peace talks to end the conflict were, of course, routinely ignored by the Americans and their lackeys. They still think that victory comes through air-superiority and hi-tech weapons. Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan proved them wrong. And they’ve been taught no end of a lesson in Palestine...
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.
Mikhail Gorbachev is dead. He was 91. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres says “the world has lost a great world leader, committed to multilateralism, and a tireless defender of peace”. Imperialist leaders such as Joe Biden, Boris Johnson and the rest of the Western pack mourn the passing of an old friend. Sir Keir Starmer calls him a “great figure” who will “forever be remembered”.
In the West you’d think a saint had died – but on the Russian street Gorbachev is hated. He’s the traitor who restored capitalism and broke up the USSR for the benefit of the Western corporations and the black-marketeers who emerged from the shadows to become the oligarchs that plunder the country today. He achieved nothing apart from bringing unemployment and poverty back to what was once the Soviet Union.
Gorbachev didn’t come from nowhere. He wormed his way to the top of the Soviet Communist Party posing as a “reformer” to become the idol of the Eurocommunists in Britain and the rest of Western Europe.
In fact, the basis of post-war revisionism was laid down at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). The vicious attack on Stalin by Nikita Khrushchev had two main effects within the world communist movement. In the West it opened the door to the fallacy of Trotskyism, which until then had been confined to small groups drawn from the middle strata and encouraged social-democratic illusions within the mass communist parties of Western Europe.
In the East, the loss of confidence in the masses led to the rejection of the concept of the leading role of the working class. This, in turn, created a climate of compromise and defeat and led to the conditions that counter-revolutionary traitors successfully exploited in the end.
Throughout the international communist movement it reinforced the drift towards social-democratic strategies and the abandonment of Marxist-Leninist thinking.
Some communists were confused by Gorbachev’s false promises and his watch-words of glasnost and perestroika that presented essentially social democratic, anti-communist ideas and policies as "new thinking" and a creative development of Marxism. In turn, that helped to create the conditions that allowed the revisionists, liquidators and outright agents of imperialism to strengthen their position organisationally at every level of the Soviet party.
The lack of a consistent and sustained attack on Eurocommunism by the CPSU leadership in the 1970s should have alerted the sound elements in the international communist movement to the pending danger emanating from the revisionist factions in the CPSU.
Instead, the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev and his clique was the beginning of the counter-revolutionary offensive. It was a co-ordinated offensive masterminded by imperialists. It ended with the collapse of the USSR.
The bitter lesson of that defeat for communists, the working class and progressive humanity has to be taken to heart. Revisionism, if it is not defeated and rooted out, will inevitably give rise to the eventual liquidation of the party.
They say it’s wrong to speak ill of the dead. But, as Russian communist leader Gennady Zyuganov said this week, that doesn’t apply to major politicians. “I believe that Gorbachev was one of those rulers in the thousand-year history of Russia, who brought not only the peoples of our country, but also all allies and friends, absolute misfortune, grief and misfortune,” he said. “I consider it a great tragedy that he came to the crucible of political power…”
Not a day goes by, it seems, without someone’s expulsion from the Labour Party. Most people have lost track of the Corbynistas who’ve been suspended these days. It began with trumped-up charges of “anti-Semitism”. Now it been extended to “auto-exclude” anyone associated with Socialist Appeal, the Labour in Exile Network, Labour Against the Witchhunt and Resist. And it’s being applied retrospectively to condemn Labour members for taking part in events with members of banned groups in the past, even though they weren’t banned at the time.
Taken to its logical conclusion, the Blairites should now move to expel any dead members they don’t like on the same grounds. Tony Benn would top the list. Sir Keir Starmer QC, the great “forensic” silk, could easily find some sort of legal precedent for posthumous expulsion. He could point to the precedent set by Charles II, who had the remains of Oliver Cromwell and the other dead “regicides” dug up and ceremonially hanged in public when the monarchy was restored in 1660.
But Starmer beware. The Pharaohs and Caesars did this sort of thing big time to those they deemed traitors or blasphemers and look what happened to them…
