Bruce Kent brings fight against Trident to Lewisham

 By New Worker correspondent

VETERAN peace campaigner Bruce Kent last Thursday addressed a well-attended meeting of Lewisham and Greenwich CND jointly with Forest Hill and Sydenham CND in Lewisham Town Hall.

It was part of a series of meetings all around the country organised by CND to campaign against the renewal of the Trident nuclear submarine nuclear weapons system – a demanding task for an 84-year-old.

The meeting was opened with peace songs from the Strawberry Thieves Choir and local peace activist and Green Party member Ann Garrett recited some of her own poetry to the meeting.

 The opening speech was given by Dr Rebecca Johnson, vice-president of CND.

Rebecca spoke about the work being done by 146 nations under the United Nations ambit to make nuclear weapons illegal under international law. She also called for support for a 50,000-strong demonstration to link Aldermaston and Burghfield this August.

Bruce Kent, aged 84, based his argument against Trident on the waste of money and resources on a weapons system that most people in this country do not want when schools, hospitals and other vital public services are suffering austerity cuts.

He said: “It seems to me that we, as a country, are towards replacing – at vast expense – ‘our’ present Trident submarines and their murderous missiles and warheads with a new generation, planned to last for another 30 years.

“Despite majority public opinion against, there is no clearly articulated political opposition to replacement, except from CND and other disarmament groups. So the Government is just attempting to go ahead with its project through a series of small steps – all of which will make it very difficult, if not impossible, to say NO when a vote comes in 2016.

“Yet many, many groups and organisations strongly oppose the cuts that will make humanitarian work of all sorts so much more difficult. We are supposed to ‘be in this together’. We are not. The cuts will hit the poorest hardest.”

Red Salute to Kim Il Sung!

John McLeod speaking

By New Worker correspondent

FRIENDS of Korea met at the John Buckle Centre in London last Saturday to celebrate the birth of great leader Kim Il Sung with a panel of speakers who have all visited Democratic Korea over the years.

Kim Il Sung advanced and developed Marxist philosophy throughout his long and active life – a theme taken up by the panel, which included Michael Chant of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist), NCP leader Andy Brooks, John McLeod of the Socialist Labour Party and John Rainsborough from the UK Korean Friendship Association.

Born on 15^th April 1912, Kim Il Sung dedicated his life to the emancipation of the Korean people, which he did until his last breath in 1994.

Kim Il Sung developed and advanced Marxist-Leninist theory and led the struggle against Japanese colonialism and US aggression. He was a fighter, a thinker and a leader, Kim Il Sung was an outstanding communist of the 20^th century whose name will forever be remembered as the founder of the modern Korean communist movement that began amongst the patriotic youth of Korea when he was a student in the 1920s.

 Kim Il Sung founded the communist movement that liberated the country from Japanese colonialism, defeated the might of US-led imperialism in the Korean War and led the drive to build the modern, socialist republic that exists today in the north of the divided peninsula.

Kim Il Sung was a great commander in war and a great leader in peace. In the north of Korea, so brutally partitioned by imperialism, he built a modern communist movement dedicated to serving the working people of Korea and he led the people in the mass struggle to build a new life after they had won their freedom in 1945.

The Workers’ Party of Korea, with Kim Il Sung at the helm, led the battle for land reform, education and socialist construction in the 1950s and 60s and then pushed forward on the engineering, technical and scientific fronts to raise living standards and the quality of life for the millions of workers and peasants who had fought for a better tomorrow.

In western Europe communists understood the economic case for scientific socialism but ignored the philosophical aspects of the teachings of Marx and Engels. Though the role of mass action was clearly understood, the role of the individual was often ignored. Though the achievements of the Soviet Union led by Lenin and Stalin were studied, they were often not properly understood.

Kim Il Sung not only grasped Marxism-Leninism but he applied it to the concrete conditions of the Korean people. He knew that once the masses realised their own strength they would become unstoppable. He knew that serving the people was the be-all and end-all for the Korean communists and for the Workers’ Party of Korea that he launched in 1945. He developed Korean style socialism and the Juché idea – which elevates the philosophical principles of Marxism-Leninism as well as its economic theories – and focuses on the development of each individual worker, who can only be truly free as part of the collective will of the masses.

In the western world Juché is simply described as “self-reliance” but it is much more than that. Kim Il Sung said that working people could only become genuinely emancipated if they stood on their own feet. But the Juché idea doesn’t negate proletarian internationalism. The Soviet Union, People’s China and the people’s democracies of eastern Europe all closed ranks behind Democratic Korea during the Korean war.

The Korean people responded with their trade and assistance whenever they could, while Korean experts and advisers helped the Vietnamese, the Arabs and the Africans struggling to break the chains of colonialism and they continue to do so today. And Kim Il Sung’s successors, dear leader Kim Jong Il and leader Kim Jong Un are following his footsteps to build a modern socialist republic, where every individual worker is master of his or her own life.

The Friends of Korea committee consists of the New Communist Party of Britain, Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (ML), Socialist Labour Party, European Regional Society for the Study of the Juché Idea and the UK Korean Friendship Association. The committee organises friendship meetings throughout the year in London, which are publicised by the supporting movements and on the Friends of Korea blog.

Down with US war-games in Korea!

 

By New Worker 

correspondent

ANDY BROOKS joined other friends of the Korean revolution demonstrating outside the American embassy in London last week to protest against the latest US provocations on the Korean peninsula.

The NCP leader, along with other comrades and friends, picketed the US embassy in Grosvenor Square to call for an immediate halt to the "Foal Eagle" and "Key Resolve" exercises of the US imperialists in occupied south Korea and the hostile policy against the DPR Korea including the "human rights" racket.

The banner of the UK Korean Friendship Association (KFA), which organised the event, was draped over the hedge facing the US embassy while the demonstrators waved the Democratic Korean flags and gave loud-speaker addresses throughout the 90-minute afternoon protest action.

KFA members and supporters of the Juché Idea Study Group took turns with the microphone to denounce the south Korean puppets and their US imperialist overlords for launching the war-games that simulate the seizure of the nuclear facilities of the DPRK and a “regime change” invasion of the DPRK. They were followed by academics and other friends of Korea including Andy Brooks and other NCP members.

The 90-minute afternoon picket closed with rousing chants of  "US out of Korea", "Korea is One", "Yankee Go Home", "Long Live the Workers' Party of Korea" and  "Long Live Kim Jong Un" by the demonstrators undeterred by recent hysterical media attacks on the KFA in the bourgeois press. 

The UK Korean Friendship Association (KFA) regularly organises solidarity meetings and protest pickets in London throughout the year. The KFA also works side by side with the Friends of Korea committee which also holds regular events in London.

An anti-racism day in London

By New Worker

 correspondents

AROUND 10,000 anti-fascists and anti-racists gathered in and around Old Palace Yard, opposite the Houses of Parliament, last Saturday to mark United Nations Anti-Racism Day with a march to Trafalgar Square and a rally, organised by Unite Against Fascism and the TUC.

            There were scores of union banners from all over the country as unions Unite, PCS, Unison and many others joined the noisy and cheerful march.

There were also contingents from EU migrants, faith communities as well as the Woodcraft Folk, the Dale Farm support group, disability groups and many community campaign groups, including the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign. and a contingent of London communists marching under the banner of the Central Committee of the New Communist Party.

United Nations Anti-Racism Day originates from the Sharpeville massacre of 1960 when South African police shot dead 69 peaceful demonstrators protesting against apartheid. And Saturday was the first Anti-Racism Day following the death of anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela, who passed away on 5th December 2013.

The themes of this year’s event were against discrimination, against Islamophobia and against the scapegoating of immigrants for the effects of austerity cut imposed in the wake of the 2008 banking crisis.

These themes were also prominent in similar demonstrations taking place in dozens of major cities around the world, including New York, Athens and Sao Paulo.

As the march made its way to Trafalgar Square, a small group from the Islamophobic English Defence League wandered around the literature stalls of the various participating organisations in the Square. Police did not recognise them but UAF stewards did and made it very clear to them that they were not welcome.

A well-known EDL photographer and his partner were also spotted photographing marchers.

At the rally in Trafalgar Square, reports Adrian Chan Wyles,

the dozens of police officers present had to quietly look on as speaker after speaker attacked the police for their part in the killing of a number of young people detained in police cells.

Grieving relatives took their turn to explain the tragedy of how they had been vilified by the police and by the Independent Police Complaints Authority whilst fighting through the hostile bourgeois legal system that supports feral police officers by default, usually by absolving the culprits of all charges before promoting them and returning them to duty.

These included Mark Duggan’s aunt Carol Duggan, Christopher Alder’s sister Janet Alder and Sean Rigg’s sister, Marcia Rigg. Carol Duggan explained how the police led a smear campaign against their family.

Also at the rally in Trafalgar Square a long list of speakers addressed the colourful crowd, as the threatened rain mercifully held off. They included MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott, TUC president Mohammad Taj, UAF joint leader Weyman Bennett, and Searchlight editor Gerry Gable.

Diane Abbott said: “We are here today to say to the Leaders of all the parties, Conservative, Lib-Democrats and Labour, ‘no to racism and fascism’. We want the political parties to say ‘no to anti-immigrant politics’. We don’t want gutter politics in the run up to the election this May. It is not immigrants that cause low wages; exploitative employers cause low wages. It is not immigrants that are a drain on the NHS, without immigrants we would not have an NHS.”

Many spoke out against the United Kingdom Independence Party’s scapegoating of immigrants and called on the leaders of the main parties not to be drawn into trying to play the race card in the coming European elections in May – or in next year’s general election.

Another common theme from many speakers were words of tribute to those two giants of the anti-fascist movement, Bob Crow and Tony Benn, who died earlier this month.