Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: Wearing the burqa is neither Islamic nor socially acceptable

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: Wearing the burqa is neither Islamic nor socially acceptable -The Independent.

To deny face-to-face interaction is to deny our shared humanity.

I am a Shia Muslim and I abhor the burqa. I am offended by the unchallenged presumption that women covering their heads and bodies and now faces are more pious and true than am I.

Islam in all its diverse forms entitles believers to a personal relationship with Allah – it cuts out middlemen, one reason its appeal extended to so many across the world. You can seek advice from learned scholars and imams, but they cannot come between your faith and the light of God. Today control freaks who claim they have a special line to the Almighty have turned our world dark. Neo-conservative Islamic codes spread like swine flu, an infection few seem able to resist.

The disease is progressive. It started 20 years ago with the hijab, donned then as a defiant symbol of identity, now a conscript's uniform. Then came the jilbab, the cloak, fought over in courts when schoolgirls were manipulated into claiming it as an essential Islamic garment. If so, hell awaits the female leaders of Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Soon, children as young as four were kitted up in cloaks and headscarves ("so they get used to it, and then later wear the full thing," said a teacher to me who works at a Muslim girls' school) and now for the graduation gown, a full burqa, preferably with dark glasses.

White liberals frame this sinister development in terms of free choice and tolerance. Some write letters to this paper: What is the problem? It is all part of the rich diversity of our nation. They can rise to this challenge, show they are superhuman when it comes to liberty and forbearance.

They might not be quite so sanguine if their own daughters decided to be fully veiled or their sons became fanatic Islamicists and imposed purdah in the family. Such converts are springing up in Muslim families all over the land. Veils predate Islam and were never an injunction (modesty of attire for men and women is). Cultural protectionism has long been extended to those who came from old colonies, in part to atone for imperial hauteur. Redress was necessary then, not now.

What about legitimate fears that to criticise vulnerable ethnic and racial groups validates the racism they face? Racism is an evil but should never be used as an alibi to acquit oppressions within black and Asian or religious communities. That cry was used to deter us from exposing forced marriages and dowry deaths and black-upon-black violence.

Right-wing think tanks and President Sarkozy of France scapegoat Muslims for political gain and British fascists have turned self-inflicted "ethnic" wounds into scarlet propaganda. They do what they always have done. Self-censorship will not stop them but it does stop us from dealing with home-grown problems or articulating objections to reactionary life choices like the burqa. Muslim women who show their hair are becoming an endangered species. We must fight back. Our covered-up sisters do not understand history, politics, struggles, their faith or equality. As Rahila Gupta, campaigner against domestic violence, writes: "This is a cloth that comes soaked in blood. We cannot debate the burqa or the hijab without reference to women in Iran, Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia where the wearing of it are heavily policed and any slippages are met with violence." What happened to solidarity?

Violent enforcement is evident in Britain too. A fully veiled young chemistry graduate once came to my home, her body covered in cuts, tears, bites, bruises, all happily hidden from view. Security and social cohesion are all threatened by this trend – which is growing exponentially.

As for the pathetic excuse that covering up protects women from male lasciviousness – it hasn't stopped rapists in the most conservative Muslim nations. And what a slur on decent Muslim men, portrayed as sexual predators who cannot look upon a woman without wanting her.

We communicate with each other with our faces. To deny that interaction is to deny our shared humanity. Unreasonable community or nationalistic expectations disconnect essential bonds. Governments should not accommodate such demands. Naturists can't parade on the streets, go to school or take up jobs unless they cover their nakedness. Why should burqaed women get special consideration?

Their veils are walls, keeping them in and us out. We need an urgent, open conversation on this issue – which divides the Muslim intelligensia as much as the nation. Our social environment, fragile and precious, matters more than choice and custom should to British Muslims. If we don't compromise for the greater good, the future looks only more bitter and bleak. Saying so doesn't make me the enemy of my people.

Link: More from Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

The wheels come off “the good war” in Afghanistan by Robin Beste, Stop the War Coalition

The wheels come off “the good war” in Afghanistan by Robin Beste, Stop the War Coalition.

We have had weeks of government and army propaganda selling the “good war” in Afghanistan as being for the benefit of the Afghan people and as necessary to Britain's interests. There has been:

• Endless stories in the tabloid media about "our boys" heroism bringing "stability and security" to Afghanistan;

• Armed Services Day on 27 June, with army parades and other events up and down the country glorifying mass murder as a career;

• The sponsoring by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) of toys depicting British soldiers as "action heroes";

• The rigid control of journalists reporting the war to ensure only the MoD's version of events gets media coverage.

All of this has been aimed at portraying the war in Afghanistan as an honourable cause on its way to being won. It was meant to culminate in a major British offensive in Helmand Province codenamed Operation Panther's Claw.

Biggest military operation

The biggest military operation by the British military since the invasion in 2001 was always as much a propaganda exercise to sell the war to the British people, two thirds of whom oppose the war in Afghanistan, as a military exercise with coherent aims. As even the pro-war Observer newspaper commented, "The reality is that the war in Afghanistan is increasingly aimless and lacking in coherent strategy."

It was utterly predictable that the wheels would come off the propaganda wagon trying to promote the "good war" with a troop "surge" in Helmand, not least because the Taliban were understandably not too keen to hang around to be incinerated by the horrific firepower used by the US and British military. They simply melted away.

Occasional hit and run tactics were still enough to inflict image denting casualties on the British army. Within the space of ten days, from 1-10 July, ten British soldiers were killed, including the highest ranking army officer to die in battle since the Falklands War in 1982. A number of others were seriously injured, adding to the statistic which we never read about in the mainstream media, that a British soldier has a one in eight chance of being seriously injured or contracting a serious illness when deployed to Afghanistan.

"For the good people of Afghanistan"

The latest British fatality brings the number killed in Afghanistan to 179, equalling the fatalities in Iraq.

According to the army commander of the latest dead soldier, "He laid down his life for his country and for the good people of Afghanistan". This is simply nonsense. He laid down his life for a war which many senior British officers say privately — and a few publicly — is unwinnable.

He sacrificed his life because Gordon Brown — as much a warmongerer as his predecessor — is determined to hold on to the coat tails of America's imperial strategy, wherever it takes British foreign policy, whatever the costs in the lives of those sent to kill and be killed in foreign lands, and whatever the financial cost to a British economy now so indebted that essential services such as the NHS, education and social services face draconian cuts.

Perhaps even the pro-war media is realising the game is up. The Observer now says there has to be "a final burying of the 'war on terror' rhetoric and the idea that what happens in Afghanistan presents a serious security threat that challenges us in an existential way... What is needed is a serious debate about what we are doing in Afghanistan".

The Observer concludes that without this debate, "the war in Afghanistan can only drag on, with deaths on all sides". Such a debate can only reach one conclusion: there is no possibility of stability or security in Afghanistan while a single foreign soldier remains in the country.

It is for this reason that the anti-war movement needs to maintain the highest level of active opposition to a war that is killing Afghan civilians at double the rate of a year ago and bringing endless devastation to country ravaged by the invading armies.

London Public Meeting: Monday 13 July: »The good war? Afghanistan in the Media...

Sign the Troops Out of Afghanistan petition here...

Link: Stop The War Coalition
Link: Military Families Against the War

Respect - which way now?

Respect - which way now?

At the Respect National Council meeting held in London on 27th June, a discussion was held regarding the strategy Respect should adopt in the aftermath of the Westminster expenses scandals and the recent European Parliament election results, including the election of two BNP members in the North of England.

There have been a variety of analyses of these results such as those published by Salma Yacoob and Southwark Respect branch (see this blog lower down).

In advance of the meeting a motion was submitted by National Council member Nick Wrack for discussion. However, this motion was ruled out of order by the National Chair Kay Phillips as it was received after the deadline for motions that she had set prior to the meeting. As a result this motion will now be discussed at the next National Council meeting, to be held on September 12th. It was the feeling of the National Council that this motion deserved wider debate across the organisation and so we are asking that branches and/or individual members consider the issues involved prior to the next National Council.

If individuals, groups of members or supporters or branches wish to make comments with regard to this motion please could they send them by email to myself, the National Secretary, at clive@respectnorthwest.org prior to 5th September so that these comments may be circulated to all the members of the National Council.

Yours in solidarity,

Clive Searle

MOTION by Nick Wrack
This Respect National Committee notes the resolution headed Respect perspectives (elections) that was agreed at the 2008 Respect conference. This included the following:

1. "Conference recognises that Respect cannot, at this stage, present an alternative at elections except in a few places. Conference therefore agrees that Respect will seek to work with other organisations and individuals who also want to build a leftwing alternative, with a view to presenting the broadest possible left-wing challenge at elections. This could include electoral alliances, non-aggression pacts, joint lists and other such methods of collaboration."

We believe that it is imperative that there is the biggest left-wing electoral challenge possible at the next general election, to give working-class people the opportunity to vote for candidates who represent their interests.

We note the continuing fall in the Labour vote.

We note also the recent collaboration between the RMT, the CPB, SP, AGS and others in NO2EU. We also note the recent Open Letter from the SWP.

We would welcome talks between Respect and these organizations and others with the aim of creating a left-wing electoral coalition to challenge at the next General Election.

In order to maximize impact it would be best if this coalition could agree to stand under a single name and with a common minimum programme.

We therefore agree to write to the above named organizations to propose that talks are set up to discuss these issues.

Proposed by Nick Wrack (past National Secretary of Respect)

Editors Note: The Editor of this bog would urge all Respect members and branches to support this motion at the September National Council of Respect - let your branch know your views (members can use the E-mail address posted above in this article)

Link: Respect
Link: Statement on left unity - Southwark Respect

Why not build the houses? - Morning Star

Why not build the houses? - Morning Star Comment

It is always frustrating when you watch a government palpably missing the point and failing to do something which is clearly necessary.

And it is even more so when the government in question is a Labour one, a government which should surely be able to add two and two to make four.

But we should probably have got used to it by now, given that new Labour has demonstrated an ability to miss the point at every available opportunity.

And new Labour's Cabinet shows no inclination to change its dreary ways.

We have an economy which is struggling to keep its, and our, heads above water. We have the best part of three million people unemployed, even by the government's phoney figures.

And that government is sitting by, merely trying to make small gestures to assist the private sector to reflate an economy which is stagnating, starved of cash by a banking sector, in large part funded by the taxpayer, that seems more interested in its bonuses than in recapitalisation.

And we have a construction industry that is overflowing with skilled and idle workers, without the jobs that they need and without the opportunity to exercise those skills. All this while we have a crisis in housing which is reaching epidemic proportions.

According to the National Association of Estate Agents, nearly one in four people claim they are unable to get a mortgage due to the tighter lending criteria being used by banks and building societies.

In addition, the Council of Mortgage Lenders says that eight out of 10 young people are receiving help from their parents to raise the huge deposits they need to buy their first home, which may be all right if your parents have that sort of cash to hand, but doesn't help the majority of young working people one iota.

And, in the midst of this, Shelter Scotland is warning that the number of council homes for rent in Scotland is at its lowest for 50 years.

The charity warns that the figure is 18 per cent lower than in 1998 and the lowest figure since 1959.

As Shelter Scotland director Graeme Brown said: " The figure lays bare the chasm between the number of homes needed and the number available to Scotland's people.

"It's a crisis that's built up over time and can only be solved by building more homes."

And the position in England and Wales is little better, if at all. But the private-sector housing industry is dying on its feet, starved of capital and, given the lack of mortgages for first-time buyers, neglecting the entry-level market where housing is most needed.

The government has made timid noises about changing the system to allow local authorities to recommence housebuilding. However, it's all too little and too late.

A scheme to answer this problem is certainly not rocket science. It's not even difficult to outline.

Release local authorities to restart the housebuilding projects that were, since the second world war, such an important and positive part of their function.

Stop ploughing billions of taxpayers' cash into banks which just pocket it and steer it towards large-scale housing development to answer the clear and obvious need.

And move away from the private sector and back into direct labour for this scheme, cutting out the profiteering cowboys who have been soaking up huge percentages of any public money that they can lay their hands on.

Workers in building, in manufacturing, in transport and in all the myriad skills that the construction industry needs would all gain from having the work.

More cash is pumped into the economy and the claimants become the consumers again. Everyone benefits, those needing housing most of all.

Unfortunately, it's still beyond new Labour to grasp that the bankers and the profiteers have no idea of social responsibility beyond profit.

It ain't rocket science, but it appears that it's still beyond new Labour's free marketeers.

Link: Morning Star
Link: Defend Council Housing

"Left unity and Class Politics" by Ian Donaovan

"Left unity and Class Politics" by Ian Donaovan

This is a contribution to the debate about the results of the European and local elections by Ian Donovan (Secretary Southwark Respect).

The analysis of the Euro Elections by Salma Yaqoob (Statement on the euro-election results, 8th June), makes a number of pertinent observations about the reasons for the disaster of the BNP’s winning two seats in the European Parliament.

One point she gets right is that “Labour is wholly to blame for its own crisis and has to take a large share of the responsibility for creating the conditions in which the far right is growing.” Many of the other things she says about the impact of the recession on working class people, about the attacks of the Labour government, the demoralisation which these are inflicting, and the danger that this can drive people into the arms of the far right, are correct.

Yet the political perspective she puts forward as a solution to this situation is badly flawed. Salma is advocating an alliance of ‘progressive’ forces to block the advance of the far right, centred on the Green Party and soft-left elements in Compass. This block assembles forces that are incapable of putting forward, or hostile to, the kind of working class politics that is needed to roll back the encroachment of the fascists in traditionally strong centres of the labour movement such as Yorkshire and the North West. The alliance of liberal, middle class forces she advocates will not stop the BNP; their aims and ideologies will not be attractive in the main to working class people alienated by New Labour whose alientation is fundamentally driven by economic hardship and class anger, which the BNP aims to exploit and misdirect against scapegoats such as immigrants and refugees.

Salma writes: “The broad left must work together, irrespective of party affiliation, to maximise the impact of the progressive vote at the next General Election.” This is wrong, and will not undermine the BNP because the question of a new party, separate from New Labour that will stand up for workers against the Labour government and all its neo-liberal attacks, is central to politically cutting the ground from under the BNP. We do not need a ‘broad left … irrespective of party affiliation’, we need a new broad party of the working-class left that puts class politics at the centre of its perspective. The alliance she is proposing is a cross-class alliance of Respect with the Green Party, and Compass and other soft-lefts.

The Green Party does not, in its ideology, appeal to workers as a class. It does have paper policies on a number of questions that are progressive and would benefit workers, such as opposition to privatisation and anti-union laws, but its central appeal is to people of all classes who want to stop climate change and save the planet for future generations. It has people in it who are sympathetic to workers struggles, but there is also a significant element who see the growth of the human population, and hence mainly of the working class and the poor, as one of the central causes of environmental degradation.

A recent YouGov survey taken between 29th May and 4th June – just before the European Elections took place – is very revealing about the class character of the Green Party’s support. The survey showed that in terms of social grade or occupation, the Green Party’s intended voters had the highest percentage – 64% – of those with a high income (grade ABC1) of all the major parties. That is, of professional people and the like. It also had the lowest percentage of those surveyed in social grade C2DE (36%) – which is predominantly composed of unskilled manual workers.

Conversely, the BNP has the lowest percentage of those in social grade ABC1 – 39%, and the highest percentage in social grade C2DE – 61% of all the major parties.

This is fairly indicative of the reason why it is an illusory idea that the Green Party can be the vehicle for undermining the potential appeal of the BNP to disillusioned working class voters. The Green Party, ‘progressive’ policies notwithstanding, appeals in the main to a middle class, not a working class, constituency, and because of that there is a real social gulf between its base of support and the kinds of alienated working class people, impoverished by the recession, that are in some cases being driven towards the BNP. It will take a completely different kind of politics, which centres its appeal on defending working class interests, to undercut the demagogy of the BNP and undermine this potential base of support.

Compass also is a middle class force. It is the loyal opposition within New Labour, and its left-wing criticisms of Blair and Gordon Brown do not go very far at all. As an example of this, on one key question of importance to working class people above all it showed its true colours. On the question of the housing crisis at its conference on 13 June, it failed to invite a speaker from Defend Council Housing – a campaign that does exactly what it says on the tin – in favour of a speaker from Shelter, the homelessness charity, which is fairly close to the government and places much store in promoting home ownership and first time buyers, and working with Housing Associations and other ‘social landlords’ who are in fact thinly-disguised private-sector organisations. Council Housing is not high on its ‘realistic’ agenda.

At the conference those attending were regaled by the likes of Harriet Harman and Liberal Democrat MPs, as well as the more hesitant, softer left trade union leaders like Billy Hayes. Also speaking was Caroline Lucas, the Green MEP who herself previously made clear her own middle class politics by saying that she equally opposes politics being at the behest of big business or the trade unions. Salma thus gives her credibility as an anti-war activist and Respect councillor to this gathering whose whole thrust is all-inclusive, classless politics hostile to independent working class political activity. This is seriously mistaken.

Compass itself has proved spineless in the face of pressure from the Labour leadership, including on issues that are close to Salma’s heart such as the Iraq War and the ‘war on terror’. Its main figures, most notably Jon Cruddas, supported the Iraq war and only belatedly decided they had been mistaken on this when the allies got bogged down and Bush/Blair’s political justifications were completely discredited. And then there is Gordon Brown and Jacqui Smith’s ill-fated proposals for 42 days detention without charge. Jon Cruddas and co showed their true colours by voting for that in parliament. Most recently, Cruddas was seen denouncing those supporters of Unite Against Fascism who chucked eggs at BNP leader and fascist MEP Nick Griffin outside Parliament and disrupted his press conference.

Salma writes that “The challenge for the left is to renew itself and reassert some basic socialist critiques and solutions into mainstream political debate.” It is certainly positive to see a call for socialist politics as a road forward. But the vehicle for socialist politics is the working class; the perspective of Compass, Ken Livingstone’s Progressive London, the Greens etc is not to found a new party to fight for the independent interests of our class but rather to construct multi-class alliances, either for elections or for pressure politics between elections.

The prime example of this kind of politics in practice was Ken Livingstone’s London Mayorality from 2000 to 2008, which came to include Liberals and Greens as part of a ‘progressive’ administration. Which as everyone knows, notwithstanding the Mayor’s refusal to buckle to Islamophobia, involved systematic concessions to the City, and such disgraceful actions as the Mayor calling on workers to scab on tube strikes. These incompatible and often treacherous political forces will never be a vehicle for socialism or anything like it – the best they will ever produce is something like Ken Livingstone’s administration.

This is totally ineffective as a perspective to combat BNP influence on working class people … the concessions Livingstone made to business, and even more the left cover he gave to New Labour, also helped undermine the left and in fact played an important role in paving the way for the BNP’s previous election gain of a representative on the GLA. It was correct to support Livingstone when he broke from Labour in 2000 to campaign against tube privatisation, and correct to defend his idiosyncratic left-talking administration against the Tory challenge of Boris Johnson in 2008 – though the difference between Livingstone and Johnson has not so far been as marked as predicted – but to put forward Livingstone’s London as a model of ‘socialist’ solutions, as this perspective implies, undermines and demobilises the radical potential to advance working class politics that Respect originally had in it.

Finally, Salma’s criticism of No2EU and the SLP cannot go unanswered. She implies that simply by standing and refusing to unite behind the Green candidate in North West England, they allowed the BNP to win a seat for Nick Griffin. It is a conceit of the Greens’ that in this area at least, they were the barrier to the BNP gaining a seat. Yet the figures don’t add up. Salma points at the fact that the Greens fell behind Griffin by around 5000 votes, and laments that if only a small fraction of the combined No2EU and SLP vote of around 50,000 had gone to the Greens, Peter Cranie and not Griffin would have been in the European Parliament. Yet hundreds of thousands of votes were lost to the main parties in the same region – particularly to Labour.

The Green challenge was well known and long prepared. Why focus on the relatively few votes of the two working class campaigns, which were in a weak position in this election for well-known reasons, and yet fail to explain why the Greens did not have the ability to win over the necessary votes from among these many more thousands of disillusioned Labour supporters particularly? This, I think, says something about the class nature of the Greens as explored above. The allegation that simply by standing, the weak working class groupings were responsible for the BNP advance sounds like making an excuse for the inability of the long-established Greens to attract those many more from Labour they might have been expected to.

Salma’s statement, while aiming to promote what she sees as left unity, is in fact promoting something that is non-working-class in its content, and really involves middle class forces lording it over the workers. The shrill tone of various ‘left’ Greens in ‘condemning’ a workers organisation, the RMT, for initiating a left-wing ticket for the Euro elections, reflected sheer middle class arrogance and hardly a democratic spirit either. No wonder the Greens failed to win over disillusioned working class support from Labour – many of whom detest the BNP but failed to vote at all. To mobilise these people politically, a working class party and clearly working class politics are necessary. That is the only kind of ‘progressive’ politics that can be effective on this political terrain. We need unity of the working class left, and that is what leading Respect figures like Salma should be putting their energy into building, not promoting a form of cross-class politics that for all its pretensions, can never be truly socially progressive.

Link: Southwark Respect
Link: Southwark Respect statement on the European election results and left unity
Link: The Junius Blog

The sacking of the Lindsey workers is a challenge for the whole working class

The sacking of the Lindsey workers is a challenge for the whole working class - Socialist Worker

Support this statement on the construction dispute.

The sacking of 900 workers at the Lindsey Oil Refinery (LOR) is an attack on every trade unionist in the country.

Total used the sacking of 51 workers as a threat to activists at the site. They have now moved to break the recent unofficial strike movement based around LOR. If the employers succeed in breaking this well organised group of workers then every trade unionist will suffer.

There is only one response to this outrageous attack. That is to shutdown every construction site, every refinery and every power station. Workers across the movement have to move now to support the workers at LOR.

The fact that workers have moved to do exactly that should be applauded.

Unite and the GMB unions repudiated the action at Lindsey. They say that they were forced to by the anti-union laws. But 12 years into a Labour government that Paul Kenny, Tony Woodley and Derek Simpson tell us to back why are these laws still in place.

There are 2.2 million on the dole now and soon there will soon be 3 million out of work. A job goes every 30 seconds. We have just seen British Airways ask their workers to work for nothing.

Its time to resist now. These sackings are a challenge to the whole working class movement. We have to back the construction workers to the hilt.

Earlier this year on some construction picket lines the slogan "British jobs for British workers" appeared. Every construction strike is now branded as "anti foreigner". This is not true.

But to win support from the whole movement it needs to be made crystal clear that the battle is for every worker to have decent conditions and one rate for the job, no matter where they are from.

Every trade unionist, every workplace has to get behind this fight.

Sometimes there are pivotal moments in the history of the workers’ movement. The sacking of the printers at Wapping in the aftermath of the miners’ strike was one such moment. It was used to intimidate the whole working class. At a time when resistance to the economic crisis is just developing we can't allow this to happen again.

This is a battle for everyone. We have to build the maximum possible solidarity, urgently. A victory for construction workers would be an inspiration for every worker who is fighting back for the right to work, this is a fight the labour movement has to win.

Add your name to this statement. Email michaelb@swp.org.uk

© Socialist Worker (unless otherwise stated). You may republish if you include an active link to the original.

Link: Construction workers walk out over union-busting - SW
Link: Exposed: construction bosses’ secret plans to block national strike - SW
Link: Total war: Protests solid as 650 workers sacked - Morning Star

Mark Steel: So this is New Labour's legacy...

Mark Steel: So this is New Labour's legacy... (missed this one last week but cant resist posting late) - from The Independent.

They sacrificed all to get elected and now can't get elected to anything.

What a pathetic "rebellion". The Labour Party is in its worst state for a century and all it took for their leader to save himself was a sentence about finding a vision, and a promise he would "learn to listen". So after 10 years as Chancellor and two asPM he's going to start seeing and hearing. Next time he's challenged he'll promise to learn to crawl and eat solids.

Similarly his speech last Friday, when it seemed he needed to deliver an inspired and courageous flourish to save his job, was a bumbling splutter of incoherence that would have embarrassed a regional manager announcing the quarterly figures for envelope sales. If Gordon Brown had been Braveheart, his speech to his troops as the English started to charge would have gone "Now then – we are in a, er, er, a crisis of being attacked by archers that is in as much as it is global in its nature, which requires a global strategy of yes lances which is to say shields, but the Scottish people expect us to deal with that global and that is what I intend to to to do, er, do to."

But that was enough, because then most of his ministers made statements such as, "Of course the Prime Minister is fully aware he's a useless tosspot, but the others are even worse, so let's stop this in-fighting as there is still much work for this government to bugger up."

Because none of them, in all the billions of hours of interviews and intrigue, either for or against Brown, have said a single thing they believe their party should be doing. Instead they make statements about "needing to reconnect with voters" but to do that they'd have to come on television going, "I'm a bloody disgrace, I am. And you should see the expenses I rake in, alright for some ain't it. I'm never voting for me again, I can tell you."

But there's no clue about what they want to do differently. Their last seven years looks like one long fiasco, from Iraq to reverence for a disastrous banking system, but there's no one prepared even tosuggest how they got in this mess and how it might be put right. So none of them can make a case for being any better, except for having a cheerier smile, so no one comes forward.

They might as well have a frog as their leader, and Ed Balls would be on Newsnight telling us the frog isn't the problem, and the way he responded to some sharp criticism by hopping off the table shows his determination, because they haven't got a clue. This is why they're in a much worse mess than the one in 1983. Back then, although the election was a disaster, the Labour Party had active branches in every area, with thousands of young members bursting with ideas of why they wanted to run local councils or the country. Now the branches barely exist, debate has been eliminated, and all that's left are careerists frightened of losing their careers.

For example, at four o'clock last Friday Caroline Flint was adamant she supported Brown, but two hours later she couldn't stand him. So either this was because she'd been snubbed for promotion, or she's genuine, and she honestly thinks he did a wonderful job for Labour for 15 years but then did one dreadful thing that negated all that, at around half past four.

This is New Labour's legacy. They sacrificed principles, debates, humanity, purpose and personality for the prize of getting elected. But now they can't get elected to anything so there is absolutely nothing left.

Link: Respect

Open Letter to the left: How we can join together

Open Letter to the left: How we can join together.

Michael Rosen welcomes the Socialist Workers Party’s (SWP) open letter to the left and discusses how he thinks unity can be achieved.

The open letter to the left is a good move. We desperately need to make the things that unite us count more than the things that divide us.

The simplest way to do this would be to create some kind of federation or umbrella organisation.

At this stage, a federation need be no more than an electoral pact – an agreement to not contest candidates from each other’s groups or parties. This could also mean that we could put out some kind of joint platform, with shared publicity.

Obviously this kind of thing isn’t easy. There are long histories of mistrust and splits, and there are some big disagreements over ways of interpreting the past and the present.

The question in front of us now though is whether we would gain more or less by staying divided? I think it’s clear – the answer is less.

This is not only a matter of developing a more effective way of organising. It’s also a matter of political wisdom and thought. None of us has a monopoly on that.

We all have insights and we all make mistakes – but in the long run we have to acknowledge that it is only the collective minds and deeds of like-minded people that can change the world.

What we have to work out is how best to pool and mix those words and deeds.

My own view is that a federation or umbrella is one way of doing this. The years of analysis and organisation that each group or party has worked out wouldn’t be thrown away. No one is being asked to give anything up.

However, in the act of co-operating, we will come up against different ways of working, different analyses.

There will be local and sectional knowledge that might not have been shared, but would be in a federal structure.

So, for example, I’ve just been in Dagenham. The British National Party (BNP) has a whole bunch of their people on the council. When you walk about the area, you see devastation. Ford’s pulled out, and more than 25,000 jobs have gone.

Right next to the deserted factories and car parks, the government is putting up a brand new prison. The politics is clear: who closed Ford? Ford. It wasn’t any of the groups that the BNP target that closed the factory. And what’s the New Labour response? Lock people up.

Now, this situation may or may nor prevail elsewhere. What we know is that this has to be fought in the locality dealing with the conditions on the site.

Federation

In a federation, it may be that one or other of our groups or organisations has done the most work in that locality. Then we should be grown-up enough to give that organisation pride of place and the rest of us do what we can to support them.

Across the country, this is likely to even out – more or less. If it isn’t absolutely even Stevens, so be it.

It will be more important to make the effort to unite than to get too worked up about perfect divvying up of electoral battlegrounds.

Four key names have emerged over the last few years who have strong local bases of support. In alphabetical order – George Galloway, Michael Lavalette, Dave Nellist and Salma Yaqoob. There are others all over the country.

It would be great if we could create a network and give it time to develop.

I wouldn’t want to prejudge anything more than that. Let’s leave that to our dreams and hopes. In the meantime, let’s be simple, practical and strong.

Link: Socialist Worker

John McDonnell: We need change now, Gordon

John McDonnell: We need change now, Gordon.

The Campaign Group had nothing to do with the coup attempt, but if Brown does not offer real change, I will back a challenge.

About a month ago the weekly discussion meeting of the Campaign Group of MPs focused on the imminent electoral wipeout of Labour in the coming European and local council elections. We decided to write to Gordon Brown to seek a meeting with him to see whether any common ground could be found on the policy changes needed to win back support for the party. No response was received.

Over the following weeks we refused to be dragged into either the plotting to oust Brown or the positioning by others seeking to fill his shoes if he fell. Our line was straightforward – there's no point in changing the faces at the top if there is no change in political direction.

When I then learned that No 10 was briefing journalists that Campaign Group members were involved in the email plot calling for Brown to go, I wrote again to the prime minister requesting that his people desist from this covert briefing. I told him straight that allegations about our involvement in this backstage plotting were untrue and that whatever political differences we had with him they were always expressed openly and honestly. I got no reply.

Few realistically doubted that the prime minister would survive this half-hearted attempted putsch. Nevertheless at the parliamentary Labour party meeting on Monday a chastened Brown for the first time admitted to weaknesses and mistakes and assured Labour MPs that lessons had been learned and gave the strong impression that changes would follow with intensive discussions within the PLP and party, and that a raft of new policies would be announced.

Labour MPs have taken false comfort in the Tories not surging ahead in the percentage share of the vote, ignoring the role Ukip plays in siphoning off Tory votes in European elections that largely return to the Tories in general elections. They cling to the statistic that Cameron needs a 7% swing to win the next election, which has only been achieved twice in the last century, forgetting that they themselves were party to just such an achievement only 12 years ago.

On Wednesday the first of the policy announcements on constitutional reform produced typical Brown-like long-winded, turgid consultations and committees of inquiry, stretching well beyond the election and possibly into infinity.

If Labour is to stand any chance of surviving at the next election, real change has to be visibly under way and progress demonstrated at the latest by the autumn.

A consensus checklist of what constitutes real change is emerging from many sources. Securing jobs by intervening in manufacturing and restoring trade union rights; securing homes by a mass local authority house-building programme; stopping the squandering of public resources by ending the privatisation of public services; reasserting the government's green credentials with no third runway; for young people freezing, as the first step towards abolishing, student fees; for pensioners restoring the link between pensions and earnings; halting the attacks on welfare; paying for our programme by fair taxation and cutting out the waste on the likes of Trident renewal and ID cards; and making government ruthlessly clean, open and fair with immediate electoral reform.

Most of the policy changes are blindingly obvious and readily implementable to re-establish our credentials with each section of the broad coalition that enthusiastically ensured the rout of the Tories and Labour's election in 1997.

These all seem straightforward, sensible and popular. But what happens if Brown refuses to contemplate real change? If we go beyond November without real change visibly under way, what hope is left of Labour not only remaining in government but also surviving as an effective political force at all?

At that stage the only responsible act in the long-term interests of our movement would be to offer a real change in political direction by mounting a challenge to the political leadership of the party and letting the members of the party decide. Let me give notice now that this is the path I will take. If this route is blocked again by MPs failing to nominate, then the alternative is Labour MPs making it clear at the next election that they stand on a policy platform of real change as "change candidates".

Of course, they will be standing as Labour candidates but binding together as a slate of candidates committed within Labour to advocating a change programme, setting out the policy programme they will be advocating as a group and supporting in parliament if elected. Only in this way can we demonstrate to the supporters that want to come home to Labour that there is the hope and prospect of change.

Link: Labour Representation Committee
Link: Respect

Southwark Respect welcomes the appeals for action to be taken to pose a united socialist alternative at the next general election.

The following statement was passed at a well-attended Southwark Respect branch meeting last night.

Southwark Respect welcomes the appeals of the last few days for action to be taken to pose a united socialist alternative at the next general election.

In the face of the recession and the growing assault on working class living standards the left needs to unite in defence of our class.

The recession is also being accompanied by its ugly outrider the rise of the fascists as a force in politics.

The BNP represent a real danger. The anger at the corruption of the mainstream politics linked into the worsening recession means that the BNP now have the opportunity to establish themselves as a permanent fixture on the political landscape, and to solidify a still soft voting base into a harder, more racist and more openly fascist one.

This has happened in theses elections not through a spectacular growth of the BNP vote, but by the collapse of the labour vote.

A strategy that merely relies on stacking up as many votes as possible against the Nazis cannot succeed.

Support for the BNP is growing out of the lack of hope and the fear which is now stalking working class communities.

An real alternative has to be posed.

That is why we in Southwark Respect supported NO2EU in this election. It was a temporary platform formed shortly before the election and though it had imperfections, it was a real attempt to grapple with this question.

Though it might not have staged a dramatic breakthrough, NO2EU together with the SLP got 326,000 votes, more than Respect (standing as the sole national left force) got in the 2004 European elections in aftermath of the Iraq War. It also did better than Respect did in some important working class areas such as Wales and the North East.

The vote was not as large as we would have liked, but it proved that there is still, despite the difficulties that the project of a new political force to the left of labour has experienced, the basis for such a party.

The experience of constructing a political alternative to Labour has proved to be a difficult and bruising one for the left.

The project has suffered a number of setbacks and the left is now hampered by the fact that after twelve years of Labour government it has not managed to build a political force that can seriously challenge the mainstream parties or the fascists, across the country.

The need for unity however presses heavy on all now. We cannot let previous strife prevent us uniting again. We should not allow past differences to blind us to the importance of the task in hand.

We notice that there is a growing realisation in the trade union movement that there is a need to pose a political alternative to Labour and stand candidates against in the general election. No2Eu is the most concrete example of this, but the PCS is also talking about standing candidates, the FBU remains disaffiliated and relations between Labour and the CWU have been stretched to breaking point.

We welcome the appeals put out by Bob Crow, the CPB and the SP following their joint work in NO2EU. We also we welcome the moves by the SWP and others to seek unity again with the rest of the left.

These moves will not immediately result in the kind of party that we believe is necessary, but they could be steps towards it.

We in Southwark Respect have long maintained that what the working class needs a new party, rooted in the labour movement, to represent its interests.

We welcome every step taken by the working class to find its own political voice again.

Note: The editor of this blog fully supports the motion passed by Southwark Respect.

Link: Southwark Respect

Open letter: Left must unite to create an alternative - SWP

Open letter: Left must unite to create an alternative.

An open letter to the left from the Socialist Workers Party (SWP)

Labour’s vote collapsed to a historic low in last week’s elections as the right made gains. The Tories under David Cameron are now set to win the next general election.

The British National Party (BNP) secured two seats in the European parliament. Never before have fascists achieved such a success in Britain.

The result has sent a shockwave across the labour and anti-fascist movements, and the left.

The meltdown of the Labour vote and the civil war engulfing the party poses a question – where do we go from here?

The fascists pose a threat to working class organisations, black, Asian and other residents of this country – who BNP führer Nick Griffin dubs “alien” – our civil liberties and much else.

History teaches us that fascism can be fought and stopped, but only if we unite to resist it.

The SWP firmly believes that the first priority is to build even greater unity and resistance to the fascists over the coming months and years.

The BNP believes it has created the momentum for it to achieve a breakthrough. We have to break its momentum.

The success of the anti-Nazi festival in Stoke and the numbers of people who joined in anti-fascist campaigning shows the basis is there for a powerful movement against the Nazis.

The Nazis’ success will encourage those within the BNP urging a “return to the streets”.

This would mean marches targeting multiracial areas and increased racist attacks. We need to be ready to mobilise to stop that occurring.

Griffin predicted a “perfect storm” would secure the BNP’s success. The first part of that storm he identified was the impact of the recession.

The BNP’s policies of scapegoating migrants, black and Asian people will divide working people and make it easier to drive through sackings, and attacks on services and pensions.

Unity is not a luxury. It is a necessity. If we do not stand together we will pay the price for a crisis we did not cause.

The second lesson from the European elections is that we need a united fightback to save jobs and services.

If Cameron is elected he will attempt to drive through policies of austerity at the expense of the vast majority of the British people.

But the Tories’ vote fell last week and they are nervous about pushing through attacks.

Shadow chancellor George Osborne told business leaders, “After three months in power we will be the most unpopular government since the war.”

We need to prepare for battle.

But there is a third and vital issue facing the left and the wider working class. The crisis that has engulfed Westminster benefited the BNP.

The revelations of corruption, which cabinet members were involved in, were too much for many Labour voters, who could not bring themselves to vote for the party.

One answer to the problem is to say that we should swallow everything New Labour has done and back it to keep David Cameron, and the BNP, out.

Yet it would take a miracle for Gordon Brown to be elected back into Downing Street.

The danger is that by simply clinging on we would be pulled down with the wreckage of New Labour.

Mark Serwotka, the general secretary of the PCS civil service workers’ union, has asked how, come the general election, can we ask working people to cast a ballot for ministers like Pat McFadden.

McFadden is pushing through the privatisation of the post office.

Serwotka proposes that trade unions should stand candidates.

Those who campaigned against the BNP in the elections know that when they said to people, “Don’t vote Nazi” they were often then asked who people should vote for.

The fact that there is no single, united left alternative to Labour means there was no clear answer available.

The European election results demonstrate that the left of Labour vote was small, fragmented and dispersed.

The Greens did not make significant gains either. The mass of Labour voters simply did not vote. We cannot afford a repeat of that.

The SWP is all too aware of the differences and difficulties involved in constructing such an alternative.

We do not believe we have all the answers or a perfect prescription for a left wing alternative.

But we do believe we have to urgently start a debate and begin planning to come together to offer such an alternative at the next election, with the awareness that Gordon Brown might not survive his full term.

One simple step would be to convene a conference of all those committed to presenting candidates representing working class interests at the next election.

The SWP is prepared to help initiate such a gathering and to commit its forces to such a project.

We look forward to your response.

© Socialist Worker (unless otherwise stated). You may republish if you include an active link to the original.

Link: Socialist Worker

No2EU calls for unity to defeat the BNP

No2EU calls for unity to defeat the BNP

No2EU:Yes to Democracy coalition convener Bob Crow has called for urgent discussions involving socialist organisations, campaigns and trade unions to build a concerted response following the election of two fascists from the BNP to the European Parliament.

No2EU was the first progressive EU-critical coalition to stand in Britain in any election and it gained 153,236 votes despite an almost complete media blackout.

The combined vote in Thursday’s poll for No2EU, the Socialist Labour Party and some of the smaller left parties stacks up to nearly a third of a million votes - just over 2% of the total. In Scotland, the combined left vote was close to 4%.

Meanwhile, the Labour share of the vote has dropped by a massive 31%, the Lib Dems by over 7% and the Tories, despite all the hype, have only managed a tiny increase in share with turnout collapsing to just over 30%.

Bob Crow said today:

“There is no question that the BNP have benefitted from the collapse of the establishment political parties and from media coverage that has pumped them up like celebrities on “I’m a Nazi - Get Me Out of Here.”

“Sections of the press, which have deliberately ignored anti-establishment parties from the left, need to take a long, hard look at the way the blanket coverage they have given to the fascists from the BNP has contributed to their success.

“But it’s the collapse of public support for the three main parties - each of which is pro-business, pro-EU and supportive of the anti-union laws - which has created the conditions for the scapegoat-politics of the BNP to thrive.

“The fascists support in former mining communities like Barnsley is shocking and throws down a massive challenge to the Labour and Trade Union movement.

“Along with our colleagues from the SLP and other left groups we won nearly a third of a million votes. From No2EU we won over 150,000 supporters from a standing start in the teeth of a media blackout. That gives us a solid platform to build from.

“We now need urgent discussions with political parties, campaigns and our colleagues in other unions like the CWU to develop a political and industrial response to this crisis.

”I also want to pay tribute to our colleagues from the Hope Not Hate campaign. There is no doubt that without their tireless efforts the BNP would have won even more seats,” he said.

Link: No2EU - Yes To Democracy

Seizing the moment by Steve McGiffen

Seizing the moment by Steve McGiffen - from the Morning Star.

Last month I used my column to try to persuade No2EU - Yes to Democracy to drop its abstentionist line and, should it win seats in the European Parliament, use them to further resistance to neoliberalism and the fight for socialism.

I don't want to return to that subject exactly, though I note that, while there has been no public evolution of this position, candidate Dave Nellist said recently in an interview on these pages that he felt that the No2EU list could and should become the basis of a new workers' party.

That such a party is urgently needed seems to me to be beyond dispute.

The game is well and truly up with the Labour Party. The threat from the BNP must be countered - and fast.

We need a mass activist party and we need it now.

Parliamentary politics is in deep disrepute.

Britain and Europe are run by crooks and liars in the pay of corporate capital. The danger is that the now almost universal understanding that this is the case is currently most likely to benefit the enemies of democracy.

On the other hand, the combination of financial crisis, open greed in the corporate world and corruption in politics offers the left an opportunity to reconstruct itself.

There is a country not very far from here where the left has spent the last 15 years successfully doing just that.

In 1994 the Dutch parliament contained not a single radical socialist.

To the left of the Dutch Labour Party there was nothing but a ragbag of Europhile remnants of moribund left parties, the so-called Green Left.

In the general election of that year, however, the radical left Socialist Party (SP) entered national politics for the first time, winning two seats.

In 2005 the SP, which by then had grown considerably in membership and had nine seats, led the campaign against the European constitution.

Almost two-thirds of the Dutch electorate voted No to this neoliberal con trick.

Over the next two years, the SP tripled its vote in local, regional and national elections.

It is now the country's biggest opposition party both inside parliament, where it has 25 seats, and outside.

With almost 50,000 members, the SP has never succumbed to the tempting comforts of parliamentary politics.

It remains an active presence on the streets of the Netherlands, in its workplaces and social organisations, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with every campaign of resistance to neoliberalism, to the destruction of social provision and of the environment and to the undermining of democracy by political parties which have forgotten what the word means.

Every SP member of parliament, local representative and employee is paid a salary based on the average skilled workers' wage (ED: this needs further discussion as a lot depends on what you mean by an average skilled workers wage).

Those who receive a salary from the state must comply with a rule under which any amount above that level is handed over to the party.

Expenses are paid against receipts and only against receipts.

Such a rule should be the first principle of any socialist political party.

Such a party is badly needed in Britain and must be organised in good time to fight the next general election.

It should adopt a broad but clearly anti-neoliberal platform and make it clear that it will not be confining its activities to Parliament or to council chambers but will be out on the streets and standing at the side of everyone and anyone who is fighting back.

It should be active in its solidarity with every victim of workplace exploitation, of racism or sexism, every person resisting the degradation of our environment, the sullying of public life and the cynicism of the whole pack of political opportunists, from the formerly social-democratic Labour Party through to the BNP.

People want their vote to make a difference.

They want people to represent them who understand the real problems of real people.

If we offer a clear alternative and avoid speaking as if it were 1917 or 1968, or as if we have all the answers and are therefore by definition not interested in listening to people's views and concerns, we can create a new political force capable of setting fear into the hearts of the political establishment.

The tired old argument that standing candidates against Labour will let the Tories in is now laughable.

The Labour Party no longer has the slightest claim on the loyalty of working people or the left.

In any case, it is in for a thorough tonking whatever we do or don't do, so we really don't need to worry about costing it votes.

They have spent the last quarter century collaborating with increasing enthusiasm in the theft of the people's property, not just in the case of the relatively trivial amounts stolen in fiddles expenses, but in the wholesale corporate trough-snouting that was privatisation and deregulation.

They have supported illegal wars and illegal torture camps.

They claim to be "green" while planning new airport runways and new motorways.

They claim to respect civil liberties while allowing the police to behave like the militarised force which is the hallmark of a repressive state.

I believe in a broad and diverse socialist movement, but surely not so broad that it includes the flimflam artists currently governing the country.

The left must seize this moment, before the far-right does.

A salary rule similar to that of the Dutch SP should be at the heart of our programme.

This would leave plenty of money to cover the legitimate, receipted expenses of MPs and other party personnel, reducing or even eliminating the need to claim reimbursement from the state.

Whatever is left would be used to run the party and finance campaigns.

If we tell the people the truth and show them that we live by our principles, we can yet reconstruct our movement, save democracy and begin to offer the real and effective resistance which Britain has not seen in a quarter of a century.

Steve McGiffen is editor of the EU-critical website Spectrezine.org. He is a former environmental adviser to the European Parliament's United European Left group.

Link: Morning Star
Link: No2EU - Yes to Democracy

No2EU - Yes to Democracy Election Broadcast

Vote No2EU - Yes to Democracy on June 4 (Election Broadcast)

The broadcast was televised on Channel 5 on May 26.

It will also be shown on the following stations and times:

* S4C – Wednesday May 27, 7.25pm (Welsh language)

* BBC One - Wednesday May 27, 10.35pm

* BBC Two - Wednesday May 27, 11.20pm

* BBC Wales - Wednesday May 27, 10.35pm

* BBC Scotland – Wednesday May 27, 10.35pm

* ITV Scotland – Wednesday May 29, 10.30pm

* ITV – Friday May 29, 10.30pm

* ITV Wales – Friday May 29, 10.30pm

Video: Tony Benn explains why there should be a referendum on the renamed EU Constitution

No2EU - Yes to Democracy is a coalition of trade unionists, political parties and campaigning groups which have come together to defend democracy here and across the European Union, so lend us your vote in the Euro elections on June 4.

Link: Help Southwark Respect with their No2EU campaign.
Link: No2EU Web site

Labour's car crash - Morning Star

Labour's car crash - Morning Star.

The rats are now openly attacking the captain of their sinking ship.

Health Secretary Alan Johnson, who in Monday's Times set out his allegedly "modernising" credentials, talks of the need to "overhaul the engine, not just clean the upholstery." Morning Star readers would no doubt agree.

But to run with Mr Johnson's motoring analogy, there is a dodgy tactic in the car trade known as "cut and shut."

It's the illegal welding of parts of two damaged cars together to create a "new," fundamentally unsafe vehicle that will temporarily fool - and potentially kill - an unsuspecting buyer.

Whatever Mr Johnson has in mind for the Labour government would undoubtedly bear more resemblance to a cut and shut than an engine overhaul.

And the tired, abused electorate which voted Labour in on a landslide in the hope of heralding a brighter post-Thatcherite era have become so used to the blatant betrayal and hypocrisy of careerists such as Mr Johnson that they are unlikely to be attracted by the outdated model of vehicle he is offering, regardless of whether the engine is purring like a cat, the upholstery has been cleaned or it comes with a set of free red fluffy dice.

The truth is that none of the self-interested individuals who now comprise the top echelons of the Labour Party has what it takes to avert the slow-motion car crash that the party and democracy now face.

Talk of proportional representation, at least from the likes of Mr Johnson, is a red herring, one that will on its own do little to avert the spectres of falling participation in our partial democracy and the rising fortunes of the far-right.

Whatever the merits of PR - and there are many on the left who would advocate such a system - the ongoing disappearance of Westminster up its own rear is the result of something far more fundamental.

So long as MPs are hand-picked centrally rather than chosen freely by local democratic structures, so long as alternative ideas on the structure of society are wilfully ignored in craven deference to the failed financial sector formerly feted as Britain's road to wealth, so long as elected representatives in Parliament hang blindly on the mumbo-jumbo spouted by private-sector consultants and wealthy business figures, the crisis of our political system will continue.

The rest of the media may blind people to the truth by obsessing over Blairites and Brownites, incestuous leadership bids and rivalries. In reality, not one of the media's supposed "players," whether Johnsonites, Milibandonions or Purnellniks, has the imagination or desire to see past sell-offs, spin and private-sector sycophancy.

Labour and British democracy are indeed in need of a complete overhaul, but this cannot come from the bankrupt remnants of new Labour, their greedy cuts-obsessed counterparts the Tories or the falsehoods and hate of the far-right.

The People's Charter, which is currently being discussed and engaged with by trade unionists and political activists, MPs and ordinary people, offers a tantalising glimpse at another path.

Its aim - to draw together a broad coalition that transcends party boundaries around policies that will help the majority in Britain - is both commendable and essential.

The alternative just does not bear thinking about.

Link: Morning Star
Link: The Peoples Charter for Change

Interview with Dave Hill who tops the No2EU list in the South East

Interview with Dave Hill who tops the No2EU list in the South East (Dave is in the middle of the picture). Article from the Mac Uaid blog. This article was first published in the The Weekly Worker when Dave Hill spoke to Peter Manson.

How do assess the campaign so far?

It’s the beginning. No2EU is a new party. The manifesto comes out on May 21 – the same day as the national television broadcast. In the meantime I am making a regional broadcast on The politics show.

We reckon that the South East is the area where we can get elected with the smallest percentage of the vote anywhere in the country – we only need about eight percent to get in. And we could be on line to do that – it depends on the way the national publicity goes – there’s only so much we can do locally.

We’ve got a vibrant local campaign – I must say, mainly run by the local Socialist Party, but also with the RMT and some independents.

There isn’t much by way of the Communist Party of Britain in your neck of the woods then?

No, not in the Brighton area. But in other parts of the region, yes, there are – in Kent, Oxford and Southampton, for example, the CPB is active. In the Brighton area, where I’m mainly going to meetings, doing interventions, etc, we have a group of young comrades from the SP.

I believe you’ve recently come out of retirement from politics?

Yes, I joined the Labour Party when I was 16 – I was brought up in poverty in fact. All my family are working class and I was a socialist from a very early age. I was a parliamentary candidate a couple of times. But in the early 90s I started to go deaf. At the same time I was getting pretty disgusted with Labour – this was before New Labour, under Kinnock – because of the expulsions, which I always opposed. I also decided it was time to concentrate on my career.

But then I got new hearing aids from the NHS about three years ago and it made a huge difference to my life – I could actually hear what people were saying! I left New Labour finally in 2005 after 40 years – most of my friends and comrades had left in tranches over the previous years. The sense of relief I felt was incredible.

I then joined what seemed at that particular time to be the major group on the left, Respect, and indeed the International Socialist Group.

Are you still in Respect?

I am a member, yes. I have been engaged in very vigorous attempts to get Respect involved in No2EU. When I saw the campaign was being set up, I immediately got in touch – then it was just the CPB, SP and RMT on board, so I got in at the beginning. I thought, wow, this is what I’ve been looking for for years – a reconfiguration on the left; a trade union-backed, working class-backed movement and hopefully party to the left of Labour.

Respect at that time was still considering standing and I was opposed to that. Since then Respect, I’m delighted to say, along with Socialist Resistance, has come on board and supported No2EU.

Isn’t it more a case of Respect leaving it open to individual members?

Well, you and I are both right. They have supported No2EU except where there are local considerations – we’re really just talking about the North West …

… where they’re voting Green.

My view is that the Greens are a bourgeois party – a lot of them are very good people – but they’re not a working class party and they are not socialist, even though individual members might be.

I could not believe it and I was very angry. My hope is that the layers that have been involved in Respect – that is to say, predominantly the middle and working class layers of the Muslim population and some others – will fully join No2EU. My hope is that after the election the promised convention does take place and I want to see the development of a democratic and pluralist party grow out of it.

But the main forces involved have divergent positions on that. The official position of the CPB is that No2EU is just an electoral platform and after June 4 it will cease to exist.

Well, you go round the blocks probably more than I do, so you will be well aware that there is a momentum building. If there is a tiny vote, then perhaps the momentum will be lost. But I think that by the time of the election No2EU will actually do well. There is a very good chance that there might be one or two MEPs elected, of whom I reckon to be one. The disgust with the mainstream parties is such that many people to the left of Labour have been looking for something substantial they can vote for.

But, to get back to the convention, history moves. I know the SP is very committed to the Campaign for a New Workers’ Party – which incidentally I support – and I think the CPB and RMT will come on board, and hopefully small groups like the Alliance for Green Socialism, which are also involved. I just hope that the momentum will be such that we are living in historic times, so that a successful party to the left of Labour will be launched some time in the next couple of months.

I see from your blog that you are part of the wing that is for taking up your seats if you get elected.

I’ve always admired the integrity of what was the Militant and SP and their position of a workers’ MP on a skilled worker’s wage – even though I’ve disagreed with them historically on various issues.

Here I’m going to be careful what I say – I think the historic position of working class parties and socialists seeking election has always, quite rightly in my view, been to take up those positions and to use them as a platform and an arena of mobilisation. In the South East election material – and indeed in the television and radio broadcast – I have been very firm about saying we are for a worker’s MP on a worker’s wage.

That’s an advance on the position on the website.

Absolutely. I think we should view No2EU as developmental, and that website was put up at the very beginning. I would like to see a development of that in the manifesto. What I’ve been saying when I’ve been interviewed is that we’re working class and socialist activists. We will be mainly in Britain, but of course we’ll be supporting workers’ slogans and workers’ issues in Europe. But there will no bathplugs or bungs on expenses for us!

We’ll be workers’ MPs on a worker’s wage, fighting for working class issues, rights, conditions and pay and opposing privatisation and neoliberalism.

It seems to me that the ‘Yes to democracy’ slogan is without content. It is posed in a way which suggests that the British parliament, House of Lords and monarchy is the alternative.

Yes, I agree with that 100%. I think a better slogan would have been ‘Yes to a workers’ democracy’ or ‘Yes to a socialist democracy’.

We have an article in the Weekly Worker calling for republican democracy.

I’m a convinced republican.

What we’re saying is: abolition of the monarchy and the second chamber, annual parliaments, as with the Chartists; recallable MPs on a worker’s wage, which you’ve already referred to; an end to the secret state …

… I haven’t thought about the annual parliaments, but I agree with retiring the monarchy and giving them all an old-age pension; and getting rid of the House of Lords and having an elected second chamber – if there is to be a second chamber. The term of the parliaments I’m not so sure about.

What I would say in defence of No2EU is, looking at the speeches of Bob Crow, Dave Nellist and various other comrades, it has been pretty clear that it is a leftwing, internationalist campaign that goes beyond the initially thought-up slogans.

I want to ask you about internationalism, but first can I put to you our last point on republican democracy? That is, replace the standing army with a popular militia and the constitutional right to bear arms, as in the United States. What do you reckon on that?

I haven’t given that any thought. I wouldn’t want to comment without doing so and discussing it.

OK, fair enough. Then let me take you up on what you said about internationalism. For example, the platform – which seems to be inspired by the worst part of the CPB’s programme of anti-EUism from a nationalist perspective – comes out against Fortress Europe, but gives every impression of being for ‘Fortress Britain’.

I fully understand what you’re saying and where you’re coming from. During an election campaign I’m not going to attack other constituent parts of the campaign of which I am a candidate.

What I would say is that in my view the enemy is capitalism, based in both the European Union and in Britain. They are the same. What I have been arguing for in the meetings I’ve been involved in is workers’ internationalism with no illusions in the sanctity of British capital. We’re a movement seeking to replace capitalism with socialism – and I’m not just talking about neoliberalism, which is simply the current version of the class war from above.

What I do think is that we’re living in tumultuous times. We’ve seen 30 years of incredible war on the workers since Thatcher and Reagan, and this is the chance that working class, socialist and progressive forces have to ally, nationally and internationally, to pose and to organise for a working class and socialist alternative to combat and replace capitalism.

If the platform read, ‘No to Fortress Europe, no to Fortress Britain’, how would that sound to you? In other words, for the free movement of labour.

I was a politician for many years, so I’m well used to not answering questions! What I will say is that the views expressed, for example, over the Lindsey refinery workers’ strike by the leaders of No2EU from all its sections have not been narrow little Englandism. What they have defended is the rights of all workers in Britain, wherever they might come from.

So I take heart not from the odd phrase that needs developing, but from the more lengthy phrases that No2EU speakers have been expressing on the stump and in public statements.

I agree with what you say about Lindsey and in fact I think the Socialist Party did a good job in helping to divert the strike away from the ‘British jobs’ slogan …

It was a dreadful slogan …

But that wasn’t actually the nature of the strike, which was to defend jobs. However, what about immigration controls? I’m against them.

Well, I’m not sure that the No2EU campaign has got a particular view on that …

What’s your view?

My personal view is that in my political life I’ve been opposed to racism and active in the Anti-Nazi League – and indeed was attacked on two occasions by fascists because of my leading local role in anti-fascist activity. My working life has involved teaching against race, gender and sexuality discrimination.

My view is that this is not a time to have completely open borders. On the other hand, I think that the current controls are racist and that people who are in this country should be treated with full human rights and have full workers’ rights. The conditions under which many refugees and asylum-seekers live are horrendous.

If ever – god forbid – there were a fascist government in this country, then people like me or you would have to seek asylum somewhere else unless we went underground. I would want us to be treated with full human rights and dignity and have the ability to lead a happy, healthy, safe and employed life.

So the anti-racist slant of No2EU is hugely important to me. I fear that now, unlike any time since the late 70s, when the left basically kicked the fascists off the streets, and unlike the 1930s, when the Battle of Cable Street did the same, the dangers of fascism and of a BNP revival are greater at this moment than at any time in the last 30 years. So we must have no truck with nationalistic slogans and must make very clear our internationalist and anti-racist beliefs.

Finally, I do hope that all of the left, including the CPGB, will come into No2EU and make it a democratic and pluralist organisation. I am including in that people like the Socialist Workers Party and Alliance for Workers’ Liberty – I am totally non-sectarian. I look with great hope to the new anti-capitalist party in France, the Bloco de Esquerda in Portugal and some of the experiences of Die Linke. That’s what I want this to develop into.

Editors Note: And on that hope Dave you have my full support - a position I will fight for on the National Council of Respect - Neil Williams

Link: Mac Uaid blog
Link: No2EU web site
Link: No2EU - Yes To Democracy, South East Region

ALICE MAHON BACKS NO2EU

ALICE MAHON BACKS NO2EU - report from the Socialist Unity Web Site.

Alice Mahon, the former Labour MP who resigned last month from the Labour Party after 50 years membership, will speak at her first public meeting since leaving the party in Birmingham on Tuesday, May 26th, in support of the No2EU campaign in the Euro elections.

Mrs Mahon, 71, was the Member of Parliament for Halifax from 1987 to 2005.

She joins a number of former Labour figures backing the anti-EU coalition - including the former leader of East Sussex Council Labour Group, Prof Dave Hill, former deputy Labour leader of Carlisle Council, John Metcalfe, and former election agent for Peter Shore MP, John Rowe, who are all candidates for No2EU on June 4th.

The former Labour MP for Coventry, Dave Nellist, is the lead candidate for the trade union backed campaign in the West Midlands.

Mrs Mahon in her resignation letter said she could no longer be a member of a party “that at leadership level has betrayed many of the principles that inspired me as a teenager to join”. Her letter, sent to former colleagues in her Halifax constituency, was sharply critical of Labour’s failure to deliver a promised referendum on the EU “Lisbon Treaty”.

“If that Treaty is ratified”, she wrote, “we can say goodbye to any publicly owned services…… we will be handing over to private corporations, social services, education, transport and postal services. Even the NHS will be up for grabs”.

Ms Mahon will be joined at the election rally on Tuesday, May 26th, 7.30pm at the Carrs Lane Church Centre, Birmingham by Brian Denny, national officer of the RMT trade union, and West Midlands No2EU candidates Cllr Dave Nellist, and Joanne Stevenson, the General Secretary of the Young Communist League.

Link: Socialist Unity web site

Can you help Southwark Respect? - No2EU activity in Southwark

Can you help Southwark Respect? - No2EU activity in Southwark.

Sunday 24 May - 11.00am - 1.00pm - leafleting
2.00pm - 4.00pm - leafleting

Monday 25 May - 11.00am - 1.00pm - leafleting
2.00pm - 4.00pm - leafleting
(If there are Bank Holiday events we will aim to cover them with leaflets.)

Tuesday 26 May - 6.30pm - leafleting

Thursday 28 May - 6.30pm - leafleting

Respect members/supporters - Can you help next weekend? - please call Ian on 07941936 087

Saturday 30 May - 11.00am - Stall (probably Camberwell. If we have enough people we will try to have more than one stall.)
2.00pm- leafleting
5.00pm- BARBECUE - This is for all supporters and to help raise funds for the Southwark Respect NO2EU leaflet, which has cost over £600.

Sunday 31 May - 11.00am - leafleting
2.00pm - leafleting

Monday 1 June - 7.00pm - NO2EU Public Meeting at Friends Meeting House - opposite Euston Station, with BOB CROW, lead candidate for London, DAVE NELLIST, lead candidate for West Midlands, and others

Tuesday 2 June - 6.30pm - leafleting

Wednesday 3 June - 6.30pm - leafleting

Thursday 4 June - POLLING DAY

Any inquiries - please call Ian on 07941936 087

We hope to see you over the next two weeks. Please try to make some of the activities.

Link: No2EU
Link: Southwark Respect

June 4 and beyond - Dave Nellist

June 4 and beyond - Dave Nellist.

Former Coventry Labour MP Dave Nellist is fighting a vigorous campaign as No2EU - Yes to Democracy's lead candidate in the West Midlands.

Now a Socialist Party councillor in the city, he recalls the 1975 referendum campaign, when the left was united in branding what was then called the European Common Market as "a bosses' club."

"The Labour manifesto on which I stood in 1983 was against the European Community," Nellist recalls. And he hasn't changed his mind since - although Labour has.

"Without No2EU, there would be a largely sterile debate in this forthcoming election, since all the three big parties agree with the free-market philosophy of the European Union - and the only opposition to the EU would come from the far-right.

"New Labour, particularly under Tony Blair's leadership, has become increasingly wedded to big business and so when, for the first time in 100 years, a trade union decided to stand independently in a national election, the Socialist Party wanted to help," he remarks.

In Nellist's view, past campaigns against the EU have suffered from a "confused identity," with business and right-wing politicians being involved.

"This campaign is based solidly on the working class and offers a socialist alternative which no other platform does," he enthuses.

In the West Midlands, Nellist identifies two key issues as jobs and the rise of the extreme right.

Unemployment is rising faster there than most other regions of Britain, which in turn accounts for one-third of all jobs lost in the EU since January.

"Major manufacturers have been taking advantage of the free movement of capital and labour promoted by the EU, to export jobs and factories to areas of Europe where trade unions are weak and wages are low," he says.

Nellist cites the local case of Peugeot at Ryton, where the firm shipped the factory to Slovakia to avoid paying decent trade union rates of pay at £500 per week.

"There, they can get away with paying £350 per month!" he says.

The export of jobs, the import of exploited labour and growing disillusionment with the main parties, particularly in working-class areas, has inflated support for the BNP. The fascists now have 16 councillors in the West Midlands EU region - a third of their national total - and regularly poll votes in the hundreds in local council elections.

"It's not that the people of the West Midlands are becoming more racist - for many, it's a protest vote," Nellist insists. "We intend to offer a trade union alternative to the barmy politics of the far-right."

He fears that merely portraying the BNP as Holocaust deniers - although he notes that "their leaders clearly are" - who believe that the wrong side won the second world war is not enough.

"I think you have to approach potential BNP voters differently," he argues. "Many of them are working class, formerly voted Labour and, in an election where most electors are switched off from the big parties mired in sleaze and scandal, they are unlikely to be won away from the BNP if their only other option is to support one of those establishment parties.

"Thanks to No2EU - Yes to Democracy, working people will be able to vote for a non-nationalist, anti-EU, left alternative in these elections."

And Nellist hopes that its impact will be felt beyond June 4.

"We hope No2EU will be the first step towards the development of a new mass left party. Given the severity of the economic crisis facing working-class people, this is now particularly urgent," he says.

He is particularly encouraged by the new networks being built up during the election campaign.

"Obviously, the organisations involved will want assess the project and their involvement in it - but I hope that after the June elections we can come together to jointly look at what comes next."

The diversity of the No2EU alliance has raised some eyebrows on the left. How does Nellist find sharing a bed with the Communist Party, for instance?

"What has happened is a growing realisation not only that the Labour Party is on a trajectory away from working-class people, but that the forces of the left still inside Labour do not appear to be strong enough to hold back the tide.

"The Socialist Party has always been prepared to work with other forces on the left in any project which advances the cause of the working class, whether that is on the industrial or the political front.

"Having consistently called for 15 years for the development of a serious left alternative to new Labour, we were very pleased that the RMT, the Communist Party and others wanted to form an electoral bloc for the European elections."

On a more personal note, Nellist downplays his own position as lead candidate in the West Midlands. He certainly doesn't miss the Westminster Parliament in which he sat for nine years.

"I found the privileged gentlemen's club atmosphere very unpleasant and, unlike some former MPs who have haunted the place since they left, I've only been back five times in 17 years," he points out.

"Like fellow Militant supporters Terry Fields and Pat Wall, I took only a worker's wage. That made sure we were not sucked into the unreal world we see in recent revelations, but remained in touch with our working-class constituents."

Nellist spent much of his time as an MP campaigning outside Parliament, notably against the poll tax.

"That balance of work - predominantly outside Parliament and involved in working-class struggles - is what I'd like to see any successful No2EU MEP doing," he says.

"Whether it's me is not really the issue, but there clearly is a desperate need for more politicians who don't have their snouts in the trough and stand up for the millions instead of the millionaires," he concludes.

And millions of people in sleaze-ridden Britain today will agree with that.

Link: Read this article on the Morning Star web site
Link: No2EU - Yes to Democracy

The dangers of anti-politics - Jeremy Corbyn

The dangers of anti-politics - Jeremy Corbyn.

Monday was one of those surreal days that happen at Westminster.

Parliament Square and the streets around were blockaded for most of the day by Tamil people, desperately worried about families and loved ones in Vanni as news of the Sri Lankan army's final push came through.

Later, as news of Velupillai Prabhakaran's death was reported, the crowds became bigger and more angry.

Last Saturday, a march in Birmingham asked for government action to protect jobs and save companies in the recession.

Another march in London expressed support for the Palestinian people and demanded a new policy towards Israel.

Parliament, on the other hand, was discussing MPs' expenses, or, more prosaically, the additional costs allowance.

The long-drawn-out saga of MPs' battle to get out of having to disclose their expense claims in response to a request issued under the Freedom of Information Act finally ended with agreement to publish all the details... in July.

The Daily Telegraph jumped the gun, having apparently bought the information from a stolen disk, and has been publishing ever since. Non-London MPs have been able to claim up to £23,000 per year and the effects have been dramatic in media and political terms.

Obviously, those who make fraudulent claims should suffer the consequences and equally obviously the system needs a big change.

Michael Martin as Speaker vainly tried to make an appropriate statement on Monday but, if anything, only managed to make the situation worse.

This is one of the few issues relating to Parliament that has sustained the interest of both the "heavy" papers and the tabloids at the same time and consequently has filled the airwaves of chat shows and dominated most political programmes.

But what initially emerged as an understandable anger and revulsion at individual examples of excessive claims has now become, first, a contest between the party leaders - in which Cameron has had the easiest ride - and, second, an attack on politics as a whole.

In the failure of MPs to get to grips with public feeling, a space has been created for other forces.

These are not progressive forces but the harbingers of desperation and doubt.

Thus UKIP has apparently gained much ground ahead of the European elections and the BNP is already making hay.

Strange, as one of UKIP's MEPs has spent most of the time since his election in prison for fraud, while the BNP's racist policies and the record of its candidates go unchallenged in most of the media.

We now have an openly right-wing agenda designed to ignore the issues of the recession, the massive bail-out of the banks and the bonuses paid to directors, and which focuses only on attacking democracy.

Unless Labour can get to grips with this and provide a viable alternative, the ground is open for a Conservative government and a frightening rise in intolerance and the far right.

But this anti-democratic atmosphere has its antecedents in the 1980s and the rise of new Labour.

Essentially, the economic strategies of Reagan and Thatcher came down to money being everything - how it was made was irrelevant. Thus asset stripping, tax cutting, privatisation of public services and impoverishment of the poorest became articles of faith.

New Labour under Blair sought to accommodate these attitudes and, while they did invest in public service improvements, they also went even further in deregulating financial services and threatened - and carried out - privatisation of public services.

At no stage did new Labour ever challenge the notion that public services run by publicly employed people are intrinsicially better than private services run for profit by unaccountable companies. New Labour also demonstrated an attitude to welfare and means testing that has no place in socialist thinking at all.

These attitudes did not stop at government policy. They were the product of a wider agenda.

The whole new Labour project was to weaken and ultimately destroy the link between trade unions and the Labour Party and to ensure that its funding came from the wealthy and influential, who gradually became the main source of income.

This has led to a loss of party members, a reduction in activity and a whole movement vulnerable to the anti-politics debate through disillusionment. A weak and unfocused Labour movement at a time of recession is the perfect breeding ground for the far right.

The saga of the Speaker, the expenses, the claims and the ridicule will be played out in the next few weeks and we may even end up with a more accountable system and openness as a result. The damage, however, will extend to the very idea of representative democracy.

Unless the labour movement can deliver protection of the poorest in the recession, permanent control of the banks and the banking system and provision of homes, jobs and opportunities, then we leave ourselves vulnerable to the far right.

Essentially the BNP and UKIP are the same thing. The BNP has all the accoutrements of a fascist party - UKIP are much the same but with blazers and more refined accents.

Their message is one of despair and division, blaming the poorest and most vulnerable migrant workers for the economic failures of a system built on greed and exploitation.

Opposing the BNP means campaigning for high electoral participation to minimise their influence and adopting policies of substance for those most affected by the recession.

Parliament must urgently get its house in order and be seen to be of relevance. The alternative is a return to naked monetarism and its enforcement by fear and bigotry.

Link: Read this article on the Morning Star web site

Speaker Martin: a prize scalp for English snobs - George Galloway

Speaker Martin: a prize scalp for English snobs - George Galloway.

English snobbery can do a morris dance of delight at the political demise of the Speaker, Michael Martin. The bigots have put the taigs back in their place. Above all the MPs desperately seeking solace from the evisceration of the expenses scandal hope this will be enough to staunch the haemorrhage in public confidence.

For a certain class of Englishman every Catholic is a Mick and every working-class Scot is from the Gorbals. In fact, Michael Martin – it was always Michael! – has no connection to the Gorbals, but his elevation was a fillip to both: the first manual worker to sit in that ancient seat and the first Catholic since Cromwell to surmount the still considerable prejudice. Thanks to Speaker Martin my grandson Sean enjoyed the first Catholic baptism in the House of Commons Crypt since Cromwell turned it into a stable.

His accent never cut through the cut-glass ceiling, he appeared mentally sluggish and the arcane vocabulary of great parliamentary occasions seemed beyond him. His tearoom skills are what had landed him the job. He lay in wait for a generation of MPs to charm avuncularly. Government office was never likely to come his way, and a remaining parliamentary lifetime of high teas and grand tours seemed ample compensation.

But that which seemed charming and solicitous offstage in the warren of Westminster was cruelly exposed in the unforgiving glare of the television lights. It was Martin's bad luck to have been caught up in a maelstrom of crises andpublic odium. He did not invent the discredited system of parliamentary allowances – that came largely under the "distinguished" speakership of Lord Weatherill and became especially lucrative during the golden era of Betty Boothroyd. Under both, MPs believed that allowances were but a supplementary salary, their receipts notional and in any case highly secret. The consistent deferment of recommended salary increases, the tearoom mafia would nod and wink, justified this deceit.

But caught in the white heat of this unprecedented focus, the former sheet-metal worker melted. He might have avoided the complete destruction had he decided to leave over the Damian Green affair where policemen were allowed to trample through the parliamentary estate on a political witchhunt of an opposition politician merely doing his job. If Martin didn't know they needed a warrant to be there he was too stupid to be Speaker; if he knew but turned a blind eye then he was too wicked. But that was also an opportunity. He could have admitted an error, apologised humbly and gone back to Springburn with a grain of respect left. MPs might have even shaken his hand for doing the decent thing while looking over his shoulder for a successor.

Martin's fall from grace is necessary but not sufficient. The election of a new Speaker in this parliament will be effected by the same people who brought it into disrepute. Similarly the "constitutional convention" now being touted would merely be a conclave of the self-regarding great and good and the conclusions would crucially lack credibility in the harsh public spotlight. Only a new parliament where the public have cast judgment on those who have disgraced our political life can be trusted to set in place the new dispensation.

We need a revolution in public life, halving the size of the lower house, and directly electing the revising chamber – all by proportional representation. We need transparent and contemporary disclosure of all financial details – publish the income tax returns and all details of perks, outside jobs and jollies. Party funding and election spending decisions must be part and parcel of the reform. None of this can be done by the current discredited House of Commons.

Link: Read this article on the Guardian web site
Link: Respect

Southwark Respect backs No2EU

Southwark Respect backs No2EU.

Nick Wrack, Southwark Respect and No2EU candidate in London, writes:

Southwark Respect has decided to support to No2EU in the Euro Elections in London. Other branches of Respect have also voted to back it.

The NO2EU list in the capital is headed by Bob Crow, leader of the rail workers union, the RMT and the most militant union in the country.

Other candidates in London include Kevin Nolan, convener of the Visteon workers in Enfield.

NO2EU is an important initiative that that seeks to pose an alternative for working class people to vote for across the country. It is backed by the RMT, many other trade unionists, the CPB and the Socialist Party.

The European Union is a bosses club. Its purpose is to create a Europe in which there are no barriers to big business and to allow the free rule of the market.

It is the EU that has been the greatest force for deregulation and privatisation across the continent in recent years.

Laws passed by the European parliament and the decisions of the European Court have undermined workers’ rights. The posted workers directive, which was at the centre of the Lindsey dispute, is only the best-known example in this country.

The neo-liberal Europe being pushed by the EU must be opposed.

Up until now in this country the arguments against the EU have mostly come from the right.

They create fear that it is scheming foreigners who want to undermine our way of life and whip up feeling against migrant workers.

Yet it has been British governments, whether Labour or Tory, that have pushed most enthusiastically for privatisation and deregulation in the EU.

No2EU stands for international workers solidarity. It is an opportunity to undermine the racist lies of the right.

Mainstream politics is dominated by a deadening consensus. Despite the economy sliding into the greatest crisis since in fifty years the differences between the major parties are miniscule.

Rather than reject the economic policies that have led to this crisis Gordon Brown’s government is giving us more of the same. Rather than taking the failed banking system into full state control and using it for the good of ordinary people they have thrown billions to the bankers.

And we will be paying for this for a generation to come. Whoever forms the next government they will push for massive cuts in public spending and services.

New Labour has betrayed the working class and accepted the bosses’ agenda lock stock and barrel.

They have betrayed the hopes that millions put in them in 1997. This has created conditions for the growth of the BNP and other parties of the right.

To resist the shift to the right, and to defend working class people against the crisis and the inevitable attacks on jobs, wages and conditions that it will bring, the working class needs a political alternative that can gain mass support. The working class needs a new party to represent it. That is the reason why Respect was formed five years ago.

In 1901 the RMT (the NUR as it then was) became one of the founding members of the Labour party because it realised the labour movement needed its own political voice. In 2004 it was expelled from that same party.

The fact that it is now one of the main moving forces behind No2EU is of massive importance. It is a sure sign that many in the labour movement now see the necessity to pose an electoral alternative to the neo-liberal consensus.

NO2EU is a temporary platform for the European elections, not a new party. Mistakes will be made, but lessons will also be learnt. But that is why we welcome this and support every step taken by the labour movement to find its own political voce again.

That is why in these elections we will be campaigning for No2EU.

Link: To find what Southwark Respect will be doing to support NO2EU click here

Link: To contact Southwark Respect click here

Link: For the No2EU – Yes to Democracy website click here

No2EU - Yes to Democracy

No2EU - Yes to Democracy is a coalition of trade unionists, political parties and campaigning groups which have come together to defend democracy here and across the European Union, so lend us your vote in the Euro elections on June 4.
No2EU-Yes to Democracy is a response to the growing cynicism across Europe towards the undemocratic direction the EU is taking and to the rise of extremists like the BNP who are benefiting from this disillusionment. Come to one of our public meetings and find out more.

Keep your public services public:
The Lisbon Treaty and the EU’s privatisation agenda represent a significant threat to working class communities and to the services we all rely on.

The renamed EU consttituion forces governments to hand public services over to private corporations – that means handing fat cats control of railways, schools, postal services, energy and even social services across Europe.

Under Article III-147 of the EU Constitution: “A European framework law shall establish measures to achieve the liberalisation of a specific service”. That provision remains in the Lisbon Treaty.

This commitment to ‘free competition’ enshrined in successive EU treaties was the main reason that Tories originally supported the EU. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher signed the Single European Act in 1986 to establish a single European market and John Major agreed the Maastricht Treaty, which created the Euro, the European Central Bank and tied European economies into a ‘Growth and Stability Pact’ that squeezes public investment in public services.
The current economic crisis was created by these discredited neo-liberal policies yet, under the Lisbon Treaty, they become constitutional goals. We should be defending public services in Britain not allowing bankers and eurocrats take them over in order to make money for big business in Europe.

Vote No2EU - Yes to Democracy to defend public services such as Post Offices and the NHS and to renationalise our railways and develop manufacturing in Britain (see web site for more policies).
Now read this: Southwark Respect backs No2EU
Link: No2EU Facebook site
Link: No2EU National Web site

The new Repect Party Web site is up and running

The new "Repect Party" Web site is up and running.

At last after five years we have a new Respect Party web site that is a pleasure to visit. I will be helping with this site from now on so there will be less posts on this blog ( a final decision on the future of this blog will be made soon).

Go to (where you will find my news posts):

http://www.therespectparty.net/

Miners strike 1984 A tribute to the miners and their families

And in memory of my father and grandfather both miners in the Kent coalfield.
Link: Strike84 Images from the 1984 Miners Strike UK
Link: NUM
Full Story

Gaza Convoy 2009 - Viva Palestina

Viva Palestina Convoy - some of the team.

Viva Palestina Convoy update:
Mudasir Saeed sent a message to the members of Gaza Convoy 2009.
Subject: Day 8 - When the people lead, the leaders will follow

The mile-long convoy of 100 plus vehicles and 315 drivers and peace activists today drive through the Moroccan/Algerian border in what is supposed to be a low key event, but the significance of that small journey can not be over estimated. Today’s border crossing will be recorded in the history books.

Morocco and Algeria agreed to put aside their differences to open their land border for the first time in 15 years for the sake of Palestine.

This wonderful gesture is something Condaleezza Rice failed to persuade the neighbouring countries to do - her last attempt before the departure of George W Bush was made in September.

But the peace mission and genuine humanitarian nature of the Viva Palestina convoy has melted the hearts of those on both sides of this vital land border. Despite their difference both sides have stepped aside for their mutual love and affection for the people of Palestine and, in particular to show their solidarity to the people of Gaza.

It is an astonishing gesture and both countries are to be congratulated on this generous move.

Another fine example of when people lead, the leaders will follow.

****NEWS FLASH*******

21:00 GMT…Update from the A Team…..

The convoy have been at the Algerian Border since early this morning. There have been thorough thorough thorough oh and did i mention thorough checks made by customs!!!!!. Whilst on the phone to Naveed, the loud cheering by the Algerian people could be heard. Naveed reported that hundreds of Algerians have been waiting eagerly just outside the border since dawn to recieve the convoy, but the convoy has been continuously stalled by the police with different excuses given every hour. The drivers fear that they will be made to travel in the dark of night.

There is a growing suspician that the authorities want to minimise public exposure of the convoy, to avoid public pressure on its government to provide humanitarian aid to the palestinians. It appears that the Moroccan Government may have shared this motive, when they provided a police escort to the convoy. At first the drivers felt that the police escort was a novelty. But the police avoided the planned original route in Morocco where rallies had been organised such as that in Casablanca.

Despite the interventions of certain governments and the lack of interest by the mainstream media, it is encouraging to see that people know and seek the truth about Palestine. Whatever maybe the agenda of the governments, what is certain is that the people’s hearts and minds are all in support of the Palestinian cause. And that Freedom to Palestine is no longer an Islamic or Arabic issue – its now an issue of right or wrong between justice and injustice, weather you are a Muslim, Jew, Christian or any other religion, faith or background. Viva Palestina!!!

Subject: Quick Update on Day 8

How a negative can turn into a positive…..

February 22nd, 2009
21st February 2009

Inital reports showed the Algerian authorities were somewhat stalling the convoy at the border, and indeed this was the case. however I have just learnt that after all the comotion, delays and checks, the convoy crossed the border and the Algerian authorities have provided fuel to fill up the vehicles. Im sure if the likes of Shell, BP or Esso advertised that they would provide free fuel for any cars that came through their stations, hundreds of us would gladly queue, many throughout the night to benefit from a full tank of fuel, on the house.

In this instance we are talking about free fuel for not one but many vehicles all on the house courtesy of Algeria just outside Maghnia!

It just goes to show, some things that start off negative can lead to a positve outcome…..

TEXT UPDATE: Naveed from the A Team 00:25 (GMT)

"Salaam we went through centre and hundreds of people here, it was amazing as its somthing we have never seen before. There were hundreds of people on the streets cheering. We were on the roof of our van, hanging off the back ladder with Mudasir tannoy. It was top, even the police are cheering 'Allah Hu Akbar'. The youths, kids and men were hugging us...a 15yr old boy told me that even the muslims who drink came on the street to shout 'Allah Hu Akbar' and they make dua for us everyday to succeed.
We have come to a caravan site to sleep now"

More update: by Farid Arada from Viva palestina Web Site
14.00 GMT
Sunday 22nd February
After spending the night in a caravan park, the convoy set off this morning at 08.30 towards the city of CHLEF(click map). Under police and gendarme escort,they hit some major trafic problems en route which slowed the pace down.They stopped on a couple of occasions for some rest. They are hoping to get to Chlef before dark.Then in the morning they will head for Algiers.I am told that they are bypasing the major cities to avoid congestion.

Link: Viva Palestina
Full Story

Viva Palestina: Gaza Convoy 2009 - Facebook Update

Viva Palestina: Gaza Convoy 2009 - Facebook Update.

Day 1: The Journey Begins

A huge convoy of more than 100 vehicles snaked its way out of London on route to Gaza, where more than £1 million-worth of aid, including a boat, several ambulances and a fire engine, will be delivered.

Later that night, the show-stopping convoy rolled off a freight ferry in Ostend to embark on a historic mission of mercy to help the Palestinian people.

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Day 2: Mayor of Bordeaux greets convoy

After spending a gruelling night in sub-zero temperatures, the convoy made its way to the french city of Bordeaux where it was met with a very warm reception by the mayor and the people.
The city has kindly provided a sports hall for our brave brits to camp in for the night..an appreciated break by all I'm sure, especially those suffering from arachnophobia :

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Day 3: Post From George Galloway Daily Record

"My mile-long convoy of aid to Gaza has snaked across the Pyrenees into the Basque country and the splendours of St.Sebastian.

Tonight we hit Madrid, where no less than the Prime Minister of Spain awaits our arrival at the steps of the Cortes (Editor: And the Prime Minister of the UK??).

The police will have cleared the roads for a triumphal entry of now nearly 150 vehicles, over 300 Brits, more than one mile long."

Link: Gaza Convoy 2009 Facebook Group
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Not as easy as it sounds by Yvonne Ridley

Not as easy as it sounds by Yvonne Ridley.

If you ever thought travelling in a convoy was easy, think again.

This latest drive from Bordeaux in France to Madrid via San Sebastian in Spain was back-breaking and some of the vehicles just simply gave up ... unlike their drivers.

The indomitable spirit, true grit and determination of those on board Viva Palestina refused to be beaten by mere mechanical failures and set backs which challenge long distance travellers.
Tool kits, spare parts and willing hands were in evidence everywhere, along with lashings of wonderful hot tea brewed by a man wearing a bright red Fez.

I'm not sure what time the main body of the convoy rolled up to a sports hall on the outskirts of Madrid but it is now 3am (gmt) on Tuesday and I know scores of my fellow travellers are still on the road.

Unable to face the challenges of the steep hills, some have simply headed south to the ferry where they will wait for the rest of us to catch up.

Spirits were lifted in San Sebastian when all the vehicles pulled in to a giant car park where they were greeted by George Galloway, MP, the mastermind behind Viva Palestina. We'll all be back up in a few hours time to get the latest news and developments planned en route from George.

There's still a long way to go, but as I talked to the group it is quite clear that the focus is Gaza and each and every one on board is determined to reach the Palestinians there.

"It's that focus which keeps us going. We do feel like moaning, and it's only Day Three but we get our inspiration from each other and from the example set by the Palestinians.

"Let's face it, they could have given up a long time ago but their determination to rebuild their shattered lives feeds our determination to help them," said one man from Birmingham which is represented by 20 vehicles on the convoy."

Another morale booster, they say, has been Press TV's coverage on both the website and TV news which has been avidly watched by the families, friends and supporters in Britain as well as across the world.

No other media outlet has been on the convoy since Day 1 apart from Press TV which is becoming the first station of choice for viewers tuning in to Sky 515 and other satellites in search of news without spin.

The reason for me filing this particular report to you so late?

Well the Press TV crew also suffered a malfunction - our GPS system went down and yours truly did the navigating from Bordeaux to San Sebastian. I knew confidence in my map reading skills collapsed when our technical engineer Omid Gharbifard began using his compass and the position of the stars!

The good news is that we now have a replacement electronic navigating system in place and Omid has already keyed in the final destination ... Gaza City.

So, can we do it? In the words of a certain Mr Obama: "Yes we can."
* Yvonne Ridley will be giving regular updates from the convoy for the duration of the trip. Her website is www.yvonneridley.org

Link: Viva Palestina
Link: pictures - Convoy leaving London
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Viva Palestina aid convoy for Gaza off to flying start

Watch out for the boat in the video!

Press release:

Viva Palestina aid convoy for Gaza off to flying start

In an extraordinary and unprecedented spectacle, 102 vehicles gathered in Hyde Park at noon on Saturday before setting off with aid supplies to Gaza. The convoy included 18 ambulances, a fire engine, a boat and two buses.

The convoy was given a rousing send off by veteran politician Tony Benn and by George Galloway who will be joining the convoy today.

The total aid on the convoy is etimated at over a million pounds. Last night they were given a civic reception in Bordeaux. Today they travel to a rally in San Sebastian before going on to a rock concert for Gaza in Madrid.They will then cross to Morocco via Tarifa and then travel across North Africa through Algeria and Libya before entering Egypt. Many more supporters from Britain are travelling out to join the convoy in Cairo around 6th March. The convoy will then head on to Gaza.

Press: For more information, comment, etc, phone Rob Hoveman on 07507 600561

Link: More video
Link: Follow the Convoy on Twitter
Link: Viva Palestina web site
Link: Respect
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Aid Convoy leaving London for Gaza

Aid Convoy leaving London for Gaza

George Galloway MP, Yvonne Ridley and hundreds of British volunteers are driving an aid convoy of over 100 donated vehicles packed with practical aid to Gaza leaving from outside the Houses of Parliament, London on Saturday the 14th February. This remarkable convoy will be over a mile long and carry a million pounds of aid raised in just four weeks.

Volunteers will drive the donated vehicles from all over Britain to Westminster on Valentine’s Day to form the convoy which will then drive almost 5,000 miles together through France, Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt where they will cross the border at Rafah into Gaza on the 2nd March.

The convoy includes a fire engine, 12 ambulances, a boat and trucks filled with medicines, cash, tools, clothes, blankets, and shoe-boxes filled with gifts for children. All this and more has been by donated by communities across the country.

George Galloway said, “No-one will send a vehicle that is not filled with items including pyjamas, clothes and blankets. Millions of people in this country care deeply, and we are going to show that.”

Each person travelling on the convoy is a self-financed British volunteer. The vehicles will be left with the people of Gaza; volunteers will fly home to the UK. Thousands of pounds cash has been fundraised and collections for donated goods and fundraising events are still taking place all over Britain.

The effort is being co-ordinated by the campaign group Viva Palestina and is supported by the Stop the War Coalition, the Anglo-Arab Organisation, several British trade unions and a large number of Muslim organisations. George Galloway MP and journalist Yvonne Ridley will lead the convoy from London across France and Spain then North Africa to enter Gaza via the Rafah crossing.

Please help us by making a financial contribution to help purchase further aid in Egypt.

In their darkest hour the people of Gaza must not be forgotten. Viva Palestina!

Now read this:
100 vehicles and £1million in aid

Link: Viva Palestina
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Respect is holding a public meeting jointly with the Socialist Party on the lessons of the Lindsey Oil Refinery strikes.

Respect is holding a public meeting jointly with the Socialist Party on the lessons of the Lindsey Oil Refinery strikes.

The meeting is at Friends Meeting House, London (opposite Euston station) this Friday 13 February at 7pm.

Jerry Hicks (left candidate for Unite general secretary and Respect National Committee member) will be speaking alongside SP member Keith Gibson, who was a member of the LOR strike committee.

Link: Jerry Hicks For General Secretary
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Tube staff anger as pay docked for snow day

Tube staff anger as pay docked for snow day by Jenny Booth - The Times

London Underground ticket office and platform staff vented their anger today after being told they will not be paid for failing to turn up for work last Monday when the capital was snowbound.

London’s bus network was suspended and Tubes were disrupted because of the extreme weather, which forced millions of workers - an estimated one in five - to stay at home across the UK.

The Transport Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA) said its 4,000 members in ticket offices and in other grades on LU have been told they must claim last Monday as unpaid leave or a day out of their annual holidays.

The ruling, from LU's human resources department, affects mainly office and platform staff. Drivers are not included, and it is understood that managers who worked from home last Monday have been told that they will be paid.

Union reps will meet this morning and will hold talks with managers later amid growing anger against LU bosses and London Mayor Boris Johnson, although a spokesman said that it was premature to talk of strike action.

“We think this is gross hypocrisy on the Mayor’s part,” said Manuel Cortes, assistant general secretary of the TSSA.

“He cancels all the buses and most of the Tube and urges Londoners not to risk trying to get to work in the worst snowstorm for a generation.

“So our members could not get in because Boris had effectively halted all public transport because the main line trains weren’t running either.

“Yet here he is wanting to penalise them because of his own actions. It is unfair and he should tell Transport for London to stop being so mean to its loyal staff.”

Link: Freezing Britain braced for more misery - The Times
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Turkey Probes Israel's Gaza War Crimes

Never forget!

Turkey Probes Israel's Gaza War Crimes

A Turkish state prosecutor has launched an investigation into claims of Israeli crimes against humanity and genocide during a recent deadly offensive in the Gaza Strip.

"We submitted the complaint against those who we could prove were in some way responsible for giving orders for the attack on Gaza," Meryem Sari, an attorney of the Mazlum-Der rights group, which submitted the complaint, told Reuters on Friday, February 6.

The group accuses 19 Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, President Shimon Peres, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak of committing genocide and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

"The complaint asks that Turkey be given the right to try the people mentioned," said Sari.

The investigation was launched under Article 13 of the Turkish Penal Code, which allows Turkish courts to try those charged with committing genocide and torture, even if the crime was perpetrated in another country.

Israeli troops killed more than 1,350 Palestinians, half of them women and children, and injured 5,450 others in 22 days of air, sea and land attacks in Gaza.

Foreign and Arab doctors documented abnormal injuries suffered by the civilian population of Gaza, accusing Israel of using banned weapons.

Several international rights groups, including Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, have accused Israel of using banned weapons against the densely-populated coastal enclave of 1.6 million.

A coalition of 350 European and Arab civil society organizations has filed a lawsuit with the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Israel over war crimes in Gaza.

Last month, a Spanish judge launched a war crime investigation into Israeli officials over a deadly attacks in Gaza in 2002, which killed 14 civilians, including nine children.

Turkey, a predominantly Muslim country that belongs to NATO and has an official policy of secularism, has close military, commercial and diplomatic ties with Israel.

But ties have been strained since Israel launched its deadliest-ever onslaught in Gaza.

Last week, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan stormed off during a panel discussion in the World Economic Forum in Davos telling Israeli President Shimon Peres "you know very well how to kill".

(IslamOnline.net and Agencies) via Palestine Chronicle

Link: Jerusalem, the Schizophrenic by Joharah Baker
Link: Gaza: The New Siege Mechanism by Nicola Nasser
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Hamas Leader Says Israel Blocks Gaza Truce

War Crimes. IDF in Gaza.

Hamas Leader Says Israel Blocks Gaza Truce - Palestine Chronicle

Hamas will reject a long-term truce with Israel being mediated by Egypt unless the deal includes lifting the blockade on the Gaza Strip, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said on Friday.

Addressing a rally in Damascus, Meshaal said Hamas has only received "vague" proposals from Egypt without an Israeli commitment to lift the siege, which Hamas regards as an illegal collective punishment on Gaza's 1.5 million population.

"The enemy has yet to offer a lifting of the blockade and a reopening of the border crossings. They have given no guarantee and we will not agree to any truce except in exchange for a lifting of the blockade and a reopening of the crossings."

Meshaal, whose speech was aired on Syrian state television, told more than 1,000 supporters that Hamas emerged "victorious" from Israel's deadly offensive that killed more than 1,300 Palestinians and wounded 5,000 others.

"It is the first real war that the Palestinians won," he said.

Resuming Cairo Talks

Hamas officials are due to return to Cairo on Saturday to give a final reply to proposals to reach an 18-month truce with Israel after its invasion of Gaza, which was halted last month.

Egypt has been brokering indirect talks with Israel and the Palestinians on consolidating the ceasefires into a lasting truce.

Egyptian state news agency MENA reported on Thursday that a Hamas delegation was due on Saturday to give to Egyptian mediators a final response on a proposed long-term truce.

Hamas officials from both Gaza and the exiled leadership in Damascus held two days of talks in Cairo with Omar Suleiman, Egypt's pointman for Israel-Palestinian affairs.

Slamming PLO

Meshaal also slammed anew the Palestine Liberation Organization, which is headed by his rival Mahmud Abbas, who is also president of the Palestinian Authority, saying its "institutions have lost their legitimacy years ago."

Last week Meshaal said the PLO -- the historic Palestinian umbrella that does not include Hamas and the Islamic Jihad -- had become obsolete and called for "a new, national authority."

"Institutions that are opposed to resistance ... are illegal," Meshaal told Friday's crowds in Damascus.

"How much longer must we wait for you to reform the PLO and to allow in Hamas and the Islamic Jihad," Meshaal said.

His remarks put the spotlight again on the protracted Hamas-Fatah feud, which has prevailed since Hamas seized the Gaza Strip in June 2007 after ferocious street battles with Abbas loyalists.

Last Sunday, in a reference to Meshaal, Abbas ruled out talks with any group that does recognize the PLO's legitimacy.

(Alarabiya.net and Agencies) via Palestine Chronicle

Link: Israel Releases Seized Lebanese Aid Ship - PC
Link: Egypt Reseals Rafah Crossing with Gaza - PC
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Victory for the women's camp - Morning Star

FREEDOM TO EXPRESS: The Aldermaston women celebrating outside the High Court on Thursday. Lord Justice Wall said he was unimpressed with government arguments to ban their peace camp.pic: AWC.

Victory for the women's camp by Louise Nousratpour - Morning Star

ANTI-NUCLEAR campaigners were celebrating on Thursday after senior judges quashed a special "no camping" by-law which could have put an end to their famous women's peace camp.

In a unanimous verdict, the Court of Appeal rejected the Defence Secretary's arguments, saying: "Rights worth having are unruly things."

Lord Justice Wall said that he was unimpressed with government arguments that the prohibition on camping was merely a means of redirecting the protest and not extinguishing it.

"This is a case about freedom of expression under the the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) article 10 and freedom of association and assembly under article 11," he ruled.

The judge also ruled that there was "no evidence" that the protest was incompatible with the running of the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), which produces and stores Britain's nuclear weapons.

Speaking outside the Royal Courts of Justice, Aldermaston Women's Peace Camp (AWPC) spokeswoman Sian Jones hailed the ruling as "not only a victory for the women's peace camp but an important judgement on the right to protest.

"This gives us renewed energy to carry on our opposition to the government's plans for development of a new generation of nuclear weapons at Aldermaston."

The by-law took effect in May last year and banned "camping in tents, caravans, trees or otherwise" near the AWE.

Members of the AWPC, led by peace veteran Kay Tabernacle, lost their case at the High Court when they argued that the prohibition amounted to an unlawful interference with rights guaranteed under the ECHR.

But Lord Justice Laws, Lord Justice Wall and Lord Justice Stanley Burnton ruled in favour of the camp protesters yesterday, arguing that the government had not shown that there was a "pressing social need" for the by-law.

Speaking after the judgement, Ms Tabernacle accused the Ministry of Defence of "23 years of harassment, evictions and false arrest."

Despite this, "women have continued their long-standing protest against Britain's weapons of mass destruction because we knew we must speak out against nuclear weapons," she proudly declared.

Gavin Sullivan of Public Interest Lawyers, who represented Ms Tabernacle, called the result "a landmark legal victory affirming the fundamental right to protest in the face of the government's widespread attempts to criminalise legitimate political dissent."

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) chairwoman Kate Hudson welcomed the "excellent news, not only for those wanting to protest against the madness of spending £76 billion replacing Trident but for everyone who wants to see the right to peaceful protest upheld.

"Ordinary people expressing themselves through peaceful protest has been the driving force behind social progress in Britain for hundreds of years."

Ms Hudson also welcomed Prime Minister Gordon Brown's decision to revoke the ban on protests around Westminster when he took office. But she added: "There is still a wave of repressive legislation, from by-laws and restrictions drawn up by local police, right up to acts of Parliament which all need to be reversed if we are to see the health of democracy in this country restored."

Campaigners urged supporters to join them on the peace camp on Friday evening and on Sunday afternoon.

Link: CND
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VIVA PALESTINA CONVOY T-SHIRT NOW OUT!

VIVA PALESTINA CONVOY T-SHIRT NOW OUT!

'Viva Palestina' T-shirt in support of the Aid to Palestine convoy of 100 vehicles which leaves London on Saturday 14 February for Gaza. A popular internationalism of material aid and practical solidarity at its best, reminiscent of the 'Aid to Spain' movement of the 1930s.

The brilliant design features 'A Lifeline from Britain to Gaza' in Arabic on the front, on the back the convoy's route, London to Gaza via Belgium, France, Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and through Rafah into Gaza. JUST £16.99!

Profits helps fund and promote Viva Palestina. The shirts will be worn by the drivers and crew on the convoy get yours from www.philosophyfootball.com

Link: More details
Link: Viva Palestina Web Site
Full Story - order yours now.

Badges for Palestine

Rob Marsden has produced a small range of badges as a fundraiser for the aid convoy.

The badges are 38mm diameter, metal with plastic backs and metal safety pins.

5p from each badge sold will go to the aid convoy and Rob is trying to produce them cheaply enough so that they can be sold on demos and at meetings to raise more money.

The prices are:
25 badges - £7.50
50 badges - £13.50
100 badges - £23.50 and £2.00 for each additional 10 badges.

All include postage and packaging.

Anyone interested should email Rob at kazeliot@hotmail.com

In addition to designs pictured, Rob can also produce badges to order for Respect branches and campaigns.

Link: Respect
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Strikers defy arctic storm by JAMES TWEEDIE - Morning Star

Strikers defy arctic storm by JAMES TWEEDIE - Morning Star.

UNOFFICIAL strikes against EU-sanctioned "social dumping" spread across Britain on Monday, hitting three power stations amid freezing snowstorms.

Workers braved arctic blizzards to maintain picket lines at the Lindsey oil refinery at Killingholme in North Lincolnshire, while the unfortunate bobbies sent to police them resembled snowmen by midday.

Contract workers at the Sellafield nuclear site in Cumbria, Heysham nuclear power station in Lancashire and Staythorpe power station near Newark in Nottinghamshire were among those taking unofficial action for the first time.

Around 700 contractors at the Grangemouth oil refinery in central Scotland, who took unofficial action on Friday, walked out again yesterday, although they voted to return to work today.

The dispute centres on the refusal of an Italian subcontracting firm at Lindsey to offer jobs to local workers.

More than 1,000 workers gathered for a mass meeting at Killingholme on Monday and voted unanimously to allow the union to start talks with management.

Unite member Keith Gibson told the crowd: "I think there should be a call for industrial action right around this country to make the government aware of how we feel and how we're not prepared to let this industry go to the dogs.

"I call on every trade unionist around this country in the construction industry to come out on official action."

Prime Minister Gordon Brown had claimed that the strikes were "counterproductive."

But refinery worker Kenny Ward warned: "If the Prime Minister will not defend the working man, if Parliament will not defend the working man, then the union will defend the working man."

A small group of protesters later gathered about 100 yards from the Forest Pines Hotel, near Scunthorpe, where "talks about talks" brokered by conciliation service ACAS were taking place between French oil giant Total, which owns the Lindsey refinery, unions Unite and GMB and Jacobs, the main contractor at the site.

Total claimed: "It has never been the policy to discriminate against British companies or British workers."

Business Secretary Lord Mandelson said: "I hope, in the light of that, people will be reassured and call off these unofficial disputes."

The former EU commissioner claimed that, under EU law, companies had the right to subcontract work to those firms "best suited" for the job.

But GMB general secretary Paul Kenny pointed out: "The manner in which the EU Posted Workers Directive was applied into UK law was botched.

"The problem has been made worse by recent European Court judgements. The EU Parliament has asked the EU Commission and member states to put this right.

"As the interpretation of the law now stands, it is possible for overseas companies to refuse to employ UK nationals on projects in the UK."

Unite joint general secretary Derek Simpson added: "The problem is not workers from other European countries working in the UK, nor is it about foreign contractors winning contracts in the UK. The problem is that employers are excluding UK workers from even applying for work on these contracts."

The Communist Party of Britain urged support for the workers "rising up against the whole rotten set-up."

CPB trade union coordinating committee chairwoman Carolyn Jones said: "Workers taking action at Britain's power stations are fighting for jobs, decent terms and conditions and trade unionism.

"The strikers are opposing the EU 'free market' in labour which, in reality, is dominated by transnational corporations that move workers across the map to undercut pay and conditions and maximise profits."

Extra: The demands of the Lindsey total refinery North Lincolnshire

No victimisation of workers taking solidarity action.

All workers in UK to be covered by NAECI Agreement.

Union controlled registering of unemployed and locally skilled union members, with nominating rights as work becomes available.

Government and employer investment in proper training / apprenticeships for new generation of construction workers - fight for a future for young people.

All Immigrant labour to be unionised.

Trade Union assistance for immigrant workers - including interpreters - and access to Trade Union advice - to promote active integrated Trade Union Members.

Build links with construction trade unions on the continent.

The mass meeting overwhelmingly voted for the demands put to them by the strike committee.

Link: Strikes, protest and the crisis in the construction industry - Respect

Link: Galloway: "It's about decent jobs, available to all"

Full Story

West Bank Stands Strong Against Increased Repression

West Bank Stands Strong Against Increased Repression - Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign.

For the third week in a row, intense demonstrations were held all across the West Bank on Friday, with thousands of people coming out to protest the Occupation’s strategy of annihilation in Gaza. Once again, Occupation forces used brutal tactics to repress the rallies, causing dozens injuries to the protestors.

In the village of Ni’lin, thirteen people, including two women and two children, were injured by tear gas and rubber bullets. Nine of the people who were injured had to be rushed to hospital to receive medical attention. Some 300 villagers, along with international solidarity activists, marched in Ni’lin’s weekly demonstration. They held their midday prayed on the land near the Apartheid Wall, praying for the souls of the now more than 1,100 people who have died in Gaza. As they prayed, Occupation forces stormed the village and launched a heavy barrage of tear gas onto the streets and near houses. Many residents were unable to enter their homes as a result of the tear gas filling up the rooms. Occupation forces also fired sound bombs and rubber bullets near the praying demonstrators, prompting clashes that lasted into the evening.

Organizers in the village of Bil’in staged an innovative rally, as the weekly protest was symbolically silent. Protestors wearing flags from Europe, the UN, the US and Arab League countries gagged themselves, demonstrating the silence and complicity of the international community. As they marched towards the Wall, Occupation forces began shooting tear gas and rubber bullets at them, causing three injuries and dozens of cases of tear gas inhalation.

Meanwhile, in the village of Jayyous, in the Qalqilya district, early in the morning, Occupation forces occupied the rooftops of two homes near the south gate of the village, in an attempt to intimidate the villagers and stop them from staging their weekly demonstration. The people were undeterred, however, and some 400 protestors marched through the village streets. They were immediately met with significant amounts of tear gas, as the soldiers attempted to provoke confrontation. The forces then entered the centre of Jayyous on foot, going through the village to try and terrorize the residents. Dozens of people suffered difficulty breathing as a result of the heavy tear gas fired by the Occupation forces, while one youth was shot with a rubber bullet.

In the village of al Masra, in the Bethlehem district, two women were lightly wounded by attacks from Occupation forces. As the demonstrators marched near the Apartheid Wall, Occupation forces came and attacked them, beating them with their fists and rifle butts. The protestors pressed on, however, and the demonstration ended with speeches calling on the international community to stand up for humanity, and stop the massacre of the people of Gaza.

The city of Hebron was also the site of a large demonstration, which was once again repressed in a most brutal manner. Fifteen year-old Mustafa Da’ana was shot dead by Occupation forces, while fifteen others were injured.

Hundreds of people joined a protest in Tulkarem, as Palestinian flags were waved, and demonstrators chanted slogans denouncing the assault on Gaza. The city of Ramallah saw a similar scene, as several thousand people took to the streets in the central square in a show of national unity.

Link: Demonstrations against the Wall in Ma'sara, Bi'lin and Ni'lin
Link: Siege against ‘Azzun Atmeh tightened as 75 residents are further isolated
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The shortcut to peace by Hasan Abu Nimah, The Electronic Intifada

Israeli soldiers arrest Palestinians suspected of throwing stones during a protest in the West Bank city of Hebron, 30 December 2008. (Mamoun Wazwaz/MaanImages) via EI.

The shortcut to peace by Hasan Abu Nimah, The Electronic Intifada.

Because it is generally accepted by the so-called "international community" that Hamas is a major threat to Israel, and therefore to world peace and security, France has dispatched a frigate to participate in a new blockade of the Gaza Strip. The Sunday Times reported that United States naval ships hunting pirates in the Gulf of Aden have been instructed to track down Iranian arms shipments (25 January). Many other European states offered their navies to assist. Indeed, United Nations Security Council resolution 1860 emphasized the need to prevent illicit trafficking in arms and ammunition.

Unfortunately not one European country offered to send its navy to render humanitarian assistance to the thousands of injured, hungry, cold and homeless people in Gaza rendered so as a result of Israel's attack. Perhaps helping children dying from white phosphorus burns, or just lack of clean water, would be seen as supporting "terrorism."

The perverse assumption behind all the offers of help to Israel seems to be that Hamas and other resistance groups in Gaza fired rockets at Israel merely because rockets were available. Therefore, the logic goes, peace would prevail if the supply of rockets were curtailed.

Another strange assumption is that Hamas was freely importing rockets from Iran or elsewhere because Gaza's borders were open and free of any control.

This ignores the fact that since Israel "disengaged" from Gaza in the summer of 2005, the coastal territory was never allowed any free access to the outside world. Gaza has been under varied forms of siege and blockade by land, sea and air. Fishermen were not even free to fish without constant attacks by the Israeli navy.

The Rafah crossing linking Gaza to Egypt was kept closed on Israeli insistence until a regime for strict Israeli proxy surveillance, with European monitors acting on Israel's behalf, was established for it.

If Hamas, despite the blockade and total financial and diplomatic boycott managed to import so many rockets or the materials to make them, what level of further siege would guarantee an end to arms importation now?

But the glaring moral and legal question is why the "international community" is mobilizing its navies and political efforts to protect the aggressor, preserve the occupation, and deny the victims any means to defend themselves? If they do not want Palestinians to resist, why do they not themselves confront the aggressor and force an end to the occupation, the siege and dispossession?

In the better past when war broke out in a region the immediate response was often to impose an arms embargo on all sides. But when the defenseless population in Gaza were under attack from the region's strongest army all calls were to prevent the victims from defending themselves. Meanwhile, endless supplies of sophisticated weaponry were sent to the occupier despite its already massive dominance and indiscriminate and criminal attacks on civilians.

Without objective and daring diagnosis of the conflict's root causes there is no chance of any effective treatment. Sadly this lesson has never been learned, although it has been written repeatedly with much innocent blood.

When Palestinians started their first unarmed uprising in 1987, 40 years after their expulsion from their homes and 20 years after the brutal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip began, they had no rockets; they had only stones to confront heavily armed occupation forces. Israel used its guns and deliberate, sadistic bone-breaking against unarmed demonstrators killing almost 1,500 and injuring tens of thousands in its failed efforts to crush that uprising. Only with the 1993 Oslo accords was it possible to put an end to the uprising.

Hamas, as a resistance movement, was born in 1988. Israel, desperate to break the political monopoly of the Palestine Liberation Organization as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, tacitly allowed Hamas to flourish.

Before any Palestinian fired a single shot at the start of the second uprising, in September 2000, Israel had already gunned down dozens of unarmed demonstrators. Palestinians learned these lessons well: Israel will meet any peaceful challenge with lethal force so one had better be prepared to fight back.

We need to recall these facts to understand the pure folly and detachment from reality of international politics today. The tendency has been to choose as the "cause" of the conflict to be addressed only what is politically expedient and easy, whether it is wrong or right, just or unjust, legal or illegal. The starting point of history is chosen not from the origins of the problem, but from whatever point suits the narrative of the strong.

It is utterly misleading and dishonest to pretend -- as so many now do -- that the sum total of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a confrontation over what expired Palestinian Authority President and Israeli puppet Mahmoud Abbas himself referred to as "silly rockets." To pretend that stopping the supply of rockets will make any difference to the course of a conflict that results from the historic dispossession -- the Nakba -- of an entire nation, and its replacement with a racist rogue state that has exiled, occupied and massacred the survivors for 61 years is the height of delusion.

It is convenient for the occupier and aggressor to forget all these things and talk only of rockets. And it is convenient for the cowards who dress themselves in diplomats' suits and don't dare utter the truth.

Should we not acknowledge -- if there is any real desire to resolve this conflict -- that the resistance did not fire rockets just because they had them, and Israel did not carry out its barbarous massacres in Gaza just because it wanted to stop them? Should we not acknowledge the indisputable truth that Hamas did not break the truce, but Israel did when it attacked across the border on 4 November killing six Palestinians? Hamas did not refuse to renew the truce -- as Abbas and Egyptian officials confirmed. All they asked was that the halt to killing be extended to the West Bank (which Israel refused) and that the starvation siege that was quietly killing Palestinians in Gaza be lifted. Have we not been all along taught that blockade is an act of aggression and that occupation legitimizes resistance?

The gunboats that Europe is sending to police the inmates of the Gaza Ghetto are not manifestations of strength, neither are they -- or the recent shocking statements of European Union Humanitarian chief Louis Michel in Gaza blaming Hamas for Israel's crimes on 26 January -- acts of responsible diplomacy in pursuit of peace and stability; they are a new prescription, if not a clear endorsement, for further bloodshed and war crimes. They are signs of a moral weakness and corruption unparalleled since Europeans stood by silently at stations and watched as their compatriots were loaded onto Nazi trains. Who could have thought that in the 21st century such things would need to be said -- and to those we thought had overcome their terrible history? But silence is not, and should not be an option any more. For years we have been told we should learn from the darkest episode in Europe's history, but never make comparisons to it lest we diminish its enormity. But the horrifying atrocities in Gaza which an Israeli official proudly predicted last March would be a "bigger holocaust" compel us to cast our reservations aside.

There is a shortcut to calm, the elimination of violence and eventually peace. It is a lesson that should have been learned many years, and countless thousands of lives ago: justice.

Hasan Abu Nimah is the former permanent representative of Jordan at the United Nations. This essay first appeared in The Jordan Times and is republished with the author's permission.

Link: The Electronic Intifada
Link: Palestine : Multimedia: Month in pictures: Coping in Gaza, January 2009 - EI
Link: Palestine : Human Rights: Gaza prisoners held in harsh and humiliating conditions - EI
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Gaza desperately short of food after Israel destroys farmland

Support the Viva Palestina UK Aid Convoy to Gaza.

Gaza desperately short of food after Israel destroys farmland by Peter Beaumont in Gaza - The Observer.

Gaza's 1.5 million people are facing a food crisis as a result of the destruction of great areas of farmland during the Israeli invasion.

According to the World Food Programme, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation and Palestinian officials, between 35% and 60% of the agriculture industry has been wrecked by the three-week Israeli attack, which followed two years of economic siege.

Christine van Nieuwenhuyse, the World Food Programme's country director, said: "We are hearing that 60% of the land in the north - where the farming was most intensive - may not be exploitable again. It looks to me like a disaster. It is not just farmland, but poultry as well.

"When we have given a food ration in Gaza, it was never a full ration but to complement the diet. Now it is going to be almost impossible for Gaza to produce the food it needs for the next six to eight months, assuming that the agriculture can be rehabilitated. We will give people a full ration."

The FAO estimates that 13,000 families who depend directly on herding, farming and fishing have suffered significant damage. "Before the blockade and the attack," said Ahmad Sourani, director of the Agricultural Development Association of Gaza, which runs programmes with charities such as Britain's Christian Aid, "Gaza produced half of its own food. Now that has declined by 25%. In addition, a quarter of the population depends on agriculture for income. What we have seen in large areas of farmland is the destruction of all means of life.

"We have seen a creeping process of farmers being forced out of the buffer zone around Gaza's border. Before 2000 we could approach and farm within 50m of the fence. After Israel's evacuation of the settlements in 2005, the Israeli army imposed a buffer of 300m. Although it is elastic, now there are areas, depending on the situation, where farmers cannot reach their farms in safety within an area of over a kilometre. It is indirect confiscation by fear. My fear is that, if it remains, it will become de facto. Bear in mind that 30% of Gaza's most productive land is within that buffer zone."

The wholesale destruction of farms, greenhouses, dairy parlours, livestock, chicken coops and orchards has damaged food production, which was already hit by the blockade.

Buildings heavily damaged during Israel's Operation Cast Lead included much of its agricultural infrastructure. The Ministry of Agriculture was targeted, the agriculture faculty at al-Azhar university in Beit Hanoun largely destroyed, and the offices of the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees in Zaitoun - which provides cheap food for the poor - ransacked and vandalised by soldiers who left abusive graffiti.

Although international and local officials are still gathering figures, they believe that scores, perhaps hundreds, of wells and water sources have been damaged and several hundred greenhouses have been levelled, as well as severe damage inflicted on 60,000-75,000 dunums of Gaza's 175,000 dunums (44,000 acres) of farmable land.

As well as the physical damage done by Israeli bulldozers, bombing and shelling, land has been contaminated by munitions, including white phosphorous, burst sewerage pipes, animal carcasses and even asbestos used in roofing. In many places, the damage is extreme. In Jabal al-Rayas, once a thriving farming community, every building has been knocked down, and even the cattle killed and left to lie rotting in the fields.

In al-Atatra, Ahmad Hassan, 65, the overseer of an orchard that once had hundreds of lemon and orange trees, surveyed an area flattened by bulldozers. "This was the well," he said, showing a pile of bulldozed concrete. "We can clear the ground in two weeks. Then what? The well is gone. The pump has been destroyed. And where will the trees come from to replant the land?"

Van Nieuwenhuyse said: "Already, the price of meat has tripled since the Israeli operation began. What is more worrying is the situation over vegetables. Protein we can help with, but before this there were already deficiencies in the diet. Now they will have to rely on Israel."

It was a view echoed by Hassan Abu Etah, the deputy agriculture minister in Gaza. "It has all been hugely damaged. And it affects all of Gaza, not simply the farmers. We produced some of what we needed. It makes you wonder whether they wanted to change Gaza from production to consumption."

In the heavily damaged village of Khuza'a, near Khan Younis, Salam Najar surveyed the no-go zone that extends from the last houses in the village to the border fence where Israeli farmland begins. "Most of the families here have farmed that side. Now no one feels safe to go there. They have destroyed it all."

Link: Viva Palestina web site

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Unions: Labour was warned about jobs for foreigners

Unions: Labour was warned about jobs for foreigners by Jamie Doward, Toby Helm, and Tom Kington - The Observer

As industrial unrest at foreign-owned companies refusing to hire British workers spreads, it has emerged the government was told in 2004 that EU laws were being used to prevent local people taking up UK jobs

The government was warned five years ago that European laws governing the employment of foreign workers in the UK would result in the current industrial unrest sweeping the country.

The revelation comes amid fears that the row is playing into the hands of the far right and claims that similar strikes could affect other key projects.

The disruption has come back to haunt the prime minister, Gordon Brown, who in 2007 - in his first speech to the Labour party as its leader - promised to bring in "British jobs for British workers".

The former Labour minister Frank Field last night called on Brown to make an emergency statement to parliament tomorrow. Field wants a new law to compel companies operating in the UK to offer contracts to domestic workers first. "We have got to get ahead of this debate rather than react to it," Field said. "Unless we do, we are supplying oxygen to the BNP."

Jon Cruddas, the Labour MP for Dagenham, said there was a real risk that "prestige projects", such as the 2012 Olympics, would be hit by similar protests unless ministers acted. At the last count, only 63% of workers on the Olympics site were British.

"If the government is planning big infrastructure projects to keep the economy moving - including the Olympics - this needs to be resolved now, because it is in the construction and engineering sectors where these issues are most acute," Cruddas said.

Last night the Unite union demanded urgent talks with Brown. It called for the government to ensure contractors on public infrastructure projects agreed to sign new corporate social responsibility clauses that will ensure free access for local labour. "If the government can bail out the banks, it can deliver a level playing field for engineering and construction workers in the UK," said Derek Simpson, joint general secretary of the union.

The prime minister's spokesman said the government would hold talks with the construction industry in the next few days "to ensure they are doing all they can to support the UK economy". When asked about the growing unrest, Brown - speaking from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland - said he "understood" people's worries.

In an interview with the BBC's Politics Show to be broadcast today the Prime Minister condemned those threatening wildcat strikes, saying "that's not the right thing to do and it's not defensible." He also said that when he had talked about British jobs for British workers he was referring to "giving them the skills" so that they could get jobs that were going to foreigners.

As the row threatened to become increasingly xenophobic, the business secretary, Lord Mandelson, warned it should not jeopardise the UK's relationship with Europe. "It would be a huge mistake to retreat from a policy where, within the rules, UK companies can operate in Europe and European companies can operate here. Protectionism would be a surefire way of turning recession into depression."

This weekend the conciliation service, Acas, was continuing to try to calm the crisis that has seen workers at oil and power plants up and down the country stage unofficial protests in support of employees at the Lindsey refinery at North Killingholme. Lincolnshire. They are protesting at a decision by the refinery's owner, Total, to hand a £200m construction contract to the Italian company Irem, which employs only Italian and Portuguese workers on the site.

Similar protests have been made at two other construction projects -a refinery in Staythorpe, Nottinghamshire, and a power station on the Isle of Grain, Kent. In both cases, contractors working on behalf of foreign firms have said they will not use local labour.

Further industrial unrest is likely this week. Tomorrow, workers at Sellafield will consider a walkout.

Labour MPs are to table a Commons motion demanding changes to the law to prevent foreign companies undercutting national agreements negotiated by unions on behalf of British work forces.

Colin Burgon, Labour MP for Elmet, said that, if the law remained as it was, "there is going to be social unrest".

It has emerged that unions negotiating the 2004 Warwick agreement - the manifesto commitments made by Labour to the unions in return for financial backing - warned ministers that EU laws were being used to preclude domestic workers from applying for jobs in the UK.

The unions told the government that the way it had introduced the EU's "posted workers directive" - which guaranteed rights for temporary workers in EU countries - was being circumvented by foreign construction and engineering companies operating in the UK.

The 1996 directive was introduced in the UK in 1999 via a series of minor amendments to the Employment Relations Act. The unions told the government it had missed an opportunity to introduce comprehensive laws in the spirit of the directive that would guarantee a level playing field for all workers by barring the sort of exclusive practices that have triggered the current protests.

"We raised these fears with the government at the time of the Warwick agreement in 2004 and they now need to get on with resolving it," said Paul Kenny, general secretary of the GMB union.

A series of recent rulings by the European Court of Justice has also raised fears the directive is being interpreted in a way that undermines the rights of EU member states' domestic workers.

Adolfo Urso, Italy's undersecretary for economic development, yesterday claimed the protests "are the product of an ignorance which verges on racism".

Italian and Portuguese workers at the centre of the row are said to be in fear for their safety as they remained on board a barge in Grimsby docks.

Link: George Galloway: "It's about decent jobs, available to all"

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Furious energy workers down tools - Morning Star

THREATENED: Workers protesting at unfair hiring practices outside the Lindsey oil refinery on Friday. Pic: Morning Star.

Furious energy workers down tools - Morning Star

THOUSANDS of energy workers defied Britain's anti-union laws on Friday, hitting oil refineries, gas and chemical plants and power stations with strikes and solidarity action.

Workers at mass meetings across the country voted to strike in solidarity with construction workers at the Lindsey oil refinery in Lancashire, who downed tools in protest at their bosses' unfair hiring practices.

The Total refinery had contracted out work to a construction firm that then brought in Italian workers who unions feared would be exploited by bosses to undercut the pay and conditions of existing staff.

Workers at the nearby ConocoPhillips refinery and the massive Grangemouth refinery in Scotland ignored repressive Tory anti-union laws by walking off the job in solidarity and sparking a wave of defiant protests and unofficial strikes across the country.

Shell's gas terminal in Aberdeen, ExxonMobil's petrochemicals plant in Fife, the liquefied natural gas terminal in Milford Haven, a chemical plant in Teeside and the Corus steelworks near Redcar were all hit by lightning walk-outs or protests throughout the day.

Unite Aberdeen union organiser Tommy Campbell insisted that workers were protesting against their bosses, not the foreign workers that management had brought in.

"Bosses always try to use nationality to create divisions among workers, but the point is to stop management breaking national union agreements," he said.

One of the Unite shop stewards at the Total refinery Garry Scales stressed that workers were "angry that people from outside Britain are being taken on" while skilled local workers are added to the dole queue.

And local Labour MP Shona McIsaac added that the contractor's decision had been "like a red rag to a bull for local people who are out of work."

But Unite Scotland organiser Bobby Buirds pointed out that "our argument is not against foreign workers."

As the nazi BNP tried to exploit the workers' fight, with deputy leader Simon Darby claiming on Friday that BNP members would soon join the picket lines, refinery worker and Unite activist Billy Bones told the fascist party to keep away.

"The BNP will not be welcome under any circumstances. The Italian workers have every right to be there as their firm won the contract and the issue is not their nationality," he declared.

"The BNP influence can only be a negative one," he said.

GMB union officer Kathleen Walker Shaw agreed, calling BNP "exploitation of the workers' legitimate concerns abhorrent."

Referring to the Total's contractor's actions, she pointed out: "Bosses shouldn't undermine workers in other countries like this. At a time of mass unemployment, it encourages the narrow, nationalistic arguments that led to fascism in the 1930s."

Unite joint general secretary Derek Simpson revealed that union lawyers would now be investigating the "potential illegality of some employers' practices in the engineering and construction industries."

Announcing plans for a national protest in London, he said: "We will do everything in our power to ensure that employers end this immoral and politically dangerous practice of excluding British workers."

George Galloway: "It's about decent jobs, available to all"

Link: JERRY HICKS ON REFINERY DISPUTES
Link: Star Comment: Biting back at bosses' Europe
Link: Features: Undermining Labour - Morning Star
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Video: 2009-01-26 - George Galloway - Bolton (Gaza)

Supporting Gaza - why over 1000's people turned up in Bolton. Please watch this video and support the "Viva Palestina" Aid Convoy to Gaza.

Link: "Viva Palestina" Web Site
Link: "Viva Palestina" - Facebook Group - all the latest news
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George Galloway on the Aid Convoy for Gaza video

"Viva Palestina" - Support the UK Aid Convoy to Gaza.

More - Video George Galloway MP on the Aid Convoy for Gaza

Link: Video: George Galloway MP | Protest For Gaza, Against ...
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We will not go down (Song for Gaza) by Michael Heart

If you care about Gaza and Palestine please watch this video.

Donate to the Viva Palestina UK Aid Covoy to Palestine HERE - its leaves for Gaza on Saturday 14th February.

Link: Palestinian Gaza - NEW SONG 2009 (little kid si...
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Gaza: BBC Manchester protest

GGaza: BBC Manchester protest yesterday. Pic Richard Searle.

There was about 60 of us and most got into the lobby area and stayed for 45 minutes, chanting and demanding to see the senior manager on duty. A protest was mentioned at the huge Galloway public meeting last night and Respect decided to get into the building and occupy. Two members held the doors open and kept the security guards at bay while the protest moved into the lobby.

At all times, it was peaceful but angry. When the police arrived, they were more concerned to talk to the BBC management and defuse the protest than throw us out. So the BBC senior manager on duty agreed to a meeting tomorrow. The question is whether the BBC shows good faith.

Once we left, the DEC broadcast was shown on the side of the BBC building.

Comment by Chris C on Socialist Unity

Link: More pictures - Richard Searle
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Double standards as the Gaza death toll rises by Salma Yaqoob

Double standards as the Gaza death toll rises by Salma Yaqoob.

Double standards as the Gaza death toll rises

The Boycott Israel Campaign
The world has been looking on in shock and disbelief as over the last three weeks the people living in the tiny Gaza Strip have been subjected to a devastating Israeli onslaught.

The whole of Gaza is sealed by the Israelis so families have nowhere to flee to for safety, and urgent food and medical supplies are blocked from going in. The mothers of Gaza are asking: For what crime are our children being killed?

While more than 10 Israelis have died, over 1,000 Palestinians, including more than 400 children have been killed. Any loss of human life is tragic, regardless of background, but the impact on children in this latest war is particularly disturbing. Senior United Nations officials are now calling for an international war crimes investigation in Gaza due to the indiscriminate bombardment which has destroyed homes, schools and hospitals, including a UN school and aid depot.

Amid the brutal military ‘operation’ (they don’t call it ‘war’) a slick Israeli PR operation has been under way. While people around the world, including many Jewish people, recoil in horror at the carnage that has been unleashed, Israeli officials and their apologists have been busy explaining it is they who are the victims. It is Israelis who fear for their survival and that killing Palestinian children really is a regrettable by-product in their war on Hamas – which they claim is a terrorist outfit whose goal is to drive all Jews into the sea. And when mention is made of the treatment of Palestinians, Zionists invoke the experience of the European Holocaust to silence any criticism, often deliberately using the charge of ‘anti-Semitism’ to curtail discussion.

These carefully crafted and oft-repeated messages are very much part of Israel’s ruthless war on the Palestinian people. They mask a very different reality.

The current conflict has taken place against a breakdown of a six-month ceasefire in which no Israeli died due to rocket fire, a ceasefire initiated by Hamas but broken by an Israeli incursion that killed six Palestinians in November. This attack was deliberately designed as a provocation to wage war in the dying days of the Bush presidency and in the run-up to Israeli elections in February.

Given the adjective ‘militant’ or ‘terrorist’ at any mention of Hamas, very few people in the West even know Hamas is the official government of the Occupied Territories, elected in 2006. The former US president Jimmy Carter and his observers described it as “one of the cleanest and fairest elections” he had ever witnessed. It has been several years since Hamas’ leadership offered to negotiate a two-state solution based on the pre-1967 borders. Instead of embracing this compromise which gives the Israelis 80 per cent of original Palestine and ensures a lasting peace, the Israelis have refused to even negotiate. Instead they have chosen to continue to pursue a path of aggression and further expansion.

Furthermore, given Hamas members and their families are part of the fabric of the society, living together in the overcrowded strip, the notion they use civilians as protection for launching rockets into Israel and base their mortars alongside schools is ludicrous. It is simply another lie in the Israeli arsenal to draw attention away from the fact defenceless civilians are being bombarded quite deliberately as part of breaking even the idea of self-determination for ordinary Palestinians.

The idea Israel faces a threat to its very existence, is surrounded by many enemies and is alone in defending itself, is another line peddled to justify Israel’s appalling violence, sadly repeated in this paper by Sir Bernard Zissman last week. The reality of course is Israel is not a weak or vulnerable state. On the first day alone, Israel boasted having dropped 100 tonnes of bombs in Gaza. It is backed by the most powerful state in the world, the US, and its allies. It is given overwhelming military and diplomatic support. It is American F16s that are being used to bomb Palestinians and it is the US veto in the UN Security Council which allows Israel to violate more than 100 UN Resolutions without facing any practical consequences.

Many people around the world have seen through the propaganda smokescreen despite Israel banning any foreign journalists from entering Gaza. The public has been shocked with the ineffectual hand-wringing and little action on the parts of government to curtail Israel’s violence. There have been demonstrations around the world, including huge ones up and down this country.

To that end I am really pleased colleagues from all four parties in Birmingham City Council have signed a call for government to allow the council to implement sanctions against countries which continuously flout UN resolutions, Israel being one of the worst offenders. The cabinet must now act on this cross-party recommendation.

The principle here is moral consistency. It is not that Israel should be singled out for punitive measures, but that it should stop being treated with kid gloves and given diplomatic cover for acting above the law. It is not unreasonable to expect Israel to adhere to international norms and to subject it to sanctions until it does so. In the past Iraq has been subjected to sanctions for non-compliance. Today, Iran and Hamas continue to be subjected to economic sanctions.

According to Home Office figures annual bilateral trade between Britain and Israel has exceeded £2 billion for the past five years. Israel is the UK’s largest individual export market and trading partner in the region. Every year the British government approves over £20m in arms sales to Israel. So of course it has huge leverage in this situation.

The UN’s Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, John Dugard, and Desmond Tutu, the former Archbishop of Cape Town, have described the Israeli treatment of many Palestinians as being worse than during apartheid-era South Africa. One of the factors that helped bring an end to the South African apartheid regime was international pressure including a boycott approach.

Birmingham citizens have been protesting in their thousands. It is heartening to see their desire for peace and concern for human life. Young people, especially, however, cannot understand the double standards and it is imperative we show leadership and emphasise peaceful non-violent solutions. There needs to be an immediate lifting of the blockade of Gaza, Israel should stop being treated above the law and sanctions need to be implemented until it abides by international law and UN resolutions.

* Salma Yaqoob is Birmingham City Respect Councillor for Sparkbrook - Web Site

Link: Salma Yaqoobs Web Site
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MP wins standing ovation in plea for people of Gaza

SUPPORT FOR PALESTINE: Part of the audience which heard Mr Galloway appeal for aid for Gaza.

MP wins standing ovation in plea for people of Gaza - The Bolton News

RESPECT MP George Galloway addressed an audience of more than 1,000 supporters as he urged Bolton to back a humanitarian aid appeal for the people of Gaza.

The outspoken MP for Bethnal Green and Bow was given a standing ovation after he delivered a powerful speech at the 3D Centre in Bella Street, Daubhill, last night.

Mr Galloway condemned the Israeli government’s violence in Palestine and criticised the American and British governments for supporting Israel.

He also launched a scathing attack on the BBC for refusing to televise a humanitarian aid appeal for the people in Gaza who have been left dead, injured and homeless by the fighting.

He said: “The British government, which already has one million Muslims’ blood on their hands with the Bush and Blair invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, has sided with Israel from the beginning.”

Mr Galloway is planning to lead an aid convoy from the UK to Gaza, via Europe and north Africa, on February 14.

He is appealing for people to donate food, clothes, medicine, toys and other aid to be transported to Gaza in the convoy.

As he urged people to give whatever they had, audience members came forward with donations ranging from packets of painkillers to office space.

One man donated a 44-tonne truck to the appeal, while another gave two ambulances and a student offered the use of his house for two weeks.

Collection buckets were passed round and returned stuffed with notes.

Mr Galloway said: “You need to get your own trucks. Get the name of Bolton on them. Make sure that the convoy doesn’t arrive in Gaza with no presence from Bolton.”

Mr Galloway pledged to the audience that he would to return to Bolton to report his findings after his visit to Gaza.

Link: Viva Palestina - support the Covoy to Gaza
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Video: Protest against BBC in London for blocking Gaza charity appeal

Tony Ben and George Galloway Respect MP ouside the BBC last Saturday - an example to all in direct peacefull protest!

Video lasts for 1.33 secs - worth a look. On YouTube by PalestinianArchive

Link: Galloway Gaza Protest BBC 24th January 2009 Lon... - You Tube
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