National News
Anti-fascists march through Liverpool
THOUSANDS of anti-fascists took part in a march in Liverpool last Saturday against the activities of the extreme right-wing and neo-Nazis.
They included many trade union delegations, Unite Against Fascism supporters, community and religious groups and concerned individuals.
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New Snowden revelations to come
GLENN GREENWALD, the Guardian journalist now located in Brazil who was among the first to reveal Washington’s vast electronic surveillance programme, as leaked by Edward Snowden, last week announced his intention to publish more of the leaks.
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Housing colour bar still there
INVESTIGATIVE journalists working for the BBC last week uncovered letting agents in London who are prepared to discriminate against would-be tenants on the grounds of race.
Under the Equality Act 2010, it is illegal for businesses to refuse to provide a service based on ethnicity.
But 10 firms told a reporter posing as a landlord they would not let to African-Caribbean people at his request. A black researcher was denied viewings, yet his white counterpart was welcomed.
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Police Raid on Smithy Fen
ON THE MORNING of Tuesday 8th October over 50 police officers raided several homes at Smithy Fen, a Traveller site in Cambridgeshire, according to a report from the Traveller Solidarity Network.
What made this heavy-handed assault even more egregious was that a number of those raided faced eviction less than two years ago at Dale Farm. The picture is still unclear, although many in the mainstream media have already employed their usual racist drivel.
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Memorial for Senghenydd miners
HUNDREDS of people gathered on Monday in Senghenydd in South Wales to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Britain’s worst mining disaster and the unveil a memorial to the 439 miners who lost their lives there on 14th October 1913 and other mining tragedies in Wales.
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Red Cross aid for victims of Con-Dem cuts
THE RED Cross last week announced that it is to begin collecting and distributing food aid to poor people in Britain for the first time since the Second World War.
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Suresh Grover told to ‘go home’
LIFE-LONG anti-fascist campaigner, Suresh Grover, who has been a British citizen for several decades last week received a text message from the UK Border Agency, telling him “You are required to leave the UK as you no longer have right to remain.”
Suresh Grover is currently head of the west London-based civil rights organisation, the Monitoring Group. He’s entitled to be here — has been since 1966 — and he has indisputably “given back” to the community.
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Teachers strike
ON THURSDAY 17th October members of the NUT and NASUWT teaching unions which collectively represent more than 90 per cent of teachers have been on strike.
This has caused school closures and marches and rallies of teachers in Brighton, Eastbourne and Hastings.
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A new leader for the EDL?
ELLIOTT Fountain, a former Boston councillor last week claimed that he is to be the new leader of the Islamophobic English Defence League.
Councillor Fountain lost his seat on Boston Borough Council earlier this year for failing to turn up to a meeting in six months.
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Ibrox manager ‘threatens’ nuclear submarines
by Phil Mac Giolla Bháin
WHEN Glasgow Rangers (1872-2012) were in their tax-dodging days in the first decade of the millennium, the British military were fighting in two wars and their soldiers were dying through the lack of appropriate equipment.
Clearly the Ibrox faithful and the boardroom barons love the British crown forces (as we’ve seen from the sensational video revelations of their Armed Forces Day shenanigans, including a loyalist karaoke on the pitch in full military uniform) — it’s just that they don’t want to pay for them.
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International News
The crime at Lampedusa Island
by John Catalinotto
A BOAT crowded with 500 refugees that had left from a port in Libya foundered off Italy’s Lampedusa Island, located 130 miles south of Sicily. According to media reports someone set a blanket on fire to call attention to their plight. The fire spread, driving the refugees to overload one side of the ship, capsizing and sinking it. Only 155 people have been rescued. The more than 300 others are feared dead.
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China, Vietnam able to handle differences properly
Xinhua news agency
CHINESE Premier Li Keqiang said here on Monday that his country and Vietnam have both the ability and the wisdom to settle bilateral differences in a proper manner.
The two neighbours enjoy a deep-rooted traditional friendship, and the development of each country is an opportunity for that of the other, Li said during a meeting with Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang.
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Syria: terrorists take a pounding
by Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey
ACROSS Syria the heroic efforts of the Syrian Arab Army against western- backed terrorists are liberating vast areas from this demonic scourge, returning law and order and safety to the beleaguered civilians. Meanwhile the weapons inspectors praise the Syrian authorities for their cooperation, while stating that access to certain sites was blocked by insurgents.
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Urgent appeal for political prisoners in Israeli jails
by Steven Katsineris
AFTER 100 days on hunger strike four of the five Palestinian hunger strikers with Jordanian citizenship suspended their strike when the Israeli Prison Service agreed to allow family visits for the first time. Some of them have not been allowed to see their families for 13 years.
Two months later however, Israel has reneged on the deal with not a single prisoner being allowed to see their family. The father of Jordanian prisoner Abdullah Al-Barghouti is in a critical condition in hospital with only one wish — to see his son before he dies. The Jordanian government for its part has been complicit with Israel, in not pursuing the rights of its citizens. So the families have been left in limbo, their hopes now rest with the sole remaining Palestinian/ Jordanian hunger striker Alaa Hammad.
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TOR: Who’s Next?
by Neil Harris
TOR (“The Onion Router”) the US government- sponsored internet “anonymiser” has been in the news again over the last couple of weeks. Since we exposed it as a “honey trap” last year, TOR has continued to provide the evidence used to entrap those foolish enough to think that it provided them with some kind of anonymity.
Developed by the Office of Naval Intelligence and still 60 per cent funded by US Government agencies, TOR provides anonymity for US spies and US backed “dissidents” around the world. In fact it also gives the American government a two-way mirror into the worlds of “dissident” activism, the criminal underworld and the kinds of terrorism the US doesn’t control or sponsor.
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Features
Black History Month
How Explo Nani-Kofi escaped from prison
Explo Nani-Kofi fled from Ghana after Jerry Rawlings’ army coup in 1981. He eventually came to London where he continued to campaign for African unity and democratic rights in Ghana as well as playing an active role in the anti-war movement. Political change in Ghana has enabled Explo to return to Ghana to continue his work. Explo was a frequent speaker at NCP events when he lived in London and still sees his old comrades on visits to Britain.
BUILDING on his activities from the Mock Parliament, Students and Youth Movement for African Unity and Current Affairs Society in Mawuli School, Explo became the national leader of the Students and Youth Movement for African Unity (SMAU), organising branches around Ghana.
He was also a member the Kwame Nkrumah Revolutionary Guards (KNRG) and had close relations with comrades in the 4th June Movement, People’s Revolutionary League of Ghana, New Democratic Movement, Movement On National Affairs, African Youth Command and the African Youth Brigade.
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Revolutionary tactics in the bourgeois dictatorship
by Neil Harris
THE CHANGING tactics of the Communist International (1919 to 1943) have become so associated with Lenin, Trotsky or Stalin and their respective followers, that it has become almost impossible to have a useful discussion about tactics at all. No one now can see beyond the positions the Bolshevik party’s factions held, even though Lenin died 89 years ago, Trotsky 73 years and Stalin 60 years ago.
Those who cling tightly to one Comintern thesis, like a lifebelt, are actually drowning in their own dogmatism — times change. Yet those tactics were tested out during the most dangerous of times and it’s a shameful waste to ignore the lives, sacrifices and experiences of those communists who came before us. An inability to freely debate tactics effectively accepts the reformist assumptions that dominate the left in Britain today and it’s also unscientific. For a moment let’s wipe away the dust of the past and take a fresh look at tactics through the eyes of a child of the 21st century.
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