THE NEW WORKER

The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 24th August 2018


Crawling to the Americans

Crawling to the Americans WE SHOULDN’T be surprised at the Government’s renewed call for more sanctions against Russia. Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt claims that “President Putin has made the world a more dangerous place” and says: “The United Kingdom asks its allies to go further by calling on the European Union to ensure its sanctions against Russia are comprehensive, and that we truly stand shoulder to shoulder with the US. That means calling out and responding to transgressions with one voice whenever and wherever they occur, from the streets of Salisbury to the fate of Crimea.”

Licking the boots of Uncle Sam has been the policy of the British ruling class since the Second World War in the belief that this would help ensure continued American protection of their global interests in the post-colonial world. To a certain degree it did but only when it serves the over-arching interests of American imperialism.

During his presidential campaign Donald Trump claimed he was in favour of a rapprochement with the Russians. In the White House however, Trump is a prisoner of the most aggressive circles within the American ruling class — the ‘deep state’ that cuts across the American political divide to control Congress and the police and legal bureaucracy of the USA. They want a trade war with Russia and China. But whether they’ll give the British government a loyalty bonus remains to be seen.

The Government needs to turn to the Russian market if it seriously wants to restore the manufacturing and general export sector in the post-Brexit era. It can expect no favours from the Russians if Hunt carries on like this.

Immigration and asylum

NIGEL FARAGE’S return to politics amidst reports that his followers are planning to flood the Tory party in order to boost Boris Johnson’s bid for the leadership may simply be just another silly season diversion by our worthless national media. But there’s no doubt that the former UKIP leader intends to play a prominent role in a new Brexit movement called ‘Leave Means Leave’.

Workers have no say in the electoral procedures of the party that has been the chosen political instrument of bourgeois rule for the past 100 years or so. Whoever the Tories choose as their leader is a matter of total indifference to working people. Brexit is another matter.

It is clear that Farage and those behind him will play the racist card again in a new campaign designed to thwart the ‘soft’ Brexit that the May government seems to favour. It is equally clear that this is precisely the arena that the Remainers intend to fight them on, using the bogus claims on the ‘freedom of travel’ that is supposedly such a boon to workers trapped inside the European Union (EU).

The New Communist Party recognises the need for any sovereign state to set an immigration policy in accordance with its resources. But we firmly oppose any immigration policy that discriminates, either directly or indirectly, on the basis of race, creed, colour or gender.

It must never be more profitable for a boss to employ one worker rather than another on the basis of where they were born. EU rules that allow contractors to import labour from one country to another, to work under worse terms and conditions than those of the country where the work is done, will end when we leave the EU.

We call for the repeal of the Immigration and Asylum Acts of the 1990s that make it very difficult for many genuine asylum seekers to establish their claims. Asylum seekers must be treated humanely and their claims dealt with swiftly. Whilst this process takes place they must be given decent accommodation and welfare benefits to survive. No asylum seekers should be locked up unless there is good reason to believe they are criminals and no child asylum seeker should ever be locked up