The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 28th June 2024
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 28th June 2024
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
One remarkable feature of the present election is that Labour has had such an easy ride from the bourgeois press. So far, we have not heard anything about Sir Keir Starmer in his former role as Director of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), particularly over his inaction in the case of Sir Jimmy Savile OBE, Britain’s ‘best-loved’ paedophile.
Equally, Starmer’s earlier career has not been an issue. Between 1986 to 1987, Starmer was editor of Socialist Alternatives, a half-hearted Trotskyist journal which was the organ of the mighty British section of the International Revolutionary Marxist Tendency (IRMT), an organisation of which Starmer himself was a large percentage of its membership.
In those days he opposed the “paramilitary” policing of the Wapping dispute that broke the print unions in the newspaper industry. He was very keen on a “self-managing socialism” based on democratic control of production for “use” rather than “profit”.
Starmer is not of course alone. Several other Trots have turned their coats in the past. Munira Mirza, a former advisor to Boris Johnson, is not the only ex-member of the former Revolutionary Communist Party to find a home in the Tory Party. But to avoid charges of narrow sectarianism we must not forget that Margaret Thatcher’s economic policies were shaped by Sir Alfred Sherman, a Young Communist League member who was the youngest Briton to fight against Franco in the Spanish Civil War.
In the right-wing press, such as the Daily Mail and the Telegraph, there have been attempts to bring this terrifying past of Starmer to light in order to scare the bourgeois out of their skins, but these have been few and far between.
It is not difficult to see why. At the CPS Starmer was extremely energetic in the case of the anti-austerity protesters who occupied Fortnum & Mason in 2012, when some chocolate bunnies were tragically broken before they could get their heads bitten off by greedy children.
When, after the 2019 election (which was lost partly because of his sabotage), Starmer launched his leadership campaign by saying he would be a more effective advocate of “Corbynism” than Corbyn and he boasted of providing legal support to the McLibel campaigners. This was group who leafleted branches of the American multinational food chain MacDonalds asserting their products were not the of healthiest foodstuffs around, a fact MacDonalds contested in court at great expense. However, as this campaign had been infiltrated and a policeman even helped write the offending leaflet, one wonders if Starmer’s pro bono work was precisely that.
Under his watch the CPS actually advised undercover police officers on infiltration techniques. When it was exposed that some of those doing the infiltrating were organising illegal activities and fathering children with other activists, the only investigation by the CPS was a whitewash and no redress was forthcoming for activities organised in the name of an “anti-extremism” crusade – which focused primarily on environmentalists.
Starmer’s reluctance to prosecute the police who shot and killed an innocent Brazilian electrician in the aftermath of the 2005 London tube bombings is more typical. In contrast he was a very eager persecutor of Julian Assange, strongly urging Swedish prosecutors to continue their efforts to attack him, while cutting back on the Murdoch press phone-hacking prosecutions.
He even made no less than four trips to Washington to ensure that Assange was deported to Sweden to face sexual assault charges, which even British intelligence said was a fit up. Mysteriously all records of these trips have vanished.
Starmer made the law tougher on those improperly, often accidentally, claiming benefits (about 0.7 per cent of the welfare budget) by putting such offences under the Fraud Act that brought tougher sentences and lowered the thresholds which meant even the smallest offences could be pursued.
He was much softer on the £12 billion lost through corporate tax avoidance but drew up rules giving police officers more power to arrest demonstrators after the 2010 student protests. This meant police could arrest someone for wearing a scarf on the grounds that could hide their identity or carrying deadly weapons such as placards. After the 2011 London riots he visited courts to congratulate judges for tough and rapid sentences. This moved Ken Macdonald, his predecessor at the DPP to say this episode marked a “collective loss of proportion”, and an abnegation of “humanity or justice”.
MI5 is in debt to Starmer for him not prosecuting those involved in the CIA’s overseas torture programme. One might wonder if there is any connection between this and the fact that he secured a safe Labour seat less than two years after joining the Labour Party. Stranger things have happened.
Clearly the bourgeoisie have no reason to fear Starmer. Other papers are also keen on Starmer. At time of typing, the “paper of record”, The Times, has not declared its recommendation. But it always likes to be on the winning side, so it and its vulgar brother, the Sun, will likely endorse Starmer. The daily cartoons in the Times by Peter Brookes are particularly vicious towards Sunak. It is telling that the widespread coverage of the betting scandal involving a few highly placed Tories making a few pounds from multimillion gambling companies willing to take their money has been given such a high profile.
The newspaper endorsements have so far been predictable: The Telegraph for the Tories, the Mirror for Labour, while the Mail has been frightening its readers away from voting for Reform on the grounds that this will only open the door to more Labour gains.
An Unlikely Convert
It is highly unlikely that Reform Party owner Nigel Farage is a New Worker reader or has had much engagement with the International Ukrainian Anti-Fascist Solidarity movement, but he certainly set the cat among the pigeons by making the observation that “we provoked this war. Of course it’s his [Putin’s] fault he’s used what we’ve done as an excuse”. Similar sentiments were made over a decade ago by John Pilger in the Guardian on the 13th May 2014, and more recently by the Pope in Rome. John Mearsheimer, the Chicago-based “realist” political scientist who thinks America needs to focus its energies on China has taken the same view.
Farage’s uncharacteristically sound remarks came at a time when the Tories are putting all their resources into defending normally extremely safe seats and complaining about the dangers to democracy of Labour getting a “supermajority”, and so he was roundly denounced by the massed ranks of the third battalion of armchair generals.
Money Talks
Big business is now throwing its weight behind Labour. Electoral Commission figures show that by the half-way mark in the middle of June the Tories only raised £889,000 for the entire campaign. Last time round in 2019 they had a war chest of £8.7 million.
Labour is raking in the dosh from businessmen such as the Bestway Wholesale group and a mysterious organisation known as “The Spring Lunch”. In all it secured £5.3 million, of which £2.5 million came from Lord David Sainsbury whose name says it all. Sainsbury was once the main backer of the old Social Democratic Party set up to destroy a more leftish Labour, so it is not difficult to see why he invests in Labour. Autoglass boss Gary Lubner gave £900,000, while hedge fund manager Martin Taylor invested £700,000 in Labour. As train drivers’ union ASLEF has only supplied £100,000 it is not difficult to work out who will have the most influence.
The Green Party secured £20,000, which will not buy many ethically sourced biodegradable leaflets. Ironically, the only major contribution to Alex Salmond’s Alba Party was one of £36,305 that came from the Electoral Commission by virtue of the fact that it has two MPs who have sworn loyalty to the Crown.
A Rare Victory
It is not often the left gets to claim an almost total victory against the Establishment, but all the rallies and pickets outside the court and vigils outside the Ecuadorian Embassy and Belmarsh have finally paid off in the case of Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, which caused so much embarrassment.
A deal means he was released from his dungeon and sent to an American colony in the Pacific, where he will plead guilty in court to one charge for which he will receive a brief custodial sentence that will be cancelled out by the five years already spent in the top-security Belmarsh. After these formalities were completed on Wednesday he was allowed to return to his native Australia, a more agreeable form of deportation than was practised centuries ago.
Naturally the Americans have agreed, for reasons of their own, to come up with this deal. Sleepy Joe Biden desperately needed something to keep his more liberal supporters happy, especially as they have been alienated by his unwavering support for Zionist atrocities. The atrocities committed by the American military exposed by Wikileaks’ hacking of Pentagon computers include those under the watch of Obama and Biden and well as those from George W Bush.
The American government could have more easily prosecuted the New York Time which published the material made public by Wikileaks, but that would not look good. Nearer to home, the Guardian which initially published some of Assange’s revelations showed very little support for the widespread campaign to free him. This is an all too typical stand by that sanctimonious organ of the liberal bourgeoisie. Older readers will remember how it failed to shield the whistleblower who exposed British intelligence spying on CND once they had got their story.
Wikileaks said of the decision: “This is the result of a global campaign that spanned grass-roots organisers, press freedom campaigners, legislators and leaders from across the political spectrum, all the way to the United Nations. This created the space for a long period of negotiations with the US Department of Justice, leading to a deal that has not yet been formally finalised.”
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese welcomed the announcement, piously claiming that: “I’ve been very clear as both the Labour leader and opposition, but also as prime minister that – regardless of the views that people have about Mr Assange’s activities – the case has dragged on for too long.”
National Union of Journalists (NUJ) general secretary Michelle Stanistreet said: “The release of Julian Assange, after a hardfought campaign by journalists worldwide, signifies the final stages of an ordeal he has faced for several years…the targeting and persecution of journalists in this way is one that underscores the need to defend journalism and the methods used daily, including when cultivating a source.”
Sir Keir Starmer has not made any comment so far.
The Class Struggle Continues
Despite electoral distractions the class struggle continues. One of the most important is that in South Wales, where workers are taking all-out strike action to save the steel works whose owners, Tata, are threatening to close it entirely.
On Monday about 1,500 Tata workers at Port Talbot and Llanwern will start all-out indefinite strike action to oppose Tata’s plans to cut 2,800 jobs and close its blast furnaces. This will be the first time in over 40 years that steel workers in the UK have taken strike action. This follows an overtime ban that began on 17th June.
Sharon Graham, Unite’s general secretary, said: “Our members will not stand by while this immensely wealthy conglomerate tries to throw Port Talbot and Llanwern on the scrapheap so it can boost its operations abroad. They know South Wales is ideally placed to take advantage of the coming boom in green steel. “The strikes will go on until Tata halts its disastrous plans. Unite is backing Tata’s workers to the hilt in their historic battle to save the Welsh steel industry and give it the bright future it deserves.”
The union optimistically points out that Labour has promised a £3 billion investment in privatised UK steel and that Labour has also made emergency talks with Tata a priority if it wins the election. The Tories have already offered Tata half that to subsidise Tata’s investment.
On Monday Tata threatened an early closure of the blast furnaces, which it claims it wants to replace with greener ones that cannot produce steel from scratch. These can only cope with recycled steel and cannot produce the high-quality steel needed for construction or vehicle production.
The two other unions involved, Community (the former Iron and Steel Trades Confederation) and GMB, both support the action. Eighty-five per cent of Community members voted to support while the much smaller GMB members voted by 72 per cent for action. Tata’s response was the threaten to cut redundancy payments to the bare minimum.
Despite Unite’s announcement of all out-strike action, it is unclear if this deepening of the dispute will be followed by the other two unions, who have not had much to say in recent weeks and whose reputation for militancy is patchy to say the least. Despite the importance of this matter to the Welsh, and indeed UK, economy the Welsh TUC has next to nothing to say, preferring to focus on its 50th birthday nostalgia-fest celebrations.
Of lesser importance but worthy of note is the fact that the RMT marked International Seafarers Day on Monday when its members in the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) took strike action over pay. They had previously taken global action on the 19th May.
General Secretary Mick Lynch said: “This strike represents more than just a demand for fair pay; it is a stand for the respect and acknowledgment of seafarers and their crucial role worldwide.”
He added that: “RFA management and the government must urgently address this dispute and recognise the significant anger and frustration among RMT members.”
Finally, it has been confirmed that GMB workers employed by Whyte & Mackay at two distilleries in the Scottish Highlands will definitely be taking strike action despite the other union involved, Unite, calling off its action. Unite’s members at the company’s bottling plant in Fife voted to accept an improved pay offer that they said amounted to 10 per cent over two years; GMB say it’s only worth 6.8 per cent.
Whyte & Mackay warn that supplies could be seriously interrupted.