The UK General Election in Scotland : Seize the Time to open the Road to a Sovereign Independent Scottish Socialist Republic

Democracy and Class Struggle in its analysis of the British General Election Circus recently analysed the Great British Lie and the United Kingdom Independence Party now we proceed to understand that new force north of the border The Scottish National Party.

We publish an extract from Allan Armstrong's article on Republicanism and Socialism recently made in Glasgow on the 11th April to set the scene on Scottish Nationalism and The Scottish National Party.


Today, the British ruling class is even more united in its opposition to the SNP government’s ‘Independence-Lite’ proposals. There is no room, under today’s conditions of economic and political crisis, for the SNP’s wannabe Scottish ruling class junior managerial buyout of the local branch of UK plc. 

This despite their acceptance of the monarchy and hence the continued ability of the UK state to intervene in Scotland; of NATO and hence a continued Scottish commitment to US and British imperial wars; and of the City of London and hence continued imposed austerity.

So, how did the British ruling class use those Crown Powers in the recent referendum campaign? They achieved their first objective, under the Edinburgh Agreement signed between the Westminster and Holyrood government. Alex Salmond, himself a Privy Councillor, agreed to the referendum being conducted under Westminster rules. 

This meant that the official’ Yes’ campaign had to be conducted under much greater official restrictions than the ‘No campaign’, which was able to draw upon those Crown Powers hidden from public scrutiny.

It will take thirty years before we know what methods were resorted to, beyond the obviously partisan use of senior civil servants and the BBC.

However, the Guardian exposed moves by the Ministry of Defence to have Faslane Trident base declared sovereign UK territory in the event of a ‘Yes’ vote (2).

If there had been a ‘Yes’ vote on September 18th, the SNP government did not recognise this as transferring sovereignty to the people of Scotland. 

They accept the principle that their sovereignty comes from those powers devolved from Westminster to Holyrood. 

Hence, they had already decided that their negotiating team with Westminster would include MSPs from the Labour, Conservative and Lib-Dem parties, and possibly even some of their Scottish MPs. 

The already low level of Scottish self-determination, already accepted under the SNP government’s ‘Independence-Lite’ proposals, would have been further whittled away under Westminster sovereignty.

Democracy and Class Struggle says that it is delusional if the Scottish Left think that an Independent Scottish  Republic can be legislated through the Scottish Parliament or any other bourgeois institution or won through the electoral circus of a British General Election.

The Scottish people will have to create new Scottish institutions of direct democracy like a Scottish Constituent  Assembly to eliminate British Crown Powers and return sovereignty to its people.

 We appeal  to the Scottish Radical Independence movement  to constitute a Scottish Socialist Republican Congress to lead the transition from a Monarchist Bourgeois Parliament  to Socialist Republic via a Scottish Constituent Assembly and to make the Scottish People Sovereign in their own country and not the British Crown..

 If we look at Norwegian or Irish Independence in the 20th century in Western Europe Scottish Socialists and Communists will need at minimum to create a Scottish Citizens Army to support the Scottish Republican Congress if they truely want to introduce independence and Socialism in Scotland and eliminate NATO and the Crown..

Socialism in Scotland will be opposed by the British State with all the perfidiousness it can muster which has been on display to the world for centuries and no one should be ignorant of it least of all socialists and communists.

John Maclean Scotland's great son and inspirer of the idea of an Independent Scottish Socialist Republic was a victim of that perfidy.

The UK General Election in Wales: "Our Independence is not Negotiable - Restore the Senedd Glyndwr" says Yr Aflonyddwch Mawr

No return to the British political trick of Liberal Imperialism of "Home Rule all Round"

No to the Crachach - Welsh Independence and Socialism in 2015.

Vote for Independence by your actions not just words on ballot papers,

The seven hundred year struggle for National and Social Liberation of the Welsh People continues before and after and in spite of the electoral circus.

Join us in the ground up struggle to defend our Land and Liberty.

Make the struggle for Wales part of your everyday life .

We have a Wales to Win for National and Social Liberation.

Join the Yr Aflonyddwch Mawr Today.

Third Worldism and Politicizing the Blame Game: What’s Revolutionary About That? by Kevin Rashid Johnson

                            

At just the moment that I was engaged in debating several Third Worldist tendencies and lines, I received and completed Zak Cope’s second edition of Divided World Divided Class.¹

Lots of worthy research went into Cope’s book, but the end conclusion, like the typical line of other Third Worldists, is that workers in the First World are not exploited and there is no basis for socialist revolution here. Basically the theory is that goods from the Third World are so cheap that it more than offsets the surplus labor extracted from First World workers and makes them exploiters of the Third World.

Of course, it doesn’t affect shit if you can’t afford to buy these goods, but you can make statistics dance to your tune if you play with them enough. The bottom line is this purely theoretical revisionist Marxism (which deviates from authentic Marxist philosophy—namely dialectical materialism), is all about justifying not doing revolutionary work in the First World—allowing the bourgeoisie and counter-revolution to reign by default—and awaiting revolution in the Third World to topple capitalist imperialism for us.

This line dogmatically and mechanically recognized only one of three contradictions with V.I. Lenin and others recognized inhere in the political economy of imperialism, namely the contradiction between the First World and the Third World’s (neo)colonized peoples. The two other contradictions that exist yet go ignored by the Third Worldists are the contradictions between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat (especially within the First World countries,) and the contradictions and rivalries between the various competing and cooperating imperialist powers.² These contradictions also factor in the struggles to defeat imperialism and achieve world socialist revolution.

It is true of course that everyone in an imperialist country derives some benefit from imperialism, but this doesn’t mean that the majority couldn’t derive more benefit from global socialism, elimination of war, for example, or avoiding ecological crisis; not to mention the elimination of poverty, racism, sexism, police repression and theocracy.

All of which cry out for solutions right here in the First World, around which a revolutionary line, program, and movement could and needs to be built. But not without a revolutionary leadership of course, which is the very thing the Third Worldists want above all to deny the First World masses.

It bears mentioning too that during Karl Marx’s day, he observed that the English workers amongst whom he based himself, his work and lived, derived benefits from England’s colonial exploitation of India, Ireland, etc. Yet he didn’t dismiss English workers as an enemy of those more severely exploited Third World peoples. In fact he noted that those “benefits” were offset by other burdens on the English workers inherent in maintaining England’s colonial areas. Here’s an example from Marx:

“It is thus evident that individuals gain largely by the English connection with India, and of course their gain goes to increase the sum of the national wealth. But against all this a very large offset is to be made. The military and naval expenses paid out of the pockets of the people of England and Indian account have been constantly increasing with the extent of the Indian domination. To this must be added the expense of Burmese, Afghan, Chinese, and Persian wars.  In fact the whole cost of the late Russian War may fairly be charged to the Indian account, since fear and dread of Russia, which led to that war, grew entirely out of jealousy as to her designs on India. Add to this the career of endless conquest and perpetual aggression in which the English are involved by the possession India, and it may well be doubted whether, on the whole, this domination does not threaten to cost quite as much as it can ever be expected to come to.”³

And even though he saw the English masses gained benefits from the colonial exploitation, Marx recognized that objectively revolutionary conditions existed among them, but they needed a revolutionary leadership (a vanguard) to awaken and actualize it. As he observed in 1870:

“The English have at their disposal all the necessary preconditions for a social revolution, what they lack is the spirit of generalization and revolutionary passion. Only the General Council [of the International] can provide them with this, and this accelerates a truly revolutionary movement here and in consequence, everywhere.”

Consider that it was as a result of the International’s leadership, in which Marx played no small part, that England’s textile workers opposed the Southern US plantation owners whose slave-labor produced the cotton on which their very jobs depended. The English bourgeoisie were therefore compelled to find other sources of the raw material. So we have an early example that First World workers who enjoy “benefits” from Third World super-exploitation can, with correct revolutionary leadership, become allies of the Third World masses.

Also, the Third Worldists see (dogmatically) that the value of labor is just enough to sustain and reproduce the labor force; as if socialized labor is not capable of providing everyone on the planet with more than mere subsistence and to do it within an environmentally balanced planet.

And the Blame Game Goes On

“Tools cry out for liberation,” as Mao Tse-tung put it. Only the revolutionized proletariat can lead us out of this mess and to a bright future for humanity, but to the economic determinist Third Worldists (who avoid looking at the Third World very much), the only issue is First World workers complicit in the exploitation of Third World countries.

In that case we can also say Third World workers are complicit in the exploitation of their own countries, their peasants and so on. We can say the Chinese masses were complicit in the overthrow of Socialism in their country and in the imperialism being practiced in Afrika and elsewhere by China. Much the same could be said of the Russian masses.

We can play the blame game all night long!

We can blame slaves for being complicit in their slavery, wimyn in their oppression, and rape victims in their rape. We can blame New Afrikans/Blacks and Browns in Amerika for being complicit in the militaristic and murderous police occupation of their communities because, for lack of other available options, they must call upon the same forces to respond to their community’s otherwise unmet security needs.

Does a worker go to the unemployment office and say, “I want to be complicit in the system of global imperialism, what have you got for me?”

People are struggling to get by as best they can. Shoppers don’t ask why one item costs more than a seemingly identical one, they buy the cheapest, or maybe the more expensive one hoping it is of a better quality.

Imperialism consciously chose to bribe sectors of the masses in the imperialist counties with various concessions (economic, political and otherwise), to avert the threat of socialist revolution on its home grounds and to sell its goods to consumers.

And the Third Worldists are content to concede this ground to the imperialists, allowing them and counter-revolution to reign by default. So whose complicity is really counter-revolutionary and criminal?

The Third Worldists or First World workers? As Mao observed, it is the role of revolutionary leaders to “create public opinion and seize power” — the opposite of the Third Worldist line of allowing the imperialists a free hand in manipulating public opinion and ceding power to them.

Even so, imperialism won’t and can’t keep this level of bribery up forever. Nor can it keep super-exploiting the Third World forever. It is the combination of austerity and repression at home and overextended military abroad that creates a revolutionary situation. But leave it to the Third Worldists and no one will do the political work needed to awaken the revolutionary consciousness of the workers and other oppressed sectors in the First World to seize the time. So their line if given sway performs the greatest service to imperialism.

Maintaining the Amerikan Empire

As said, the Third Worldists deny the basis for revolutionary class struggle in the First World, and overlook the role of inter-imperialist rivalry in the struggle to overthrow imperialism, but instead dogmatically focus on the contradiction between the First and Third Worlds as the sole basis for such struggle.

As both Lenin and Joseph Stalin were to observe, Communists should push to sharpen the conflicts between the imperialist powers. So whether the Third Worldists choose to recognize and act upon it or not, inter-imperialist conflict is rising with Amerika angling to maintain its world hegemony, which is actually the principal contradiction in the world today (not the First versus Third World contradiction, which the Third Worldists dogmatically cling to). Although this contradiction is one primarily internal to US imperialism which dominates the globe and acts preemptively to maintain that domination.⁴

The rising inter-imperialist conflict exists particularly between the BRIC countries and the US-EU bloc. Why indeed had the US been saber-rattling with North Korea and Syria except to threaten Russia and China? Why is it so set on thwarting Russia’s own imperialist aims in Central and Eastern Europe? Why is it setting itself up as a major oil producer/exporter, while destabilizing oil rich countries throughout the Third World (e.g. Nigeria, Libya, Sudan, Iraq, Venezuela, etc.) and blocking Russia’s own exports, except to try and maintain its monopoly if the world oil market and the markets’ ties to the US dollar?

The US is not going to give up its position as “Top Dog” to anyone, that is one reason it spends so much on “defense” – more than all others combined. But the threat of nuclear blackmail doesn’t work if countries are armed with nukes too; the old refrain of “N—ers with guns”. Because you can’t suppress people who have the same big guns as you.

The US is not afraid of North Korea or Iran attacking itself, but of not being able to threaten them with attack without the threat of counter-attack. They want to force China, Russia, Korea and Iran to spend more of their GNP on military “defense” and thereby slow their economic development. Amerika especially wants to prevent others’ advancing civil sector nuclear energy technologies, which might replace the old cumbersome system developed by Amerika over 70 years ago.

The same is true for India and Pakistan. This is a dangerous game because a full scale nuclear war between these two countries could kill everybody on the planet. Yet the threat of South Asia uniting as a socialist bloc scares them more.

The slaughter of Shiites in Pakistan by the Sunni Taliban pushed Pakistan to the right and sharpens the contradiction with India over Kashmir, which both India and Pakistan rely on for water. As climate change makes water scarcer, the contention between these countries grows sharper.

Why No First World Revolutions

Third Worldists are fond of arguing that the lack of revolutionary movements in the First World in modern times, compared with their relative frequency in the Third World, empirically proves that First World workers have no revolutionary potential.

Every genuine Communist recognizes the error of this argument on its face. As Mao pointed out, “when revolution fails it is the fault of the vanguard party,” not the masses. George Jackson expressed it this way:

“The success of China, Cuba, Vietnam and parts of Africa cannot be attributed to any innate, singular quality in the characters of their people. [People] are social creatures, herd animals. We follow leaders. The success or failure of mass movements depends on their leadership and the method of their leaders.”

Amerika for example has not had a mass and workers based revolutionary party since World War II when the Comintern was disbanded and the post-war Red Scare, Communist witch hunts, and Cold War drove Communists underground and shattered the remnants of the 1930s revolutionary movement and Communist Party.

Subsequent efforts to build mass based revolutionary parties also came under concentrated attack under the imperialist state’s counter intelligence programs (COINTELPROs), such as the Black Panther Party and the Revolutionary Communist Party USA for example.

The rural-based parties in the less developed Third World proved harder to target and suppress, and could more directly interact with their mass bases. The Panthers had similar success, but never embraced as specifically proletarian political and ideological line, so fell victim to left and right deviations and political opportunism. The RCP-USA was active within the US working class for a period, but ended in disengaging from this base in the 1970s, has since engaged primarily in agitational work aimed at other sectors than the traditional strategic working class, and doesn’t practice the mass line so it has no mass base.

In other First World countries, without Comintern leadership, the workers’ parties were effectively infiltrated by traitorous elements that entered into alliances with their bourgeoisie and allowed their parties to be co-opted into the mainstream political system.

The imperialists recognize the essential role and value of a revolutionary vanguard. This is why they have targeted with almost fanatic consistency every potentially revolutionary organization that has reared its head, and expended untold resources and energy on demonizing and undermining the very image of Communism, that even today people fear almost instinctively to be identified with Communism, and those on the “Left” who prefer instead to be called “Socialists”.

And the Third Worldists, right in league with their imperialist agenda, would also see that no revolutionary vanguard arises to awaken and lead a revolutionary movement in the First World.

Conclusion

Overall the Third Worldist line is one of “left” opportunism which is “left” in its form and rhetoric, but “right” in essence. Left opportunism always concocts positions that rob the masses of their essential role as the makers of history and revolutionary change, and instead substitutes such opportunists as the heroes and forgers of history.

Like all opportunism, the Third World line is based on petty bourgeois idealism and revision of revolutionary science, to strip it of its revolutionary essence and accommodate it to the interests of the capitalist imperialist system. All of which is consistent with the petty bourgeois tendency to make the imperialist system as tolerable to itself as possible and realistically confining itself only to reformism. All of which serves the imperialist agenda of denying the masses the needed revolutionary vanguard to awaken and lead them in revolutionary struggle.

The science of revolution does not become spontaneously evident to the workers nor any other oppressed sector. Revolutionary science and consciousness must be brought to them through the work of revolutionaries, and more specifically by the vanguard revolutionary party, which is set up to do it in an organized and all-round way. As Mao observed:

“If there is to be a revolution, there must be a revolutionary Party. Without a revolutionary Party, without a Party built on the Marxist Leninist revolutionary theory and the Marxist Leninist revolutionary style, it is impossible to lead the working class and the broad masses in defeating imperialism and its running dogs.”

This leadership is what the imperialists fear and seek to subvert above all else in its continual struggle to hold onto power. That the Third Worldists share this agenda with respect to the First World where they also live and share in the spoils of imperialism exposes the utter bankruptcy and counter-revolutionary essence of their line. And all the blame-gaming and playing with statistics in the world won’t change this one iota.

Workers of the World – not just the Third World – unite!

 Dare to struggle, Dare to win!

 All Power to the People!

1. Zak Cope, Divided World Divided Class: Global Political Economy and the Stratification of Labor Under Capitalism (Quebec: Kerspebedeb Publishers, 2015, 2nd Ed.) [↩]
2. In the Foundations of Leninism, Stalin outlined the three most important contradictions which inhere in the capitalist imperialist system. In short they were listed as: “The first contradiction is the contradiction between labour and capital… The second contradiction is the contradiction among various financial groups and imperialist powers in their struggle for sources of raw materials, for foreign territory… The third contradiction is the contradiction between the handful of ruling “civilized” nations and the hundreds of millions of the colonial and dependent peoples of the world…” [↩]
3. Karl Marx, “British Incomes in India,” in Karl Marx on Colonialism and Modernization. Ed. By Shlomo Avineri (NY: Doubleday, 1968), pp 238-39 [↩]
4. George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson (NY: Random House, 1970). [↩]

 

See Also :

http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/kevin-rashid-johnson-answering.html

http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/kevin-rashid-johnson-answering.html

Statement on British General Election by Revolutionary Praxis

WHOEVER WINS THE ELECTION -

WE LOSE!

Every effort is being made by the politicians and the media to get us to vote in the General Election.  Yet millions of people have not even bothered to register to vote.  Many of those voting do so very reluctantly, on a least worse basis in their choice of parties.  The fact is that public confidence in politicians and the political system in Britain is at all time low.

GRINDING US DOWN

The multi-millionaire bankers created the world-wide financial crisis in 2008 but ordinary people have been paying for their folly ever since.  In Britain:

· There have been massive cuts in public spending on vital social services with old and disadvantaged people suffering the most as many thousands of those providing care are being sacked.  Also welfare benefits have been reduced causing much hardship.

· Most people’s living standards have significantly fallen during the last five years.  More people than ever before are working longer in a desperate attempt to maintain household income.  Many of the new jobs are on insecure, zero hours contracts at National Minimum Wage.  Working people are being exploited by employers to a greater intensity than ever before.

· There is a growing housing shortage leading to sky high rents being charged by greedy landlords.  Very few council houses have been built. A declining number of people are able to afford to buy their own homes.  Homelessness is on the rise.

· Growing poverty means that  hundreds of thousands of people, many of them working full-time, are turning to food banks to ward off hunger.

In one of the richest countries in the world massive differences in living standards are growing between the tiny minority of billionaires and the great mass of the people.

CAPITALISM IS CRAP, LET’S GET RID OF IT!

 This exploitative and oppressive system we live under is called CAPITALISM.  Whoever  forms the next government, they will carry on propping up the capitalist system which enriches the tiny minority capitalist class who own and control finance, industry and commerce..  While the bankers carry on playing we will carry on paying for their excesses.

In the world at large capitalism brings about murderous wars, as in the Middle East, and growing environmental devastation.  It is literally killing the planet.  We can’t afford to put up with capitalism for any longer.

PREPARE FOR REVOLUTION

We have to face up to the fact that the only lasting way to deal with our problems is to work towards the forceful, revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and its replacement by socialism, a system run on the basis of real, mass democracy where satisfying the real needs of the many is the aim of society.

REMEMBER: ANY VOTE IS A VOTE FOR THE SYSTEM

Revolutionary praxis

9th May 2015 - Free Dr Saibaba - One Year Anniversary of his arrest - Dr Saibaba from fighting his own disability today fights those dispossessed and disabled by the Indian Comprador State - Justice demands Free Dr Saibaba from Prison Now ! No Justice No Peace !

Democracy and Class Struggle had the opportunity of a private meeting with Dr GN Saibaba during his visit to London on 2010 when we discussed building the movement against Operation Green Hunt.

The meeting was with comrades from Greece, Italy and Germany and we appreciated the quiet confidence that Dr Saibaba had then in the victory of the people of India over the Indian Comprador State and its capital accumulation by dispossession of the poor.

The fact that the Indian Comprador State kidnapped and imprisoned a disabled man a year ago shows its weakness not its strength.

The Indian Comprador State fears the ideas of Dr Saibaba because they are true and because he eloquently exposed the corruption of their power.

Dr Saibaba is a voice against injustice and as the injustice continues in India today the burning flame against injustice will grow and ultimately it will consume all those fake patriots of the Hinduvuta as being the quislings of imperialism that they are.

The Burning flame of Justice Demands the freedom of Dr Saibaba - No Justice No Peace

SEE ALSO: http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/india-condemn-and-expose-frame-up-of.html

The British General Election 2015 : Statement of the Indian Workers Assocation, Great Britain

 

BRITISH ELECTION 2015

CHALLENGES FACED BY THE WORKING MEN, WOMEN AND THE YOUTH 

 

Election circus has arrived again as it does every five years. And all the political gladiators are in the ring to out-manoeuvre each other in throwing all sorts of promises at us, knowing fully well they mean nothing.  Suddenly the people you may never have seen in the past five years are out and about knocking our doors, visiting our workplaces, shaking hands on high streets and kissing our babies. Pretty obviously they are after our votes. Indian Workers Association (IWA) Great Britain appeals to the working men and women and the youth of this country to challenge these politicians on the following burning issues that are making our lives miserable:

 

1. Stop the Austerity measures: All parties are all trying their best to make us believe that this country can only be saved from the ongoing economic recession by the so-called austerity measures, where as in reality these measures are the actual cause of the misery brought onto the people. The economic recession has caused a drastic rise in youth unemployment and poverty in the UK in recent years. As happened during the earlier recessions, many families remain partly or fully dependent on benefits for extended periods of time. It is evident that the austerity measures and benefits cuts are hurting the poor working class families because the benefits system is more strongly targeted at low income groups.

 

When it came into office in 2010, Prime Minister David Cameron's coalition government promised to the people that they will eliminate the budget deficit by 2015. But now the Chancellor Osborne outlined his strategy saying that four more years of austerity is “a price that works for our country”. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the total government spending is going to reach to its lowest level as a proportion of national income since before the Second World War. Whatever party or coalition of parties comes to power after the general election, Britain will find itself halfway through a nine-year stretch of spending cuts, with both Conservatives and Labour determined to shrink and redefine the role and shape of the state beyond recognition. So far, £35bn has been cut; the plan is to cut a further £55bn by 2019.

 

According to recent estimates, more than 13 million people live in poverty, including almost one-third of all children. The working poor make up the largest number of those in poverty, with millions struggling to make ends meet on low-pay and often zero-hour contracts. At the other end of the social spectrum, Britain’s mega rich have not only recovered everything they may have lost in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis, but became filthy rich. The Sunday Times has published a “Rich List”, according to which, there are now some 104 billionaires in the UK, three times the figure from a decade ago.

 

2. Stop the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) and Cuts to NHS: Privatisation of NHS is a direct result of Private Finance Initiative (PFI). PFI schemes were introduced to the UK under the John Major Government in the 1990s, which were significantly expanded by Tony Blair’s New Labour Government. Despite opposing the PFI program whilst in opposition, in 2011 Chancellor George Osborne continued, rebranding it as "PFI 2". Rather than Central Government directly funding infrastructure works like schools or hospitals, PFI means a consortium of private sector banks and construction firms finance, own, operate and lease them back to the UK taxpayer, over a period of 30-35 years. NHS Trusts owe £80bn in PFI loan repayments and the extortionate ongoing running costs of maintaining PFI hospitals via PFI - where private contractors are granted 30- year monopoly rights to deliver maintenance and services. The number of NHS Trusts in financial trouble has doubled in the last financial year and several A&E units were shut down or downgraded. NHS is being increasingly privatised. This must be stopped.

 

3. Abolish the Tuition fee in Universities: The tuition fee of £1000, introduced by Labour Party in 1998, became £9000 by 2010 under Conservatives. In November 2010 students staged a series of marches and demonstrated against the proposed increase in the rise of tuition fees. Despite these protests the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition government won a vote in the House of Commons, which resulted in universities eventually being able to charge students up to £9,000 a year for the annual tuition costs. The government crushed the students’ agitation by deploying hundreds of police and arresting many students and their leaders. As a direct result of the rise in tuition fee, students from poorer families are not able to go for higher education and as a result they are remaining unemployed or under-employed due to lack of proper qualifications and training. Talking about election promises, Nick Clegg of the Lib Dems signed a pledge in 2010 election not to raise tuition fees. After the elections however, his party voted to triple the tuition fees.

 

4. Repeal all anti – Trade Union laws: Between 1980 and 1993, several anti-Trade union laws were introduced by the Tories under Margaret Thatcher’s regime. Not a single one of them was repealed during 13 years of Labour in office. All 3 parties are in favour of strengthening these laws never mind repealing them. These draconian anti-union laws have increasingly restricted the unions' ability to undertake lawful industrial actions and have taken away the working class’s collective power to fight for better wages, better working conditions and a right to decent living standard. These laws have made it illegal for workers even to show solidarity across departments and companies. The government has made closed ballots mandatory and is now thinking of introducing compulsory postal ballots to Trade Union decision making.

 

The Conservatives are drawing up radical anti-strike laws. They have included banning of strikes by public sector workers in health, education, transport and fire services without the support of 40 per cent of union members entitled to vote. This is hardly opposed by Labour and Lib Dems, proving their anti-working class nature. All these anti-Trade union laws must be repealed and the democratic rights of the workers restored.

 

5. Stop Spending on wars of invasion at the expense of NHS, education and welfare: All major parties are pro-war and for more wars. Having destroyed Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria with 1.5 million people’s blood up to their elbows they are dutifully following their White House master's war cries in Ukraine. They don't have money for NHS, Education and Welfare but are all in favour of spending £100 billion for upgrading Trident, a new generation of nuclear weapons system. David Cameroon is ready to send Navy to the Mediterranean Sea to sink the boats that are used to carry thousands of desperate Libyan people, who are trying to escape from the wrath of lawlessness and the raging civil war after Gadaffi was killed and his legitimate government was overthrown as a result of the covert British operations.

 

6. Stop the Anti-immigrant xenophobia and the racist election campaign: For the last fifty years or so immigration has been an issue in every single general election.  The abominable UKIP Party has now given lead in the raciest campaign against the immigrant population. Immigrants, especially from Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, are being blamed for the shortage of jobs, housing, hospital beds and lack of places in schools. With the ongoing civil wars in Syria and Somalia, demonisation of Muslim population is on the rise. With UKIP and the notorious English Defence League we are experiencing the return of racist propaganda from the 1960s and 1970s. The Tories, Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party are trying to out-manoeuvre each other by coming up with new figures and ways of curbing immigration. They want to take the racist lead from UKIP. Just for the sake of wining the votes of the native British population, every parliamentary party is racing with each other, trying to pit the native white working class against their own brethren from other ethnic backgrounds. On the other hand, the Eastern European immigrant working class, particularly the Romanians, are portrayed as criminals and thugs. UKIP leader Nigel Farage (other parties are no exception) is campaigning that immigrates are the cause of unemployment, where as the truth is that unemployment and economic recessions are inherent characteristics of their own capitalist system and are inevitable. The fact that the multicultural Britain that exists today has been created through generations of immigration is completely being ignored. Little is said about the substantial contribution made by the immigrants to the British economy and culture.

 

7. Implement the Section 9(5)a of the Equality Act 2010: In March 2013 Parliament agreed the legislation to outlaw Caste discrimination in some of the Asian population of Britain by considering Caste as an aspect of Race. The Government has been failing the will the of Parliament by not bringing into force Section 9(5)a of the Equality Act 2010. There have been numerous reports that points to the wide spread existence of discrimination based on Caste in the Britain. The Government is failing the victims of Caste Discrimination by not making this practice illegal immediately.

 

Indian workers’ association, Great Britain appeals to the working men, women and youth of this country to unite to fight against the austerity measures, cuts in NHS, cuts in education, and cuts in welfare. We must all unite and challenge the politicians who come to us asking for our votes, on their anti-working class, anti-people, and anti-immigrant policies and the wars of aggression in the Middle-East and elsewhere. We must challenge this exploitative system and fight for a just society.

 

• No more austerity measures! Stop the cuts in social securities!                       
• Stop the privatisation of Public Sector - the NHS and Education
• Repeal all the draconian anti- Trade union laws! Restore the legitimate right to strike!                                     
• Stop the anti-immigrant xenophobia and Islamophobia!
• Capitalism is the cause of economic recessions and unemployment - Not the immigrants!
• Stop the wars of Aggression! Bring all troops back home from Iraq and Afghanistan
• Implement Equality Act 2010! Stop the Caste discrimination in Asian Communities!                              

 

Indian Workers’ Association, Great Britain

Central Organising Committee

 

Charan Atwal (Chairman)                                                                             Lekh Pall (Secretary)

The Great British Lie - The United Kingdom Independence Party are Anti Establishment Outsiders by Nickglais

The UK Election and its ritualistic election politics are underway controlled and contrived by the British Media.

Democracy and Class Struggle  thinks it necessary to turn our attention to what is "new" in this Election to learn what deception and self deception bourgeois politics has in store for us today.

Leaving aside the Scottish National Party who we will address in another article the "new force" in English politics is the British Nationalist United Kingdom Independence Party which could get 4 million votes in this election.

UKIP is led by a spiv and wide boy called Nigel Farage a former commodity trader who has deep roots in the City of London  working not only at the London Metal Exchange but also at Drexel Burnham Lambert, Credit Lyonnais, REFCO and Natexis Metals - a true City of London insider.

UKIP  has attracted the financial support of Schroders Fund Manager Andy Brough and Hedge Fund manager Crispin Odey and of course the largest ever Tory donor Stuart Wheeler of City based IG Index has become an enthusiastic UKIP financial supporter.

From a firm city financial base UKIP has attracted some industry men like Paul Sykes of the Paul Sykes Group in the North of England to pay for some of his advertising past and present and a million pounds from former Tory donor Arron Banks of Brightside Insurance and "ex" pornographer and Daily Express owner Richard Desmond has chipped in another million - truly millions stand behind Nigel Farage.

The BBC has invited Nigel Farage on dozens of occasions on its flagship programme Any Questions where he poses as an outsider  - the BBC is very good at "grooming".

Nigel Farage has been well and truly "groomed" for "British" political leadership.

When the City of London Piper calls the tune Nigel Farage does not disappoint his financial capitalist masters.

Since the 2008  Financial crash Nigel Farage has been busy blaming immigrants as contributors to this crisis deflecting blame from his City of London chums who should all be doing prison sentences for fraudulent trading.

Just to churn out more money from his chums Nigel introduced the Aids and Foreigners NHS scare to keep the millions rolling in.

So much for these rank UKIP outsiders with their firm City of London Financial base of support groomed by the BBC.

Truly the Great British Lie that the United Kingdom Independence Party are anti Establishment outsiders.

May Day Protest in Turkey "Our Hands and Our Minds are stronger than their Weapons"

Ukraine: Remember Odessa - Never Forget the Atrocities of the Banderite Fascists of May 2nd 2014

We demand the fascists who fire bombed and murdered 42 people in the Trade Union House of Odessa on 2 May 2014 are found and brought to justice!

No impunity for... Banderite fascists!

On May 2, 2014, dozens of people were killed in Odessa, Ukraine, after far right thugs set the Trade Union House on fire.

 Amongst those killed were many who were participating in the anti-Maidan "Kulikovo field" protest camp, including communist activists.

There has not been any serious investigation into the events by the Ukrainian authorities.

The Solidarity with Antifascist Resistance in Ukraine campaign was established at a London meeting on June 2nd, 2014, and one of its aims is precisely "to demand that the killers of 42 people at the House of Trade Unions in Odessa on May 2nd be brought to justice."

On May 2nd, 2015  gathering outside the Ukrainian embassy in London to demand JUSTICE FOR ODESSA - NO IMPUNITY FOR FASCIST KILLERS

Democracy and Class Struggle says we must never forget the fallen brothers and sisters and comrades.

See Also: https://www.facebook.com/events/1433191620312144/

http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/euromaidan-nightmare-how-odessa.html


List of those names massacred in Odessa - incomplete

Information on 36 identified bodies in the union building (many with gun wounds)
.
1. Biryukov Andrey, 1978 born - shot.
2. Zhulkov Alexander - shot.
3. Yavorsky Nikolay - shot.
4. Petriv Gennadiy, 1985 born - shot.
5. Brazhevskiy Andrew, 1987 born - fall from a height.
6. P.Vadim, 1996 born - fall from a height.
7. Zayats Igor, 1968 born - fall from a height.
8. Kusch Ruslan, 1984 born - fall from a height
9. Varenikina Anna, 1955 born - poisoning.
10. Kalin Anatoliy, 1976 born - poisoning
11. Nikitenko Maksim, 1982 born - fall from a height.
12. Ostorozhnyuk Igor, 1964 born - fall from a height.
13. Bullakh Victor, 1956 born - fall from a height.
14. Ivanov Igor, 1986 born - shot.
15. Markin Vyatcheslav, 1969 born - fall from a height.
16. Negaturov Vadim, 1959 born - asphyxiation.
17. Gnatenko Evgeny, 1952 born - thermal burns
18. Populyakh Alla, 1962 born - asphyxiation.
19. Yakovenko Irina, 1959 born - asphyxiation.
20. Kushnaryov Gennadiy, 1975 born - asphyxiation.
21. Mishin Sergey, 1985 born - asphyxiation.
22. Pikalova Svetlana, 1981 born - asphyxiation.
23. Kovriga Nikolay, 1984 born - asphyxiation.
24. Sadovnichiy Alexander, 1954 born - asphyxiation.
25. Brigar Vladimir, 1984 born - asphyxiation.
26. Nikityuk Dmitriy, 1974 born - asphyxiation.
27. Mythcik Evgeniy, 1983 born - asphyxiation.
28. Stepanov Victor, 1948 born - asphyxiation.
29. Kostyukhin Sergey, 1967 born - asphyxiation.
30. Novitskiy Vladimir, 1944 born - asphyxiation.
31. Polevoy Victor, 1966 born - asphyxiation.
32. Bezhanitskaya Kristina, 1992 born - asphyxiation.
33. Lomakina Nina 1953 born - asphyxiation.
34. Kononov Alexander, 1959 born - asphyxiation.
35. Gnatenko Andrey, 1989 born - asphyxiation.
36. Balaban Alexey, 1982 born - asphyxiation.

All were local people and were anti fascists - although we are aware of some political filth trying to smear these dead people has just Russian separatists or Stalinists and somehow deserving of their fate - to such people all we can say is that these deaths are weightier than Mount Tai but your death political filth will be lighter than a feather.

London May Day 2015 - Red and International Proletarians of all Countries Unite

 

Democracy and Class Struggle offers a Red Salute to our class brothers and sisters in CPGB ML and to their political line against Labour Reformists and Trotskyists and Anarchists.

 

We have our differences with CPGB ML on the National Question in British Isles and Imperialism and some important questions of Marxism Leninism Maoism but they are contradictions amongst friends and not with the enemy.

 

  Long Live Proletarian Internationalism.

 

Our Views are outlined in the May Statement which we signed below

 

RED AND INTERNATIONALIST MAY DAY!

 

Crises, wars, repression, oppression, unemployment, poverty! 
Proletarians and oppressed people, let us unite and take the future in our hands! 
Long live Revolution! 
 

Imperialism continues crossing a deep economic crisis and unloading it on the proletarians and peoples of the world. They speak about recovery, but the only thing that recovers is the rush to profits, wealth and arms.

For the proletarians, poor peasants and other people’s masses in every country of the world, instead, we see unemployment, labour laws increasing precariousness, exploitation and slavery, misery, plunder of raw materials and energy resources, devastation of environment and territories. Youth without work are now the majority, in spite of their educational and cultural growth. New technologies are used to make more profits, intensify exploitation and the despotic command and control on labour and increase the destructive power of arms.

Against this situation proletarians and masses rise up, in the imperialist countries, as well as in the countries oppressed by imperialism. Proletarians and masses cannot accept a worse and worse condition of life and work; a life of hardship with neither hope, nor future, and they hate more and more their oppressed and harassers.

In the oppressed countries, workers, peasants and youth have repeatedly come out in the streets braving severe repression to fight back the attacks on their livelyhood; the peasantry, main force for the New Democratic Revolution, withstand the reactionary anti-peasants policies of displacement and annihilation and persist in the struggle for lands against old and “new” forms of semi-feudal domination, base of the imperialist rule.

In the imperialist countries the uprisings of youth and immigrants from Ferguson to Stockholm, to the banlieues in Paris, the general workers’ struggles, which often clash with the repressive apparatus of the State.All of this show that the revolution, as tendency and need, is increasingly emerging and clashes the reactionarization and fascistization of states and governments.

Wherever, in the struggles and people’s wars, the forefront role of women advances, to put an end to the heinous class and gender oppression that fills the streets of the world of rapes, femicides, and to demand a revolution for a true liberation. In order to face and prevent the people’s rebellion, imperialists, their States, their right or claimed “left” governments, respond with fierce repression, massacres, persecution; demagogy and plotting. They establish police states that rub out political, social and individual freedoms, in a vain attempt to stop the people’s wave and the revolutionary organization of masses.

They also employed the enticements of the electoral farce of reformist, social-democrats and revisionist in order to contain the rage of the mass within their reactionary system. These forces foster the illusion that some ‘pro-people’ government can overcome the ravages of the crisis; for instance, in Greece, highest expression of the crisis in Europe, forces of new social democracy as SYRIZA, come to power as a last resort, but they are not able to stand up to the diktats of European capital and banks or give response to the needs and struggle of masses. Also if the service done to imperialism by such fake left forces who misguide the masses still remain as a hurdle, in many countries the masses respond with the intensification of the class struggle and an increasingly massive abstention and boycott.

In Ukraine and Eastern Europe reactionary, also Nazi-like, forces advance, supported by US, EU and NATO, in a framework of inter-imperialist contention with Putin’s Russia. The masses are justly struggling against fascism and Western imperialism, but they need a genuine communist leadership to be not pawns of imperialist Russia expansionism.

The rebellion of proletarians and masses demands a radical change and the only means to achieve this is to overthrow, weapons in hand, the ruling classes and establish a new society free from exploitation, oppression and imperialism. Within the crisis become inter-imperialist contradictions sharpen and tendency to a new world partition war becomes more and more insistent – although the contradiction between imperialism and people and nation oppressed remains the principle contradiction  in the world – the revolution remains the main trend and is embodied by the potential new wave of the world proletarian revolution.

In order to become successful new democratic revolutions marching to socialism in the countries oppressed by imperialism, and proletarian and socialist revolutions marching to communism in the imperialist countries, the rebellions of masses need a genuine revolutionary communist party in each country, a united front of all the exploited and oppressed masses led by the proletariat and a revolutionary people’s army. Where the masses lack these instruments, their heroic and bold struggles are defeated and / or end to be prey of reactionary forces, always tied to imperialist system, that can not free them from the social, economic and political chains.

In the name of the war on terrorism, imperialism unleashes wars and domestic terror. But imperialism is the true terrorism, the monster that we must fight and overthrow. What in the world is worse than imperialism? Imperialism, especially US, intensifies the policy of war, invasion and aggression in Iraq, Afghanistan and fosters wars in Syria, Libya Yemen and throughout the Middle East and West Asia. They respond to the people’s revolts in the Arab countries by installing in power forces that continue the policy of the old tyrants and regimes, as in Egypt, in cahoots and alliance with the Zionist gendarme, Israel, and other reactionary regimes in the region, from Turkey to Iran, Saudi Arabia.

In these wars and interventions, they arm feudal and reactionary forces which then turn against them, bringing the war within the imperialist countries themselves with fierce attacks that undermine the security and strength of those States, within which there are masses and sections of rebel immigrants who hate imperialism. In the field where these direct and indirect interventions took place, imperialismcontinues applying the policy of Low Intensity Conflict (LCI) with agents and plots to put masses against masses, to divert the target of the struggles of the oppressed peoples from of their main enemy, at the aim of dividing the anti-imperialist united front, as now in Syria facing the Arab and Kurdish masses.

Where the ISIS advances, the masses fight and resist, as Kurdish masses, with a leading role of women, in the front row in Rojava, Kobane. But only by fighting with the People’s War, not only the ISIS but also imperialism and the reactionary regimes in the region, the masses can free themselves from social and national oppression.

The bourgeoisie and its sophisticated intellectuals, in the imperialist citadels as in the centers of culture in the countries oppressed by imperialism, sing the funeral of the working class and its ideology, powerfully drawn by Marx, Engels Lenin, Stalin Mao, but in every corner of the world we are witnessing a huge resumption of the workers’ struggle, classist and combative, that shakes the citadels of capital, also in China, as well as all countries of the alleged development of capital , the so-called, “emerging countries”.

In the imperialist system, big countries, such as Brazil, Turkey, etc. are crossed by strong struggles of workers, peasants and other masses and show how the economic rise of these countries under the rule of imperialism makes them “giant with feet of clay” and land of revolution. There is no place in the world that does not see tensions and sharpening of the class struggle. In this framework it is the People’s War, led by Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties, the only strategic reference of the liberation struggle.

The People’s War in India, hitting directly at one of the major bastions of imperialism and reaction in the world, has roused great enthusiasm among the revolutionary masses all over the world and become a powerful internationalist rallying point. Together with the People’s Wars in the Philippines, Peru, and Turkey, it continues to undermine imperialism and shows the path to overthrow the system of exploitation and oppression of imperialism and the feudal reactionary forces and the construction of a new power and society.

The Marxist-Leninist-Maoists communists in the world must construct and strengthen Communist Parties to take up their tasks of leadership and development, ridding their ranks of revisionist and capitulationist tendencies, as Prachandism in Nepal, Avakianism in the US, the Right Opportunist Line, in all forms, in Peru, etc., without falling, at the same time, into the sterile petty bourgeois revolutionarism and dogmatism. The building of the communist parties must take place in the fire of the class struggle with close tie with the masses, in function of the revolutionary struggle for the power.

This May Day 2015 calls us to lift high and strong the red flag of communism and revolution in every demonstration, in every anti-imperialist struggle in the world, bringing and renewing with strength the slogan of: “Proletarians and oppressed peoples of the world, unite!”

Let us unite to stop imperialist and reactionary wars, to crush imperialism and reaction around the world!

Let us salute the martyrs of the people and revolution, let us support the struggle and free revolutionary and communist political prisoners around the world! 

Let us bring forth the genuine proletarian internationalism in the leadership of proletarian struggles, in the struggles of the peoples to create the conditions and advance towards an international organisation of communists 

Let us support people’s wars until victory!

Let us take the future of communism in our hands! 

Declaration signed by:

Collective of Iranian maoists
Marxist-Leninist Party of Turkey
Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan;
Communist Movement of Serbia
Communist Party of India (Maoist)
Democracy and Class Struggle – British State
Great Unrest WSRP-Wales British State

Long March Towards Communism (Spain);
New Communist Party (Liaison Comittee) USA
Maoist Comunist Group USA
Maoist Communist Mouvement Tunisia
Maoist Communist Party Manipur
Maoist Communist Party Italy;
Maoist Revolutionary League-Sri Lanka

Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Party Construction Committee (Germany) MLM-PAK
Peru Peoples Movement (Committee for Reorganizing)
Red communist Blogs
Red Fraction of Communist Party of Chile – RF CPC – PPM (CR)
Red Block (Unity of maoists) France
Revolutionary Communist Party (PCR-RCP Canada);
Revolutionary Intellectual -Cultural Front,Nepal
Revolutionary Praxis – United Kingdom
Serve the People – Communist League of Norway
Servir Le Peuple – Sheisau Sorelh – Occitany – French state;
Workers Voice – Malaysia

 

*Version francaise ici

*Deutsch version finden Sie hier

*Versión galega aquí

*النسخة العربية هنا

* Spanish Version here

 

* Italian Version