Steve Cohen Memorial
Posted on June 27, 2009
There is an event celebrating the life and political achievements of friend and comrade Steve Cohen, next Saturday in Manchester.
Steve Cohen — A celebration of his life and political achievements
5th July, 11am - 1pm in the Lord Mayor’s Parlour at Manchester Town Hall followed at 2pm by Immigration Law Practitioners Association meeting. Speakers covering aspects of Steve’s political life. Lunch available and all welcome to both meetings.
Steve died on March 8th 2009. The meeting will celebrate Steve’s four decade long contribution to radical politics including anti-fascism, fighting antisemitism and the struggle against immigration controls.
Racist Attacks In Belfast
Posted on June 17, 2009
Nazi thugs have been terrorising migrant families in Belfast, forcing them to flee their homes. Local residents have been standing guard to protect Romanian Roma families from violent racists claiming to be from Combat 18, who have reportedly posted texts from Mein Kampf through the letterbox of one residence, and threatened to cut a baby’s throat.
Where have the police been while all of this has been going on? Predictably, when there is no threat to private property, they are not particularly interested.
Lisburn Road resident Paddy Meehan said: “The police have taken a long time to respond. They have been shamed into getting involved after around 200 residents were outside protecting the Romanian people.”
For one slimy columnist at the Daily Telegraph — What the BBC didn’t want you to know about the Belfast ‘Romanians’ — none of this is as much of a concern as what he calls an ‘Orwellian version of reality’, because news reports call Romanian citizens ‘Romanian’. The message here is clear. Roma are always ‘Roma’ and can never be Romanian (or French, or Turkish, or anything else).
The Elephant In The Room
Posted on June 17, 2009
The British Labour Party is running like frightened rabbits from the right-wing consensus on immigration, a consensus that stretches all of the way from the extremes of the BNP and UKIP, through the Daily Mail and wannabe far-right websites like Harry’s Place, through the conservative press, and clasps at the ankles of New Labour.
During the BBC coverage of the Euro Election results, New Labour Health Secretary Andy Burnham responded to the election of the first BNP MEP by saying
Clearly, there are concerns about immigration. The government has got to respond to those concerns.
This is echoed in the campaigning of the nationalist popular front No2EU — Yes to Democracy (but only if you have the ‘right’ passport) and the line of supporting websites, such as ‘Socialist’ Unity, with their cretinous division of workers along national lines into ‘indigenous’ and ‘immigrants’, the latter purportedly ‘disadvantaging’ the former.
Acceding to the right-wing consensus on immigration is doing the work of the BNP for them. Instead of challenging the consensus, the centre-left and a worrying section of the ‘far’ left is surrendering to it. They should stand up to the the racism, homophobia and antisemitism of the BNP, not jump to every dog whistle and allow the BNP to set policy.
The right-wing press repeatedly complains that it is ’silenced’ on the ‘question of immigration’. How then does it manage daily to unleash a torrent of hatred against migrants and asylum seekers, with the outright lies about ‘uncontrolled mass migration’, scare stories of Britain changed beyond recognition, of ‘race-replacement’ and the ‘cosmopolitanisation’ of town centres, demonising dark-skinned ‘foreigners’ as criminals and disease carriers — confident in the conviction that it is normal to hate and fear people who have a different skin colour or accent, that is normal not to want to see people with darker skin than you walking down the street where you live? How is it able to publish racist scaremongering claims of institutionalised state ‘discrimination’ against white Britons — discrimination which exists entirely in the heads of Melanie Phillips and Nick Griffin.
There are minor political differences between the BNP and the rest of the far right — the BNP blames ‘the left’ for orchestrating attacks on it, while Melanie Phillips, writing in the Spectator, tries to draw some mad line between ‘racial prejudice’ and ‘racism’, and thinks the BNP are ‘the left’¹. Observers are forced to suspend disbelief that Phillips’ head doesn’t implode under the weight of contradictions inherent her belief that ’socialism’ at once allows both vicious racism and open borders — nature abhors a vacuum. Differences aside, if Griffin and Phillips looked at one another it would be though they gazed in a mirror. After his election Griffin referred to British identity and Christian heritage. Phillips inveighs against the ‘Islamisation of Britain’ and appeals to the notion of British ‘identity’ based on ‘Judeo-Christian ethics’² and ’shared particulars of religion, law, history, traditions and culture’.
The contention which pervades the right-wing consensus is that society is under attack, that ‘our way of life’ is mortally threatened by alien and devious unknowable foreigners, accompanied by a strong conviction of personal injury. This is the tactic of ‘blaming the victim’ — it turns existing power relations on their head, and the powerless, voiceless minority is is made out to be the aggressor.
the blind murderer has always seen his victim as a persecutor against whom he must defend himself³
It was not Labour voters switching to the BNP in droves who elected nazis to the European Parliament. A great number of Labour voters simply stayed at home — New Labour’s problem is the failure to motivate and mobilise traditional Labour voters. The Labour Party’s forthcoming electoral annihilation will present an opportunity for political reorientation.
To start off, they can tell the truth about the economy — about why we have boom and bust cycles. It is not the fault of migrants that jobs pay only £5.78 an hour, it is the greedy bosses screwing the workers. Stop taking voters in the ‘heartlands’ of Wales, Scotland and the North for granted, while housing rots and jobs steadily drift to London and the Southeast. Tell the truth about immigration. Stand up to the fascist parties and the right-wing media which repeat over and over and over again ‘they are to blame, they are the reason you are poor’. When constituents, in their ignorance, complain about migrants and supposed ’special privileges’, ask why they believe such things. Instead of pandering to the racist consensus, make it clear that none of this is true, that it’s a big stinking lie put about by vile racist scum to divert attention from the real problem — the elephant in the room: capitalism.
It is time for them to stop triangulating, and bury once and for all the thoroughly discredited experiment with Thatcherism.
—
¹ The Nazis had ’socialist’ in the name of their party you see. Followers of Phillips should await her forthcoming trenchant denunciation of the conservative, Catholic CSU (Christlich-Soziale Union in Bayern), as a ’socialist trade union’ and a jeremiad against the concept of ‘democracy’, the essential qualities of which are exposed in the name of the military-industrial gulag, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
² The formulation ‘ Judeo-Christian’ properly belongs in the mouths of the right, conflating as it does the people who were subject to 2000 years of pogroms, murder, forced resettlement and ultimately genocide, with the very perpetrators of those crimes.
³ Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, The Dialectic of Enlightenment, 1944.
SOAS Direcorate Occupied
Posted on June 15, 2009
PRESS RELEASE: SOAS directorate block occupied over brutal deportation of SOAS cleaners
University cleaners who won living wage detained after dawn raid
Students and allies at the University of London’s School of School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) have occupied the university today to protest against managers’ attacks on migrant workers.
Nine cleaners from the university were taken into detention after a dawn raid by immigration police on Friday.
Five have already been deported, and the others could face deportation within days. One has had a suspected heart attack and was denied access to medical assistance and even water. One was over 6 months pregnant. Many have families who have no idea of their whereabouts.
The cleaners won the London Living Wage and trade union representation after a successful “Justice for Cleaners” campaign that united workers of all backgrounds and student activists.
Activists believe the raid is managers’ “revenge” for the campaign.
Immigration officers were called in by cleaning contractor ISS, even though it has employed many of the cleaners for years. Cleaning staff were told to attend an ‘emergency staff meeting’ at 6.30am on Friday (June 12).
This was used as a false pretext to lure the cleaners into a closed space from which the immigration officers were hiding to arrest them.
More than 40 officers were dressed in full riot gear and aggressively undertook interrogations and then escorted them to the detention centre. Neither legal representation nor union support were present due to the secrecy surrounding the action. Many were unable to communicate let alone fully understand what was taking place due to the denial of interpreters.
SOAS management were complicit in the immigration raid by enabling the officers to hide in the meeting room beforehand and giving no warning to them.
The cleaners were interviewed one by one. They were allowed no legal or trade union representation, or even a translator (many are native Spanish speakers).
The cleaners are members of the Unison union at SOAS. They recently went out on strike (Thursday 28 May) to protest the sacking of cleaner and union activist Jose Stalin Bermudez.
The occupation has issued a list of demands to SOAS management:
- We call on the directorate to request the secretary of state to immediately release the detainees and to prevent the deportation of the three cleaners who are still in detention in the UK.
- For the directorate to release a public statement condemning what has happened to the SOAS cleaners and calling for their immediate release and return.
- To campaign for the return of the cleaners who have already been deported.
- To bring all contract staff in house. SOAS should not use contractors, ISS or others.
- To keep immigration officers from entering campus under ANY circumstances or other forms of collaboration with immigration or police. Universities are for education not for state violence and oppression.
- A year’s wage as reparations for all detained and deported staff.
- To hold accountable SOAS managers who were complicit in facilitating the raid and detention of the cleaners, refusing to aid a sick worker and a pregnant woman.
- To reinstate Jose Stalin Bermudez, the SOAS UNISON branch chair.
- To respect the right to organise in Trade Unions unimpeded.
- To provide space and resources for a public meeting to build support for the SOAS 9 and other migrants, in education and beyond, affected by immigration control and racism.
- Amnesty for all those involved.
The Murderous Rulers Should Not Be Given A Break!
Posted on June 14, 2009
Liberal commentators have promoted Mirhossein Mousavi as the great hope for political reform in Iran, conveniently omitting to mention that he was Prime Minister during the 1988 massacre of 30,000 members of, or symathisers with, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, and represents more of the same repression. The Worker-communist Party of Iran has released the following statement.
The message of Hamid Taqvai, leader of Worker-communist Party of Iran, addressed to the people in Iran
***
Do not give the murderous rulers a break!
Freedom-loving people!
The election charade ended and the fact incessantly emphasized by our party has now appeared naked to all eyes: the regime of Islamic Republic neither bears free and fair elections nor is reformable. It must be totally overthrown. What we are currently witnessing is not any election aftershock but the death tremors of the regime. It is the death crisis of the regime in its entirety which appears as its domestic faction fightings. Do not let the murderous rulers flee out of the present harm’s way!
People!
The ranks of the regime have never been so jumbled and muddled. The Khamenei-Ahmadinejad gang has resolved on crushing and stamping out the opposite gangs. It imagines that it can rely on its forces of suppression and, indeed, the whole state machinery under its control, in order to both see through this internal surgery and, at the same time, to intimidate the society as a whole, that is, to beat back your nascent struggles aimed at the complete overthrow of this wicked government. It is, however, sheer self-delusion on its part. This is no June 20th, 1981, the starting point of clamping down the revolution. This is no summer of 1988 when, immediately after the conclusion of Iran-Iraq war, thousands of political prisoners were massacred in order to intimidate the people at large. This is no July 9th, 1999, when the people rose up on a massive scale demanding freedom of expression. Today the Islamic regime is too desperate, too corrupt and too rotten to be able to hold off the current wave of protests across the nation. The murderous rulers should not be given a break!
Hamid Taqvai
Secretary of the Central Committee of Worker-communist Party of Iran.
June 13, 2009
World Protests To Demand Union Rights For Iranian Workers
Posted on June 7, 2009
Four global union organisations representing over 170 million workers have called a worldwide action day on June 26 to demand justice for Iranian workers. Demonstrations will take place outside Iranian embassies and consulates to protest the ongoing denial of rights and arrests of trade unionists within the country.
The ITUC (International Trade Union Confederation), EI (Education International), ITF (International Transport Workers’ Federation), IUF (International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations) are forming a coalition for the event, which is the latest move in an ongoing campaign to secure justice and trade union rights inside Iran. Amnesty International has backed this campaign.
They are calling for the immediate and unconditional release of jailed trade union members and leaders including Mansour Osanloo, Ebrahim Madadi, Farzad Kamangar, and the annulment of the one year prison sentences recently handed down against the five leaders of the Haft Tapeh Sugarworkers’ Union, as well as the release of trade unionists arrested in Tehran on May Day.
Guy Ryder, ITUC General Secretary explained: “Each of these organisations has campaigned to protect their colleagues in Iran, and now we are all joining forces to do it even more effectively.”
“We have exhausted all avenues of reasonable dialogue to persuade the government of Iran to allow basic human and trade union rights. Their answer has been repression and arrests. Given this failure we must take to the streets to demonstrate that the world is watching what they are doing and what is happening to our colleagues within the country.”
Rifles Against Spears As Indigenous Rights Trampled
Posted on June 7, 2009
There are reports that more than 50 people have been killed in Peru’s Amazon region after the army clashed with indigenous people protesting against government plans to turn their land over to mining and energy companies. President Alan Garcia has issued a number of decrees which effectively release removing 60% of Peru’s remaining jungle for exploitation, and allowing companies to apply directly to central government for zoning permissions, bypassing the process of indigenous consultation — decrees which are in violation of the Peruvian constitution, which specifically stipulates that same consultation process must take place.
On May 27, Peru’s two largest trade union federations, the General Confederation of Peruvian Workers (CGTP) and the Unitary Confederation of Workers (CUT), together with the Social and Political Coordinating Committee, held a national day of protest to “let the indigenous people of Peru know that they are not alone”.
In Lima, thousands of workers marched on Congress demanding the annulment of the decrees. In the Amazonian city of Iquitos, 11 construction workers were injured by rubber bullets and 20 arrested in clashes with police.
Roadblocks, strikes, street protests and occupations of oil company installations occurred across the country.
The protests also called for a general increase in wages and pensions, arguing “the rich should pay for the economic crisis, not the people”. They also demanded the repeal of anti-democratic measures introduced by the government that criminalise political protest.
The government’s actions constitute nothing more than a shameless and cynical land/money grab.
However, since the protests began in April, the Garcia administration has already auctioned off huge swaths of indigenous lands to mining and energy companies. Contracts for a further 15 oil concessions have been signed — the majority in the Amazon region.
Now, the government has declared the protestors are ‘plotting against democracy and the country’ and ‘falling to a criminal level’, and massacred protesters.
keep looking »A local indigenous leader has stated that indigenous people are still being killed, and that the police are actually burning the dead and dumping the remains into the Marañón River [...] Early in the day the government was accused of committing genocide. Painfully, this confirms it. [...] ALERT: Massacre in Peru Police shooting Amazon Indigenous civilians - 84 people dead PLEASE TAKE ACTION! [...] The government of Peru has ordered for the National Police to attack the Amazonian Indigenous peoples. Civilians were shot from buildings roofs and helicopters.
