Around two hundred socialists and anti-imperialists attended the founding meeting/conference of the British Capitulo (Chapter) of the Anti-Fascist International (AFI) on Saturday, 5th September, at Bolivar Hall, a public conference hall that is part of the Venezuelan Consulate in London. The AFI is an international anti-imperialist/anti-fascist international campaigning body initiated by the government of the rightful President of Venezuela, Nicholas Maduro, in late 2024. One crucial topic of discussion at the conference was the kidnapping of President Maduro and his wife Celia Flores on 3rd January by the Trump administration, as part of its drive for recolonisation of Latin America. It is clear, and becoming increasingly clearer to many of the AFI participants that the government of Delcy Rodriguez, Maduro’s Vice President and now acting President, has capitulated to Trump’s piratical seizure, and is now openly collaborating. The collaborationist regime, as well as having earlier deported anti-imperialist fighter Alex Saab into Trump’s clutches, has now signed a deal with Trump granting the US majority control of roughly 20% of Venezuela’s oil reserves for 100 years, amounting to 65 billon barrels of proven reserves. There are also indications of treachery in the Venezuelan administration against Maduro prior to the abduction.
The political default of Rodriguez was at least partly discussed at the conference, and we were well aware that it was an anomaly that we were still able to use Venezuelan facilities despite the political collaboration of Rodriguez with Trump. This is because the new regime has not yet got round yet to purging the diplomatic corps, or much of the machinery of government in Venezuela itself, of anti-imperialists and leftists. They have to tread carefully as the Chavez and Maduro governments had an organic relationship with a formidable movement of the Venezuelan worker and peasant masses, known as the ‘Bolivarian Revolution’. That mass base still exists, and there is the potential for major resistance breaking out if the masses acquire new leadership. Much of this, as well as the state of play with Trump’s deadly dangerous attacks on Cuba, were extensively discussed in the first session, on Latin America: Resisting Recolonisation – solidarity with the anti-imperialist struggle across the region.
Speakers generally were from those communist and anti-imperialist tendencies that have been involved in founding the AFI in Britain, including the Communist Party of Great Britain – Marxist-Leninist (CPGB-ML), the Revolutionary Communist Group (RCG), the Platform of 12th October (P-12O), the Posadists in Britain, the Consistent Democrats (CD), British Section of the Liaison Committee for the Fourth International, and from the New Communist Party (NCP). Miriam Palacios, of the P-12O spoke extensively about the situation in Cuba, which Trump is trying to strangle in an unprecedented manner, accompanied by Charley Taylor of the RCG and Daniel Obrien of the CPGB-ML
We also had some distinguished guest speakers: David Miller, the anti-Zionist academic who recently won a famous victory against Bristol University, which sacked him for his outspoken anti-Zionist views in 2021 after a ferocious campaign backed by Zionist supporters in all the major parties. Chris Williamson, the former Labour MP and a Deputy Leader of the Workers Party, founded by George Galloway, spoke later in the day in the last session. We should have had former British Ambassador and distinguished anti-war/anti-imperialist activist Craig Murray in the first session, but he was unable to attend due to illness.
Regarding David Miller, an Employment Tribunal in 2024 found that he had been unlawfully sacked because of his anti-Zionist views, which constituted a “philosophical belief” “worthy of respect in a democratic society”. Zionists pushed hard for the University to appeal against this, which they did at a hearing last autumn. They were finally revealed to have lost this in early August, which set a legal precedent that anti-Zionist views are a protected characteristic under British law. A major victory. David Miller’s views on Zionism’s international activities are not popular on much of the far left in this country. Some echo the Zionist allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’ about his criticisms of Israel’s international activities, such as his formulation about ‘Pax Judaica’ regarding Zionism’s capability to influence politics in the major Western counties and also most recently in the toppling of left-wing and left-populist governments in Latin America with Israeli involvement. We in the Consistent Democrats have always rejected these attacks, and have initiated petitions in his defence against the witchhunting that some on the ‘far left’ have engaged. We have a similar, but not necessarily identical understanding of Zionism’s international influence.
The second session, on Political Freedom Under Attack – resisting state repression and defending free speech focussed very much on the Palestine genocide and war against Iran in West Asia. The session was kicked off by Ian Donovan of the Consistent Democrats, who sharply attacked and deconstructed the IHRA fake ‘definition’ of Anti-Semitism. He pointed out that it acted both as an ideological support for the Zionist genocide in Palestine, and a means of suppressing criticism of Israel’s genocidal tendencies, right from the start. It attempted to systematise an equation of criticism of Zionist racism with anti-Jewish racism, a system of gaslighting using such an amalgam as a weapon. It acted therefore as a kind of ‘warrant for genocide’ of the Palestinians, in an analogous manner to the way the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the forged Tsarist document, acted as a ‘warrant’ for Hitler’s genocide against the Jews in the period of the Third Reich. Other speakers included Ranjeet Brar of the CPGB-ML, who spoke about his own arrests and victimisation for opposing Zionism including as a senior Doctor in the NHS, and about an important lawsuit against the IHRA definition. Dr Masoud Shajereh of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, spoke extensively about repression and violations of basic rights by Zionists and their allies. He was followed by David Miller and Kotsai Sigurake of the RCG. The latter criticised David Miller’s points on Israel’s ‘Jewish imperialism’ but did not really manage to refute him about Israeli involvement in Latin America which comrade Miller discussed.
The final session was titled Imperialism Means War – Understanding Imperialism and the Constant Drive to War. This featured Andy Higginbottom, of the Platform of 12 October, Joti Brar of the CPGB-ML, Theo Russell of the New Communist Party, representing International Ukraine Anti-Fascist Solidarity (IUAFS), and Chris Williamson of the Workers Party, as previously mentioned. The war in Ukraine was obviously a major feature of the discussion. The Workers Party, and the CPGB-ML are all outspoken against the NATO proxy war being waged against Russia. The Consistent Democrats, Posadists and NCP are all active in IUAFS and so Theo Russell spoke for all of us in condemning the proxy war and NATO, and defending the Donbass/Crimean people and Russia itself against imperialism, while maintaining a critical distance from the bourgeois/bureaucratic layer that rules Russia. Chris Williamson also defended some more Labourite positions in the final session including touching on Modern Monetary Theory, a novel form of left-reformism many would say, and calling for the working class to seize hold of the existing state for our own purposes, a position that we certainly oppose (in our view the working class needs to smash the existing bourgeois state).
All-in-all this conference, as a one-day event with a profusion of speakers, was an excellent, but preliminary event, aiming to drive recruitment to the AFI so we can build a more substantial organisation for activism, and for a future Congress that will be able to engage in must more wide-ranging open discussion. The broad nature of the subjects addressed open up the possibility that the AFI could serve the purposes of at least a strand of regroupment of the best militants into what is necessary – a real, political movement that can lay the basis for the emergence of a revolutionary party. If that is the result, it will need to engage with other strands who are trying to create a real working-class party in the wider workers movement. Last weekend’s conference was a very useful start.
