We reprint below the response by Ukrainian Anti-Fascists and Communists to a 3 April letter of solidarity from Communists and and Anti-Fascists from the UK and elsewhere.

Below that we reproduce the joint letter itself. It was addressed to the Communist Party of the Donetsk People’s Republic and Borotba as a jointly signed letter by all those who have supported the Solidarity with the Fascist Resistance in the Ukraine campaign in London in recent years

It was initiated by the New Communist Party through the umbrella campaign , and endorsed by our international tendency, the Liaison Committee for the Fourth International (LCFI). Our British LCFI Section, the Trotskyist Faction of Socialist Fight, signed this, together with our sister British LCFI section, also currently known as Socialist Fight, as well as three overseas sections of the LCFI, from Brazil, Argentina and the United States. Also signing were the UK Posadist group.

It is a source of pride that our small currents stand out as those who have kept the flame of solidarity alive on this important political struggle against reaction in this period.

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From: Редакция сайта “Вперед”
Sent: 13 April 2020 06:02
To: New Worker
Subject: Re: Solidarity with Ukrainian anti-fascists 

Thank you comrades for your solidarity!  

http://wpered.su/2020/04/13/kommunisty-velikobritanii-latinskoj-ameriki-i-ssha-podderzhali-obrashhenie-kpdnr-v-svyazi-s-neprekrashhayushhimisya-boevymi-dejstviyami-na-donbasse/ — 

С уважением, редакция сайта “Вперед” 

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Dear Comrades

We send solidarity greetings from the UK to all those living under a fascist-infested illegitimate government in Ukraine, defending and building the anti-fascist people’s republics in the Donbas, and to the hundreds of thousands forced into exile by political repression, attacks by fascist gangs and economic austerity.

Although we have had no recent Ukraine anti-fascist solidarity actions, we have by no means forgotten your struggle and the sacrifices you are making.

We were intending to begin organising another Ukraine anti-fascist solidarity protest in London in the near future, but unfortunately events in the form of the Covid-19 pandemic have overtaken us.

All of us have been working hard on other political issues, including helping to organise a very successful meeting attended by 400 people in central London on March 3rd which exposed the lies, tampered and falsified evidence being presented at the current MH17 trial in The Hague.

Ever since the February 22 2014 Ukraine coup we have been aware of the illiegal nature of that regime change, the open involvement of actual fascists in the government, police and armed forces, the complete suppression of democratic rights and freedoms in Ukraine, and the physical attacks on political parties, trade unions and even the courts.

We have not forgotten the heinous crime at the Odessa Trade Union House on 2nd May 2014 and the many other outrages perpetrated by the fascist bands, and we have not forgotten the criminal, barbaric ‘Anti-Terrorist Operation’ launched in April 2014, unleashing all-out war against civilian anti-fascist protestors in Donetsk and Lugansk.

We know that the fighters of the people’s Donbas and Lugansk People’s Militias are making daily sacrifices in the front-line trenches, and that civilians – women and men, children and the elderly – are being killed and injured every day in attacks by the Ukraine armed forces and the fascist brigades.

In our solidarity work for the anti-fascists in Ukraine we are also faced with confronting the lies and whipped up hysteria against the Russian Federation and Vladimir Putin, which have continued for almost a decade.

We have no illusions about the capitalist, oligargic nature of the Russian Federation, but we reject the attempts to portray it as totally undemocratic, and we call for an end to the trade sanctions the constant western interference designed to economic instability and provoke protests. And this coming from governments which kiss the feet of the reactionary fuedal monarchs of the Middle East, and instigate coups and regime change from Brazil and Bolivia to Hong Kong.

Above all we are aware of the vital support given by the Russian Federation to the Donbas people’s republics, the generous hospitality extended to large numbers of Ukrainian exiles, and its open condemnation of the fascists in Ukraine.

We also applaud the the sacrifices made by the Russian volunteer fighters in the Donbas, by the Russian Federation’s armed forces to defend the popular front government in Syria, and the strong support the Russian Federation has extended to Cuba and Venezuela.

This anti-Russian hysteria has created a poisonous atmosphere in which anyone challenging the lies and false flag operations of of US-EU-NATO imperialism risks being labelled as a Russian asset, in a repeat of the anti-communiist witch-hunts of the 1950s.

Unfortunately many progressives, social democrats, trade unionists, and even the anti-fascist and anti-racist organisations on Britain, have fallen for this demonisation, even though it is clearly a repeat of the lies and fake news used against Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gadaffi and Hafez al Assad. This has prevented them from even discussing the most dangerous revival of fascism in the whole of Europe.

Once again we renew our support and solidarity with your organisations, which will continue as long as it takes until democracy has been restored throughout Ukraine, and communists, socialists and anti-fascists are allowed to operate freely again.

Andy Brooks
New Communist Party of Britain

Ian Donovan
Trotskyist Faction of Socialist Fight

Gerry Downing
Socialist Fight

Bridget Dunne
Solidarity with the Anti-Fascist Resistance in Ukraine (SARU)

George Shaw
Posadists in Britain

As well as:

Frente Comunista Dos Trabalhadores (Brazil)

Tendencia Militante Bolchevique (Argentina)

Socialist Workers League (USA)

A CONVERSATION WITH FRANK FITZMAURICE

We reproduce excerpts from the first conversation between comrade Humberto Rodrigues (FCT-Brasil) and Frank Fitzmaurice (SF-Great Britain) on 02/09/2017. Frank passed away on April 7, 2020. In the expression above, which headlines this piece, Frank summarizes the turn that affected the International Workers League, an international current of which the PSTU is the Brazilian section. The conversation also addresses the WRP, ISL, Nahuel Moreno, “democratic revolutions” in Libya and Syria, …

This is also published in Portuguese by our Brazilian comrades here

Humberto Rodrigues: Hi Comrade.

Frank Fitzmaurice: Hello Humberto.

Humberto Rodrigues: For a long time, I want to talk to you, we need to strengthen our bonds of friendship. Forgive me for my confused use of the English language.

Frank Fitzmaurice: Your English is fine. How are you? A lot better than my Portuguese, which is non-existent.

Humberto Rodrigues: No problem. What is your political origin?

Frank Fitzmaurice: I was in the WRP with Gerry [Downing, head of Socialist Fight]. After we expelled Healy, our group started talks with the LIT [International Workers League] and joined that organization in 1988 and became the English section, the ISL [International Socialist League, in Portuguese]. [After 2011] Some of us left after disagreements over the policy on Libya.

Humberto Rodrigues: Very progressive the rupture of you. It is truly a dialectical rupture. While the LIT followed a path, you went the opposite way.

Frank Fitzmaurice: It was more the way the debate was handled in our branch. Would have stayed in but could not debate properly

Humberto Rodrigues: Why?

Frank Fitzmaurice: Think the LIT has regressed really badly. Don’t think they got over the death of Moreno

Our branch was suffering because our leader, Bill Hunter was getting very old, in his nineties, and his faculties were declining, so differences came out.

Humberto Rodrigues: Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Brazil, … in all these countries, the LIT supported the policy of imperialism. In all the LIT supported the coup against the bourgeois ruler who was pro-BRICS.

Frank Fitzmaurice: they have fallen off a cliff.

Humberto Rodrigues: In my view, I believe that support for the “democratic counterrevolution” against the “Stalinist dictatorships” in the USSR and Eastern Europe had already pointed out the morenismo in favor of a pro-imperialist policy, but what happened after the crisis of 2008 was amazing. Stalinophobia of the 1980s and 1990s became “dictatorophobia” that followed the democratic public opinion of imperialism.

Frank Fitzmaurice: Yes, Bill [Hunter] wrote some good stuff against this view of “democratic revolutions”. We joined because we thought that their split with Unified Secretariat was based on principles and we liked Moreno’s anti- guerillaist platform. Above all, we agreed that we should join organizations in struggle and not be afraid to be in a minority.

Humberto Rodrigues: Undoubtedly, in the 1980s, Morenism was more progressive than Mandelism (and the USFI’s capitulations to foquismo, social democracy and, finally, Perestroika). But, from 1989 to 1991, Morenism evolved to increasingly pro-imperialist positions. Like supporting UN blue helmets in the Balkans.

Frank Fitzmaurice: Yes “an ultra-left pro-imperialist twist” sums them up. We gradually came to realise that the discussion had become one way. They sent some very good comrades over in the early days.

Humberto Rodrigues: Good. But, in any case, I consider it a non-materialistic stupidity to believe that the blame for any degeneration after Nahuel Moreno is to be attributed to NM and to his legacy. There was, without doubt, a leap in quality in the LIT program, particularly from Libya.

Frank Fitzmaurice: If Moreno had lived things may have turned out differently. We put into practice going into movements and we learned a lot and it certainly developed us.

Humberto Rodrigues: To assert that LIT’s current policy is NM’s fault is a spirited conception, of Allan Kardec and not of Karl Marx.

Frank Fitzmaurice: Yes there was a further degeneration, could not be blamed on Moreno

Will try to send some of Bill Hunters stuff to you, think you will like it.

Humberto Rodrigues: Okay … In Brazil, the PSTU lost more than half of its militants for supporting the coup against the PT.

Frank Fitzmaurice: That is a qualitative degeneration. The developement of the capitalist crisis, especially since the crash of 2008 has thrown all the left into turmoil. The LIT are by no means alone in giving in to the humanitarian interventionalism, in fact the majority have.

Humberto Rodrigues: Yes. I agree.

Frank Fitzmaurice: Off to bed now. Will write something for you tomorrow on that. Goodnight

Humberto Rodrigues: Good night, comrade.

On 4th April the result of the Labour Party leadership election was announced and true to form and the prediction of the bourgeois press, Sir Keir Starmer was announced as the new leader of the opposition.  Starmer, the establishment stooge, has hammered the final nail into the coffin of the Corbyn project.

Corbyn’s leadership success in 2015 paved the way for the Labour Party to be dragged, albeit kicking and screaming, from the Blairites and over to the left of the political spectrum. The Party attracted a membership of over 560,000, making it the largest political party in Western Europe. These members brought in both class consciousness and hope of reform of the bourgeois political system in the interests of ‘the many, not the few’, which at one point seemed to promise real change. The political landscape in Britain had and still has changed, despite those hopes within the Labour Party being snuffed out by the bureaucratic layer at the top and within the trade unions, protecting ruling class interests. This hope suffered terminal damage with the devastation of the general election defeat in December 2019.

Corbyn’s capitulation to the Zionist smears by constantly apologising and throwing principled anti-racist comrades under the bus on spurious accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’, the adoption of the IHRA, and the treachery of Lansman, Hodge et al, doomed the Corbyn project.  It exposed him as unprincipled and weak and was a major factor (amongst others) in Labour’s disastrous general election result.

A Neoliberal Stooge

The general election defeat was a major blow to the left, and it has left many members and voters completely disillusioned and looking for a new political home. Many of these people are left in the wilderness and considering their Labour Party allegiance, as the natural establishment heir to the throne emerges to be crowned. Starmer, a Knight of the Realm, was involved in the 2016 ‘chicken coup’ attempt to oust Corbyn. His establishment credentials include being in the role of Director of Public Prosecutions during the period (2003-2009) when infiltration of environmental and leftist groups was being carried out by the state, and in 2011 when a trial of environmental activists collapsed due to the CPS (of which he was the Head of and was present in court) covering up vital evidence.

He has been responsible for overseeing the criminal activity of his imperialist paymasters, including in 2012, when he announced that MI5 and MI6 agents would not face charges of torture and extraordinary rendition during the Iraq war, concluding that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute. As an MP, he voted against an investigation into the Iraq war. He also fast tracked the extradition of Julian Assange, who as part of Wikileaks exposed imperialist crimes against the people of Iraq. He disregarded legal precedents by advising Swedish lawyers not to question Assange in the UK, and in so doing prolonged Assange’s legal purgatory, denied closure to his accusers in Sweden, and essentially ensured Assange would face the threat of extradition to a show trial in the US.

Starmer’s crowning is just a continuation of protecting the establishment under the pretext of being the leader of the ‘opposition’ in a ‘socialist’ party. His immediate olive branch to Johnson to work together in a ‘time of national crisis’ obfuscates his real purpose. Starmer immediately signed up to the Board of Deputies of British Jews’ 10 demands and declared his sympathy for Zionism. In February of this year he told the Jewish News that “I support Zionism without qualification.”  He declared in his victory speech, “Anti-Semitism has been a stain on our party” vowing to “tear out this poison by its roots.”

This is code for a purge of the left, of anti-racist campaigners and pro-Palestinian activists and supporters, on the basis of the far-right, Goebellsian blood libel that to condemn the racism of Zionism and the Israeli state is in some way a racialised attack on Jews. In fact Labour is now dominated by anti-Arab, Zionist racism and under Starmer’s leadership and the dictatorship of the IHRA fake-definition, should be considered an anti-Arab, racist party.

At all points of his career Starmer has put his ‘left credentials’ to use to ensure that the bourgeois state is protected at all costs, such as: altering legal guidelines so that those improperly claiming benefits could be charged under the Fraud Act, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years; removing the financial threshold for such cases, allowing the government to waste endless resources arresting and incarcerating people who had claimed minimal amounts of money; drawing up rules that gave police officers more power to arrest demonstrators, including vague guidelines allowing scarfs to be classed as ‘masks’ and placards classed as ‘weapons’; being found by a Parliamentary Select Committee to have restricted the scope of the tabloid phone hacking investigation; and having abstained on the Tory Welfare Bill in 2015, which introduced a series of drastic cuts to social spending that disproportionately affected women, children and the disabled.

He replaced ‘leftists’ Barry Gardiner and Ian Lavery and brought the likes of Rachel Reeves into the Shadow Cabinet. The same Reeves, who in 2013 as Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, claimed that “Labour will be tougher than the Tories on benefits” and earlier as a Blairite minister called for the eviction of the unemployed from council housing. Expecting these careerists to have any sympathy with the working class in the current economic crash would be like inviting a fox into a hen house and hoping it will behave itself.

Tactics and Strategy Toward the Labour left

For all the crowing of the right wing, the fact is that Keir Starmer has a much flimsier mandate as Labour leader than Corbyn had in 2015 and 2016. His supporters claim he has 56% of the vote, whereas in both earlier leadership contests, Corbyn received just shy of two thirds. Equally importantly, more Labour members did not vote at all in the 2020 leadership election than voted for Starmer. This has created a situation where a Scottish socialist, Sandy McBurney, who is often quite close to our comrades in terms of tactical understanding of the nuances of the Labour Party and its politics, projected:

“I think a future split of the Labour left is very much on the horizon. Sir Keir will be expelling many on the left and anyone who tries to organise against the expulsions. So we will have de facto an organisation that is mainly outside the Labour Party. Will our perspective just be to try to get back in? Or will it be trying to build a socialist current that stands for a mass socialist party and that calls a spade a spade i.e. that the Labour Party is led by an anti-socialist and the PLP is dominated by anti-working-class servants of capital. Look what has happened to social democracy in Europe? Should socialists be fighting to be in the French Italian, German or Spanish social democratic parties?

“Obviously not. Take the blinkers off. It is highly unlikely that the left will ever win over the Labour Party to socialism. Things are a lot later and have moved on from that. The Labour right and the capitalist class has shown it won’t accept even a mild left leadership of the LP. Are we not going to learn from that? A socialist takeover of the Labour Party is now ruled out. The right won’t make the same mistake again. But you can be sure that the Labour right is going to expel those socialists who won’t kowtow to their anti-working-class politics. They will try to integrate some as long as they keep their mouths shut but the right is out to purge the hard left with slanders about antisemitism etc.”

This has to be the tactical approach of Marxists to the radicalised and alienated, and quite massive Labour left, of maybe 200-250,000 militants or so. We need a lifeboat, an organising centre for the creation of a genuinely anti-capitalist, anti-Zionist mass workers party, and revolutionaries need to be sharpening up their programmatic approach to create a bridge between the alienated, but still to a very large degree left-reformist consciousness of this advanced layer, and the objective need for a revolutionary anti-capitalism, i.e. the programme of socialist revolution. This may involve blocs with principled left socialists of reformist or centrist consciousness, such as Chris Williamson and others, but our overall aim as revolutionaries must be to fight for a revolutionary programme among these vitally important vanguard layers of working class and allied militants.

The British road to socialism through the bourgeois parliamentary system is an illusion. The capitalist class will use all bureaucratic means necessary to frustrate, divert energy, and where necessary corrupt means with the support with their lackeys in the capitalist press to prevent any real change in the interests of workers. Crumbs will be given piecemeal here and there, some minor reforms, some concessions, but nothing substantial, to ensure that the working class are kept subdued and the protection of capital in the hands of the ruling class is kept in place.

The Labour Party has a track record of leading workers down a dead end and some of the most terrible of British imperialist crimes have happened during times of having a Labour government in power. However, the Tories response to the current COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted that the ruling class fear the class consciousness again developing within the masses. The majority now understand the importance of cleaners, nurses, delivery drivers, supermarket and factory workers and not the CEOs of large corporations that are now squealing to be bailed out.

The likes of Branson, the multi billionaire who evades taxes living on his own island, requesting government assistance while he lays off his workers is causing resentment amongst the masses, who now see the stinking hypocrisy very clearly. To placate the majority, financial promises and concessions have been made by Johnson and his Chancellor. The ruling class fear people on the streets as they have seen in France, the emergency powers rushed through Parliament, which were supported by Labour, show this.

If they believe that another round of austerity will solve the financial hole that they have now dug themselves into they are sorely mistaken. The genie will not go back into the bottle. The crisis has shown neoliberal economics has to be pulled out by its roots and the trunk and branches of capitalist system completely destroyed for humanity to have any chance of survival, and to realise its true potential to live in a more just and equal world; a world where capitalist class dictatorship is overcome and replaced with the class dictatorship of the working class and the oppressed, the great majority of humanity, as a bridge to a rational, sustainable and egalitarian world order, or world socialism to put it straightforwardly.

By Ian Donovan

So Gerry Downing’s ‘change of heart’ on Zionism, leads to Tony Greenstein writing an ‘unsolicited’ letter of support for Gerry (see below) to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign executive, a melange of Abbas/Fatah supporters and treacherous Socialist Action bureaucrats who organise events featuring Zionist witchhunters such as Emily Thornberry (of Labour Friends of Israel), begging for Gerry’s PSC membership back.
Any revolutionary militant worth their salt, any real anti-Zionist, would find this a source of shame, not of pride.

It signifies that Gerry is now housebroken, and to be considered on the road to becoming an integral part of traitorous social democracy.

Its good that Tony clarifies the nonsense Gerry has been spouting about my supposed ‘move to the right’ in the recent factional conflict in SF. Tony entirely accurately writes:

“However there is no doubt in my mind that Gerry has had a sincere change of heart as a result of a heated debate inside his own organisation.  I have written an article here for Weekly Worker and on my blog.  Whilst I certainly have criticisms of Gerry, I have no doubt that he is sincere in making a political break from Ian Donovan who has not had a change of heart.”

And his ‘change of heart’, i.e. his capitulation to Zionism, now makes him fit for the company of those who parley with the regime of Abbas, who tortures and murders Palestinian militants on Israel’s behalf, and of those who work with Emily Thornberry, the Zionist who tried very hard to bully the movers of the successful resolution on Palestine at the 2018 LP Conference which condemned the Nakba, into withdrawing it. But failed!

It is not difficult to imagine what Lenin or Trotsky would have said about such grovelling to class enemies!

What is also revealing is what is unspoken but clearly visible in Tony’s letter. Tony considers himself to be part of a common movement with Ben Soffa and all the other traitors and Zionist capitulators in PSC, and is fully aware that they are organically linked to supporters of ethnic cleansing like Thornberry and Vichy-like collaborators like Abbas’ Palestinian authority (to cite the late Edward W. Said). 

Tony sees himself as part of a common movement with those who collaborate with Israel against the Palestinian masses, and who work alongside those who defend the Nakba. His criticisms of them for these very things are really only platonic, as when push comes to shove he sides with them nevertheless. His ‘opposition’ to them is essentially fake, and an obstacle to a real, consistently anti-Zionist opposition to them emerging in the Palestine Solidarity Movement.

For him, to say that the many Jewish-Zionist bourgeois who concretely fight as a bourgeois faction/caste for Western support and endorsement of genocidal Israeli policies, are an independent factor and a social and economic formation that oppresses the Palestinians on ethnocentric lines, is a terrible crime, far worse than the Nakba, and fully entitles the pro-Zionist traitors at the top of PSC to exclude consistent anti-Zionists from their common movement.

He insists that:

“Until recently Gerry was of the view that there existed a trans-national Jewish/Zionist bourgeoisie and that what is termed the ‘over representation’ of Jews among America’s billionaires and ruling circles accounts for the US’s support for Israel. His group, Socialist Fight, did not accept that the USA supports Israel because it is in its interests to do so”

Thus he asserts that such things as the US support for the blockade and slow genocide in Gaza, the annexation of Jerusalem and Golan, are in the rational interests of the USA, and to project that they may not be is ‘anti-Semitic’. It is undoubtedly true that that the United States imperialist bourgeoisie regarded it as in US interests to have an alliance with imperialist France during its period of colonial war in Algeria, but that did not extend to US endorsement of the French claim that Algeria was itself merely a province of France! To deny that Jewish-Zionist ethnic politics plays any role in the US endorsement of Israeli annexations and openly genocidal actions is simply to deny reality, and is untenable. It is itself an apologia for Zionism. 

Here we have proof that Greenstein’s ‘anti-Zionism’ is only skin deep, that for him, forbidding meaningful criticism of Jewish-Zionist bourgeois racism is far more important than any putative support for the Palestinians. Or to put it bluntly, for him also, despite his self-delusion otherwise, Jews are more important than Arabs.

The real social-imperialist nature of centrist gatekeepers like Greenstein is here revealed once again. They identify on communal lines with their ‘own’ bourgeoisie and ultimately regard themselves as part of a common movement with them. They police and ‘discipline’ the workers movement on behalf of the Jewish-Zionist bourgeois caste, and define which ‘crucial socioeconomic facts’ (to quote Norman Finkelstein) would be Marxists are allowed to incorporate into their analyses.

This makes them a political agency of part of the class enemy. The classic role of centrism, and now Gerry has obtained absolution from Greenstein, his centrist confessor, along with the Sven Golly’s of this world who again, when push comes to shove, show their real affinity. His obcurantist, incomprehensible writing about philosophy, Neitzsche, Arendt, and all the rest of the irrelevant gibberish he has gone around trying to pick fights with people about, is a smokescreen aimed at fooling others, and perhaps even deluding himself, that he is not capitulating to the bourgeoisie and becoming just another one of its tame servants.

That is is all just incoherent posturing and pretentious psuedo-intellectualism is shown by the following passage in his latest obscurantist article, “Tony Greenstein’s revenge”, when he notes, accurately enough, that the pre-war surrealist artist Salvador Dali was sympathetic to fascism. He writes:

“Salvador Dali’s art is repugnant to all class conscious socialists; his enthusiastic support for the fascist Francisco Franco in Spain and Adolf Hitler in Germany makes it an instrument of human oppression and the impressionist school justly expelled him in 1934 because theirs was a revolutionary movement under Andre Breton.”

(https://socialistfight.com/2020/03/25/tony-greensteins-revenge/)

Quite why the whole of Dali’s art, as distinct from the parts of it that glorify Hitler and fascism, should be ‘repugnant’ to class conscious socialists is not clear, as an examination of the art of Breton and Dali would reveal a great deal of similarity, which you would expect as they were from the same surrealist, Dadaist school. But as with his philosophical obscurantism, art is of no real interest to Gerry here, as the elementary error in the above passage shows. For Breton and Dali were not ‘impressionists’ at all; they were surrealists.

Impressionists are a completely different school from the late 19th Century, typified by Claude Monet and Paul Gauguin, that specialised in depictions of reality as it appeared, as different from the disturbed imaginings of surrealist art as black is from white. How anyone can pontificate about art and make such an elementary error is just staggering!

This is not a polemic about art, just as Gerry’s material about philosophy is not really about philosophy, whatever interest he may once have had in the latter. It is about erecting a smokescreen to cover his rightward retreat into the camp of ‘respectable’ psuedo-Marxism that is acceptable to those who formerly witchhunted him when he adhered to our politics.

In the same article Gerry claims that failing to agree with his refusal to condemn the 9/11 attacks, which attracted the attention of Cameron, means that I agree with the third campist CPGB, which took no side when imperialism bombed IS beginning in 2014.

Completely untrue, as he well knows. The very first leaflet I produced after I was forced out of the the Communist Platform of Left Unity, in September 2014, was distributed on the anti-war demo on 3 October 2014, with the headline “Imperialist Hands off Syria, Iran, Iraq and Islamic State”. It stated:

“…the basic contours of a genuinely communist, anti-imperialist policy need to be spelt out now. This means that, in the face of an imperialist drive to destroy the Islamic State movement and re-establish the status quo, communists stand for the defence of the Islamic State, notwithstanding their brutal nature, insofar as they are able to mobilise any serious section of the Sunni Arab masses in struggle against an imperialist re-subjugation of these areas. If they refrain from such mass mobilisation, nothing can ultimately help them.

Obviously this means no support for Al Qaeda-style actions like bombings and massacres such as those that all sides frequently perpetrate in Baghdad, or even similar acts in imperialist countries. It would involve communist solidarity with a serious war of resistance against re-occupation. Indeed, only such solidarity would have any hope of breaking down the impotent rage at oppression that makes such Islamic radicalism  attractive to the youth. As opposed to more imperialist barbarism that can only feed more such desperately flawed ‘radicalism’.”

https://commexplor.com/2014/09/27/imperialist-aggression/

This is not remotely like the CPGB. But it does draw a clear distinction between support for an indigenous armed force among oppressed people resisting imperialism, and politically approving of atrocities carried out by such forces. It is simply wrong to support, or refuse to condemn, intentional atrocities against civilians even if the force that perpetrates them is also involved in a fight with imperialism. That was my position before I joined SF, and it is my position now, on all such actions no matter who carries them out. 9/11 was a deliberate attack on civilians as was the attack on the Stade De France by ISIS supporters in November 2015. I wrote the SF statement that condemned that attack specifically as a corrective to Gerry’s wrong position on 9/11 and he did not raise any objection.

Despite the headline “Imperialism’s Chicken’s come home to roost” which is an analytical point, the condemnation is clear:

“Socialist Fight condemns utterly the barbaric terrorist action carried out on Friday 13 November in Paris, which has left around 130 dead, and another 300 injured, 80 critically. These came only hours after other bloody actions targeting Shia Muslims in bombings in Beirut, where 41 died, and Baghdad, where 26 were killed.

“We condemn these actions as bloody crimes against the French, Middle Eastern and international working class, and indeed the civilian populations more generally. We extend our profound condolence, sympathy and solidarity to the families and friends to the murdered victims and the wounded.

“As Marxists we are totally opposed to methods of individual terrorism however ‘anti-imperialist’ the motivation of the perpetrators may be. The inevitable consequences of this is civilian casualties, intended or not. And the attack never weakens imperialism, it ALWAYS strengthens the repressive forces of the capitalist state against the working class and its aspiring revolutionary leadership. This attack in Paris is qualitatively worse than the Charlie Hebdo massacre because however misguided that was a least it was against targeted victims who they held to be in some manner, however distorted, responsible for the wars in the Middle East and North Africa. This attack was for openly reactionary motives specifically targeting defenceless civilians which can only result in increased Islamophobia and repression of the entire working class and further moves towards a police state.”

https://socialistfight.com/2015/11/17/the-paris-massacre-imperialisms-chickens-coming-home-to-roost-17-11-2015/

And a few month later in response to related events in Brussels, we wrote:

“Socialist Fight condemns the apparent suicide bombings at Brussels Zavateen Airport and the Maelbeeck metro station. These incidents are highly likely to be linked to the capture by the Belgian police of one of the chief suspects in the Paris massacre/shootings last November, where around 130 civilians were killed. It does appear from early reports that the death toll in both attacks is around 34, however it is quite likely that this could rise as more details emerge.

“Our attitude to these attacks is the same as for the Paris massacre…”

That again was my doing. And the Paris Massacre statement was before Gerry’s earlier refusal to condemn 9/11 became an issue in the Labour Party witchhunt. It is a principled Marxist position that has been held by me since around 1980 and never deviated from. 

But it has nothing to do with third campism. You can support military struggles against imperialism and condemn atrocities against civilians: the two go hand-in-hand especially when the forces involved in such conflicts with imperialism, are bourgeois, whether Assad’s forces or those of IS. One presumes that support for Assad against imperialism does not mean support for the many crimes of his regime against civilians (I mean real ones, not fabrications like Ghouta). Obviously support is extended despite such crimes, not to the crimes themselves.

Gerry’s nonsense about how I supposedly agree with the CPGB about IS is just another petty falsification to obscure the fact that it is he who has had a ‘change of heart’ and it now being taken in hand by gatekeepers like Tony Greenstein and Zionists like ‘Sven Golly’. The fact is that I have had no change of heart at all, as Tony rightly points out. I am still as militantly anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist as I was when I put out that leaflet, and when I joined SF.

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Gerry Downing’s Introduction to Tony Greenstein’s letter to PSC on his behalf

Thanks to Tony Greenstein for this unsolicited  letter in my support to Ben Sofa of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign against my suspension. Despite political differences on other important issues it was vert big if him to do so.

I had missed the original letters from the PSC on my expulsion but I can appeal to the PSC AGM next January, which I will do.

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Tony Greenstein letter to Ben Soffa on behalf of Gerry Downing

Dear Ben

I have been sent a copy of a letter from you to Gerry Downing regarding his suspension from PSC. Perhaps I can comment?

In your letter to him you express doubt that he is in a position to accept the stipulation in 4.1 of the Constitution viz. ‘The aims of the campaign include the requirement to be ‘in opposition to racism, including anti-Jewish prejudice’.

Until recently Gerry was of the view that there existed a trans-national Jewish/Zionist bourgeoisie and that what is termed the ‘over representation’ of Jews among America’s billionaires and ruling circles accounts for the US’s support for Israel. His group, Socialist Fight, did not accept that the USA supports Israel because it is in its interests to do so.

However there is no doubt in my mind that Gerry has had a sincere change of heart as a result of a heated debate inside his own organisation.  I have written an article here for Weekly Worker and on my blog.  Whilst I certainly have criticisms of Gerry, I have no doubt that he is sincere in making a political break from Ian Donovan who has not had a change of heart.

Gerry makes his own position clear here in a letter to WW of 29th February.

Gerry sent me a copy of your letter and although he did not make any request that I approach you I have nonetheless decided to do so.  I do not believe that Gerry Downing holds anti-Semitic opinions any longer (I have never believed he was, on a personal level, antisemitic) and I am happy to recommend that the Executive reconsider the matter and lift his suspension.

Best wishes

Tony

The following letter was sent to the Weekly Worker in time for last week’s online edition, but was not published, in reply to Gerry Downing’s weak letter (see ‘Scurillous’ here) in the previous issue defending his comrade Gareth Martin against charges of racism. No doubt the editors did not consider concluding this exchange properly a political priority for them, which is comprehensible. However as a matter of political hygiene we consider that GD’s attempt to obsfuscate the truth about this should not go unanswered and so we are publishing it here.

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Gerry Downing tries to deny that the abuse by Gareth Martin of our Middle Eastern comrade, his grotesque allegation that he supported imaginary murders of Jews in synagogues in London, was really directed at him at all. He foolishly asks:

“Look at the line of argument here and the ridiculous, demented non-sequiturs; how in the hell is it ‘a direct criticism of one of our Middle Eastern comrades’? Ah, you see, Gareth mentions London and the comrade he is debating with lives in London (he doesn’t), so he must be referring to him!”

Well our comrade considers that he lives in London, even if on the periphery and not inner London. And more to the point, it is clearly a direct criticism since it is a Facebook comment in which our comrade is tagged, and him alone. No one else is tagged. It is very clear that this comment was directed at him personally. We have screenshots of this Facebook exchange which we are quite prepared to produce before any reputable third party.

We also have screenshots of another Facebook exchange with another defender of Downing’s politics racially abusing our comrade, one Rob Lyons, apparently from North America, who lectured our comrade about a ‘worker’, from the same Middle Eastern ethnic group that our comrade comes from, in an even more obvious vein thus:

“If a [Middle Eastern] worker beats his spouse, then to his spouse he is a direct oppressor, but within the matrix of social relations globally, he is just another oppressed worker passing along his alienated state in the form of domestic violence.”

When our comrade protested that Lyons knew that he was from the same ethnic group that Lyons was stereotyping, and that this was racist innuendo, Lyons replied, tagging our comrade personally again:

“Get stuffed slimeball. I used an example I thought you could relate to given your experiences. Something real easy for you to understand. Obviously I over rated your intelligence. Truly sorry for that. But there is no colouring book to teach you how to draw inside the lines on this issue.”

The poisonous racial innuendo here is palpable. Yet when both the target of this abuse, and myself, protested about this and pointed out the obvious racist intent, we were both removed, and blocked, from the Socialist Fight Facebook group by the admin, Gerry Downing, and our comments protesting the racial abuse deleted. We have screenshots of Lyons’ comments which again are clearly tagged with the same of our Middle Eastern comrade here.

This is where the racism that lurks behind Gerry’s capitulation to Zionism becomes explicit. It is also borne out by his attempt to theorise why Gareth Martin should not be challenged for this innuendo-laden attack:

“Previously Ian’s ‘proof’ of his racism was a ridiculous biological-determinist theory: he is white and was born in South Africa, so this made him a racist and a supporter of Zionism, regardless of his proud record of fighting apartheid in South Africa since he was a teenager and his direct participation in the Anti-Nazi League and the Socialist Workers Party for 10 years from the mid-1990s, all the while fighting against Zionism and Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians.”

Even in the minds of ‘biological’ racists, there is no perceived difference between white settler types in Africa and the broader white population around the world. Gerry has invented a strange new concept here, even though he projects it onto me. My point is that Gareth’s attitudes reflect backward attitudes that he has not overcome despite being in essentially left-liberal, in practice reformist organisations like the social-chauvinist Anti-Nazi League and the SWP that I rejected from the left at the beginning of the 1980s. Presumably if that is his tradition then for Gerry he cannot have failed to overcome backward, racist views that come from his background at all. The fact that Gerry can make such an argument shows a degree of political degeneration.

As does his whole argument about my ‘biological’ hostility to Gareth’s racist backwardness. This is about backwardness from a cultural background, and applies not only to Gareth but to the dictatorial leader of the SWP, Alex Callinicos, who comes from a white settler aristocratic background in colonial Zimbabwe. Callinicos denounced Norman Finkelstein as providing comfort for Nazis in 1999, and now orders his SWP goons to bureaucratically harass pro-Palestinian militants who object to the presence of open Zionists in the SWP’s ‘Stand Up to Racism’ events. I would assert that this particular policy, which was not the policy of the SWP under previous leaderships, is a product of his personal regime in the SWP and Callinicos’s own politics and prejudices. But I’m sure that Callinicos, like Martin, will profess opposition to Zionism as well. It means nothing if his actions contradict that.

Gerry is in effect attacking me for ‘anti-white racism’, racism against myself, with this polemic. This is itself a racist, far right trope. ‘Self-hatred’ among groups that currently oppress others is always a far right trope, and this has particular relevance where Zionists and those who are soft on Zionism are involved. The campaign against Atzmon has much of the same character, nothwithstanding his confusion about history, which is shared by an enormous number of people in the Middle East who are faced with genocidal oppression at the hands of ‘democratic’ imperialism and Zionist Jews.

There is an element of ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ in the politics of the Middle East. This has produced the paradox today where it is perfectly possible for someone to doubt the truth of the Nazi holocaust, and yet for their underlying, real motive, be a confused hostility to the racism that Arabs and Muslims experience today. And conversely, it is perfectly possible for someone to be completely in tune with the long established truth of the Nazi genocide, and yet to be a genocidal racist who defends the mass murder of Arab civilians. I judge people by their real motive and drives, not their confusions. So actually, the ‘anti-white racism’ trope that Gerry implies has much in common with the denunciation of Atzmon the Jewish-Israeli as an ‘ Jewish anti-Semite’ and ‘self-hating Jew’. This is also a far right trope and it is no surprise that Gerry in defending the latter comes to advocate the former. It is indicate of an extreme contradiction in his politics that a left-wing militant of Trotskyist views should come to echo such tropes.

Gerry absurdly claims that to denounce Gareth for racially abusing our comrade is anti-Semitic, and regrets that we are allowed to criticise him. That is in tune with his behaviour in trying to silence our criticism on every forum he controls. But when he tried to do that on an International forum of the Liaison Committee for the Fourth International, this was countermanded by International comrades. The contradiction Gerry has is that our ‘expulsion’ is not recognised internationally by our common International comrades, though they are compelled to recognise that Gerry’s political retreat into pro-Zionist chauvinism and bureaucratism have led to the creation of two groups, both of whom are recognised as LFCI groups by the international comrades. That puts Gerry in an extreme contradiction with not only workers democracy but also the democracy of the LCFI when he denounces others for allowing us to argue our views.

Communist Greetings

Ian Donovan

Trotskyist Faction of Socialist Fight, and LCFI.

The Prime Minister of Britain, Boris Johnson, is tonight in intensive care in St Thomas’s Hospital, London, apparently receiving oxygen on a ventilator after spending around two weeks with worsening Covid-19. It is possible he will not survive the viral pneumonia that has set in. This is possibly the most shocking and prominent demonstration yet of the very dangerous nature of the Coronavirus-Sars-2 virus which is responsible for this pandemic. Johnson’s own ministers have started to emphasise that the virus does not discriminate among its victims, and can infect or kill anyone. Even a highly privileged, Eton-educated Tory Prime Minister can be struck down by it!

This just underlines the stupidity of the attitude that part of the bourgeoisie, including Johnson himself, have adopted towards the pandemic. This is particularly so of the right-wing populists of whom Johnson is a prime example; not the worst or the most irrational, but pretty arrogant and stupid nevertheless. US President Donald Trump is also a prime specimen of this anti-scientific irrational idiocy, as is Jair Bolsonaro, the fascistic right-populist Brazilian President.

You could quite literally say that Johnson may have signed his own death warrant with his anti-scientific, callous stupidity. On the This Morning show of 5^th March, Johnson floated a strategy for dealing with the virus thus:

“Well it’s a very, very important question, and that’s where a lot of the debate has been and one of the theories is, that perhaps you could take it on the chin, take it all in one go and allow the disease, as it were, to move through the population, without taking as many draconian measures.” (https://fullfact.org/health/boris-johnson-coronavirus-this-morning/)

Johnson delayed for several weeks from crucial measures like closing schools, or introducing social distancing measures, and equally importantly, it has completely ignored the obvious need for the introduction of widespread testing for the virus. The UK government has been forced into action on some of these things from below, by such things as parents keeping their children off school in defiance of the government. Such was the backlash when it became clear that the result of this strategy would be 500,000 deaths, that Johnson’s government has had to publicly abandon the ‘herd  immunity’ concept, at least publicly. However their failure to test the population for the disease reveals that the strategy remains.

It’s an anti-scientific, genocidal strategy whose real driving force has occasionally leaked out, such as when Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s adviser and mentor, was quoted as saying in a meeting in February that the government’s strategy was “herd immunity, protect the economy, and if some pensioners die then too bad” (Sunday Times,  22 March).

This is the logic of neo-liberalism, Social Darwinism, or the survival of the fittest; the poor, the sick and the old can be allowed to die off not least because of the potential savings that the wealthy can make from social benefits and pensions. As one Daily Telegraph writer, Jeremy Warner, wrote on 3 March:

“Not to put too fine a point on it, from an entirely disinterested economic perspective, the COVID-19 might even prove mildly beneficial in the long term by disproportionately culling elderly dependents. (https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/11/telegraph-journalist-says-coronavirus-cull-elderly-benefit-economy-1238390)

Johnson is the personification of the hubris of the neoliberal populist right over this. His injunction to ‘take it on the chin’ could well be his epitaph. In tune with this, he boasted of visiting a hospital and shaking hands “with everybody” including Covid-19 patients. He may well have spread the disease from the infected to others by this act of sheer stupidity alone. It appears he has also infected his pregnant partner, Carrie Symonds, in the process.

He is not the only one of course. When Covid-19 first emerged, Trump first declared that it was a ‘hoax’ put forward by his political opponents to discredit him for the election, and has both tried to exploit the virus’ apparent point of origin in Wuhan, China, calling it the ‘Chinese Virus’, and then has like Johnson, declared that the priority is ‘the economy’ rather than preserving lives. He was forced into declaring a Federal Emergency over the virus, at the same time he is continually trying to undermine it with calls for easing it, for people to go back to work after Easter, etc. His notorious tweets, such as that saying “”WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF” and hinting at easing the quarantine for the economy’s sake, point one way. Yet Trump has also been forced to guarantee payment of hospitals by the US government for the uninsured millions who are at risk of huge hospital bills for treatment for the disease. Thus Trump has been forced, temporarily, to institute a form of socialised medicine. Like in Britain, we see the same outrageous contempt for life being forced to back down by the certain knowledge that failing to do these elementary things will lead to a social explosion.

The genocidal and anti-scientific ideology of the neoliberal right over the pandemic is shown by the actions and words of Bolsonaro in Brazil. According to the Brazilian President, the pandemic will end when 70% are of the population are infected. He puts forward the outrageous view that that social isolation is of no use and only hinders the economy.

But the retreat of the tide of infection in China is concrete evidence that social isolation and distancing works. A country with 1.5 billion people had 83,000 cases, and yet the virus has stopped spreading. The virus is not a living being, it depends on being finding suitable bodies to multiply. If everyone is in social isolation the infected people create antibodies or unfortunately end up dying. Thus the virus disappears. As the contamination and reaction time of the organism is 3 to 4 weeks, if social isolation lasts 2 to 3 months it is possible to stop the circulation of the virus and have a small number of infected people, which is what is happening in China today.

That is why they continue to quarantine everyone who comes from outside, so that there is no new introduction of the virus and so no new cycle of pandemic. For this cycle to be truly broken, it is essential that government officials guarantee all support and continued income for the population to remain in social isolation and apply tests to all. Testing for everyone is crucial, so that those infected can actually be isolated and not be the focus of new transmissions. Only after breaking the cycle and carrying out this testing programme to a conclusion is it possible to relax the insulation.

 But for Bolsonaro and the elite he represents, their concern is not how to break the circulation of the virus and save lives, but how to save corporate profits. And for that he uses all possible lying arguments and the denial of scientific evidence, and more blatantly and consistently than the likes of Johnson and Trump, gives expression to the barbaric, genocidal Social-Darwinism that is at the core of neoliberalism and the fascistic populism it has spawned.

The undersigned revolutionary working-class groups demand the protection of all workers and oppressed people from the dangers caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, which is a very dangerous threat to the health and lives of the oppressed. Particularly older workers, the retired, the disabled, those with underlying health conditions, to prisoners, the impoverished, those in nations such as Iran, occupied Palestine and Gaza, Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea who are targeted for starvation sanctions and barbaric deprivation of basic medical supplies and services by imperialism and its allies, and particularly also many oppressed people who live in impoverished semi-colonial nations in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Oceania.

This pandemic crisis has produced the most serious economic and political crisis for capitalism since the Second World War, or earlier crises that led to that war such as the 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression. The fundamental contradiction facing world capitalism is that the prolonged strategy of saving capitalist profitability over the last several decades has involved savage attacks on social benefits, including healthcare benefits, for workers and the poor around the world, both in the imperialist countries, going hand in hand with globalisation and the export of jobs to poor, low-wage countries, this putting pressure on the working class in the imperialist countries to accept a serious decline in living standards and benefits.

The imperialist drive to capitalist restoration in the former USSR and much of its sphere of influence was initially the driving force of these such attacks, but they have become a generalised phenomenon throughout the capitalist world, part of neo-liberalism, the dominant creed of capital today, which is seen by the ruling classes of the world as their saviour from the spectre of Communism and the Russian Revolution.

A similar, parallel thing has been done also in poorer, semi-colonial countries, where the rise of exported capital and the increase in jobs has led to the rise of free market economics and attacks on already meagre healthcare and social welfare systems there also, through such things as IMF ‘structural adjustment’ programmes to attract imperialist investment.

Now that neo-liberal capitalism is itself in terminal decay, we see the grotesque spectacle of the rise of right-wing populism with a stern, fascist tendency, put in power in part as a result of the disillusionment of backward sections of the working class in many countries, which has given rise to leaders such as Trump, Johnson , Bolsonaro and Modi, who make light of and mock a deadly pandemic that threatens to decimate the victims of capitalism, those who are considered surplus population by much of the ruling class.

At the same time we see that under mass pressure and fear of an eruption of the rage of the masses at the huge death toll that is threatened, and the obvious fact that healthcare has been deliberately undermined for decades as part of neo-liberal asset stripping and privatisation, many bourgeois regimes are attempting to stave off disaster by imposing a necessary measure of quarantine on the population.

We support the quarantine and demand effective measures of public health. We will also support agitation to force recalcitrant neoliberal regimes to carry out such measures where they a playing with obscenities like Johnson’s injunction to the British population to ‘take it on the chin’. While there is no vaccine or cure for this new disease the working class is in a defensive, backs-to-the-wall situation and needs to be extremely cautious about protecting its most vulnerable and frail components. We must seize on the weapon of quarantine to protect ourselves, and fight for the nationalisation of health provision and its supply chain, housing for the homeless, and protections for workers sacked because of the pandemic. We defend the international solidarity efforts of the workers’ states and peoples oppressed by imperialism against the pandemic, as Cuba has been doing.

But this situation is causing the capitalist system to totter economically, and we must demand of the bourgeois states every possible measure to negate the ruinous impact of capitalism and neo-liberalism on the masses. We demand the expropriation of private healthcare and the privileges of the rich to save as many working class people as possible from the pandemic. We demand the expropriation of failing industries in the economic crisis, and that all workers, in regular and ‘casual’ employment of all kinds, be paid in full for the duration of the pandemic. We demand economic planning to handle the economic needs of the masses under quarantine; the idea that market economics and neoliberalism can be any kind of solution to any of this is poisonous rubbish, too preposterous for words. Such is the international nature of this human crisis that this must be on a world scale if a terrible death toll is to be avoided in the poorest parts of the world.

At the same time we must be vigilant against attempts by far right and fascist forces to exploit the need for a quarantine to attack the democratic rights of the masses, to attack our freedom to criticise, to institute a dictatorship. An ominous example is the demand of Orban in Hungary for the right to rule by decree for the duration of the pandemic. There are similar dangers from Trump in the US, from Johnson in Britain, and in many other places. We must be on our guard.

Above all we demand and seek the world revolution, as the only way to save the working class, and the planet on which we live, which is being degraded and polluted, particularly through capitalist mode of production induced climate change, to the point where human extinction is on the horizon. Capitalism has caused a devastating Climate Change that in combination with systematic destruction of nature have caused unprecedented degradation of nature throughout the world. This allows deadly viruses such as the coronavirus to evolve, adapt, and jump from animals to humans. While we are facing such a deadly threat it may appear unrealistic to talk of world revolution, but the root causes of this calamity, and others to come, dictate political and economic tasks that only the world proletariat in power can solve. This particular disaster will end at some point and there must be a reckoning with its causes. We need worldwide economic planning, we need an end to the destruction of the ecosphere, we need the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism worldwide.

Signed:

Frente Comunista dos Trabalhadores (Brazil)

Tendencia Militante Bolchevique (Argentina)

Socialist Workers League (United States)

Socialist Fight (Britain)

Trotskyist Faction of Socialist Fight (Britain)

The above groups who endorse it are part of the Liaison Committee for the Fourth International.

Mohammad Basir Ul Haq Sinha, President, Inter Press Network, Dhaka – Bangladesh

Fernando Gustavo Armas, physician, militant of Socialismo Revolucionario – Argentina

Akhar Bandyopadhyay, non-partisan Political Activist — India

Ady Mutero, Revolutionary Internationalist League – Zimbabwe

Akash Mirza, chair, Bangladesh Revolutionary Socialist Union – BRSU

Nigel Singh, independent left militant, Oxford, UK

Curtis T, youth and socialist activist, Monrovia, Liberia

The above groups and militants also endorse the statement.

Demands for the Covid-19 Pandemic crisis

We have an imbecilic Prime Minister and a Government behaving like a rabbit in the headlights. Now Johnson claims he can resolve this crisis in twelve weeks. As one wag in the media noted, this slogan could be painted on the side of a bus.

They are lurching from one U-turn to another, reacting to events clearly overtaking them. Much of their policy-making has been in response to what others have already decided. Advising self-isolation and staying away from pubs, clubs and theatres were measures that the public and even some businesses had already decided for Johnson and the Government.

The same could be said about the closure of schools, which already had large numbers of pupils and teachers missing. The Government then found itself having to respond likewise after devolved Scotland and Wales announced schools would close from Friday. The largest teachers’ union, the National Education Union, had already called for this.

The government has been dragged reluctantly toward implementing some of the advice of the World Health Organisation, ‘a day late and a dollar short’, and is still dragging its feet.  A Tory government that has almost wrecked the NHS since 2010 with austerity; deliberate underfunding that has overseen the cutting of 17,000 beds; savage cuts to social care services; operations delayed and cancelled; and a decline in staffing resulting in a shortage of 100,000 NHS staff; the Tories tried to destroy the NHS and cannot care less about healthcare for the poor and the working class.

Already two London hospitals are at crisis point with a chronic lack of beds. Northwick Park Hospital has declared this critical requesting help from other hospitals. One senior doctor described the situation as “f***ing petrifying.” The same can be said of the Tories’ complete disdain of workers who have been treated with utter contempt, seeing their real wages decline year on year since 2010.

The Chancellor’s ‘rescue package’ was just a public relations exercise, a headline grabber, which soon unravelled. The £330 billion package is simply a money printing exercise by the BoE, a bail out with a loan package that would be underwritten by the taxpayer. Small businesses and workers, already finding themselves in difficulties are being ‘supported’ by saddling them with even more debt and interest added to boot, albeit after a 12 months interest-free period.

The government have since announced further measures, such as its job retention scheme: employees unable to work are paid 80% of their wages, stopping employers making them unemployed; tax breaks such as  VAT deferral for three months; and raising benefits. While welcome to a degree, these people cannot be trusted. This must be implemented without delay and be accessed easily. There is ambiguity around protecting those in the ‘gig economy’ on zero hours contracts and workers need vigilance and organisation through unions etc. to stop employers taking advantage.

This pandemic has exposed the Tories catastrophic economic programme and the crisis within the capitalist system, which has not recovered from the economic crisis in 2008. The system is convulsing, and workers are in danger of yet again paying the price for the failures of the capitalist class. We need a workers’ government to put the needs of the working class before the needs of people like the billionaire Richard Branson, who are yet again demanding bailouts. We are witnessing a major shock and upheaval to the system, small businesses going to the wall and workers being laid off.

We, the Trotskyist Faction of Socialist Fight, recognise the bankruptcy of the capitalist system and as Marxists we understand that it needs to be overcome, i.e. overthrown and abolished root and branch. While we demand reforms in the here and now, under the present bourgeois ‘democratic’ system such changes can only be forced upon capitalism through fear of working-class people below.  With the public health crisis unfolding we must hold the Government to account, we must put forward a simple set of demands to defend the interests of workers who now find themselves in difficult circumstances.

HEALTHCARE

We demand immediate requisition and nationalisation of all private hospitals, facilities and staff, as the Spanish government has done. Sickness should not be profited from. We see no reason why the government (i.e. the taxpayer) should pay £2.4 million a day for additional beds during a national crisis.

NHS staff are having to share masks, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) out of date, and in some cases none. We demand that all front-line NHS staff are fully protected.

Testing for COVID-19 must be increased without delay following WHO guidelines; the government’s increase from 4,000 per day to a target of 25,000, while welcome, is nowhere near enough. Testing must be available to all who need it. Despite claims of improvement and upgrading the numbers, at present ionly 6,000 per day are being carried out. We have seen elsewhere how testing is crucial and the ability it provides the authorities to have adequate information to contain the virus.

Private testing is cos ting £300, while NHS staff are unable to get tested. Tests must be free, and top priority for NHS staff.

The government must immediately commence large scale production of ventilators and other essentials required for the NHS, and must commandeer industry to do this.

WORKERS

Workers are already losing jobs, facing reduced hours, or unpaid leave. They must not be made unemployed; there must be no redundancies, no loss of pay during this public health crisis. No attacks on workers’ rights, or jobs, should be permitted or tolerated.

While we welcome the workers retention scheme, no worker should lose 20% of their wages. We demand full pay for those affected. This should include workers from the gig economy, on zero-hour contracts and the self-employed.. We must demand the abolition of zero-hours contracts and fake self-employment. Workers must have legally-binding hours with sick pay, holiday pay, paid maternity and paternity leave etc. as of right. If the employer cannot provide hours workers should be paid anyway. This is a basic minimum.

While the government has offered a ‘mortgage holiday’ of three months (which has not been guaranteed by the lenders), we demand mortgage, rents and utility bills be paid by the government in full during the pandemic which threatens workers and their families. Banks and corporations are bailed out and supported;  government must do the same for workers, whose exploitation is the basis of capitalist economy.

SCHOOLS AND EDUCATION

We welcome the closure of schools, and the plan to temporarily convert them to child care facilities for the children of essential workers, such as nurses, doctors,, other healthcare staff, emergency services personnel, delivery drivers, essential manufacturing sector staff, essential public service staff, etc.  

Testing must be available to staff and children for safety. Parents who look after children must get paid leave for the duration and compulsory job security, enforced by the state.

Children unable to take examinations must not be disadvantaged. Marking on previous mock exams and work throughout the school year is subjective and ignores students who may ‘perform’ during a real examination. We demand provision for students of all ages whose education is disrupted to re-sit course years at the state’s expense as an exceptional measure.

Schools now have online learning platforms for homework, which can be utilised for lessons. However, disadvantaged children from poorer families may not have access to the internet or a computer. Facilities for these must be provided free.

Food must be provided to vulnerable children who no longer find themselves at school and having access to a nutritious meal. Over 4 million children live in poverty and being fed at school is their only chance of a decent meal. This needs to be co-ordinated with local authorities.

THE HOMELESS

The government must ensure that the homeless are given immediate protection with a roof over their head. Statistics published by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) put empty homes in England in October 2018 at 634,453. Shelter showed that there were 320,000 homeless for the same period. With one person dying on the streets every 19 hours, individuals vulnerable to exposure to the virus, we demand that these people are housed.

PRISONS

This week (18 March) a prisoner was diagnosed as being positive with COVID-19. The prison system is extremely overcrowded and as such would be an ideal environment for a rapid outbreak of infection. Under the Ministry of Justice’s own definition of safety and decency, the prison estate should not hold more than 74,954 people. There are currently 8,759 men and women held above this level.

Overcrowding is not evenly distributed, which results in some prisons holding many more than they are designed for. We demand those held for low level crimes, or due to be released within 12 months are released to ease pressure on the system.

DETENTION CENTRES

There are 12 in the UK. Many of them overcrowded with refugees detained in appalling conditions. There are no restrictions on how long people can be detained in these centres. We demand refugees, many escaping conflict zones, and all detainees are not treated like criminals and caged but released. These detention centres, just like prisons, are ideal hubs for the virus. They should be closed down, and removals stopped, as the possibility of migrants and refugees dying of disease just underlines that they are in fact concentration camps.

PANIC BUYING AND RATIONING

The government really need to get a grip with panic buying, and ensuring that the supply chain is able to keep up with demand to enable stores to have adequate stock so the elderly and healthcare workers (many who are working long shifts) are able to put food on their table. Many supermarkets are seeing large queues, which presents a huge health risk, and empty shelves after just a few hours trading.  

If this crisis deepens there will be a serious risk of anti-social manifestations, such as the riotous pushing in that took place at a London Aldi branch with hundreds defying attempts at rationing. According to the government, there is a shortage of delivery drivers. If so, coach drivers should be redeployed to drive delivery vehicles.

A proper rationing system must be put in place by the government for foodstuffs and sanitary-related goods, just as a basic necessity for health and hygiene. This should be overseen and supervised by rank-and-file trade unionists at local level who must seek to draw in the poor and those most at risk from this crisis. We need collective organisation not ‘dog-eat-dog’ and lumpen violence among those at risk. We cannot depend on the ‘goodwill’ of chains like Tesco and Sainsbury’s to bring about a fair rationing system. There needs to be workers inspection of profiteering and businesses that abuse the shortages to raise prices must be expropriated.

GOVERNMENT POWERS AND THE CORONAVIRUS BILL

The government are set to give police sweeping powers to arrest and detain suspected coronavirus sufferers, and stop all public assemblies, which would remove the right to protest. The police will have powers to take blood and swab tests, demand personal information (which at present people arrested have the right to withhold). Refusal will be a criminal offence.

The bill extends the validity of warrants under the Investigatory Powers Act of 2016 and relaxes protections for those cared for under mental health acts. It cancels local elections in England this spring; and empowers government to potentially cancel other elections, should the crisis continue into 2021.

The pandemic must not be allowed to be used as an excuse to trample over civil liberties. While we acknowledge the need for the quarantine to protect public health, there are serious dangers with the new law. Labour are correctly opposing it being on the statute books for two years, without any control by parliament, who ought to have the duty to expire it if the threat from the pandemic is overcome.

This crisis signals the total discredit of Thatcher’s neoliberal economics. Working class people of this country, seeing a second bailout in 12 years are now starting to see through the lies being told, they will not easily buy the austerity agenda a second time around. The public health crisis and the impoverishment of the working class is a permanent issue. Now a pandemic has forced even this Tory government to back-peddle and make a show of saying they will put this right, to avoid huge unrest and struggles that would follow inevitably from their allowing hundreds of thousands of deaths from COVID. This is the result of a fundamental push from the bottom up.

Once the pandemic and quarantine recedes, this crisis has the capacity to develop on the streets like the Gilets Jaunes movement in France. This is the last thing that the capitalist class want. The virus is not man-made but the public health crisis it has exposed was made by neoliberalism. This may well turn to anger and a working class that has again become conscious of its power. We on the left need to promote a correct programmatic perspective to point the working-class masses towards the need to take power and abolish the root cause of the neo-liberal attacks: capitalism itself.

Trotskyist Faction of Socialist Fight