the shipwrecked (part III): anti-fascist refugees during world war II

“Save one million Jews! And to do what with them? Where will we put them?” Third in a series by João Bernardo: see here for parts one and two.

I mentioned in the previous article that, during the time of the German-Soviet Pact, the Polish Jews that managed to escape from the Nazi-occupied areas of Poland to the areas occupied by the Red Army were deported or put in concentration camps, a sad fate, but at least they were accepted and nobody ever sent them back across the border. Far more sinister was the UK’s and the USA’s attitude.

france and britain send troops to afghanistan – and refugees too

Last week the French and British governments launched a new era of co-operation with a joint flight to deport asylum seekers to Afghanistan. Just weeks after the clearing of 278 people living at the ‘Jungle’ migrant camp in Calais, this was a fresh reactionary step by the French authorities, who had previously said they would not deport people to countries at war. Below appears a statement from Afghan communist women based in France – see here for their previous commentary on the conflict.

We, the organisers of the French section of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, condemn the cowardly and disgraceful expulsion of three Afghans which took place on 20th October.

imperialism and the world today – watch online

Videos of the presentations at our recent London forum on modern imperialism are now available at The Commune’s YouTube channel. The speakers at the event were Latin American solidarity activist Andy Higginbottom and Ukrainian Marxist Marko Bojcun. Click here for other videos by The Commune.

royal mail management strategy for defeating strike

Below appear a series of slides from a Royal Mail management strategy document for dealing with the national strike. These amply display the bosses’ craven lack of ‘good faith’ and feckless disdain their employees and the postal service itself. These slides first appeared in Socialist Worker.

If you cannot read the text of the images properly, download the PDF here.

a letter from a postman

A Royal Mail worker describes the background to the 2009 national strike vote, including details of how managers have been manipulating the figures to justify cuts.

Old people still write letters the old-fashioned way: by hand, with a biro, folding up the letter into an envelope, writing the address on the front before adding the stamp. Mostly they don’t have email, and while they often have a mobile phone – bought by the family ‘just in case’ – they usually have no idea how to send a text. So Peter Mandelson wasn’t referring to them when he went on TV in May to press for the part-privatisation of the Royal Mail, saying that figures were down due to competition from emails and texts.

the shipwrecked (part II): anti-fascist refugees during world war II

Knowing how to fight one enemy means knowing how to fight another: this sentiment underlay the Stalinist politburo’s attitude towards refugees from the fascist countries. Second in  a series by João Bernardo: see here for part one.

Why did those who fled from fascism, only to end up in the democratic countries’ prisons, not seek exile in the Soviet Union? Moreover, what happened to the people who did go to there, the country of the October revolution and the socialist fatherland?

the commune’s youtube channel launched

The Commune has launched a YouTube channel. This will feature videos of our meetings as and when they are recorded, as well as films about the ideas and history of the workers’ movement and video updates on strikes and class struggle: see http://www.youtube.com/user/thecommune1

Footage of our meeting held on International Women’s Day is already on the site, as well as links to a number of other interesting YouTube videos. Videos from the Monday 19th October The Commune forum on ‘Imperialism and the World Today’ are gradually being uploaded.

question time: did the straw man really slay the griffin?

by Adam Ford

Viewers of the BBC’s Question Time were confronted by many truly repellent outbursts from the platform on 22nd October. The screening – which had generated massive controversy due to the debut appearance of British National Party chairman Nick Griffin – often broke out into shouting and boos as the audience expressed their disgust with Griffin’s barely disguised racism and homophobia. But a significant early comment by another panellist went almost unnoticed amidst all the fury: Jack Straw claimed that Labour and the other ‘mainstream’ parties’ have a “moral compass”. In this article I will examine that claim, look at the ideological role of Question Time, and criticise the tactics of Unite Against Fascism and the Socialist Workers Party.

(Photo by Mike Fleming)

Since it began in 1979, Question Time has been a centrepiece of the BBC’s political coverage. During that time, it has played a significant role in framing the national policy debate, in determining which views are (and which are not) acceptable as ‘mainstream’. When the programme began, in the early days of Margaret Thatcher’s first Conservative government, there were four panellists – one each from Conservatives, Labour and the Liberals (as the third party were known at the time). The fourth panellist would be a prominent ‘talking head’, often from the fields of academia, the media or religion. In 1999, the panel was expanded to five guests, and the show experimented with ‘outsider’ figures, such as comedians, but this was quickly ditched.

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‘get this racist jack straw off the bbc’…?

Leaflet for tonight’s demo against Nick Griffin appearing on Question Time

– Labour and Tory anti-fascism is a con
– Support migrant-worker organising: no borders
– For workers’ action against racist propaganda

The recent row over the British National Party’s appearance on BBC Question Time displays the level of anger at the rise of the far-right party. All of us have turned out today because we oppose Nick Griffin’s racist effort to blame immigrants for all of society’s ills, including the economic crisis, and do not want his rubbish to gain more of an audience. But given the level of establishment racism, a campaign to defend immigrants must not stop at mere anti-BNPism, nor can the growth of the far-right be stopped by appealing to the existing authorities to silence them.

free valentin urusov!

Click here for Facebook group; click here for open letter to the Russian president; click here and here for leaflets

An international campaign has been launched for the release of Valentin Urusov, a Russian miner framed up and imprisoned after recruiting workmates to a union.

Urusov, an employee of Alrosa, the diamond mining company, is serving six years’ hard labour for an obviously fabricated offence (possession of drugs).

honduras: zelaya abandons popular movement’s demands

Four months ago Honduras’ centre-left president Manuel “Mel” Zelaya was deposed and forced into exile by a military coup, sparking a long resistance campaign in which twelve trade unionists have been killed. Now Zelaya is back in the country and negotiating elections with the coup régime of Roberto Micheletti (depicted below).  But as Socialismo o Barbarie argue, this national unity means legitimising the coup and stepping back from democratic reforms.

Mel Zelaya has given fresh “space” for negotiations with those who conducted the military coup. This is Zelaya’s strategy: bending over backwards as far as possible, abandoning each and every one of the demands which the popular resistance has stood up for in the streets every day, since the very day when the coup régime seized power.

Zelaya has now given up the central demand of this struggle: a Constituent Assembly.

Zelaya has also given up on the idea of punishing those who conducted the coup, accepting an amnesty for them.

26th october london reading group: what are trade unions for?

The next of our London discussion meetings on workplace organising is to be held from 7pm on Monday October 26th at the Artillery Arms, 102 Bunhill Row, near Old Street. We will be looking at the questions:

– Why should unions remain independent from the state?

– What are the limitations of negotiating better conditions of employment?

– In what ways have unions become integrated into the administration of capitalist relations, and how can this be resisted?

amnesty for some, or papers for all?

At yesterday’s Hands Off My Workmate conference a speaker from London Citizens argued for a limited and conditional amnesty for some unregularised migrants as the only ‘pragmatic’ means of helping them settle in Britain. Similar arguments were made at a May 4th demonstration organised by London Citizens, and here we present a translation of a text distributed at that event by the Coordinadora Latinoamericana.

In a political context, the expression ‘amnesty’ means a general ‘pardon’, turning the page and forgetting the past. In the immigration context this means a ‘grace’ which certain states eventually give to allow certain immigrants meeting given conditions to be able to be regularised. In our view, the idea of amnesty must have the widest possible meaning and cover and benefit all immigrants. In other words, amnesty must mean papers for all.