report of 17th january palestine demo in london

After last week’s massive march to London’s Israeli embassy in opposition to the Israeli state’s attack on the people of Gaza, a much smaller set of regional actions was called for Saturday 17th by the leaders of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Stop the War Coalition. In London, a rally in Trafalgar Square was followed by a “women and children only” protest at Downing Street.

However, as an eyewitness who spoke to The Commune reports, not everyone was happy with such conservative ideas of how to protest:

The rally in Trafalgar Square attracted a few thousand people. There were the usual speeches: Tony Benn called for the RAF to drop humanitarian aid over Gaza… When the women and children’s march headed for Downing Street at about 4 o’ clock we tried to go with, but a steward kept repeating “You are neither a woman nor a child!” and held me back. Around one to two thousand people were left in the square.

At the same time, a few dozen people started heading down Cockspur Street, planning to go to the Israeli Embassy in Kensington but the police ‘kettled’ them [ surrounded them] right there and told them they couldn’t leave the square. People from the rally swarmed round them, breaking the police ‘kettle’ and freeing them. There was then a contingent of about 400 people, itself surrounded by police on horseback and with dogs… but this police line was also only one deep, and another group of 200 protesters broke through.

the people’s charter: a charter for change? – updated

In recent weeks and months a “People’s Charter” has been elaborated by a commission involving a number of leaders of the trade unions and the left, notably the leadership of the RMT railworkers’ union but also John McDonnell MP, leading officials in other broadly radical trade unions such as the FBU and NUT, and prominent members of Respect and the Communist Party of Britain. This “charter for change” has not yet been finalised, but it appears that its text will be decided upon and then launched at a rally, rather than openly and democratically discussed across wider layers of our movement. We disapprove of the manner in which this project has been carried out, and do not think much of the current raft of “programmes for government action” issued by left groups which say little about what action we ourselves must take and what movement we need to do it.

However, we publish this draft of the document (see below) in the hope that it will provoke discussion and allow dissenting voices in the labour movement like our own to be heard: as always, feel free to post comments and replies. A more thoroughgoing analysis and critique appears in the second issue of The Commune.

hal draper’s “independent socialism: a perspective for the left”

The following pamphlet was published in 1964 as an outline of the ideas of the Independent Socialist Committees in the USA, which involved such figures as Hal Draper who represented the left trend which emerged from the old Workers’ Party.  Along with a group in Chicago led by Kim Moody and comrades in New York they formed a national organisation which later became the International Socialists.  They sought to preserve the idea of the third camp of independent working class politics.

Chris Kane

There are many pamphlets and books explaining the general idea of socialism; this is not another one. For present purposes and for the sake of argument, we are assuming you know what the socialist idea is: the idea that the ability of human beings to live like men should not be dependent on the making of private profit; that the community of men can operate our economic institutions under social control rather than under the autocracy of moneyed overlords; that democracy can apply as much to the way we make a living as to the way we make a government, by putting the factories and plants under collective control.

activists disrupt israel’s pr operation – report and video

Activists disrupted the offices of the British Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM) in central London on the morning of Tuesday 13th. The lobby group’s media centre, which is playing a key role in Israel’s public relations operation during the assault on Gaza, was shut down as protesters occupied the building.

Photographs of civilian casualties from Gaza were pasted on to the computer screens of public relations executives, phone lines cut off to halt the organisation’s media rebuttal unit and leaflets thrown out of window on to the main road and handed out to staff pressing them to confront the truth about the human cost of Israeli aggression.

reminder: january 19th reading group on self-organisation and communism from below

Our series of reading groups kicks off at 6:30pm on Monday January 19th with a discussion on the subject of working class self-organisation and “communism from below”.  Email uncaptiveminds@gmail.com to find out more info on the central London venue. The texts for this first meeting are:

The Communist Manifesto (click here)

Arguing against different conceptions of “socialism” prevalent at the time, such as paternalistic “utopian” projects, Marx and Engels’ 1848 Manifesto argues that it is the working class must take power in order to revolutionise society. Tracing the development of Western society through the ages, Marx argues that we must get rid of capitalist ownership and the repressive social order and create a new, free and collectively organised system based on the development achieved by humanity thus far.

The Civil War in France – Engels’ 1891 introduction (click here) and chapter five (click here)

Marx’s thundering eulogy to the Communards – the Parisian workers who seized power in 1871 in the midst of France’s defeat in a war against Prussia – and the new order they established, casting aside the state bureaucracy and standing army and taking control with their democratic working-class “commune”. Introduction by Engels traces French history in the intervening decades and summarises the work.

Communism and Society (click here)

This section of British communist William Paul’s 1922 work argues against conceptions of introducting socialism through Parliament, and like Marx in The Civil War in France denies that the working class can take over the existing state machinery. Paul’s piece focuses on the self-organisation of the class and the manner in which the organisation of struggles against capitalism prefigures the society which will replace it.

Socialism and self-management (click here)

Yugoslav Marxist Mihailo Markovic’s piece looks at different aspects of workers’ self-management, with particular reference to post-war Yugoslavia where organs expressing elements of workers’ democracy were in conflict with the state bureaucracy under Marshal Tito. He argues that the state and party should be replaced by organs of workers’ self management whereby the mass of the population make economic, political and social decisions for themselves.

occupations for gaza in london! get down to lse!

In our report on Saturday’s demonstration, we urged students to occupy university buildings.  A leaflet which some of us helped to distribute also called for university occupations.  With demonstrations outside the embassy dwindling, and the PSC seeking to demobilise the movement with their latest (sexist) call for a “women’s and children’s march” following another mind-numbing rally at Trafalgar Square, occupations are vital to take the movement to the next level.

Students at SOAS have already occupied, and the university has agreed to grant several of their demands (including banning the military from campus, and allowing the student union to run a series of events for Gaza there during the week).   Tonight LSE students have embarked upon their own occupation.  We need to support these!  Get down if you possibly can, student or not, and help to make every occupation a centre of discussion and organisation!  Find more about the occupations here:

SOAS occupation

LSE occupation [Map and travel instructions]

These occupations pose a question of social power – i.e. who runs the institutions that make up society – and doing so while raising the banner of Gaza. Street mobilisations alone will burn us out without posing these questions of power, and leave us with no alternative centres of organisation apart from the PSC and the STWC which are already trying to demobilise the movement. Isolated actions – such as the disruption of BICOM on Tuesday morning – are broadly positive, but don’t provide an organisational centre to counter the national NGOs, and don’t do anything to link the situation in Gaza to broader questions of politics and power. Occupations can also be centres of learning and organising, they are exactly what needs to happen. Their potential will be defined by the number of people who attend and commit to them.

If you are at another university, consider organising your own occupation.  We also need to think about how these occupations can become a space, not only for students, but for the broader community of activists and demonstrators who have taken action over the past two weeks.

anti-semitism and the assault on gaza

by Joe Thorne

Criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitic, and the vast majority of our movement is not anti-Semitic, but it is a terrible reality that some anti-Semitism has been pulled along in its wake [1]. Therefore, we have a duty to acknowledge and oppose this. In fact, if we do not, we renounce the right to say we are true fighters against the brutality in Gaza.

the mindset of israelis in the gaza war

by Solomon Anker, recently returned from Tel Aviv

The most dramatic event within Israeli society in the war has been the amazing lack of compassion for Palestinians. It is not true that Israelis are calling for “Death to the Arabs”: this is a very marginal phenomenon and outside the mainstream. However, in general people do not care about the almost 1,000 people of Gaza who have died so far.

Israeli television is giving off some soft war propaganda which does a good job of curing Liberal Israelis’ guilt for the crimes in Gaza, plus going a bit over the top about the effect which the Hamas rockets have. Nevertheless the media is telling people most of the truth about what goes on in Gaza and in fact the newspapers in Israel which tend to be left-wing (especially Haaretz) tell of all the war crimes that have taken place.

report: conference on working-class political representation

by Chris Kane

About 120 people attended Saturday’s conference, which was called by the RMT rail union.  It was much smaller than a similar event held a few years ago and unfortunately clashed with the anti-war march and the Socialist Workers Party conference.  The event itself was not built widely with a clear agenda or purpose.  The contrast between the vibrant militant youth of the anti-war mobilisations and this conference could not have been greater: it was veterans of the left, mostly over forty, male and white.   But there was an open and extensive debate and plenty of time was allowed for contributions from the floor.

RMT leader Bob Crow opened the event by responding to criticism by a 90 year old communist who said that “this is just a talking shop”. Crow defended it on the basis that “there is a need to talk to break down the barriers of the past”.  He said that if New Labour were to found itself as a political party today there would hardly be a “trade union which would affiliate”.  It was in his view a thoroughly capitalist party and could not be reclaimed: he praised John McDonnell MP and Jeremy Corbyn MP, and pointed out that when they are gone, there will be no similar people to replace them.

mobilisation and militancy in the anti-war movement: photos and report of 10th january palestine demo

For Gaza

Notice: Demonstrate against police brutality in solidarity with yesterday’s arrestees.  This evening (Sunday 11th) at 5pm outside Kensington Police Station, 72 Earl’s Court Road.  Directions: Come out of High Street Kensington tube and turn left. Left again at the next big cross roads.

On Tuesday, the Israeli army shelled a school designated as a refuge from the assault, killing 42 and injuring scores more.  Two days later, thirty more civilians were killed as a second refuge was shelled.  By Saturday, the number of dead from the past fortnight stood at over 800, with a little under a quarter children.  Later that day in West London, cold as it was, and with frost on the ground, around 70,000 people marched against the massacre in Gaza.

Clashes between police and protesters erupted on a scale not seen for a decade in this country.  This is a report by eye-witnesses associated with The Commune, who have also been at many of the demonstrations outside the Embassy over the past fortnight.  We also reflect on the significance of the days’ events.

local energy and workers’ control

by Brian Rylance

Bio-diesel has presented an unusual opportunity over recent years as various local workers coops have taken a relatively simple technology to make a mostly carbon neutral diesel from local used cooking oil. Food and energy are the most important goods to any community and they are subject both to fluctuations in the global economy and fickle state control. The opportunity to take local worker control of any portion of the energy they consume, however little and however briefly, is important on a scale beyond the actual goods they produce as it trains co-operators in the knowledge of fuel making and fuel makers in the practicalities of cooperating.  Such local control has allowed genuinely ethical decisions to be taken for the community benefit rather than for purely economic reasons; all the coops associated with the Goodfuels Coop have freely chosen to use only waste cooking oil for feedstock rather than any unused food oils including dubious soy or environmentally damaging palm. Driven by profit alone it would have been far better for the balance sheets to import large amounts of palm oil from plantations that have been grown on slashed and burned rainforests.

activist’s arm broken as police clamp down on gaza protest

by David Broder

Our readers will forgive us for another report on the daily protests at the Israeli embassy in response to the war on Gaza. Although the numbers at the 9th January protest were less than on previous days due to a simultaneous demo at the embassy of Egypt, whose government actively participates in the the blockade of Gaza, the protest was remarkable for the arrest of one activist and the aggression of the police, leading to another protestor’s arm being badly broken.

Below are several photos of the demo and a brief summary of the course of events.

photo-report of action to defend rmt cleaners’ reps

On the morning of January 8th a series of actions were held in defence of two RMT activists victimised by their employer ISS for standing up for cleaners on the London Underground. Feminist Fightback and CAIC activists and RMT members were prominently involved. Clara Osagiede – RMT cleaners’ grade secretary – faced a disciplinary hearing on charges of “gross misconduct” for allegedly failing to return to work after a meeting, while recently elected local rep Mary Boakye, who has an eye condition caused by an injury picked up at work, was appealing against her dismissal for allegedly sleeping during working hours. In both cases the employers’ clear motivation was to break up the organising centre of the cleaners, who last year staged a strike for a ‘living wage’ of £7.45 an hour.

Photos and comments on the day’s protests below.

gaza demo 7th january: police run riot after zionist counter-protest

report by Taimour Lay

Demonstrations outside the Israeli embassy in Kensington on Wednesday night ended in baton charges on pro-Palestinian protesters and at least ten arrests. A counter-demonstration organised by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Jewish Leadership Council and UK Zionist Federation attracted 300-400 people, but the arrests were ultimately sparked by police tactics at the end of the evening rather than the conduct of the opposing sides during the protest.

The police chose not to force pro-Palestinian demonstrators – who had been gathering since 5pm for the daily demonstration – away from their pen as the Zionists arrived shortly after 7pm, instead setting up a second pen opposite the embassy nearer Gloucester Road, with three police vans and 40-50 officers to keep the two sides apart in contained areas.

But as the night wore on riot police were used to end the anti-war demonstration by force. One policeman said a strategic decision had been made to ”clear the area”, including Kensington High Street and surrounding roads, to prevent ”Israeli and Palestinians from kicking each other”. In reality, it meant that the peaceful pro-Palestinian demonstrators, who still numbered around 200 by 9pm, and who remained determined not to depart before the close of the opposition demonstration, were pushed, harried and chased out of the pen.