ALB
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About twice can much, but then we don’t claim this as a mandate to do anything except carry on campaigning for socialism. Just Stop Oil think that, despite such minimal support, they have the right to disrupt other ordinary workers’ life through blocking roads, etc. in any event, they are in the same league as us and TUSC.
More on him here:
An interview with the Reverend Mark Coleman, candidate in the 2024 Rochdale by-election.
For the record, the Revered Mark Coleman got 455 votes or 1.5 percent of those who voted.
Just Stop Oil did, however, carry out their threat to disrupt elections:
https://www.gbnews.com/politics/george-galloway-heckled-just-stop-oil-protester-rochdale-by-election
I don’t know. Could be to convince NATO that they are serious about the current proxy NATO-Russia war in Ukraine going nuclear if NATO sent in its own troops. Or it could something to do with the upcoming presidential elections in Russia.
More NATO states pooh-poohing Macron’s suggestion:
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/czech-polish-pms-rule-sending-190700851.html?
“… they are expecting Armageddon”.
Not necessarily. Putin was responding to Macron’s suggestion that at some point NATO troops might need to be sent to fight in Ukraine. He was earning that if that ever that happened there would be an open NATO-Russia war that would inevitably turn nuclear.
Macron’s idea was shot down by other NATO states including the US itself, also by Britain, Germany and Italy, all anxious to avoid such a direct confrontation.
Leaflets were distributed yesterday at this event outside Twickenham Rugby Ground where merchants of death, selling military helicopters, were holding an arms fair:
https://palestinecampaign.org/events/stop-the-twickenham-arms-fairs-protest/
Most of the up to 100 present received a leaflet. Also present were SPEW.
There was a lone counter-protester on the other side of the road holding up a hand-written placard saying “Hamas is a Terrorist Organisation”. Which is not untrue.
The next big event is another national demonstration in London on Saturday 9 March.
Mick Lynch and the RMT have said they will support Corbyn if he stands as an independent in the general election:
🚨 NEW: The RMT union has announced it will support Jeremy Corbyn if he runs as an independent at the next general election.
RMT leader Mick Lynch said: "We will be supporting Jeremy Corbyn in the next election." pic.twitter.com/aDdqj7W8X0
— Stats for Lefties 🍉🏳️⚧️ (@LeftieStats) February 24, 2024
But elsewhere they will be supporting Starmer’s Party of Business:
I am beginning to think that it is something like that that is going on in Gaza. The Israeli Attack Force seems hell-bent on killing Hamas leaders and freeing hostages no matter what the cost to the local population in terms of death and destruction.
In any event those currently in charge of the Israeli state are guilty of something, if only of being deluded in imagining that they can effectively make Gaza and the West Bank part of a Greater Israel inhabited by oppressed, second class subjects — actually fourth class, after Jews, certain non-Arab Muslims, and Arabs living in Lesser Israel.
This will only work by brute force and at the cost of immense suffering but this is what a state will do when it considers its existence is threatened.
There is a n interesting letter in this week’s Weekky Worker from Ian Birchall who was a long-time member and one of the leaders of the SWP and before that IS denouncing Galloway and calling for a vote for the Just Stop Oil candidate in the Rochdale by-election next Thursday:
“But Roberts goes on to call for a vote for George Galloway. As a former Galloway supporter, I have been saddened to see his political degeneration. At one time an articulate and courageous spokesperson against imperialism and Labour betrayals, Galloway has adopted a ragbag of positions, some of them openly reactionary.
Roberts does not mention the independent candidacy of Mark Coleman. Yet to me he looks like the only honest candidate in this swamp of corruption. As a supporter of Just Stop Oil, Coleman has gone to jail in pursuit of his principles, despite having serious health problems. He is campaigning against Labour’s betrayals, and especially against the fact that Starmer has now effectively become a climate-change denier.
Coleman is a clergyman – nobody’s perfect. But I would far sooner have someone guided by his moral principles to attack Labour’s rightward move than a self-proclaimed atheist willing to back Starmer and Islamophobia.
In my view the revolutionary left should give Coleman full practical support in terms of finance, leafleting, etc. A good vote for Coleman would be a warning shot to Starmer, and an encouragement to all those hoping to build a left alternative to Labour.
Ian Birchall
North London”The missing words are “carry on”, so it should be “The mujik must carry on the war” but which article does it appear in?
Found the article. It’s the one from March 1924 on “The Passing of Lenin”. It is correct in the original and in the version on our website:
I wonder if Engels ever practised what he preached. I doubt it but we know he had the vote as in his life of Engels, The Frock-Coated Communist Tristram Hunt mentions that
“… when, in 1876, a female candidate bounced up the steps of No. 122 Regents Park Road seeking Engels’s vote for the London School Board elections (for which women were eligible to stand following the 1870 Education Act), he couldn’t help but give her all his seven votes …”
That would have been Alice Westlake who topped the poll the Marylebone Division (as Engels noted in a letter joking he helped her do this). She was in fact Liberal though not standing as such. Engels would have been voting for her. despite this, to get a woman ekected.
Presumably Engels would have had a vote in parliamentary elections too but we don’t know if he voted in them. He was in the Marylebone constituency whose MPs were generally Liberals. Since, presumably, the electoral registers for the period are available somewhere there’s a research project here for some student looking for a subject for his Ph.D or at least their Master’s dissertation.
What? The photo of a group of women members of the Israeli killing machine taking a selfie of themselves against the background of a ruined building?
Following the latest US veto at the UN, ie green light to Israel to continue its campaign of killing and destruction in Gaza, anti-war demonstrations will be continuing. We have therefore ordered a further 1000 leaflets from the printers.
Some will be distributed at a march in Bolton this Saturday.
According to today’s Times:
“Just Stop Oil plans to put candidates up for election if Labour MPs do not sign a pledge to resign if a Labour government does not cancel oil and gas licences granted by the Tories.”
Contesting elections would not really be a change of tactics as they have contested elections before, only to get as many votes as us.
Their degree of support will be confirmed at the Rochdale by-election a week on Thursday where one of them, the Reverend Mark Coleman, is standing.
The Times quotes another of them as saying;
“We do aim at some point to take the reins and to take political power’.
But how? By a mass uprising when they reach the figure of 3 percent they claim is enough to bring about political change?
If they do get political power, they won’t last very long when they try to drastically reduce everybody’s standard of living.
“As of 21 January, 621 people had crossed the English Channel in small boats in 2024. In 2023, 29,437 people came to the UK this way. That was a big drop from the 2022 total of 45,755.”
(https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53699511)But
“More than 200,000 Ukrainians visa holders have arrived in the UK since March 2022, with the first visas to expire in March next year.”
(https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/18/ukrainians-can-extend-uk-visas-by-18-months-in-new-scheme#)
