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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#)Yes, I did underestimate the intransigence of the US in insisting that Ukraine be allowed to join NATO. I thought that, because there was less at stake for them than for Russia, they would back down. But they didn’t. Instead they called Russia’s bluff and the rest is still going on.
Incidentally, it was dated 21 January, not 21 February as you claim, ie wasn’t said 3 days before the invasion took place.
I imagine he will feel fairly satisfied with what Russia has already got even if he would like Russia to control the whole area of the four Ukraine provinces it has annexed.
The Russian state may well want to go beyond this, if only as a bargaining chip in any future settlement. For instance to withdraw from in return for a guarantee that Ukraine won’t join NATO. Or to force Ukraine to come to the negotiating table. I don’t know. In fact Russia already controls a small part of a fifth Ukraine province that it has not annexed.
My guess is that Russia would be satisfied with a situation that froze the current line of control if this was offered. But it’s not, so it will continue to try to over-run more territory.
That sounds more like it — even if 3500 workers doesn’t seem much and that the union is affiliated to the Communust Party of India (Marxist} (ie Leninist).
You have advanced two contradictory propositions:
1. That the Kiev government will never accept partition.
2. That one part of a partitioned Ukraine will join NATO.It depends on what you mean by “accept”. Argentina doesn’t accept that the Falkland Islands are not part of Argentina but that does not alter the situation that in fact (and under international law) they are part of what’s left of the British Empire.
I would think that you are right that the Kiev government will never accept the partition of Ukraine in law, but, if the present situation is frozen, they will have to accept it as a fact even if they don’t recognise it in law.
This would mean that Ukraine — as a state with an ongoing territorial claim and dispute — would not qualify to join NATO:
Unless, that is, NATO wanted a direct war with Russia. Which they don’t as it is the officially declared US policy is merely to weaken Russia.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/04/25/politics/biden-administration-russia-strategy/index.htm
Russia seems to understand this too. So what there is there is a trial of strength between the US and Russia restricted to Ukraine.
I think this from the official Russian state news agency presents the situation rather well and explains why those in control of the Russian state decided to invade Ukraine two years ago.
They see the incorporation of Ukraine into the NATO sphere of influence as an existential threat to their state while those in control of the US state want to incorporate Ukraine into its sphere of influence just to weaken Russia.
I wouldn’t have thought that that was ever the aim of the Russian ruling class. They would have only wanted to overthrow the government there and replace it by one not so tied to the US, the EU and NATO. To install such a government would be why they tried to march on Kiev. When that failed they concentrated on controlling the majority Russian-speaking areas near to the Russian border.
It’s Ukraine that would have a rebellious population to control if ever they conquered these areas, especially Crimea (and unless they ethnically cleansed them). But this is hardly likely to happen even with NATO weapons.
The most likely outcome would seem to be some sort of truce or ceasefire, formal or informal, more or less along the present line of contact. The sooner the better of course.
