Partisan defence committee, Autumn 2024

Sinister Starmer

Many people have celebrated Starmer’s swift crackdown on the racist rioters rampaging across the country this August. While we shed no tears for these anti-immigrant thugs, the way the state went after them is a sinister warning to the left because the methods used against the rioters will be deployed against the left and pro-Palestine activists.

In the days after the riots, over 1000 people were arrested and nearly 600 charged. Judges responded to the immense social pressure to clamp down on the unrest by imposing stiff penalties. When the mass arrests began, the state secured fast convictions as arrestees were coerced into pleading guilty in exchange for significant time off their sentence. It should be clear that when a wave of hysteria sweeps the country, the social pressure to plead guilty can get you railroaded into prison, often based on flimsy evidence.

The last time Britain saw mass arrests on this scale was in 2011 after the police shot Mark Duggan, leading to huge protests against racist police killings. Sir Keir Starmer was the country’s top prosecutor and he kept courts open for 24 hours a day, encouraging magistrates to hand down longer and tougher sentences. In France, when mass protests erupted in the banlieues of Paris against the police killing of Nahel Merzouk last year, they were met with similar repression.

In an escalation of repressive measures, several people involved in the riots were arrested based only on social media posts. Now, the government is threatening to increase online censorship, curtailing the right to free speech. Don’t be fooled that this only applies to racist social media posts! Pro-Palestinian journalists Richard Medhurst and Sarah Wilkinson were recently subjected to terrifying arrests by anti-terrorism cops for their online reporting, including on social media.

In August, the state was cracking down on reactionary mobilisations. But the same methods are used against struggle that is in the interest of the working class. Socialists must be clear that such ramped-up mobilisation of the capitalist state machinery is ultimately aimed at suppressing working-class struggle.

Stop bloody crackdown on Nigeria protests!

The following is a reprint of a 6 August supplement from AmaBolsheviki Amnyama, published by Spartacist South Africa.

Over the past six days, hundreds of thousands of youth and unemployed have taken to the streets across Nigeria to protest the imperialist-dictated shock therapy which has led to economic catastrophe including widespread starvation. In response the government of Bola Tinubu is unleashing a bloody crackdown. Police repeatedly open fire with live ammunition, already killing anywhere between 13 and 50 protesters and injuring many more. State agents are hunting down protest organisers and journalists. It is urgently necessary for workers here and everywhere to demand an end to the murderous repression. Free all protesters and journalists, now!

What can stay the government’s bloody hand, and turn the tide against neoliberal austerity, is the social power of the organised working class — including crucially workers in the imperialist centres. Revolutionaries and workers in Nigeria must fight for the Nigeria Labour Congress and Trade Union Congress federations to place themselves at the head of the protests. This is the best way to push forward the demands of the youth and unemployed, and it is in the direct interest of every NLC and TUC member. Similarly, the workers movement of South Africa has a vital stake in the victory of the protests. Every blow the Nigerian masses are able to inflict against the Tinubu regime and the imperialist masters, will strengthen our ability to fight the same imperialists here. Everyone knows the neoliberal onslaught is only going to increase under the new right-wing ANC-DA coalition. A struggle here in support of the Nigerian protests is also the best way to cut through the Randlords’ divide-and-rule pitting black South Africans against immigrants from Nigeria and the rest of the continent (the poisonous campaign against Miss SA candidate Chiddima Adetshina being just the latest example).

The Kenyan youth struck the first blow by successfully forcing the William Ruto government to repeal its IMF-dictated tax laws. To really turn the tide and build a movement to defeat the imperialist stranglehold of the African continent, what’s needed is a fight for revolutionary working-class leadership. The struggles for democracy, national liberation and socio-economic development are constantly undermined and sabotaged as long as they remain under the leadership of the nationalist elites.

From Lagos to Nairobi, from Cairo to the Cape, we must fight, now:

• Down with the crackdown against the #DaysofRage protests!
• Re-instate the fuel subsidy! Down with austerity!
• Repudiate the debt to the imperialist bloodsuckers!
• Nationalise the oil fields, refineries, mines and all imperialist assets!
• For communist leadership of the anti-imperialist struggle!

Pröbsting appeal denied

The 6-month suspended sentence for Michael Pröbsting, leader of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency, was upheld by the court in Vienna at a 21 August appeal hearing. This means that at any time he can be thrown in prison at the state’s whim. Michael’s conviction in May for the RCIT’s staunch defence of the Palestinian people sets a sinister precedent for increasing repression of pro-Palestinian activists throughout Western Europe. It is urgently necessary to unite in defence of the RCIT and all opponents of the genocide in Gaza facing similar prosecution.

Free Just Stop Oil Five!

The PDC demands the immediate release of the Just Stop Oil (JSO) activists Daniel Shaw, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu, Louise Lancaster and Cressida Gethin who were recently given four-year prison sentences, as well as Roger Hallam who got five years, because they attended a November 2022 Zoom meeting to discuss peaceful civil disobedience to protest the expansion of fossil fuel licences.

The JSO5 were convicted in July of conspiracy to cause public nuisance at a trial that severely restricted their ability to put forward an effective defence, making a conviction virtually a foregone conclusion. This followed many months of draconian bail restrictions. And these five activists are just a few in a very long list of JSO supporters who have been arrested and put on trial for taking action to bring attention to the climate crisis.

The sinister campaign of repression by the British state against JSO to criminalise not only civil disobedience but even just talking about it, is very bad news for the workers movement and the left. It is an attack on the rights of us all to protest against the ravages of capitalism. The powers used against JSO are also wielded against protesters for Palestinian liberation, opponents of the government’s anti-Muslim “extremism” campaign and militants standing up for workers’ rights on the picket line. That is why, despite our many disagreements with the aims and methods of Just Stop Oil, the PDC is fighting to build a united-front campaign to take action in defence of the JSO5 and the many others arrested and languishing in jail. Join us in this struggle!

Draconian charges against Palestine Action

As Israel continues its unrelenting genocidal war in Gaza and the West Bank, Palestine Action’s co-founder Richard Barnard is facing charges of “supporting a proscribed organisation” under the sinister Terrorism Act for a speech he gave last year. He also faces charges of encouraging “criminal activity”, namely against arms manufacturers like Elbit. This is an outrageous attack on militant opponents of Britain selling arms to Israel.

Earlier, five other PA activists were jailed on charges of damaging a Glasgow armaments plant owned by Thales UK, an Elbit partner, in June 2022. Their prosecution underlines the state’s determination, passing seamlessly from the Tories to Labour, to smash any opposition to Israel’s Zionist rulers. See PA’s website for information on others threatened with jail. Hands off all of Palestine’s defenders!

While PA’s intent is laudable, its strategy, based on the daring actions of a few, cannot stop the flow of military goods to Israel. The power to do that lies with the trade unions, which could shut down arms production and transport in a flash. But that requires determined struggle against the Labourite trade union leadership, which helped usher in a Starmer government committed to austerity and support to the Zionist butchers. The workers movement can start fighting back by mobilising to defend Palestine Action and all others targeted by the prosecutor-in-chief in No 10.