The following is a selection of postings from the IBT Facebook page published since the last edition of 1917.
IBT comrades in London and Oxford attended demonstrations last week to counter threats of violence from the far right against immigrants and the organisations that support them. We were joined by thousands of others across the country, not only the usual left, but local multi-racial communities who saw the racist riots of previous days as a threat to their homes and families, their workplaces, their neighbours and community spaces.
From Tommy Robinson, to newly minted Reform Party MP Nigel Farage, to explicit fascist organisations such as Patriotic Alternative—the leaders of this movement have fanned the flames of discontent and then sit back to watch their disorganised followers pick up hefty jail terms. The same press that has been lauding Farage and complaining about immigration now presents a positive spin on the anti-racist assemblies. Fascism, and those that wittingly or unwittingly follow it, are a weapon that the ruling class likes to keep under control but primed and ready for action. The last two weeks have been a measure of the current state of those forces, and the reaction to them. They are likely to grow and will be unleashed against the workers’ movement and the left, and especially immigrants and racial minorities, when the ruling class feels threatened.
This is a class issue. Liberal chants and platitudes from politicians will not stop fascists. This is a job that the working class, of all backgrounds, will need to do for ourselves. Currently the organisation for that is severely lacking. Stand Up to Racism can “mobilise” and produce the placards for the cameras, but generally avoid direct confrontation, working with liberal politicians and even the police to keep demonstrations tame and ineffective. Others respond to this by building mobile action squads working behind the scenes but fail to draw large numbers.
Numbers are what we need, but organised with a militant leadership prepared to confront the fascists and drive them off the streets. The role of the trade unions—not empty speeches and social media posts from the bureaucrats and reformists, but organised rank and file workers—is key to this. We need to build multi-racial workers’ defence guards for any community that is targeted, and united fronts of all those prepared to organise this defence, regardless of our differences on other issues.
British Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has announced several measures designed to assert the new Labour government’s strong stance on the “immigration problem”. Plans include a substantial increase in the number of deportations and the re-opening of two detention centres near Oxford and Portsmouth. Obviously unsettled by the recent anti-immigrant riots, the government has responded, not (as many people across the country) by welcoming immigrants and helping to integrate them into British society, but by attempting to be tougher on immigration than the Tories.
The IBT attended a protest in Oxford against one of the proposed re-opened detention centres on the evening after the announcement. Campsfield House, just north of the city, was closed in 2018 after decades of local campaigning against the cruel regime of immigration detention, where asylum seekers are imprisoned indefinitely while waiting for their claims to be processed. The demonstration called for an end to immigration detention entirely, not just the local facility, and loudly chanted “Refugees are welcome here!” and “No deportations!”
Local MP and government minister Anneliese Dodds was nowhere to be seen, although she was happy enough to campaign against Campsfield when the Tories were running it. One of the speakers at the protest called the announcement a “disappointing decision from a government that we all hoped better from”. This should have come as a surprise to no one! Keir Starmer’s Labour Party made it clear well before the election that they, just like the Tories, aimed to restrict immigration (“stop the boats”). Imperialist war, which forces many to claim asylum, is baked into the capitalist system, whether run by Labour or the Tories.
No detentions! No deportations! For organised workers’ action to defend migrants!
Fred Hahn, president of the advocacy wing of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) in Ontario, has become the target of a vile smear campaign designed to remove him from his democratically elected position. Hahn, who is critical of Israel’s ongoing genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza, has been falsely accused of “antisemitism” for sharing a video on social media that showed an Israeli Olympic diver turning into a bomb—a poor choice that he has already apologized for. The campaign is being driven by the union bureaucrats on the CUPE National Executive Board, which has called on Hahn to resign from his position on that body, and is fully backed by Zionists within CUPE along with Ontario’s Conservative premier, Doug Ford. A handful of pro-Israel CUPE members have even filed a human rights complaint against Hahn and CUPE Ontario for antisemitism. Hahn has forthrightly rejected the accusation of antisemitism and is refusing to accede to Zionist pressure to resign.
While we have serious political differences with Hahn, including a fundamentally different understanding of how the union movement should operate and how to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we nonetheless defend him against the libelous charge of antisemitism. We denounce the outlandishly bureaucratic machinations of CUPE’s national officers to remove him as CUPE Ontario president, a position he was re-elected to only a few months ago. We also condemn attempts to drag Hahn and CUPE before the bourgeois courts.
Actual acts of antisemitism are real threats that must be confronted—through united-front action, led by the working class and involving as many layers of the oppressed as possible, Jews as well as non-Jews. Genuine antisemitism within the labour movement must equally be rooted out, not by appeals to the capitalist judiciary or other alien class forces but through struggle inside the unions. However, antisemitism is not the same thing as any and all criticism of the state of Israel or the reactionary political ideology of Zionism. Conflating opposition to Israeli apartheid with antisemitism, which the current smear campaign against Hahn does, creates a dangerous equation of Jews and the genocidal state of Israel, i.e., it is itself a kind of antisemitism.
Many Jewish opponents of Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians have, in fact, come out in support of Hahn, including Independent Jewish Voices and Jews Say No to Genocide. Judy Rebick has stated unequivocally: “Fred Hahn is not an antisemite. I am a Jew and a CUPE member and I have never seen any sign of or support for antisemitism from Fred.”
Attacks on those speaking out against Israel’s brutal war on Gaza are all too common. In the imperialist states backing Israeli war crimes, we see intimidation, arrests and harassment of activists who oppose the Gaza genocide. Workers and pro-Palestinian activists must defend those wrongly labeled as antisemites.
Labour for Palestine (Canada), a network of activists in solidarity with the struggle of Palestinian workers and people, is encouraging everyone to email the CUPE national executive to speak up and “Stand with Fred.”
A long-awaited French government has finally been appointed by newly installed conservative Prime Minister Michel Barnier, more than two months after the legislative elections. Despite having blocked with President Emmanuel Macron in a cross-class front républicain in the second round of voting, political representatives of the leftist alliance Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP), which won a plurality of seats, have unsurprisingly been completely frozen out of government. Instead, Barnier’s cabinet is a collection of Macron’s center-right forces, the conservative Les Républicains (traditional Gaullist right-wingers) and so-called “centrists.”
The new government, if it even remains in power long enough, will undoubtedly pursue an agenda of capitalist austerity and defend the interests of the French ruling class: “targeted” tax increases and public sector cutbacks to address France’s soaring debt; crackdowns on protests to “restore order”; vows to “control and limit immigration,” etc.
Opposition forces in the NFP and in Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National (RN) are threatening to move a no-confidence vote in parliament as early as next week, which, if passed, would force the government to immediately step down and likely elicit yet another crisis.
There is deep-seated anger towards Macron and the incoming government. Just last weekend, thousands of NFP supporters protested in cities across the country against the composition of the new government. Clearly, the French working class must mobilize to oppose Barnier’s incoming right-wing administration. However, a cabinet comprised largely of political representatives from the NFP—with ministerial portfolios no doubt shared with their erstwhile front républicain bloc partners—would also deserve no confidence from the French working class. It too would fundamentally be committed to defending the interests of French imperialism.
As we wrote in “Popular-Front Betrayal in France: The Nouveau Front Populaire & the far left” (1917 No.48):
“The Nouveau Front Populaire is a class-collaborationist bloc politically subordinating the French working class to the bourgeoisie. Despite its pseudo-socialist trappings, the NFP’s pro-capitalist leadership seeks to ‘responsibly’ administer French imperialism on behalf of monopoly capital, not to overthrow it. By intentionally invoking the legacy of the Front Populaire, the reformist misleaders atop the NFP reveal their political bankruptcy. Exposing their own political bankruptcy are those ostensibly Trotskyist organizations that have politically backed the modern-day Blums and Thorezes. While the class struggle in France today is less acute than in the 1930s, the NFP is no less disastrous. If it ascends to power, whether ruling as a minority government or in a coalition, it will inevitably betray its working-class base; its very existence is a betrayal.”
Black Londoner Chris Kaba was shot in the head two years ago at the age of 23 by police marksman Martyn Blake who was cleared of murder last week. The outrageous verdict was quickly followed by the Labour government taking a public stance in defence of the armed wing of the capitalist state, declaring that in future firearms officers on trial over shooting dead suspects are to be given total anonymity.
Kaba died after a police pursuit—no firearms were found with him and his family accused the Metropolitan Police of being “totally racist”. Demanding justice for the victims of the state, Kaba’s family were among dozens who have lost family members to police killings at the United Families and Friends Campaign (UFFC) annual remembrance procession in London on Saturday.
The UFFC’s demands for “justice and accountability and restorative justice” for the families who have died at the hands of the state falls on deaf ears, whether it is Labour or Tory administering the ancient class-based legal system whose only purpose is to prop up the status quo. There will be no justice and accountability, only racism and state violence, until capitalism is overthrown.
The recent decision by American and British imperialism to assist Ukraine in using long-range missiles inside Russia is a recklessly dangerous provocation that threatens a military retaliation involving nuclear weapons, with the potential to trigger World War III. The use of American ATACMS and British Storm Shadow missiles from Ukrainian soil, both of which require Western operational assistance, is de facto a direct attack by US/British imperialism on Russia. Moscow has responded by “expanding” its nuclear doctrine, including lowering the threshold for a nuclear strike, clearly designed to target NATO members arming Ukraine in the ongoing proxy war.
Revolutionaries condemn imperialist brinkmanship and oppose the headlong slide towards WWIII, a military conflict that could potentially cost the lives of hundreds of millions or billions of people. In the Ukrainian proxy war between NATO/Western imperialism and Russia, we take a position of dual defeatism, actively favoring the defeat of both camps. While we take no side in inter-imperialist conflicts, for Leninists in any particular imperialist country, “the main enemy is at home.” Revolutionary socialists living in the US, Britain, Canada and other NATO member states call urgently for labor strikes against the NATO war machine and “our” imperialist ruling classes’ escalation towards global catastrophe. For further analysis, see “Inching towards WWIII: US Imperialism Targets Russia & China” (1917 No.47).
The collapse of the French government following the resignation of Prime Minister Michel Barnier has triggered a crise de régime under embattled President Emmanuel Macron. Barnier, who was appointed by Macron, resigned following an attempt to force through his highly unpopular Social Security budget, the PLFSS, without a parliamentary vote. This prompted opposition parties in the National Assembly, led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s New Popular Front (NFP) who joined forces with Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN), to bring the government down in a no-confidence vote. For now, Barnier remains in place as a caretaker until a new prime minister is appointed by Macron.
Leaders of the various pseudo-socialist parties participating in the NFP (La France Insoumise, the Parti Socialiste, the Stalinist Parti Communiste Français) are now openly discussing with Macron about joining a new government. Going into the talks, Socialist leader Olivier Faure candidly admitted his party is open to “compromises on every issue” towards forming a government based on a “fixed-term contract” to rescue French capitalism from a potentially explosive situation. The social function of class traitors like Faure, Mélenchon, et al is to suppress social struggle and channel discontent into bourgeois parliamentarism.
While French workers will shed no tears for the fall of the Barnier government, the crucial task they face is to build a class-struggle alternative outside parliament and in opposition to the class-collaborationist NFP, not to unite with Macron in helping him form a new government. This requires mobilizing the French working class in a militant fightback against austerity budgets, Macronism and popular-frontism.
See “Popular-Front Betrayal in France: The Nouveau Front Populaire & the far left” (1917 No.48).
The sudden overthrow of Syria’s Assad regime at the hands of Islamist rebel forces is the culminating act of a brutal decade-long civil war that has all but torn the country apart. Since the so-called “Syrian Revolution” began in 2011, hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been killed and nearly 13 million people—more than half the country’s pre-war population—have been displaced. The war, which pitted pro-government forces against dissident elements of the ruling elites and Islamist reactionaries, was one in which the working class had no side.
While Marxists shed no tears at the fall of Assad’s repressive dictatorship, the new government now consolidating, which will almost certainly be Sunni Islamist and sharply dependent on foreign backing, represents no step forward for ordinary Syrians. The current power vacuum is quickly being filled by a combination of regional and imperialist powers intent on carving out their own corner of the country to control.
The primary victors are the US, EU, Turkey and Israel. The losers include not only Assad’s Russian and Iranian allies, but Syria’s national and religious minorities, and the many victims of Israeli expansionism—now emboldened by its seizure of the Golan Heights and Mount Hermon. With a major strategic victory against Russia and Iran, American imperialism is likely to redeploy forces to the Indo-Pacific to focus on encircling China and overturning the remaining gains of the 1949 Revolution.
While the full implications of Syria’s new internal arrangement remain unclear, certain tasks are urgently posed. Marxists advocate equal rights for all minority communities in Syria, especially those likely to come under attack, e.g., Alawites, Christians, Shiites and Kurds. This includes the right to self-defense from sectarian, religious and state violence, while not taking any side in the larger rival communal and ethno-religious conflicts in the region. Additionally, the millions displaced by the conflict have the right to return home.
The international working class must condemn the efforts by foreign powers to exploit the chaos by partitioning Syrian territory into zones of influence and dismantling its state infrastructure—steps towards creating a pliable neocolony or a failed state able to act as a buffer for regional powers. Revolutionaries demand all foreign forces out of Syria. We call for labor action to oppose imperialist intervention, particularly those of our “own” imperialist ruling class.
Building the forces able to pull Syria out of this morass requires a strong, principled anti-imperialism impervious to being co-opted by any side, and a renewal of revolutionary working-class politics across the Middle East. This requires struggling to build a vanguard party rooted in all communities in the region that is committed to the creation of a Socialist Federation of the Middle East, the only historically progressive framework to resolve the diverse antagonisms of the various peoples of the region.
Four years after the storming of the US Capitol, Donald Trump returns to the White House as president. The ongoing appeal of his MAGA right-wing populism is both a symptom of, and a catalyst for, the significant instability of global capitalism and the decline of US imperialism.
Even prior to assuming office, President-elect Trump has provoked a foreign policy firestorm. He refuses to rule out a military takeover of both Greenland and the Panama Canal, and cavalierly suggested annexing Canada as the “51st State.” He fully backs Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, and boasts that the political momentum from the ceasefire will be used to expand the Abraham Accords to facilitate rapprochement between Israel and Arab states allowing for closer military planning and coordination for the US in the Mid East. He has also called on members of the NATO military alliance—who are still engaged in a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine—to increase defense spending to a whopping 5 percent of GDP and warns the US will not protect allies that fail to meet targets.
At home, Trump is calling to beef up security at the border and threatening to deport millions of undocumented migrants. He intends to sweep away support for clean energy projects and openly backs Big Oil, embodied in his “drill-baby-drill” ethos. He plans on lowering the corporate tax rate to 15 percent for domestic manufacturing, while applying hefty tariffs on goods imported to the US: 25 percent for “allies” like Canada and Mexico, and up to 60 percent for rival China. The latter policy proposal threatens to unleash a disastrous trade war—along with a rise in reactionary nationalist protectionism—not only within North America, but globally. Trump’s scheme to create an “External Revenue Service” tasked with collecting tariffs on foreign imports suggests he intends to carry out his threats.
Needless to say, none of this represents the political interests of the American working class. While promising some kind of meaningful break with Biden and the Democrats, the incoming Trump administration instead represents a fundamental continuity with them. It was Biden–Harris that prosecuted NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine to the tune of $85 billion in aid, and the Democrats that fully backed Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. It was the Biden–Harris administration which expelled five times as many border-crossers as Trump’s first term in office. And it was Biden–Harris who oversaw the largest increase in domestic oil production in history.
Ultimately, whether a Democrat or Republican occupies the White House, all wings of the American bourgeoisie are firmly committed to pursuing class warfare at home and imperial conquest abroad. At most, they differ over how to best administer a US empire in decline. Marxists fight to break the political stranglehold of the Democrats and Republicans by seeking to build a revolutionary workers’ party beholden to the American working class, not the financial parasites running Wall Street.
See “US Election: Imperialism & War” for a fuller analysis.
Earlier this year, veteran activist and organiser of Palestine Solidarity Network John Minto set up a “genocide hotline”, seeking to expose Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers fresh from the genocide in Gaza on “rest and recreation” in New Zealand. A similar initiative has been promoted by the Belgian-based Hind Rajab Foundation, named after the 6-year-old child shot 355 times by the IDF.
Deputy PM Winston Peters called this “an outrageous show of fascism, racism and encouragement of violence and vigilantism”, yet obviously has no problem with IDF soldiers peacefully recuperating from their killing spree in Gaza, and violence now engulfing the West Bank.
We defend Minto against these attacks and the accusations of antisemitism and vigilantism levelled at him by the NZ Jewish Council and the Human Rights Commissioner, Stephen Rainbow.
As a signatory to the Geneva Convention, the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, the NZ government is legally bound to do all it can to prevent and stop genocide. Yet, this government is complicit in the carnage and savagery meted out by the IDF against the Palestinian people.
When governments inevitably fail to act against atrocities, when it is expedient to turn a blind eye to war crimes and genocidal onslaughts, workers, revolutionaries, activists, trade unionists and students must step up and exercise what power we have: blockading ports, refusing to load and transport shipments of weapons, ammunition and parts, the closing down of armaments factories. We must bring the whole military infrastructure to a stand-still.
A lasting solution to the seemingly intractable Israeli–Palestinian conflict will only come with the overthrow of capitalism. For now, a militant trade-union leadership, with an internationalist perspective and understanding of the historical power of an organised working class, is our most effective weapon to stop the ongoing genocide in Palestine and defend those facing persecution for speaking up against it.
Voters in Ontario go to the polls today in a provincial election that is expected to see Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford form a third consecutive majority government. The snap election takes place amidst an impending trade war between Canada and the United States, with US President Donald Trump threatening to impose 25 percent tariffs on all Canadian goods and annex Canada as the “51st state.”
The uncertain economic impact of Trump’s tariffs and annexationist appetites have dominated the election campaign and sparked a rise in reactionary Canadian patriotism, which Ford’s Tories have sought to exploit. On the one hand, his campaign has centered around a “growth plan” for Ontario based on “free, fair and balanced trade” by “building Fortress Am-Can,” i.e., a renewed strategic alliance between the US and Canada. On the other hand, the buffoonish Ford has relished parading around as “Captain Canada” pushing poisonous economic protectionism as the answer to Trump’s tariffs.
The so-called “Team Canada” approach (promoting interprovincial trade and a unified ruling-class response to the tariff threat) is enthusiastically supported by all the major political parties running in the election (Conservatives, Liberals, Greens and the New Democratic Party [NDP]). It is also backed by the treacherous labour bureaucrats atop the province’s trade unions, an unprecedented number of which are supporting Ford, including the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LiUNA), the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), the Ontario Professional Fire Fighters Association (OPFFA), the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers (IBB) and Unifor. In particular, the union bureaucrats seek to direct popular discontent away from resistance to corporate power in Ontario and instead into noxious anti-Americanism and a focus on Washington.
The first step in building an effective working-class fightback against the looming trade war is the recognition that our main enemy is at home, i.e., our own ruling class and their political representatives at Queens Park. Instead, our allies are the US working class, also under attack. From the standpoint of the working class, both free trade and protectionism are two sides of the same pro-capitalist coin. When these are the only “choices” on offer come election time, working people must show their disdain by spoiling their ballot.
Spoil your ballot!
Neither free trade nor protectionism!
Break from the NDP—Build a revolutionary workers’ party!
Three Te Pāti Māori (TPM) members have been suspended from the New Zealand Parliament for performing a haka in the chamber on 14 November 2024 in protest of the attack on Māori rights represented by the ACT Party’s Treaty Principles Bill. The three-week suspensions of the TPM co-leaders are the longest in the country’s history, and were justified with reference to the “intimidating” nature of the haka: a thoroughly normal and expected form of cultural and political expression in New Zealand life. The committee that deliberated on the issue was stacked with right-wing Government MPs, and included few Māori, a clear expression of Pākehā dominance of state institutions. This is an unprecedented anti-democratic and racist attack on the right to protest.
Te Pāti Māori represents the interests of Māori enterprise bosses and iwi chairs interested in establishing a culturally autonomous Māori capitalist sector, apart from the disproportionately Pākehā-owned economy. More often than not this strata has acted as a handbrake on the militant defense of Māori working-class and democratic interests, and a means by which resistance to Māori oppression has been channeled into entrepreneurship schemes and other efforts that benefit only the top layers of Māori communities, and offer no threat to the power of the Crown.
However, in recent years the state has proved incapable of accommodating even this conciliatory and wholeheartedly capitalist layer of Māori leaders. It has preferred to use attacks on “elite Māori” as a cover for the dismantling of gains secured via historical protest movements. Shamelessly anti-democratic and racist measures against TPM have clear implications not only for Māori politicians and bosses, but for the Māori workers who have been badly hit by the often less visible Government attacks on their class and people.
On Thursday night, Elias Rodriguez shot two Israeli Embassy staffers outside an American Jewish Committee gala for Zionist diplomats. Though quickly painted as an act of random antisemitic violence by the US media and politicians, Rodriguez's manifesto released by journalist Ken Klippenstein shows a clear desire to target figures not for their faith but for their connection to a state carrying out genocide. The feverish outcry provoked by the shooting—which will likely deepen the crackdown on pro-Palestinian and leftist speech across the West—was naturally absent when Israeli forces shot at 25 touring diplomats in the West Bank the day before.
Assassinations and other acts of individual spectacle undermine the proletariat's ability to resist genocide and other attacks, provoking repression without building the forces to withstand it. The rise of such attacks, however, reveals a deepening rift between the urgent needs of the oppressed and the absence or inaction of working-class leadership. Liberal and social-democratic critics have been quick to denounce individual violence and call for “mass action.” But so long as mass action is contained to endless rallies for yet more ceasefires, which will only be immediately broken, the consequences of terrorism must ultimately be laid at the feet of these reformist leaders. Real resistance to genocide demands strikes, port blockades and other serious disruptions of the West’s supply of weapons to Israel—actions only the workers' movement can deliver.
Leon Trotsky wrote in 1911:
“The outbreaks of anarchist assassination in Western Europe and North America always come after some atrocity committed by the government—the shooting of strikers or executions of political opponents. The most important psychological source of terrorism is always the feeling of revenge in search of an outlet.…
“Whatever the eunuchs and pharisees of morality may say, the feeling of revenge has its rights. It does the working class the greatest moral credit that it does not look with vacant indifference upon what is going on in this best of all possible worlds. Not to extinguish the proletariat's unfulfilled feeling of revenge, but on the contrary to stir it up again and again, to deepen it, and to direct it against the real causes of all injustice and human baseness—that is the task of [Marxism].”
Over the weekend, US anti-migrant efforts ramped up in the Los Angeles suburb of Paramount. In response to the ICE raids, working-class residents gathered outside the houses and workplaces under attack, while crowds assembled at the federal building where migrants are being kept. Members of California's trade unions were among the first on site, with SIEU president David Huerta arrested along with several others.
The liberal bourgeoisie of California, which is united in both its opposition to Trump and its heavy reliance on migrant labor, has reacted with outrage at federal overreach. The Trump administration took the opportunity to attack its opponents, directing its officials and pet media to describe the situation as an out-of-control riot being mollycoddled by effete liberals. It has now authorized the deployment of 2,000 National Guard troops to crush the "RIOTS & LOOTERS." Pete Hegseth, Trump's Secretary of Defense, has said that the Marines at Camp Pendleton are on stand-by and ready to be mobilized against the domestic population.
Marxists defend the actions of LA residents who have courageously stood up to an increasingly militarized state effort to deport their fellow workers. Local government officials are no friends of the oppressed, and activist NGOs are a completely inadequate leadership in this fight. The rapid escalation makes spontaneous attempts by small groups of unarmed individuals to de-arrest ICE detainees extremely risky, while liberal outrage provides no support whatsoever. California's trade unions must take the lead with industrial action, not only to defend migrant workers, but their fellow unionists now being arrested. Workers must transcend their labor bureaucrat leaderships to organize defense guards based in their unions and communities and stop the ICE raids.
Stop the deportations!
Workers’ defense of migrants!
Full citizenship rights for immigrants!
Break with the Democrats & Republicans—Build a revolutionary workers’ party!
As the genocide in Gaza descends into mass starvation and the open abandonment of even the thinnest humanitarian pretences, the same imperialist governments that have armed and funded the Zionist state now profess grief and outrage. These crocodile tears are a farce—desperate gestures to save face in the eyes of future generations while continuing to arm genocide today. Token arms controls, trade restrictions and sanctions on selected sacrificial lambs in the Israeli government imposed by the EU, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Norway and Canada are attempts to buy off popular outrage with hollow spectacle, devoid of any real pressure on the Israeli state.
State sanctions and legal measures have proven resoundingly ineffective in halting the Israeli war machine, but militant workers are turning instead to blockades and “hot cargoing” of Israeli war materiel. In February, Swedish dockworkers in Gothenburg undertook a six day blockade of Israeli military cargo, and have since undertaken strike action following reprisal firings by their employer. In April, growing public pressure compelled the leadership of the Moroccan Union of Port Workers to refuse to handle military cargoes destined for Israel, denying entry to a shipment of F-35 fighter parts. On 6 June, French stevedores at Fos-sur-Mer near Marseilles blocked a shipment of Israeli machine gun parts bound for Haifa, their action soon being joined by Italian and Greek workers at Genoa, Salerno, Scilla and Piraeus. Days later, activists occupied the Maersk shipping company headquarters in New York, in support of working-class actions across the Mediterranean.
Labor action against genocide is not easy. It demands coordination between militants in unions that are often depoliticized, undemocratic and dominated by bureaucracies tied to pro-Israel politicans. It demands going beyond BDS resolutions and pressure campaigns—tools the union bureaucrats use to redirect and smother militancy. Had the workers in Mediterranean ports directed their energies towards the ceasefire and sanction demands now taken up by many governments, they would have got nowhere, and the flow of weapons through loopholes in arms controls would continue. Their actions instead stand in a long tradition of effective struggle—from British dockers refusing to arm Franco, to the ILWU "hot cargo" against South African apartheid-showing that real international action against oppression is possible.
As we noted in “On the ‘Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions’ Campaign: Strategies for Palestinian Liberation,” 1917 No.33:
“Only a class-struggle strategy can lay the basis for the liberation of the Palestinian people. Mobilizing the potential power of the international proletariat, however, requires a fight to forge a new, socialist leadership for the workers' movement—one committed to uprooting the entire exploitative and oppressive system of global capitalism.”
IBT comrades from Britain visited France last weekend, where we ran a stall at the annual Fête de Lutte Ouvrière, selling literature and discussing our politics with comrades from various groups on the French far left. We also attended a demonstration at the occupation in the Place de la République in central Paris against the Israeli genocide on Gaza, sparked by the capture of activists on the flotilla Madleen in international waters on 9 June, including French-Palestinian MEP Rima Hassan.
A key issue of discussion at the Fête and at Place de la République was the recent action by dockworkers at the port of Fos-sur-Mer near Marseilles, who refused to work a shipment of Israeli machine-gun parts bound for Haifa. This kind of action strikes a powerful blow at the French state and its alliance with Israel, which involves supplying weapons and funding for attacks on Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Yemen and now Iran. We call for further workers’ action against French, British and all imperialist intervention in the Middle East!
Also discussed was the French state’s recent attacks on pro-Palestine militants, several being put through court for the “crime” of opposing Israel’s genocidal attacks. We call for all charges to be dropped against Anasse Kazib of Révolution Permanente, Gaël Quirante of NPA-Révolutionnaires and all other pro-Palestinian militants, and for the release of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah. We will be attending a demonstration at the French Embassy in London at 5.30pm on Tuesday 17 June organised under the slogans “Protest French state repression! Pro-Palestinians and trade unionists under attack”. We call on all those opposed to Israel's genocide to join us.