Dennis Carabott Wins Key Victory Against his Unjust Sacking by Newham Council. This is a Victory for all of Newham and Tower Hamlets!
Demand Newham Council reinstates Dennis Carabott now. We will not accept attacks on our leaders. We will defend our jobs and communities against austerity measures and against racist and anti-immigrant attacks.
On December 18th Employment Appeals Tribunal (EAT) Judge Barklem found that the original Employment Appeal (ET) Judge’s decision against Dennis was not based on the evidence and was “arguably perverse”. Perverse means a decision made by an employment tribunal that is so clearly against the weight of evidence and so irrational, one sided and unjust that no reasonable person could have reached that conclusion. This is a spot-on description of ET Judge Massarella’s decision against Dennis Carabott.
Dennis Carabott is a refuse worker and a highly regarded champion of workers’ rights. He is a trade union activist and strike leader. Dennis was a refuse truck driver and worked for Newham for 16 years, before he was suspended in 2019. Dennis was unlawfully and unjustly sacked by Newham Council in response to his record as a workers’ leader who would not back down – who exposed the bullying, discrimination and corruption of Newham management and successfully defended his co-workers – including another union steward – who were unjustly targeted by managers. Management response was to set-up Dennis to be sacked on spurious charges in retaliation. He has been fighting to reverse this cowardly and baseless attack by Newham and expose their actions ever since.
Throughout his fight, Dennis has had the unwavering support of Newham refuse workers, Tower Hamlets workers, and communities across Newham, Tower Hamlets and all of London. This is a victory that points the way forward for the kind of struggle we need, in order to defeat the austerity policies we now face under the Labour government. Dennis is the kind of leader who will not back down. He speaks truth to power.
Dennis’ victory is a victory for all of Newham and Tower Hamlets. However, Dennis, his union support person Alex Owolade, and his US-based legal team (BAMN – MFJ’s sister organisation) were told that he had no chance by every solicitor, barrister, UK employment law site and union official they reached out to for help. And the judge who first reviewed Dennis’ EAT application of appeal rejected his appeal and described Judge Massarella’s decisions as “well-reasoned.”
There were two important developments before Dennis’s second EAT hearing on December 18th, where judge Barklem gave his strong decision in support of Dennis’ right to appeal his case. First, Movement for Justice (MFJ), the anti-racist, pro-worker and pro-immigrant rights organisation that supports Dennis’ fight, redoubled its public organizing campaign to mobilize support for Dennis. Second, his legal team went on a self-taught crash course in UK employment law, in order to add further grounds for his appeal and to sharpen our arguments. By the time the winning case was heard, Newham Council had been scandalized and Dennis had irrefutable legal arguments to convince Dennis’ new EAT judge to rule for him.
Employment Tribunals are terrible, pro-management bodies, aimed at making workers feel subhuman and so demoralized, angry and hopeless that many workers just want to abandon their cases rather than endure hours more of bullying and shaming.
Dennis won because he is an honest leader dedicated to the fight for workers’ rights and Justice. But he could never have won fighting alone. Dennis had an organization to support him and develop a winning strategy, based on an understanding of how to beat the rich and powerful. He had a group of co-workers and community supporters and family members standing by his side urging him to keep fighting. Without all of these different kinds of support most workers would lose or give up. The lessons of Dennis’ victory are that you need: a) an organization to win; b) to know that having any illusions in the fairness of the ET process is a guaranteed way to lose and c) to ignore the advice of weak, routinist solicitors and barristers who are more concerned about looking good to a judge than fighting for their clients to win.
The Employment Tribunal Kangaroo Court of Judge Massarella
Last year Dennis’s case was unlawfully shut down by Judge Massarella, at the East London Employment Tribunal. Dennis was denied the opportunity to present one speck of factual evidence from the overwhelmingly strong case against his illegal sacking by Newham Council – a sacking on the ludicrous charge that he took a 20 pence discount on a can of soft drink from a store owner (sic). Judge Massarella sprang into action when – before any evidence was heard – the Council’s barrister made a reference to Dennis’s leadership in the Newham and Tower Hamlets refuse workers strikes.
The ET panel then allowed Newham management to enter a new and unverified email message as evidence on the second morning of the hearing. It was supposedly sent from the manager to Dennis, sacking him three days before he received the letter by post. They were attempting to argue that Dennis’ ET case should be thrown out of court because it was out-of-time. Dennis had never received this email, and out of scores of emails it was the only one that was not copied to his union representative worker and MFJ leader, Alex Owolade. David Humphries, the manager who supposedly sent the email was not even in court for questioning.
Instead of demanding that the Newham Barrister prove the suspicious email was authentic and explain how Newham management failed to find it for three years, Judge Massarella put the burden on Dennis and his family to prove the email did NOT exist. But given that it was never sent, it was no surprise that Dennis couldn’t produce it. This entire farce was dictated by Judge Massarella in open court in order to avoid Newham having to answer for its scandalous and unjust sacking of Dennis.
It was these actions that Employment Appeal Tribunal judge Barklem called “arguably perverse” and arguably “errors of law” in Dennis’ hearing on 18th December. The judge’s decision is definite and strong, giving Dennis the best chance possible to win at the forthcoming full hearing of the Employment Appeals Tribunal. That hearing should give Dennis his first chance in the 5 years following his illegal sacking to finally get his case heard and his sacking reversed.
Defend our workers’ leaders – Defeat the austerity attacks by Labour
Dennis would not give up. Newham workers and the community would not give up. Newham Council had one play in its gamebook – endlessly delay; they live by the old adage that “justice delayed is justice denied” and they plan to achieve that delay/denial at every step. No trick, no lie is considered too wrong – but now we have turned the tables, and now Newham Council is on trial.
The job of the movement now is to mobilise, and force Newham to drop its embarrassingly weak case against Dennis. It is too costly and too much of a diversion to continue. The Council needs to reinstate Dennis and stop wasting the Council’s resources. But it will not do this unless we mount an all-out campaign of action that unites the community, the unions and workers, and all the oppressed & struggling people of Newham.
The Council fears that if it cuts its losses and reinstates Dennis, then every worker and community member will gain the confidence to wage a collective campaign to stop the cuts in community services and the redundancies on the horizon. What our Councillors fears is precisely what we have to build, and the fight for Dennis Carabott’s immediate reinstatement is a vital part of building such a campaign of resistance to the attacks on the community and workers.
Newham Councillors were elected by the community; they should respond to our fight against austerity and the struggles of their own workers. They should be organising the fight against the Labour Party’s depraved campaign against local communities and against its own past history of progressive, pro-working-class policies.
Newham can and must lead a fight right across London boroughs and beyond, to stand up for the workers they employ and for workers generally, to stand up for struggling middle class community members, including market traders and small businesses, and especially for the youth and the immigrant and refugee communities.
The only question is, will our elected councillors participate in the fight or do we need to clear them out of the way to win. Either way, we must build independent committees of action to lead the fight. We cannot place our futures in the hands of tired, scared, subservient and sure to sell-out leaders, like the current union bureaucrats, or religious and civic leaders who only know how to fight to lose.
We have a base to build on. The movement in support of victory for the inspiring and courageous struggle of the Palestinian people has already galvanized hundreds of thousands of people in the UK and millions worldwide. Our job is to unite our movement to stop the cuts with the Pro-Palestine movement and the other progressive movements, so that we have the power to defeat all the bankrupt policies of the Labour Government and the Labour Party in Parliament and in local councils.
We demand that Newham Council Reinstates Dennis Carabott now.
Organize and Unite the movements to Defeat all attacks on the leaders we elect and trust.
Build Independent Committees of Action to Defeat the austerity measures.
Join the Struggle now to defeat the Labour Party’s anti-working class & anti-poor cuts and redundancies; against racist, sexist and homophobic policies ; against the pro-imperialist War drive; and against attacks and deportations on immigrants and asylum seekers.
If We Stand Up Together and Prove We Are Inseparable, We Can Win
Email/message us to help mobilise to win: movement4justice.bamn@gmail.com
–No Vote for parties that support imperialist wars
– No Vote for parties that are complicit in Israeli genocide
– No Vote for parties that deport immigrants and refugees
– No Vote for parties that are tied to capitalist profiteers
Victory to the Palestinian Struggle – End All UK Support for Israel
Recognise an Independent Palestinian State on Gaza & the West Bank
Stop & Reverse the Privatisation of Public Services
Strike to Win – Build Rank & File Action Committees to Stop the Sell-Outs
Defend LGBT+ Rights & the Right to Determine one’s own Gender Identity
Fight for Equality for Women, Including Abortion Rights
Build Mass Action to Shut Down Detention Centres & Stop Deportations
Amnesty for All Refugees and Undocumented Immigrants
End Prevent and all forms of Islamophobia
Fight anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry
Open the Borders – Reverse Brexit
The most important aspect of this week’s General Election is that it signifies the end of the Labour Party as a possible arena of struggle for the working class & oppressed against imperialist wars, exploitation, racism and the rise of fascism. At a time of crisis for the poor and oppressed of the world, Keir Starmer has established a totalitarian regime in the Labour Party that is complicit with Israeli genocide, expels Jewish critics of Israel for ‘anti-semitism,’ and promises to be much tougher on refugees & immigrants than the divided and incompetent Tories.
The mass movement in support of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party was the final attempt to reverse Tony Blair’s ‘neo-liberal’ policies and turn the party into a mass movement of the Left. The ruling class is relying on Starmer to ensure that nothing like that ever happens again, and he – a former high official of the British state as Director of the Crown Prosecution Service – is ready to do obey.
Starmer and his allies have opposed the strike movement, banned Labour MPs from joining workers’ picket lines, banned constituency Labour Parties from accepting or discussing motions relating to Palestine and opposed the mass movement in support of the Palestinian struggle. The Labour Party bureaucrats operate a round-the-clock ‘Big Brother’ surveillance of the social media of their MPs, candidates and many party officers and members, at least on those who are not 100% ‘on-line.’ On that basis Starmer and his future Chancellor of the Exchequer, former Bank of England economist Rachel Reeves, have established an alliance with a large section of the British capitalists and former Tory donors who have publicly supported and funded his election campaign. He has now been endorsed by the Sunday Times, a right-wing Murdoch paper.
The most urgent task now is to build a new party of a different kind, one based on mass struggle against racism, capitalist exploitation and imperialist wars.
The potential for the new party already exists
This election has been preceded by a nearly three years of radical mass action in Britain: the biggest wave of strikes for 40 years that is still developing; the frequent mass actions to prevent the arrest and deportation of refugees and immigrants; the huge anti-war demonstrations in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. These movements are represented in this election by a record number of ‘independent’ candidates and new groupings standing in opposition to both main parties, such as (in London) Leanne Mohamad in Ilford North and Noor Jahan Begum in Ilford South.
Among them are a number of left-wingers expelled from the Labour Party, including Jeremy Corbyn in Islington North and Claudia Webbe in Leicester East, and Faiza Shaheen, who is standing as an independent in Chingford & Woodford Green after being dropped at the last minute as Labour candidate because of her continuing support for the Palestinian struggle.
The Revolutionary Internationalist League (RIL) and the Movement for Justice (MFJ) are calling for a vote for those expelled Labour MPs and candidates, for Labour candidates who have shown public support for Palestine or opposition to Starmer’s anti-immigrant rhetoric during the election campaign, notably Bell Ribeiro-Addy in Clapham & Brixton Hill, Diane Abbott in Hackney North & Stoke Newington, and Apsana Begum in Poplar & Limehouse – and for independent candidates who support the Palestinian struggle and oppose the Labour leadership’s support for Israel, especially for those have supported the strike movement.
We support a vote for the Green Party because of its opposition to Labour’s support for Israel, its support for immigrant & refugee rights and Palestinian rights, and its demand for the repeal of Tory legislation that has drastically restricted the right to protest and freedom of speech, and its call for ending the anti-Muslim Prevent scheme.
We support these candidates and groups, not because they agree with all our policies or we agree with all theirs, but because we recognise them as part of the mass movements that have grown in direct opposition to a Labour Party that is dead for any progressive struggles, in Britain or internationally. We are calling on them to come together to build the new, democratic party of struggle.
We are not advocating some new alliance of established Left groups (though not excluding them either) we are arguing for a party that is based on action, that fights to win, unites the various arenas of mass action in a common struggle, and that does not bow before the archaic stupidities of the parliamentary system or the treachery of full-time trade union bureaucrats.
For those reasons we are opposed to any support for George Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain. We are calling on its candidates to disassociate themselves from Galloway and his allies and stand as independents. Galloway is an unsavoury opportunist and a political exhibitionist, who makes totally different ‘pitches’ to different audiences, and whose election manifesto bristles with reactionary positions on women and the family, on gender issues & green politics – and on immigrants and refugees. In a recent interview he was demanding that the Royal Navy should be used to push back cross-Channel refugees. That was the position of Priti Patel and Suella Braverman. The Navy refused their demands.
Getting from ‘Potential’ to the New Party We Must Build
The most important problem facing the candidates listed above is that, however sincere they are and however closely they feel responsible to their immediate communities, they are not accountable to the movements we have built, that are the bases for their electoral success if they win, or for their future role in those movements.
This deficit means that their victories may give them the votes in Parliament needed to get some concessions from a Labour Party government, but we cannot expect them to fight to win. They will rely on Parliamentary manoeuvres that will not succeed in rebuilding the NHS, protect refugees and immigrant communities from racism and discrimination, or end fees for university & college student and reinstate grants for education at every level so that working class and poor youth can stay in school and succeed.
We can take Jeremy Corbyn as an example. He is well known for his pro-working class politics, but he has not called on rank-and-file trade union activists to dump their current union leaderships. It is just ‘not done;’ neither Corbyn or any other MPs see that as part of their political role. Yet it is obvious that the current trade union bureaucrats squandered the strength of the strike movement and sold out their members. To win the forthcoming rounds of strikes and/or negotiations, the existing sell-out leaders who are tied to the Labour Party must be replaced by independent committees of elected rank-and-file militants, directly accountable to their members. Neither Corbyn nor any of the other candidates we are supporting have raised this perspective or called for unified, all-out strikes of the unions to win.
The strike movement has been inspiring and historic, but if it does not win real improvements in wages and working conditions this year, protected by cost-of-living allowances and minimum staffing levels, both of which are needed to prevent inflation and more job losses, we will not only suffer defeats in trade-union terms, we will face a backlash from the small business people, middle- class professionals, and some of our community supporters. Nigel Farage and the fascists will swoop in and promote the lie that only an authoritarian fascist leader can solve the economic decline Britain is experiencing. A new round of anti-immigrant, racist, and bigoted attacks will occur in the streets and in the airwaves. Former Brexit supporters who may be testing out the viability of progressive political solutions, will turn back to the more familiar politics of bigotry, cynicism and hopelessness they held onto for so long.
Only a movement can win those gains. Politicians divorced from popular collective struggles can only posture while they fail to achieve anything more than the individual social work they do in constituency surgeries. That is why we must continue to build our movements, raise the level of our struggle, and consolidate new leaders. If we don’t move forward, we regress. We have to provide the spine for even the best and most sincere politicians we send to Parliament.
Reverse Brexit and Open the Borders
The outgoing Tory party and its leadership were the principal promoters and executors of Brexit – a policy of whipping up racism, xenophobia and immigrant-bashing in order to establish an authoritarian government that would attack workers’ rights & human rights. They secured an election pledge from former prime minister David Cameron to hold a referendum on leaving the European Union and went on to dominate the ‘Leave’ campaign, scoring a narrow victory in the 2016 referendum. That campaign and the aftermath of its victory were a prolonged ‘carnival of reaction’ – a huge rise in racist and fascist attacks (and some murders) along with homophobia and Islamophobia. Even primary school children and their parents were not exempt from their threats.
Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Liz Truss, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Rishi Sunak and their political cousin Nigel Farage rank high among the people responsible for those crimes.
Before & after the referendum, the RIL & MFJ argued that Brexit was a racist, anti-immigrant project. Britain’s black, Asian, and Muslim communities knew that perfectly well and mostly voted against it. Every survey at the time and every study since then has demonstrated that anti-immigrant prejudice was by far the principal motivation behind voting for Brexit.
Brexit was a major factor in undermining Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party. While his economic and social policies won tremendous support, and while we oppose his frame-up expulsion by Starmer and support his stand in the current election, we have to be clear that his refusal (along with nearly every Labour MP) to call out Brexit as a racist project was a fatal error. It meant that Labour endorsed Brexit as a ‘democratic’ decision.
It was not as though he had not heard the argument. His close ally on the Left, Diane Abbott, spent nearly 6 months campaigning on the racist character of Brexit and arguing for keeping free movement (which was perfectly possible) before she was silenced.
The consequence was that the Corbyn leadership ended up making decisions that lost him the support of several Labour Left MPs and alienated a large proportion of his young supporters.
However, as MFJ argued at the time, that was not the only damaging consequence of Labour’s failure to call out Brexit as a racist project. It left the hard Brexit faction around Boris Johnson unchallenged in its campaign to undermine the Tory prime minister Theresa May. As a result she resigned and Johnson became the Tory leader and prime minister in July 2019 and went on win a large majority in the December.
Once in power they implemented the most extreme version of Brexit, and introduced legislation that massively increased the powers of the state, giving state bodies (police, army, intelligence services etc) the power to authorise or commit crimes in the service of the government. They undermined effective voting rights, especially for the poor and the young, and gave the government rather than independent bodies control over the conduct of elections. A torrent of new laws created ever tighter restrictions on the right to protest and freedom of speech. They tore up the rights of refugees, immigrants and workers.
And they accomplished all that with minimal opposition from the Labour leadership, now in the hands of Keir Starmer.
Brexit is now the non-issue of the election. A majority of people in Britain see Brexit as a disaster that has made them poorer and their lives more difficult, and they would like to reverse the decision. The Tories don’t want to talk about Brexit because it is an embarrassment; Starmer’s Labour Party does not want to talk about it because it would complicate their appeal to anti-immigrant racism.
This issue won’t go away. The RIL and MFJ call for the reversal of Brexit, not because we love the European Union, but because it is essential to defend the basic human right of free movement and the right of workers to go where they need to in order to find employment – the most important right for the class that has to sell its labour power in order to live.
We demand Opening the Borders because that is what millions of people are forced to do by the material, social, political, military and environmental problems they face – problems that the ruling elites of the imperialist countries are responsible for. We are already seeing the alternative to Open Borders; it is a world of despotism and barbarism. We will not tell refugees and migrants to stay where they are until the rich and powerful imperialists learn a modicum of humanity – or agree to establish ‘safe routes.’
Fascism and resistance
The outgoing Tory government was a regime clearly moving towards fascism, with many ministers having direct links with fascism and with far-right, pro-Trump ‘think-tanks’ in Britain and the USA. The repeated exposure of corruption certainly made that course more difficult, but the principal cause of the divisions and weakness in the Brexit/Tory ranks has been the growth of mass resistance – from the widespread Covid ‘lockdown’ by hundreds of thousands of individuals and families in March 2020 that temporarily forced an unwilling government to fall into line, to the 2-year long strike wave in the public services that had mass public support and created the political climate for the mass anti-war movement in support of the Palestinian struggle. Those developments were ignored, or more often opposed by the Labour leadership.
The threat of fascism has not gone away. The rise of fascism is an international development because everywhere there are ruling classes, or sections of the ruling elites, which are turning to fascism to crush opposition, increase exploitation, and prepare for war with rival states. Fascists are in the governments in the Netherlands and Austria, they are the government in Israel and Italy, Marine Le Pen’s ‘Far Right’ party has come top in the French elections and Trump may be elected President in November. And everywhere the ‘moderate,’ ‘centrist’ or social democratic parties are normalising these developments because they are many times more afraid of the power of the poor and oppressed than they are of the fascists.
Fascist activity and racist & homophobic attacks have already grown already under the Tories, though much less than in other European countries. A Labour government that is tied to a crisis-ridden capitalist class, a Labour government that refuses to meet the real needs of the poor, the workers, the sick and homeless, and the struggling lower middle class could provide ideal conditions for the rapid growth of a fascist movement.
Fighting fascism is not a battle of ideas, it is a matter of self-defence, of defending our mass movement, our unions, and our integrated communities. That will only be effective with political leadership – again, that will only be possible if we build a new party based on the struggles of the mass movements and working class.
The next phase of our struggle, under a Starmer-led Labour government will be more demanding, but we have a sound base to build on. Despite 14 years of Tory dominance, there is less racism now than there was during the last Labour government. Thanks to the continued struggles of the anti-racist, labour, immigrant rights, and anti-war movements, Britain is less divided by race, nationalism and gender identity. Support for Brexit has plummeted. The strike movement to stop the free fall of the British economy and our living standards, and to save the NHS and public services, is readying for a new offensive this autumn. The majority of people in Britain oppose the Israeli government’s genocidal war to end any possibility of a Palestinian state. Britain has had the most consistent and largest anti-war, pro-Palestinian demonstrations and mass actions of any nation outside of the Palestinian struggle in Gaza and the West Bank.
Build & Unite the Mass Movements – Build a New Party of the Workers & Oppressed
Unite and coordinate our strikes – Unite the strikes with community struggles
To fight poverty we must fight racism, anti-immigrant prejudice and fascism
Build elected rank and file action committees
The capitalists caused the crisis, they must bear the cost:
Fight for regular, automatic pay, pension & benefit rises linked to the rate of inflation
No job loss – Cut the hours not the pay
Make the polluters pay for the climate crisis, take over oil, gas & coal companies & shut them down
Open the Borders – Stop immigration raids – Amnesty for everyone without papers
To the striking workers & those preparing to strike, to the communities fighting racism & stopping immigration raids, to the refugees who are treated as criminals, to the militant movement against global heating, to the youth fighting for a future of hope
This statement is addressed to you. The Movement for Justice stands with you against the attacks of the British government and its agents. This government is creating a fascist dictatorship. Together we are the active vanguard that can defeat the most dangerous government in modern British history.
Students joining picket line of striking teachers at Lewisham College, October 2022
The past 12 months have witnessed an inspiring resurgence of trade unionism. Trade union membership has grown steadily over the last few years, and this year’s strike-wave is the biggest rise in working class struggle since the 1980s. The spirit of these strikes is as impressive as the number; time after time we are seeing strike votes of over 90%, on turnouts of 90% and more. Many of this year’s strikers have never taken industrial action before, many are young, and we are all part of a multi-racial workforce that is more diverse and integrated than ever before. We are all fighting to win. The Movement for Justice is confident that together we can win.
The current strike movement is a response to declining real pay, an increasing cost of living, cuts in jobs and working conditions – and to broken promises and racist, bullying or abusing managers. At the same time, it is a response to a government and ruling elite that embody the arrogant privilege of wealth, with all its cruelty and corruption – a regime that is shutting down democracy and aiming to establish a dictatorship.
We have government ministers who think and act as though they are above the law, while they destroy our legal protections. They have trashed workers’ rights, immigrant rights and human rights. They have trashed our public services and turned them into financial assets for their friends and supporters. At every stage in the Covid pandemic they have put private profit above the safety of the people, with the result that Britain has the worst Covid death-rate in Europe.
The government that “Got Brexit done” has relied on whipping up the racism and immigrant bashing that was central to getting Brexit done. This government has found that the majority of people in Britain are opposed to its mistreatment of refugees and its plan to deport cross-Channel refugees to Rwanda – but its only response is to appeal even more to the most racist & fascist elements in British society.
The truth is that the resurgence of trade unionism and the inspiring strike-wave are as much a political struggle as they are economic. This is a movement against a hated government. Our spirit of resistance has only been strengthened by Kwasi Kwarteng’s recent budget – a budget that takes from the poor and gives to the rich on an unprecedented scale, like Robin Hood in reverse.
Moreover, workers and poor people generally can see that there is a serious crisis among the people ‘at the top,’ that the politicians and the ruling class are divided, uncertain and devoid of any plan to resolve the problems people are facing. They don’t deserve respect, they look weak, and so growing numbers of workers believe that the bosses and the government can be defeated. That mood has proved highly infectious.
We can’t live with this government any longer. We can’t live with the poverty, the growing insecurity and the destruction of public services it is responsible for. The Movement for Justice believes that together we must Bring Down the Government as soon as possible.
We can’t wait for an election in two years’ time, while the government and the employers continue to destroy lives and jobs through the coming winter and a deep recession. We can’t wait while people are starving, freezing, dying and losing their homes, and while thousands are condemned to destitution because they have no legal immigration status and ‘No access to public funds.’ We can’t wait while the government continues to detain & deport thousands of men & women, or dumps them in Rwanda, and while the police have a licence to harass, brutalise & murder black, Asian & Muslim people.
And we can’t put our trust in a Labour Party leadership that is opposed to the present strike movement, that won’t speak the truth about racism, and that is tied hand-and-foot to defending capitalist interests. The government can ONLY be brought down and its plans destroyed by the action of our growing movement.
Newham refuse strikers marching through the community, Sept 2022
Fight to win – Unite the strikes, mobilise our communities
As this movement grows it will have to respond to new and bigger challenges, because the economic crisis will inevitably deepen. The British economy is in recession and that will get worse because the economic crisis is global, regardless of what happens to Kwasi Kwarteng’s plans or what policy the Bank of England adopts. The working class, wide sections of the middle class, renters, the sick and elderly etc will face higher inflation, higher interest rates, job loss, evictions, and a health crisis. The need to bring down the government will be more urgent.
To meet these challenges we will have to go beyond the ‘guerrilla war’ tactics of repeated, short strikes in different sectors of the economy at separate times. As a start we should bring the strikes together – united strikes by workers in all the different sectors and unions at the same time, and for more prolonged periods – everyone out at once and everyone on the streets!
Those strikes should be used creatively to build closer connections with the wider population in our communities, through demonstrations, marches, rallies, local conferences, community tribunals etc. – and by organising solidarity action to defend the poor and needy, joining the growing movement of community action to stop immigration raids, etc. Our unions, our strikes, and our fight to bring down the government will be many times stronger if, at all levels, they become champions of all the poor and oppressed.
We will be reviving a tradition rather than inventing something totally new. In the past, the local trade union organisations have been at the centre of their communities and there have been many examples of unions taking action to defend people in their communities, against evictions for example, or against racist and fascist attacks – as well as solidarity action with workers in other sectors, like the industrial workers who went on strike and marched to support striking health workers in 1980s. Reviving and extending those traditions will have a vital role in bringing down the most dangerous government in modern British history.
Set up elected strike committees in every workplace – build a rank-and-file workers’ movement
The development of this movement needs a secure base, and that cannot be left to ‘Head Office’ or to ‘Regional Office,’ or to outstanding national leaders, however skilful their organising abilities or however powerful their speeches.
We must raise our level of struggle and organisation to achieve our demands and send this wretched government to the dustbin of history, whoever is leading it next month or next year. To achieve that, it is essential that the rank-and-file of the strike movement organises and asserts its authority. We need to build our own leadership in every workplace and every locality. We need to elect strike committees, workplace committees or action committees in all sectors. These should be inter-union bodies wherever strikes involve members of different unions. Striking workers in every locality should set up city-wide or district-wide committees to coordinate action and build community links.
As the fight becomes more intense there will inevitably be points where the full-time leaders and officials are out of touch or become too cautious, as a result of pressure from the government, the media, or the Labour Party leadership. They may be afraid of some legal issue, being fined for ‘unofficial’ strike action, or want to cool things down because they think it will help with some negotiations.
The rank-and-file must be strong enough and confident enough to correct those mistakes or to act independently. That will only be possible if elected rank-and-file leaders are already working together and have the confidence of their members.
Fascism in Britain and the USA
We must bring down this government because it is establishing a fascist dictatorship, and that process is already far advanced. We don’t use the term lightly and should not be misled if most fascists don’t use the name today. Fascism is defined by what a movement or government does, not by what it calls itself.
In January 2017, barely six months after the Brexit referendum, a Movement for Justice conference adopted a statement with the title Perspectives for Action in the Time of Trump and Brexit. The first paragraph declared that,
“Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, and the boost that these events have given to neo-fascists across Europe have created a new and more negative political situation that has plunged the ‘western democracies’ into a profound crisis. We can characterise the threat of these developments quite simply: the most right-wing, reactionary forces in capitalist society have succeeded in establishing a mass base among sections of the middle class and working class, based on race and racism. For them to win total power only one thing is needed: that the poor and oppressed of all races stay silent and fail to fight back. The task before Movement for Justice is to build the mass movement that will fight back and defeat this threat by any means necessary.”
Four years later, on 6th January 2021, Trump and many thousands of his most racist supporters, ended a mass rally by storming Congress, spearheaded by violent organised groups like the ‘Proud Boys’ and the ‘Oath Keepers,’ in an attempt to overturn the result of the presidential election. We now know that the only reason Trump wasn’t at the attack on Congress in person was because his security team ignored his protests and drove him back to the White House.
That insurrection was a direct attempt to overthrow democracy – an attempted fascist coup. It didn’t succeed, but the fascist movement around Trump is very much alive. It has taken over the Republican Party, controls political power in many states, and its allies control the Supreme Court. The Court’s decision to abolish women’s right to abortion, and the anti-LGBT+ laws introduced in Republican controlled states, along with changing election procedures to exclude black, Latina/o and poor voters, have been major victories for the Trump fascist movement.
Brexit is the British version of the Trump movement. It was always a project to complete the destruction of the democratic and social gains of the working class and Britain’s black, Asian & Muslim communities. The Brexit referendum campaign was a multi-month festival of racist myths and lies, whether it was the ‘official’ campaign dominated by Boris Johnson or the ‘independent’ campaign led by Nigel Farage, the fascist leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP). In reality they worked in tandem. They used racism, xenophobia and the scapegoating of immigrants, not only as a divide-and-conquer strategy, but to create a mass movement – and they succeeded. Their propaganda gave a licence to a parallel campaign of racist & fascist attacks and abuse, on the streets and on public transport.
That escalated massively after the narrow victory of the ‘Leave’ campaign in the June 2016 referendum. There was a sharp rise in physical attacks and other forms of abuse & extreme harassment against
immigrants of all races, refugees, black and Asian people, LGBT+ people, community centres – and the organised racist harassment of children and parents at the gates of primary schools. Johnson, Farage and their allies had incited those horrors; they never disowned them and they never dropped their racist rhetoric.
That is fascism at work, and by the end of 2019 Johnson and the hard-line Brexiters had taken control of the Conservative Party and the government.
The terrible impact on people’s lives is all too clear. Recorded racist hate crime has nearly doubled since the year of the referendum, with over 100,000 recorded between March 2021 and March this year. All forms of hate crime rose by more than a quarter during the same 12-month period, with rising attacks on LGBT+ people and the disabled, but during that period only 8% of those crimes were prosecuted. A similar pattern is seen in figures for sexual assaults, domestic abuse and violence against women.
The global crisis and the worldwide rise of fascism
The last twelve years or so have seen a sharp, worldwide rise in attacks on democracy, with the growth of fascism and the establishment of fascist governments.
The democratic system that has existed in the rich countries of Europe and North America since the late 19th century has always been based on an implicit ‘deal’ between the capitalist ruling class and the working class: the capitalists continue to make huge profits through the exploitation of the workers, not only at home but in colonies & neo-colonies; they and their political and professional allies (MPs, bureaucrats, judges etc) control the administration of the state, the army, police etc. In return, the working class gets the right to vote, the right to organise and strike, a series of welfare benefits (pensions, sick pay, health insurance etc) and, for the skilled workers at least, higher wages. That was only possible because of the huge wealth of those ruling classes.
The financial and economic crash of 2008/2009 – which was caused by the reckless gambling of the banks in the world’s richest countries – delivered a huge blow to the global capitalist economy, and to the political authority of the capitalist ruling classes of the different countries. They responded by bailing out the banks – and then they made sure the cost was borne by the working class, the poor and oppressed, and the world’s poorest countries. That meant slashing public services and welfare schemes. And it meant increasing the exploitation of the working class – cutting corners on health and safety, more privatisation, fake ‘self-employment,’ zero-hours contracts, and the rise of Uber and similar companies.
Those policies have not led to any significant or lasting recovery from the crash, and the financial gambling has continued. Since every national government has resorted to the same desperate measures the conflicts between them have become sharper. That has meant new and expanding wars, and no international co-operation to deal with the climate crisis or the rise of new pandemic diseases. The period since 2008 has seen greater poverty on a world scale, the mass migration of refugees, the rapid development of a climate disaster – and the rise of fascism on a global scale.
Governments everywhere imposed cuts, but the crisis continues. In one country after another, sections of the elites decide that the only way to protect capitalist power and wealth is to dispense with democracy completely, establish a dictatorship and crush the independent action of the working class.
To achieve that, especially in the richest countries, they promote the growth of a mass movement of mainly lower middle class people who hate the established political system but despise the working class and fear losing some real or imagined privilege. Those movements are outside the machinery of the state (police, army etc) and they are motivated by some form of extreme nationalism based on racial or religious identity. They peddle the myth of a ‘glorious past’ that has been betrayed. The myth of betrayal is their justification for using physical violence against the ‘alien’ racial or religious groups, the organised working class and the defenders of democracy.
That is fascism. That describes Brexit and it describes the Trump movement. It is the character of the regimes in Russia, India and Brazil – and in Italy, where the fascist Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) and its close allies now control the government. Fascist movements are growing across Europe.
The global rebellion against growing poverty and inequality – Open the Borders
The inhumanity of the government’s attacks on the mass migration of refugees is an essential part of its drive towards fascism. It is not only about ‘divide and rule’ and the racist language of a threat to ‘national identity.’ It is, firstly, an expression of the ruling elite’s fear of the courage and determination of people who are part of that mass migration, part of a global rebellion against growing poverty and inequality, wars without end and the impact of the climate crisis. Throughout modern British history people, men and women who have uprooted themselves from their home countries to escape persecution & poverty have been leaders in the fight for equality and democracy and a force for progressive change.
But there is a further depth to the very real physical and mental cruelty that this government inflicts on refugees and the immigrants who are denied papers – it is an attempt, essential to fascism, to get the whole population to regard such cruelty as ‘normal’ and even inevitable.
So far that has had limited success, but it must be challenged and defeated. The cross-Channel refugees, everyone seeking asylum in Britain, and immigrants with or without papers are our brothers & sisters in the fight against Britain’s racist, imperialist ruling class. Movement for Justice demands Opening the Borders of Britain & Europe because that is what refugees are doing every day, in order to resolve the material problems in their lives and find some degree of safety & freedom – and because the only alternative to open borders is a world of increasing barbarism and tyranny.
The Movement for Justice demands an immediate & unconditional Amnesty for everyone living in the UK without legal immigration papers, because Papers for All is the only way to end the nightmare created by 61 years of immigration, asylum & nationality laws, brought in by governments of all the main parties.
We call on the growing strike movement and anti-poverty movement to take up these demands and unite with the growing, community-based movement & networks that are stopping immigration raids. If we are not fighting racism, we can’t stop the creation of a fascist dictatorship in Britain.
Our greatest strength in this fight is the increasingly integrated character of the working class, the youth and the major towns & cities – in other words, the majority of the population. That is a major problem for the government and its supporters. It is the base we must mobilise in order defeat the move towards fascism.
The strike movement and government
The purpose of Kwarteng’s ‘mini-budget’ was this: to use huge tax cuts for the rich and powerful, and the need to repay the money the government has to borrow, as the reason to stop funding the services and benefits that the poor and oppressed rely on for their survival. It was effectively a plan to starve those services and destroy them. At the same time he plans to bring in yet another law to stop strikes and restrict trade union action, and yet another law to make it easier to deprive the poorest people of their welfare benefits.
Those are direct attacks on the present strike movement and shows how much the government fears its impact.
The current divisions among the Brexiters certainly make the Conservative Party and the government look weak, but they are not a fundamental division. There is no real disagreement about aims, only about tactics and presentation.
They have all voted for the laws that are creating a dictatorship, destroying workers’ rights, legal protections, human rights and the right of asylum. They all voted for the Borders Act and supported the plan to dump cross-Channel refugees in Rwanda. The Tory critics of Truss and Kwarteng are angry that by provoking a fall in the value of the pound and acting too fast they have alienated many of their own supporters.
Meanwhile the Labour Party leadership has used those divisions to present itself as the ‘reasonable’ alternative, without doing or saying anything significant about their own policies.
The truth is that the Labour leadership and other supposed defenders of democracy fear our inspiring strike movement, and the power of the working class and the poor, far more than they fear the government and the advent of British fascism. They fear a working class uprising more than they fear fascism.
We see that fear of working class struggle and appeasement of rising fascism every time Keir Starmer wraps himself in the Union Jack, sings God Save the King, sacks MPs who try to speak out against racism, covers up racism & Islamophobia in the Labour hierarchy, expels Jewish members who criticise Israel and Zionism, expelled left-wing delegates before they could take their place at the recent Labour Party Conference, and orders MPs not to join picket lines or support strikes.
In reality Starmer and the rest of the leadership are making the rise of fascism seem ‘normal.’ That is a betrayal of the working class. Many of the left-wing MPs have been targets of racism and misogyny themselves and we should call on them to lead a fight against the direction in which Starmer is taking the Labour Party – and support them when they do. This can’t wait until after some future election.
Our immediate general demands
Every current strike has a specific set of demands over pay, conditions, job cuts etc. At the same time, the most urgent fight overall is to Bring Down the Government. In addition the strike movement must put forward demands for real solutions to the issues that apply to all workers and can unite the entire working class in struggle. Firstly, in the current crisis, those are the rising cost of living and unemployment. Secondly, there is the climate crisis, the issue that affects the future of humanity and that has often been used to divide the working class and tie many to the selfish interest of their employers.
Fighting inflation and poverty – Fighting unemployment
The working class, and the growing strike movement in particularly, are already facing the increased cost of living because of inflation. The recession will increasingly threaten us with unemployment. It is essential that this movement is able to put forward, and fight for, a plan to counter these twin evils and meet the essential needs of the poor and oppressed.
Inflation is at the highest level since the 1970s, but then workers’ wages, though under attack, were higher, and the trade unions had more power to win wages rises. Now inflation was rising to higher levels even before Kwarteng’s ‘mini-budget’ sent the value of the pound tumbling to the lowest level ever and pushed prices to even higher levels. Since the biggest prices rises are affecting food and energy, inflation is hitting the poorest people hardest of all.
Almost every wage rise that workers have got this year is really a wage cut, because the cost of living is rising faster and higher. It is simply not possible for new pay claims and strikes to keep up with this rising inflation. So far, the talk of ‘inflation proof’ wages is just empty words.
The only way that workers can actually defend their income from inflation is by securing automatic increases tied to the rate of inflation in the cost of food, energy, housing and transport. That should be decided independently of the employers and the government and agreed with the unions and workers. Adjustments should take place monthly, or weekly if inflation increases at a faster level.
The same system of automatic adjustments must be applied to all pensions and benefits (Universal Credit etc). Without that arrangement millions of people will be driven to destitution, starvation, ill-health and death.
A prolonged recession will inevitably mean that employers try to defend their profits by laying off workers, in a situation where new jobs are becoming more and more scarce. The jobless workers and their dependents will face destitution. That is unacceptable. We must fight for job-sharing on full pay – the available work should be shared out between the workers, while they continue to receive what they would have got for a full week or month. The workers did not create this crisis. It was the capitalists who created it and they must pay for it.
Fighting the causes of global heating must be a workers’ struggle – Make the Polluters Pay
Prime Minister Truss plans to re-start fracking in Britain and open up new oil fields in the North Sea. The Secretary for Business, the super-rich super-snob Jacob Rees-Mogg, has announced that he wants to see “Every cubic inch of gas” got out of the North Sea (a cubic centimetre would be an even smaller amount, but that would be too ‘European’ for this arch-Brexiter). This dangerous government would rather let the planet burn than see the capitalists lose a penny of profit. On that issue it only speaks for a tiny minority of the British population.
Our movement and the wider trade union movement must take up this existential fight. We must take the same approach as on inflation, wages and unemployment – the people responsible for the climate crisis, the people who are blocking any effective measures to resolve it, must be held responsible. We must make the polluters pay!
We must fight for the expropriation of the oil, gas and coal companies – they must be taken into public ownership in order to shut them down. Their vast wealth must be used to fund a rapid transition to sustainable energy, repair as far as possible the damage that has already been done, and to support and retrain the workers in those industries. Further investment in fossil fuels should be made a criminal offence.
We will be told that the proposals on dealing with inflation and unemployment are unrealistic, just as we will be told that Opening the Borders is unrealistic, and we will certainly be told that expropriating and shutting down the fossil fuel industries is unrealistic. In fact these are the only realistic solutions to the present crises that we face. They are ‘unrealistic’ only if we live and think by the rules of a morally and politically bankrupt system – parasitic, ‘neo-liberal’ capitalism.
Building the political power of the working class as an alternative to capitalist rule
If the mass movement succeeds in bringing down the government there will inevitably be a general election, but it will be in the context of a victory for mass working class action. A new government will be confronted with the power of the poor and oppressed. There will almost certainly be a Labour government or a Labour-led coalition, and there will probably be a section of more left-wing Labour MPs who, from the start, put pressure on Starmer or come out publicly against his right-wing policies.
On the other hand it is possible, though perhaps unlikely, that the present government simply collapses in the near future. If that happens there will be a general election that will most likely lead to a Labour government. Starmer will Prime Minister.
Neither outcome will end the crisis, and either way it becomes Labour’s crisis. Either way we will still face the threats of greater poverty, accelerating global heating and fascism. Either way the fight to build the movement remains on the order of the day, and in many ways it will be more urgent.
The task facing the movement will be to create a new power structure, based on the rank-and-file organisations. The movement and those organisations must grow stronger and become more representative of the broad layers of the working class, and all the poor and oppressed. They will assert that power against whatever crisis-ridden government is presiding over the broken political system and trying to defend capitalist profits.
Then the working class will be in a position to create an economy that meets the needs of everyone on a basis of equality.
Make Southwark a Sanctuary Borough, enforced by community action
Anti-raid mass action, Peckham 11/06/2022
Organise worker/student non-cooperation with the Home Office in schools, colleges, council offices & NHS, including strikes & walkouts
Police Out of Schools Now!
Full Amnesty Now for ALL those without papers
Support workers who are striking against pay cuts in Southwark & elsewhere – Unite the struggles against poverty and racism
Bring Down this racist, anti-immigrant, anti-working-class Government
Open the Borders of Britain & Europe – Organise sanctuary from the Home Office for cross-Channel refugees arriving in Britain
Join the Rally & Speak-Out
Saturday 20th August2022
Assemble 12 Noon
Junction of Peckham High Street & Rye lane (SE15 5DW)
Please wear a mask on this event to protect yourself and others from COVID-19
20/08/2022
On 11th June, Home Office officials from ‘Immigration Enforcement’ who went to Peckham and arrested a Nigerian immigrant living in Evan Cook Close were met with an instant community response. Neighbours turned out and blocked the van from leaving the street. They called their friends, Lewisham Anti-Raids Network and anti-racists in the local Labour Party. Soon, several hundred people from the local area were massed in that small street and stood their ground against police attacks for over four hours. Faced with a growing, militant mass of people the police had to release the arrested immigrant and withdraw, followed by chants of ‘Don’t come back to Peckham.’
This victory is part of Peckham’s proud history of resistance to immigration raids and the hostile environment created by Home Office vans in the area. Peckham does not stand alone. The victory on 11th June was part of a growing movement in integrated communities from London to Glasgow. Community resistance is defeating immigration raids by any means necessary, from mass mobilisations on the streets to simple actions to protect a neighbour or workmate or pass on a warning.
The victory in Peckham soon acquired a further political significance. Among the many Labour Party members who went to Evan Cook Close there were several local councillors. The leaders of the Labour Group that controls Southwark Council threatened them with disciplinary action but dropped that idea after angry protests. The next meeting of Camberwell & Peckham Labour Party voted overwhelmingly for a motion declaring that “The Labour Party has a duty to speak out against racism, injustice and violence perpetrated against any member of our community by the British state,” and agreeing to “Stand in solidarity with those opposing deportation raids” and “Organise training in resisting deportations and the hostile environment.”
The Movement for Justice (MFJ) welcomes and supports the stand taken by these Labour Party members. It is a direct and conscious challenge to the treacherous policies of Labour’s current national leadership under Keir Starmer, who ignore black & Asian communities, refuses to support the strikes of low-paid workers, and only criticises the government’s anti-refugee policies for not being effective enough.
Building on the victory in Peckham – Making Southwark a real, effective Sanctuary Borough
The victory on 11th June and the stand taken by Labour Party members are a base on which to build a more systematic community-based defense organisation to resist the Home Office presence in Southwark, uniting workers, refugees, immigrants without papers, youth, school & college students and established activist groups.
To stop immigration raids this will need to become more than an anti-raids organisation. Immigration Enforcement relies on a network of Home Office powers, connections, sources of information in council offices, hospitals, surgeries, schools and colleges, banks etc. Shutting that down requires workers, trade unions and schools refusing to co-operate with the Home Office, directly or indirectly.
For example, every hospital has an office that reports people who are denied ‘access to public funds,’ but it could not function if health unions organised a boycott throughout the hospital. Such campaigns are likely to involve demonstrations and strikes and will be sure to win community support.
In schools and colleges students are the vital force who will come forward with walkouts and occupations to defend fellow students & families threatened with arrest, detention and deportation. This has happened already, and the last few years have seen many student actions against racist school managements – like the mass protest in March at Hackney’s Petchey Academy against a racist sexual assault – the strip-search of a 15-year-old black girl by police officers who were called to the school by teachers and management.
There is no place for the police in schools. School management and the police are working together to control & repress poor, black, Asian & Muslim youth.
Building our movement will require preparation and planning in individual schools, workplaces, union groups etc. where people can discuss and pledge to take action.
A real sanctuary borough will not be an empty name, it will provide real sanctuary from the Home Office. It will be enforced by the community, by the systematic community defense organisation MFJ is proposing.
Mass migration is a global rebellion against poverty & inequality – Open the Borders of Britain & Europe
The government’s people-trafficking deal to dump cross-Channel refugees in Rwanda is not an isolated horror. It is the outcome of four decades of escalating anti-immigrant policies and the uncontrolled capitalist exploitation that imperialist governments have forced on the world.
For over twenty years, millions of people have been leaving their homes in the world’s poorest continents and regions. They are leaving in increasing numbers and risking their lives, because there is no other escape from horrific wars and political, religious or ethnic persecution, from famine, drought, and the effects of environmental destruction, from the mounting attacks on women and LGBT+ people, etc.
Mass migration is a symptom of a world in crisis. It is a global rebellion against poverty & inequality, and it is a life & death struggle against imperialism. There are no compromises to be made in this conflict. The governments of Europe & the USA have militarised their borders and condemned thousands of refugees to drown at sea or die crossing deserts. Those governments pay the UN and poorer neighbours like Libya, Mexico and Turkey to hold back refugees and ‘contain’ them for years in huge over-crowded camps.
There is a battle between humanity and barbarism at every border. Refugees are posing a central demand for human progress in our age – Open the Borders – and they are opening borders every day to resolve real, material threats to their existence.
There are no humane deportations, no humane charter flights, no humane detention centres. The liberals’ plea for “Safe & legal routes” is a trap; it will leave the racist government in control and deny fundamental human rights: the right of asylum & freedom of movement.
The government and ruling class fear refugees and other immigrants from the world’s poorest, most exploited countries. They fear the qualities those refugees and immigrants bring with them – determination, experience of struggle, commitment to freedom, hatred for the colonial and imperialist exploitation of their countries by Britain and other ‘great powers.’ Those refugees and immigrants are and will be leaders of the battle for progress and equality in Britain.
The rich & powerful minority that rules Britain tries to impose a national myth on the people they exploit & oppress – the myth that they are all united against other countries & peoples by a shared ‘national interest’ and British identity. That would mean Britain’s diverse population could never live in a society based on integration and equality. It is the basis of British racism.
Fortunately, however, British society is becoming more & more integrated every day – especially in the major cities and towns, in the working class, among the youth, and in a growing number of families. That is the basis of our strength and our fight for progress and equality. It is a nightmare for the government and the driving force of its attacks on democracy.
The government is establishing a dictatorship and moving fast towards Fascism
The current government is unlike anything this country has seen before. It is a FAR-RIGHT government – a government moving rapidly towards dictatorship and fascism. Other European countries saw such governments in the last century, and they are seeing them reappear now. The Trump movement in the USA is a similar development.
We must clear our heads of the idea that ‘it couldn’t happen here,’ and the belief that British democracy is exceptional & permanent. The creation of a dictatorship and the development of fascism are already happening here and happening fast.
One of the government’s first actions was to bring in a law that allows government bodies like the police, the Home Office, the army and the secret services to instruct their agents to commit crimes, without facing prosecution. It has effectively abolished the right of asylum and set up the ‘people trafficking’ deal to dump asylum seekers in Rwanda. It has brought in laws that give it control of how elections are run and make it more difficult for poor people, black and Asian people and young people to vote.
This government has already given the police huge powers to ban or stop protests and demonstrations. Now that workers are fighting back against growing poverty, this government is giving itself new powers to break strikes. It has already scrapped many of the legal rights people could use to challenge government decisions, and it is abolishing the Human Rights Act.
Its latest plan is to let government ministers ignore decisions of the law courts if they disagree with them, and Boris Johnson has ruled out emergency measures to support poor and vulnerable people as the price food and energy rise sharply during the coming winter. Johnson was quoted as saying in the first year of the Covid pandemic, “Let the bodies pile up in their thousands.” That is the government’s plan for the months ahead.
The fundamental weakness of this government
However, the government’s extreme plans and language cannot hide its fundamental weakness. This was the ‘Get Brexit Done’ government, and Brexit is a disaster that is getting worse by the day. Recent opinion polls and by-elections indicate a sharp fall in Conservative voters. ‘Fears’ about immigration have fallen sharply in opinion polls. More & more people see Brexit as a failure.
The government has no policies that can resolve this crisis. Its current leadership elections are exposing a party that is tearing itself apart. Its general direction is further and further to the extreme right, with more racist policies, but that is not solving its problems.
The government’s real support base is very small. Firstly, it is the financial parasites, like the private wealth funds that have taken over most of Britain’s care homes and nurseries and turned them into financial assets. This group is the main source of Conservative Party funding. It includes many government ministers and the capitalists who are benefitting directly from government corruption.
Secondly, there is the shrinking party membership (150,000 at the highest estimate) that is aging, 95% white and mostly living in rural areas and middle- class suburbs in the south of England – plus 357 MPs who are even more right-wing than the membership.
Thirdly, there is the increasingly active and violent rabble of fascists and semi-fascists, Covid deniers, anti-vaxxers, global heating deniers, followers of Nigel Farage and former members of UKIP and the EDL.
Those bases of support do not represent British society, especially not the working class, the big cities and the youth (or even most people from their ’40s and below). That is the majority of the population. It is too integrated to fall into line with the government’s policies, and it is where most white people are not racist enough to back the current government’s policies.
Resistance to immigration raids and deportation, and strikes against pay cuts & poverty, are both growing in those communities.
The government and the ruling class are divided but none of them have any solution to the economic & political crisis. They cannot go on ruling in the old ‘British democratic’ way – and the poor & oppressed are demonstrating in action that they cannot go on living in the way they are now.
Our real strength is in our communities & on the streets – We must Change the Balance of Power
The real opposition to the government is in our communities, workplaces, schools and on our streets.
We can see that in the victories in Evan Cook Close and Kenmure Street, Glasgow, and many other places where ‘Immigration Enforcement’ has been defeated. We see it in the growing strike action by low-paid workers, who include many immigrant, refugee, black, Asian & Latin American workers. We see it in the walkouts & protests by students against racist school & college management.
The women who resisted police violence to demonstrate against the police murder of Sarah Everard forced politicians to acknowledge the rampant, brutal misogyny of the police – and forced the removal of London police chief Cressida Dick.
The militant street level action against global heating (along with burning houses & fields) has focused much greater attention on a government and a system that would rather let the world burn than lose a penny of profit.
Those struggles are united by a profound loss of faith in the present system, and a growing awareness that the issues they are fighting on (racism, poverty and so on) have a common cause. To a greater or lesser extent, they imply an urgent need to get rid of this government, even if that is not explicit. These militant struggles demonstrate the potential for a movement to Bring Down the Government.
To build that movement it is necessary to bring the struggles together in on the basis that, firstly, we all need to see the end of this government, and secondly, that this can only be achieved through mass action and not through a parliamentary or legal process.
We are past the point where we can reasonably hope to get a change for the better by relying on the ballot box. A general election now will be run on the government’s anti-democratic rules. It is unlikely to happen until 2024 and by then the political and economic crisis will almost certainly be worse. Even if the government loses, we will have a Starmer-style Labour government or a weak coalition. In that situation the more openly fascist forces could become a far more serious threat.
We will bring down the government by changing the balance of power between the government, the rich & powerful and state bodies like the Home Office on one side, and the exploited, oppressed and poor majority on the other side. On a small scale that is what happened in Evan Cook Close on 11th June.
The government will fall when the movement has undermined its ability to govern, sent it into crisis, and deepened the divisions in the ruling class. Then the anti-Brexit capitalists might come out openly against the government, or the established political system will go into crisis in some other way. In the end there will be a general election – but it will be because of the power of a movement that has changed the balance of power and aroused hopes for change, not on terms set by the government.
Always Speak the Plain Truth About Racism – Fight to Win, By Any Means Necessary
Brexit was a victory for racism. That was confirmed by the surge in racist attacks and abuse that accompanied the 2016 referendum campaign and escalated after the vote. That vote was a boost to the Far Right and led the election of Johnson’s government in December 2019.
None of that was inevitable. It was the result of the confusion and failure of leadership on the Left, which principally means the Labour Party.
At the time of the referendum Labour had a new, more left-wing leadership under Jeremy Corbyn. Hundreds of thousands of new members joined the party, many of them young people. This new leadership could have taken the political high ground and led a bold anti-racist campaign against Brexit. Johnson, Farage and the right-wing Tories were unashamedly stirring up racist prejudice against immigrants and refugees. Labour could have defended immigrant rights and the free movement of people. That would have sent a clear, strong message, energised their supporters and brought dynamic new forces into Labour.
Instead, the Labour leadership made a conscious decision to avoid the issues of racism and immigrant-bashing that are the driving force behind Brexit. After the referendum, that culminated in Corbyn instructing Labour MPs to vote for ending the free movement of people.
By the first half of 2019 opinion polls consistently showed a majority against Brexit. The Labour leadership missed a second chance to change history, but by September the Far Right had taken over the Conservative Party and it was too late anyway. In the December general election the radical policies on housing, public ownership, the NHS etc, which had won Labour so much support in the 2017 election, were not enough to avoid a humiliating defeat.
Whether consciously or not, the motion passed by Camberwell and Peckham Labour Party is not only a challenge to Keir Starmer, but to the legacy of the Corbyn leadership.
Now it is the Brexit government that looks weak and incompetent, even though it has accumulated a huge assortment of dictatorial powers. Those powers seem small beside the anger it has inspired and the enemies it has accumulated, through its cruelty, its racism, its responsibility for so many deaths and so much suffering, its naked corruption and its arrogant display of entitlement.
A new and growing wave of struggles is fighting on many fronts but united against the same enemy, and by what Martin Luther King called “The fierce urgency of Now.”
A largely new, more integrated and youthful generation of struggle has come forward, ready to take militant action and fight to win by any means necessary.
We may not know each other or speak the same languages, but together we will fight this racist government and its agents – on our streets, in our schools and colleges, in our workplaces, in detention centres and crossing the Channel in small boats.
And together we will win.
To all of you, Movement for Justice sends this message:
There is no better reason to speak the truth about racism and the character of this government, or to resist the laws of the rich and powerful, than to bring down this government and prevent the rise of a fascist dictatorship.
Open Letter: To His Excellency Mr Seth George Ramocan
We are individuals and families in the UK who have been suffering under this government’s racist hostile environment for years. Our fathers, brothers, sisters, mothers, partners, grandparents and children have been subject to racist demonisation, torturous detention and unjust deportations.
We need you to stand up for your citizens facing racism & injustice in the UK. We need you to refuse to accept charter flight deportations and reinstate your agreement that no one who came to the UK as a child should face deportation. We are asking you to support our call for an immigration amnesty, so that we can live free and equally.
On 27th April 2022 at 4pm we will be coming to the High Commission with Movement for Justice, to speak out about these injustices, to make our voices heard. We invite you to come out and speak with us, to accept our letter in person, to listen and make a stand. (Facebook event)
There has been NO JUSTICE for our Windrush Generation, only pathetic apologies and promises that have led nowhere. People have died waiting for compensation. We are forced to jump through hoops like performing animals to prove our right to compensation[1], our right to be here.
The descendants of the Windrush Generation, children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, brought here as children or born in the UK suffer racism at every stage of life. We face discrimination in schools, we are criminalised from childhood, we are stereotyped and degraded, we are treated as animals. The open, blatant racism and stereotypes of our community in the early 00’s[2]have not gone away, they’ve just been absorbed into government policy.
Many of us and our children, were groomed into criminal activity in childhood[3], never treated as victims, only as criminals. Then we face deportation to a country that is no longer home, where we are demonised and stigmatised by hostile media coverage[4] and where we face destitution and murder[5].
Our lives are here, our families are here, we are PROUD of our Jamaican heritage, we are PROUD of the role our communities have played rebuilding Britain, bringing hard work, music, culture, love and joy. We are Jamaican and we are British in all but the colour of our passport. But every day this government and the Home Office treat us as less than human.
The Jamaican people and government have taken a clear stand to further throw off the shackles of colonial rule, have demanded reparations for slavery[6]; we praise all those who have fought for this moment for decades. This country enslaved us, stole our labour, they broke our backs then told us we were one with them that we were British. Our elders came to rescue the ‘mother country’ in its time of need, they worked hard, they faced down the racists and now this country throw their descendants out like rubbish. Enough.
The UK government keeps on with their unjust charter flights, spending tens of thousands of pounds to deport a handful of people[7]. The charter flights are by their nature brutal and unjust. We are swept up in a racist dragnet of our communities, we are imprisoned and given just 5 days to find representation and build a case. The majority of us are not put on that plane because we have lawful grounds to remain[8], yet every year, twice or three times a year we are put through this torture. Immigration officers and police barging into our homes, terrorising our children who are left with nightmares and mental health difficulties[9].
Thousands of children across the UK go through this, the constant fear their father will be taken away from them, the despair of knowing this country does not want us, does not care for us. Then there’s those who have been deported, barely surviving in Jamaica, unable to work, at risk of exploitation and murder, living in fear. Desperately searching for working Wi-Fi so they can see their children over a shaky connection, trying to comfort their children and partner without being able to put their arms around them.[10]
So many of us have to survive without the right to work, unable to care for our families, deepening our depression and despair. The Home Office want us to commit crime, they want us to give up hope, that’s what the racist hostile environment policies are designed to do – force people to leave[11]. But in all this horror we have found hope and strength in each other, in organisation and community. Every time there is a charter flight we stand together; we organise with Movement for Justice and we have made the truth of this injustice known[12]. We need our Jamaican government, our people back home, to stand with us in this struggle.
This government have shown they have no regard not only for decency and human rights but for the law. They routinely breach peoples Human Rights and when called out on that by the courts, their response is not to act more humanely, but to change the law. That is what they are doing with the Nationality and Borders Bill, which will deny us even the smallest legal protections such as trafficking/modern day slavery protections. A Bill which has been roundly condemned as breaching international law and treaties[13]. Judicial Review is our only means of having our voices heard in the courts at these desperate moments yet this government is working on limiting those rights[14]. They are criminalising asylum seekers and view us all as no more than “red meat’[15]to throw to their racist voter base. Immigrants & asylum seekers are not human beings to this racist government, we are seen as scapegoats for a failing government.
We know you are aware of this injustice; we know you have stepped in to try and stand up for the people who came here as children. We know the UK government and Home Office has treated you appallingly by sending a flight even when you have explicitly called for it to be stopped because of COVID risk[16].
We also know that the Jamaican government CAN refuse to accept these flights, CAN make permanent the agreement that no one who came to the UK as a child should ever be deported. We know our closest neighbour; Ireland has introduced an immigration amnesty[17] so we also know this is possible. It’s time for change.
We hope to see you on the 27th April.
All of the 51 signatories below either directly experienced detention and the risk of charter flight deportation to Jamaica or they are a family member of someone who has faced that trauma (for public release their names have been anonymised):
