Australian construction strikes take on union-busting Labor government

The Labor government boasts that its attack on the CFMEU is ‘the strongest action that any government has ever taken against any union’

Workers on the picket line with visiting NTEU members from Sydney University during the Australian construction strikes

 (Picture: RAFA via Solidarity)

By Ian Rintoul in Sydney
Thursday 19 September 2024

SOCIALIST WORKER Issue

Over 60,000 construction workers in Australia are striking this week over the Labor government’s disgraceful attack on their union.

It is the second strike in the month. Labor prime minister Anthony Albanese’s government used unsubstantiated smears in the media to impose state control of the CFMEU’s construction division, which organises building, forestry and maritime workers.

The union is now controlled by Labor’s workplace minister Murray Watt and his flunkey, administrator-in-chief Mark Irving.

The administrator has the power to remove elected officials and delegates and sack organisers employed by the union.


There are penalties of up to two years’ jail and almost $1 million fines for obstructing the administrator.

Irving’s first act was to sack elected officials in three states and remove 270 members who were democratically elected to union committees. He’s also sacked three organisers in Brisbane.

This is a shocking act of betrayal from Labor. The party made a particular point of acknowledging the union movement when it was elected two years ago, but has consistently moved to rightwards since.

Labor has shown its true colours by using Tory votes in parliament and siding with the construction industry bosses. It’s the most appalling act of union-busting since a Labor government deregistered the predecessor of the CFMEU, the Builders Labourers’ Federation, in 1986.

Watt boasted that Labor’s attack is “the strongest action that any government has ever taken against any union”.

In 1998, the then Australian Tory government’s attempt to smash the Maritime Union of Australia was defeated when the whole union movement stood behind it. This time, however, the ACTU union federation has junked any union principles and is slavishly supporting the Labor government.

Only three unions—the electricians’, plumbers’ and maritime workers’ unions—opposed the CFMEU being suspended from the ACTU.

The CFMEU has long been a thorn in the side of the construction bosses. It has a history of militancy and a willingness to defy anti-union laws that impose the most severe restrictions on the right to strike in a liberal democracy.

The CFMEU has racked up tens of millions of dollars in fines for taking unlawful industrial action. And, according to the government, the union has broken industrial laws 2,600 times in the past 20 years. That is the militancy that Labor and the bosses want to crush.

Construction bosses have been quick to take advantage as the administrator is able to sack organisers and remove delegates if they are involved in any unlawful action.

Some employers are refusing to sign a new workplace agreement that would have given construction workers 5 percent wage rises.

The CFMEU is mounting a High Court challenge to the Labor government’s legislation. But such a challenge will take months and will channel rank-and-file anger with Labor into a legal dead end.

The real power to beat the Labor government’s administrator—and the anti-union laws—are strikes. The action has brought construction workers and their supporters out in every major city.

The unions covering electricians and plumbers have put over $1 million into the High Court action—money that would be better used for a strike fund.

A strike, even by the three main unions supporting the CFMEU, would be enough to beat back the administration. The two days of strike action so far have been unlawful, but no action has been taken against any of the unions involved.

The Labor government’s attack on the CFMEU has sent shock waves through the labour movement. The plumbers’ union has disaffiliated from the ACTU and is calling for a union summit within the next three months to set up an alternative.

Many rank-and-file union members have voted Labor all their lives. But they are now confronted with the reality that Labor is more willing to openly collaborate with the bosses than represent the workers it relies on to win elections.

If the anger of workers in the construction and allied industries is mobilised, they can beat Labor’s union-busting administration.

More grassroots organising and strikes defying the law are needed to defend the CFMEU and end the enforced administration.

Ian Rintoul is a member of Solidarity, the Socialist Workers Party’s sister organisation in Australia

SCOTLAND

Labour MP urges UK government to nationalise Grangemouth refinery

David Wallace Lockhart
BBC Scotland News Political Correspondent

The closure of the Grangemouth refinery has been described as a "kick in the teeth" by workers


The Labour MP representing Grangemouth has called on the UK government to nationalise the site's oil refinery to maintain operations and save jobs.

Brian Leishman said it was a matter of public interest and national security.

Petroineos - a joint venture between Chinese state-owned PetroChina and London-based Ineos - confirmed last week that the 100-year-old refinery would close with the loss of about 400 jobs.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the UK government was working to ensure there are "safe, secure, skilled jobs" in Scotland for “generations to come”.

Petroineos intends to convert the refinery - the oldest in the UK - into a terminal able to import petrol, diesel, aviation fuel and kerosene, which it expects to open early next summer.

A spokesperson said previously that the move would "safeguard fuel supply for Scotland".



Alloa and Grangemouth MP Brian Leishman says the "fight must go on"


Leishman insisted that closure was “not a done deal” and that “the fight must go on”.

He told BBC Scotland News: “We’ve got to pull out all the stops and that includes nationalisation.”

The new MP said that it was “most definitely” time for the government to take over ownership.

Asked if Sir Keir Starmer was doing enough to save the future of Grangemouth, Leishman replied: “I would challenge that.”

He said both the UK and Scottish governments had “held the hand” of the refinery’s owner Petroineos, and had “meekly accepted the narrative that the refinery is unprofitable, which I would absolutely contest".

The Labour parliamentarian said that ensuring a key piece of the refinery’s equipment - the hydrocracker - was working would be “a game changer” for profitability.

He said that energy security was “intrinsically linked” to the UK’s national security, and therefore the government should step in to save operations.


Sir Keir Starmer says the UK government is committed to protecting skilled jobs in Scotland

First Minister John Swinney said he was "deeply disappointed" about the closure, while the Scottish and UK governments announced a joint £100m investment package to support a “just transition for the workforce and community”.

Sir Keir said he knew how “keenly” the closure would be felt in Scotland.

“We also need to make sure the transition to clean energy is real and delivers the secure jobs of the future,” he told BBC Scotland News.

He cited Labour’s commitment to setting up GB energy – a UK government-backed energy company to be headquartered in Scotland.

The location is yet to be announced but BBC Scotland News understands the firm, which will help fund new and existing clean technology, will be based in Aberdeen.

Scotland Secretary Ian Murray has insisted the UK government is "committed to working together looking at how we can help the area build on its skilled workforce and local expertise to boost economic growth".

'Kick in the teeth'


Workers described the announcement as a "kick in the teeth", while unions labelled it a "terrible indictment" of both governments and of the company.

About 2,000 people are directly employed at Grangemouth, including about 500 at the refinery, while others work at Ineos’s petrochemicals business and the Forties pipeline.

Announcing the refinery’s closure, Petroineos said it was unable to compete with sites in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

The converted terminal is expected require fewer than 100 employees.

The BBC understands the refinery is currently losing about $500,000 (£383,000) a day and is on course to lose around $200m (£153m) in 2024.

The Grangemouth refinery is one of six in the UK and the only one in Scotland.

It was originally opened by BP in 1924 and expanded into petrochemicals in the 1950s. Ineos acquired the site in 2005.

It is the main supplier of aviation fuel for Scotland's airports and a major supplier of petrol and diesel ground fuels across the central belt.

According to Ineos, about half of the refinery’s crude oil comes from the North Sea, with most of it delivered via ship to Finnart Ocean Terminal on Loch Long and piped east across the country to Grangemouth.

Between 250 to 280 of the refinery redundancies are expected to happen in the three months after the plant closes, with 100 staff retained for between six to 12 months to help decommission and to build up the import business.

A further 30 workers are to be retained for longer to work on decommissioning and demolition, which is expected to continue until 2030.

Twenty jobs will also go at the Finnart pipeline terminal at Loch Long.

SCOTLAND

What Green industrial strategy?

20/09/2024
COMMON WEAL
Rory Hamilton

Last week, the Scottish Government published the first part of its Green Industrial Strategy for Scotland. The long and short is that there’s not much in it. This might be to be expected from a ‘foundational’ paper that “identifies areas of strength and opportunity for Scotland to grow globally competitive industries in the transition to net zero”. Before getting into the meat of the paper, I might make two observations: 1) for an ‘industrial’ strategy, unions are only mentioned once – for a piece of work which should have a direct impact on workers, workers who will be key to a just transition, you’d think consulting with them might have made sense; and 2) for a piece of work targeted at addressing Scotland’s response to the climate crisis, something we’ve known about for years, this is far too late in coming. Common Weal published its Green New Deal for Scotland, fully-costed in late 2019-early 2020, and only five years later are the Scottish government putting forward a strategy for tackling the same issues.

The strategy highlights five ‘opportunity areas’ for Scotland: 1) maximising Scotland’s wind economy; 2) developing a self-sustaining carbon, capture, utilisation and storage sector; 3) supporting green economy professional and financial services, with global reach; 4) growing our hydrogen sector; and 5) establishing Scotland as a competitive centre for the clean Energy Intensive Industries of the future. Let’s go through them one by one and see what lies beneath the rhetoric.

1. Maximising Scotland’s wind economy

It’s a bold move to open with a goal to maximise Scotland’s wind economy, when none of it is in the hands of the Scottish public. As Common Weal has extensively covered, not only was it wrong to sell off Scotland’s offshore wind capacity to the private sector in the first place (instead of placing this in the hands of a National Energy Company, whether through Municipal ownership or through a mutual company), but the capping of bids for licences severely limited the potential for ScotWind to ‘maximise’ the offshore wind potential in the same way as, say New York did. The Scottish Government should now consider buying equity stakes in the projects to return revenue to the Scottish public, and move from having no involvement in the development of Scotland’s natural resources to being a silent partner, with a longer term option to become the active or sole partner.

2. Developing a self-sustaining carbon, capture, utilisation and storage sector

CCUS is another scheme which we have debunked time and time again. Not only has it been proven to not work, but in some cases the emissions are more harmful. I wont go over all the arguments again, instead watch this short video or read Robin’s article from THREE years ago. What I will say is this, Carbon Capture and Storage is a con led by the oil and gas industry as a way to delay the transition to renewable energy and keep their profit base alive for a few years longer. They are pushing it hard – last year there were 30 meetings held between the Scottish Government and oil and gas executives which were initially kept hidden from the public record. The money invested in developing the CCUS sector as part of this strategy would be much more effective in supporting training schemes for current oil and gas workers which will help them move into renewables-based jobs.

3. Supporting green economy professional and financial services, with global reach

So the argument goes that financial and professional services (FPS) is one of Scotland’s core strengths, being the largest financial centre outside of London, employing around 144,00 people. But it should be no surprise to hear that the interests represented by this sector are not those of the broader public. Whether it is one of the big four accountancy firms, hedge funds and investment banking, fintech, or asset management companies, the goal is maximising financial returns on investments largely by speculating on values. In this case the speculating is focused on Scotland’s “natural capital” (for natural capital read, Scotland’s resources: wind, land, solar, tidal, etc.), meaning that supporting Scotland’s green FPS sector with global reach is code for attracting more foreign direct investment (again code for profit extraction), as we’/ve already seen successfully leveraged in the offshore wind industry and in the selling off of Scotland’s trees. Besides – who ever thought of accountants and bankers when ‘industry’ was mentioned, Sod’s Law for all the engineers, welders, timber workers, transporters, farmers, joiners, plumbers, electricians, and anyone else whose skills will be crucial to the just transition that I haven’t mentioned. When the closure of one of Scotland’s last remaining industrial sites at Grangemouth is estimated to see around 400 immediate job losses and impact a further 2,200, it is fairly on the nose that it might well be white collar workers (many of whom will already come from and live in fairly comfortable living and working conditions) who will see the greatest support from what should be an enormous engineering and investment programme like the Green New Deal.

4. Growing our hydrogen sector & 5. Establishing Scotland as a competitive centre for the clean Energy Intensive Industries of the future

Now there isn’t so much to comment on these final two ‘opportunity areas’, hence I am taking them together here. Common Weal supports the investment in hydrogen technologies, indeed the future of public and sustainable transports is not in electric cars, but moving to alternative fuels such as hydrogen. A word of warning though, is not to read all hydrogen as good hydrogen. Some hydrogens are can be derived from fossil fuels such as gas, and the use of carbon capture for example is one means of turning this into ‘clean energy’, it has been shown that blue hydrogen can be worse for the environment than the pure gas itself. So while we must support growing the hydrogen sector, emphasis should be placed on sourcing green hydrogen and not giving credence to hydrogen fuels which masquerade as clean energy but are actually just fossil fuels in disguise. And similarly the establishing to Scotland as a competitive centre for clean energy industries is surely the goal of this whole strategy which, objectively, and especially considering Scotland’s natural resources, is hardly disagreeable.

So in short, this so-called ‘industrial strategy’ is caked in the language of capital, and without casting too many aspersions, the fingerprints of the Scottish Government’s favourite accountancy firms-come public sector consultants are all over it. So much for the ‘active state’ Kate Forbes and Gillian Martin call for in their ministerial forward, the only state activity in this strategy is opening market doors for the private sector, and closing them again on the way out after all the profit is gone.

“But the public sector is only part of the economy” they say in the same forward. Is it? You wouldn’t know it was ANY part of the economy from reading this paper. They highlight Denmark and Ireland as examples to emulate, but the choices made by previous SNP governments (of which many members of this cabinet signed off on) have foreclosed the possibility of doing so, whether that’s not creating a National Energy Company (of any kind), and the Energy Development Agency (which we modelled off the Danish example) we proposed, or allowing the Scottish National Investment Bank to fall in tow to the interests of capital, and ignoring the potential of it to be that active state by leading investment into key sectors such as this.

It is quite apt that one of the governments which is failing the workers of Grangemouth, one of Scotland’s last sights of industrial activity, released this lacklustre paper on the same day it was announced that Grangemouth would indeed close next year. Indeed, with the resources we have Scotland should be a green industrial powerhouse leading the world in a radical response to the climate crisis, and lord knows the public needs the investment a Green New Deal would generate, but this paper belies the chokehold that the private sector has on policy making in Scotland.

What if we cared about the future?

20/09/2024
COMMON WEAL
Robin McAlpine

London is due many thanks to Joseph Bazalgette. As you may know, he was the man who designed London’s sewer system, and he did something which is unimaginable now – he future-proofed it. He worked out the size of the sewers London needed, concluded London would get bigger, concluded sewers shouldn’t be built in two goes and so simply doubled the size.

The outcome of this was the Swinging Sixties didn’t need you to wade through sewage to get down Carnaby Street. Had he not over-specified the sewers, they would have reached overflow point by the middle of the 20th century. Now? In Scotland we can’t successfully build a school big enough for the children already at it.

What I want to write about here is the mindset that says ‘I want to leave a positive legacy for the next generation’ and the mindset that says ‘to hell with it, the next generation can deal with it’. Which are we? Not the former. Joseph Bazalgette would never get anywhere near interview stage if Scotland put a contract for a new sewer system on its procurement portal today.

I was thinking about this because of a daft laddie conversation with someone who knows a lot more than me, and an email in response to a previous newsletter piece. Both were about the National Grid which is about to get a major upgrade to facilitate decarbonisation of electricity supply. Common Weal has been doing a lot of policy work on this (major paper to publish soon) and one of our readers is going to be stuck with the consequences.

Our reader is getting a new array of mega-pylons in her immediate area. These are enormous and it’s a stretch to find much beauty in them. But we need that copper up there because we need to get that wind energy into the grid. This is what prompts my questions.

I asked someone who used to run a national electricity grid why we didn’t just bury the cables. The answer is easy – it costs three times as much. OK, but about a third of the total cost of our electricity grid is maintenance on cables. Of course it is – they are comparatively thin wires strung way up high in a stormy country.

Ah but, said my expert, there would be plenty maintenance of underground cabling too. I asked why? The answer (as I understand it) is that thin cables like that are still vulnerable, as are all their junctions and connections. Aye, but why make them thin? You need to do that if you’re hanging them 50 metres in the air and weight is a big issue, but not if you bury them.

So make the cabling thicker and you’d have less maintenance, though of course this increases the cost further. But if you don’t need to squeeze your electricity down thin cables, do you need to use copper? Not really. Aluminium has 60 per cent of the conductivity of copper (so you lose a bit more energy along the cables) but it is a quarter of the price of copper and is much lighter to transport.

So the rule is that you’d struggle to run a grid from aluminium strung out between pylons, which is why we don’t do it. But you don’t have that restriction in the ground. Putting thick aluminium cabling underground would be more expensive than hanging copper from pylons, but it would be much more durable, would require much less maintenance and would be able to cope with rapidly increasing demand in the future if we have not predicted our future use accurately.

The conversation got even more technical from there so I won’t go on because I’ll misrepresent the arguments. The point is not that I’ve come up with a brilliant wheeze to ‘solve electricity’ that no-one else has thought of. It might not be a good idea for other reasons. But this is something like what I think our electricity grid would look like if it was being designed by a Joseph Bazalgette character.

The outcome would be a grid with perhaps three times the capacity of the one we are building now but for something like same price as if we were putting that one in underground rather than over pylons. And without lightning, wind, landslides, birds and all the rest, the maintenance bill would be negligible (for the transmission side of things – distribution is different, as I keep being reminded…).

What we’re doing is leaving ourselves a bigger bill tomorrow and the day after, and an even bigger bill for our children, and if there is any need to expand capacity in 30 or 40 years we leave a much bigger bill for our grandchildren. Oh, and the future-proofed method doesn’t spoil beautiful views or anger people who have to live with the infrastructure. There is no big charitable fund to buy community consent for pylons like there is for wind farms.

The most acute example of our ‘patch it up and make do’ approach must surely be the Rest and Be Thankful where, seemingly to avoid one big engineering bill we have been pursuing smaller-scale project after smaller-scale project to prevent landslides closing the road (£16 million just for consultants…). They have failed, but they have still accumulated a cost that could almost certainly have built a tunnel in the first place. Which would have been Job done.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot of late. For my own entertainment I have been building an eco-utopia in my head (yes, I know…). One of my conclusions is simple; a good society is a low-maintenance society. You’ll always need maintenance and when it needs done it needs done properly.

But if you build everything in a shoddy way then in truth you spend its lifecycle not so much maintaining it as repairing and repairing the poor quality work. And by shoddy I don’t just mean not fit for purpose, I mean built in a way that it might be fit for purpose at first but everyone knows it won’t still be fit for purpose by the end of its reasonable lifespan.

So if you spend just a little more at the outset to produce a better outcome, in the long run it almost certainly saves money, time and effort. But (and this is one of the fundamental problems with neoliberal capitalism) it may not save you money. It might be the next generation that benefits. The neoliberal assault on the idea of capital borrowing is the problem.

We still behave as if infrastructure which should be built to survive a hundred years ought to be paid for in ten. It’s almost like we’re saying ‘sod my grandchildren – why should I pay tax to build a school big enough so that when their kids go there is a desk for them?’, or ‘to hell with the 2050s, if they want electricity they can redo all the grid at their own expense’.

It is the stupidity of money, the corrosive mess that is the financialisation-of-everything, the reductive failure of short-termism. It is exactly the same principle behind our disposable consumerism – buy a less good thing that you’ll need to replace three times over the same time that one thing costing 30 per cent more would keep working.

It is the false effect of money. A million pounds can buy you a carbon negative, close-to-passivhaus-standard terrace of five houses or it can buy you a trip into space on a commercial rocket. And the day after you come back from your space trip, the houses are still there. They’re still there 50 years later.

Money-is-money-is-money, right? But the things you buy with money behave very differently. Some have intrinsic value that endures, some have intrinsic value that increases, some have intrinsic value that disappears. But the money is the same.

So in this financialised world it makes ‘sense’ to have the Scottish Futures Trust which is there to find clever-clever financial tricks and schemes to build public infrastructure in the private sector on a cost-saving basis. In a sane world you’d design infrastructure to be as future-proofed as possible and you’d spread the cost over its lifetime, without even thinking about it, because it is a real, meaningful capital investment with real, meaningful returns over its duration.

After all, that’s what the Victorians did and there is so much to thank them for. Us? Really, what do you think our children will thank us for building? Probably that one bridge, certainly not the hospitals or many of the schools or sports centres or the electricity grid. Instead they’re going to look at what we did and think ‘those tight-fisted bastards left it all on us’.

It isn’t much of a legacy, is it? The economics don’t make sense, the finance doesn’t make sense, the social and economic impact don’t make sense – and yet still we build a substandard future. Expensive-to-maintain electricity pylons that do so much to impact on parts of rural Scotland do not need to be there. There is a better option, if we were a better generation.

 UK

Inside Labour Together: the project behind Keir Starmer

By Sascha O'Sullivan

September 20, 2024 

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The red half of Westminster will shortly decamp to Liverpool for the first Labour conference since the party’s general election landslide. Host Sascha O’Sullivan looks at a group which played a key role in that victory — the left-wing think-tank Labour Together.

Sascha pieces together the fascinating origin story of Labour Together, speaking to ITV Deputy Political Editor Anushka Asthana, author of a new book, which details the group’s influence, and Keir Starmer biographer Tom Baldwin.

Andrew Cooper, political pollster and member of Labour Together advisory board, tells Sascha how Josh Simons, former director of the think tank, built on the work of Morgan McSweeney by using deep voter analysis to help Labour HQ.

Sascha speaks to the group’s new chief executive, Jonathan Ashworth, about Labour Together’s role in shaping the thinking of the new government. He addresses some of the cronyism accusations surrounding the think tank and is quizzed by Sascha on its purpose now Labour is in power.

Henry Newman, former political adviser and author of the Whitehall project, explains the concerns about how Labour Together acted as a middleman for political donations between wealthy individuals and politicians.

Labour “mega-donor” Dale Vince tells Sascha why he gave money to the think tank.

And think tank stalwarts Harry Quilter-Pinner of the Institute of Public Policy Research, Ryan Wain of the Tony Blair Institute and Charlotte Pickles explain how Labour Together fits into the world of the wonks and how different it is from most policy outfits.

Britain shows 'complete disregard' for Palestinians after abstaining on UN vote



The UN general assembly meeting in New York

Elizabeth Short

Thursday, September 19, 2024

MORNING STAR

THE British government faces a backlash for showing a “complete disregard” for Palestinian suffering by abstaining from a key UN vote on ending Israeli occupation.

The UN general assembly resolution passed last night demanded that Israel end its “unlawful presence” in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip within a year.

An overwhelming majority of 124 countries voted in favour of the resolution. Britain was one of 43 countries to abstain. Just 14 countries, including the US, voted against it.

Amnesty International’s secretary-general Agnes Callamard said that governments, including Israel’s allies, must ensure that the country complies with the resolution.

“Over the past 11 months, the systematic human rights violations that are a hallmark of Israel’s brutal occupation and system of apartheid have drastically intensified,” she said.

“Implementing the resolution is key to restoring faith in international law.”

Global Justice Now campaigner Tim Bierley said that Britain’s abstention has shown a “complete disregard” for the ongoing suffering of Palestinians.

“To stay on the right side of international law, the UK’s dealings with Israel must drastically change, including closing all loopholes in its partial arms ban and revoking any trade or investment relations that might assist the occupation,” he said.

Earlier this month, Britain suspended just 30 out of 350 arms export licences, after finally acknowledging that Israel has been violating international law.

Campaigners pointed out that the suspensions “do not go far enough” and fail to encompass components for F-35 fighter jets.

F-35s have been used repeatedly in executing Israel’s war crimes, including in the bombing of an Israeli-designated “humanitarian zone” in al-Mawasi, in an attack which killed at least 90 people in July.

Business and Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said today that Britain’s arms restrictions on Israel were “fair” and “proportionate.”

He told LBC that he set a scope of limitations “to restrict those licences to the conflict in Gaza, making sure that Israel can still be in a position to defend itself against Hezbollah and Lebanon.”

He made the statement after explosives planted within pagers and walkie-talkie devices led to widespread destruction in Lebanon, injuring 3,500 and killing at least 37 people, including two children. The attacks are widely believed to have been carried out by Israel.

Stop the War vice-chairman Chris Nineham said: “Reynold’s comments are morally repugnant.

“Instead of condemning Israel’s brutal acts of terrorism in Lebanon this week, his talk of allowing Israel to defend itself against Hezbollah implies the British government appears willing to stand by the Israeli government whatever atrocities it carries out.

“The UK's policy might as well be designed to encourage Israel to ever more extreme acts of violence.”

Emily Apple of the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) said: “This government is still perpetuating the narrative that the Israeli government is acting in self-defence.

“Israel is committing a genocide against Palestinian people. There can be no excuses for the atrocities it is committing in Gaza, or its deliberate escalation of conflict with Hezbollah. This is not self-defence.”

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament general secretary Kate Hudson argued that Labour’s limited restrictions on arms exports to Israel are nowhere near enough.

“Israel is committing a genocide against Palestinians and is using both conventional and hybrid warfare to kill and injure people in Lebanon,” she said.

“The Middle East stands on the edge of a wider regional war and the British government is more than happy to cheer it on. This has to stop.”

UK lawmaker calls for halt on all arms exports to Israel following waves of explosions in Lebanon

'Israel knows it can commit war crimes with impunity. End all arms sales NOW,' says Zarah Sultana

Burak Bir |19.09.2024 - TRT/AA

LONDON

Labour Party lawmaker Zarah Sultana on Thursday reiterated her call to cease arms sales to Israel after communication device explosions in Lebanon, saying "Israel knows it can commit war crimes with impunity."

Recalling a two-wave attack using wireless devices that exploded in Lebanon, Sultana said "Israel’s indiscriminate detonation" of pagers and walkie-talkies across homes, workplaces and streets has killed at least 37 people and injured over 3,000 others.

"Israel knows it can commit war crimes with impunity. End all arms sales NOW," she wrote on X.

On Sept. 2, the British government announced that it was suspending 30 out of 350 arms export licenses to Israel after a review, warning that there is a clear risk that certain UK arms exports to Israel might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law.

The 30 licenses cover components for military aircraft, helicopters, drones and items that facilitate ground targeting, excluding UK components for the F-35 fighter jet program.

Earlier on Tuesday, thousands of pagers exploded in Beirut and other parts of Lebanon, killing 12 and injuring 2,323. A second wave of device explosions on Wednesday killed 25 people and injured 608 others.

There has been no Israeli response to the blasts, which occurred amid an escalation in cross-border warfare between Israel and Hezbollah since the beginning of Israel's deadly onslaught against the Gaza Strip, which has killed nearly 41,300 people, the majority of whom are women and children, following a cross-border attack by Hamas on Oct. 7 of last year.

UK

Community Camp for Palestine Opens Opposite US Embassy

A community-run Palestine peace camp has opened opposite US Embassy in London

September 15, 2024

https://realmedia.press/

©2024 Sul Nowroz

A group of thirty peace campaigners and Ghazzah ceasefire activists have erected a camp opposite the US embassy in Nine Elms Lane, south west London. The camp was set up on Sunday September 1st and will remain there until there is a permanent ceasefire in the Palestinian enclave of Ghazzah.

US Plays a Pivotal Role in Ghazzah Genocide

©2024 Sul Nowroz

The US government has been a staunch and vocal ally of Israel during its unconstrained and indiscriminate attacks on Ghazzah, which many have labelled a genocide. Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories concluded in March of this year: “There are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide against Palestinians as a group in Ghazzah has been met.”

The US has sent an average of two shipments of weapons to Israel daily since October 7th 2023, equating to approximately 150 tons of munitions and equipment per day. In addition, the US has deployed multiple naval strike groups off the Ghazzah coastline, effectively blockading the twenty-five-mile-long stretch of land. There is also wide speculation of US intelligence services supplying Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) with detailed satellite imagery and analysis. In diplomatic circles the US has continually blocked any efforts to sanction Israel, while at the UN security council it has repeatedly used its veto to shield Israel from any resolutions aimed at ending the genocide.

Community Camp for Palestine

©2024 Sul Nowroz

The camp, situated at Nine Elms Pavilion, comprises a handful of tents, an open kitchen area and communal seating. The pavilion is decorated with a series of banners calling out US involvement in the deaths of thousands of Palestinians. In July 2024, The Lancet – one of the world’s leading medical journals – suggested a conservative estimate of the real death toll in Ghazzah could be close to 200,000, around 10% of the population. Approximately two-thirds of those murdered by IOF are suspected to be women and children.

Camp hosts organise daily events that attract a wide range of visitors, including from the surrounding neighbourhoods. Events so far have involved an open mic evening, an outdoor showing of the Palestinian film Where Olive Trees Weep, letter writing, dabkeh (a traditional Palestinian dance) lessons and hosting various speakers. There have also been walking protests outside the embassy. I spoke with several residents who were supportive of the camp, including some who brought food and other provisions for the camp’s occupants.

“We are mindful of our neighbours and have ensured the camp doesn’t disrupt their day-to-day lives. They have welcomed us and have regularly joined our activities. We are a peaceful reminder of the need to stop the genocide in Ghazzah and that is a universal message,” said one of the camp’s hosts.

The camp is a reincarnation of one set up in April 2024, which ran for a week. The new camp is larger and has drawn campaigners from across the country.

“The first camp was here for a week. We didn’t think the genocide would be allowed to continue. We were wrong and so we’re back, this time indefinitely. We, alone, are unlikely to influence the US government but by being here we are showing we care. When people are walking or driving by, they see how we are willing to make personal sacrifices to hold this space for Ghazzah.”

©2024 Sul Nowroz

Volunteers are rostered for an around-the-clock presence, often forcing them to place their own lives on hold. Some do short stints, a few hours, while others join the camp for blocks of days at a time. Personal space is limited and while there is power it can be intermittent. Local public bathrooms provide hot water and toilet facilities.

“Maintaining the camp has its own complexities and sometimes it doesn’t seem sustainable. But then we look at Ghazzah, and life in Ghazzah isn’t sustainable; it’s beyond not sustainable, it’s a devastating experience and in comparison, ours is a minute sacrifice.”

Find out more at Insta @sw.act4pal to get involved or find out about events planned.