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What’s behind Trump’s moves in Ukraine?

Ukraine is a proxy war between US imperialism and Russian imperialism

Donald Trump is changing US strategy in Ukraine (Picture: Gage Skidmore/Flickr)

By Tomáš Tengely-Evans
Wednesday 12 February 2025 

SOCIALIST WORKER Issue 2942

The West and Russia turned Ukraine into a slaughterhouse. Now, after almost three years of war, the imperialist rivals want to carve it up and call it “peace”.

Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that he had a “lengthy and highly productive phone call” with Russian president Vladimir Putin. He said the two agreed to begin “negotiations immediately”—and added that he would “inform” Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky “of the conversation”.

His remarks came on the same day that US defence secretary Pete Hegseth told European leaders they must provide the “overwhelming’ share of aid to Ukraine. He declared that a return to Ukraine’s borders before 2014 was an “unrealistic objective” and “illusionary goal” that “will only prolong the war”.

Hegseth added there must be “robust security guarantees, but that the US does not believe Nato membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome”.


The dramatic turnaround in US policy towards Ukraine flows from—and reinforces—the crisis of US imperialism.

Trump’s vile plan for ethnically cleansing Gaza can seem separate from this move, but it flows from the same strategy of asserting US dominance in the world.

How can we explain the shift over Ukraine?

First, Ukraine is not a war for freedom and self-determination nor did it begin with Russia’s brutal invasion in February 2022. Trump isn’t calling up Putin because he’s abandoning a fight for democracy.

There was a proxy war between US imperialism and Russian imperialism brewing since the 1990s.

US president Joe Biden saw Ukraine as an opportunity to overcome US imperialism’s defeats in the Middle East. He wanted to weaken Russia and, more importantly, send a signal to the US’s main competitor China.

Biden described Ukraine as an “inflection point in the world” to a group of business leaders at the White House shortly after the Russian invasion. “There’s going to be a new world order out there and we’ve got to lead it,” he said.

Colonel Alexander Vindman, who worked in the first Trump White House, pushed for a more aggressive stance on Ukraine

This fitted with a longer-term ambition in US foreign policy circles. Colonel Alexander Vindman was a leading official in the US National Security Council during Trump’s first presidency between 2018 and 2020. After leaving, he spent his time drumming up support for US and Nato involvement in Ukraine.

In November 2021, Vindman argued that “Ukraine’s strategic value to Nato” could “enable US and Euro-Atlantic aspirations for competition with Russia and with China”.

After the invasion, the Biden White House said it wanted Ukraine to “fulfil its European and Euro-Atlantic aspirations”

The US strategy in Ukraine was to “bleed Russia dry” through a process of “managed escalation”. In practice, this meant giving Ukraine enough arms to tie down Russia forces without risking a wider conflict.

But, despite over £100 billion in US aid, Ukraine is an abattoir of imperial ambition with no victory in sight.

Second, the US faces major challenges to its “hegemony”—it’s ability to dominate the world and demand leadership over its allies. Trump represents a more “go it alone” strategy to maintain it.

The US built a liberal capitalist world order after the Second World War based on free trade and free markets. There was always an economic and military dimension.


In 1991, at the end of the Cold War, the US was the only world superpower left standing. But all was not well.”

The US could use the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and dominance of the dollar to project its power against rivals, allies and weaker states.

This “Bretton Woods system” allowed the US to fix the supply of dollars and make sure its corporations had favourable terms of trade. While it fractured in the 1970s, the US still used the IMF and dollar dominance to force neoliberal policies onto states.

US capitalism’s dominance was backed by military might, through the Nato warmonger’s alliance and hundreds of military bases across the world.

In 1991, at the end of the Cold War, the US was the only world superpower left standing. But all was not well. Imperialism is a global system of competing capitalist states. The old war criminal Henry Kissinger warned that the US would face economic competition—particularly from China—on scale it hadn’t seen before.

The War on Terror in the 2000s was an attempt to assert US hegemony through military force. But the defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan signalled to the US’s rivals that it was possible to assert their own interests.

Alongside this, we’ve seen important shifts within global capitalism. For example, the likes of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are becoming more important capitalist states, diversifying from being a source of oil alone.

All this means there is growing competition among the big imperialist powers and regional or “sub” imperialist ones.

Since 2018, the US has seen “great power competition” as the main challenge facing it.

There is a great deal of continuity between Biden’s and Trump’s foreign policies—defending US hegemony against these challenges.

Trump wants to focus on the main threat, China, and cut US losses in Ukraine. US secretary of state Marco Rubio recently said, “We have been funding a stalemate, a protracted conflict.

“It’s one in which incrementally Ukraine is being destroyed and losing more and more territory.”

But more broadly he prefers a much more “go it alone” strategy—and sees US allies as draining US resources and wants them to pay their own way. Here, he said that European states would have to pay for Ukrainian security.

But there is a broader shift taking place in US foreign policy—there is a method behind Trump’s seemingly erratic announcements.

Marco Rubio laid out the US strategy in a revealing interview last week

Rubio recently described how the Trump administration wanted to deal with a world of many “great powers”. He described how the US wanted to maintain dominance in the world, but not through the institutions of the liberal capitalist order.

Instead of “multilateral agreements” between the US and many allies, it would focus on bilateral ones with states.

Rubio said, “The way the world has always worked is that the Chinese will do what’s in the best interests of China. The Russians will do what’s in the best interest of Russia and the United States needs to do what’s in the best interest of the United States.

“Where our interests align, that’s where you have partnerships and alliances. Where our differences are not aligned, that is where the job of diplomacy is to prevent conflict while still furthering our national interests.”

But he complained that “that was lost at the end of the Cold War, because we were the only power in the world”. “And so we assumed this responsibility of sort of becoming the global government in many cases, trying to solve every problem,” he said.

“It’s not normal for the world to simply have a unipolar power— that was an anomaly and a product of the end of the Cold War.

“But eventually you were going to reach back to a point where you had a multipolar world, multi-great powers in different parts of the planet.

“We face that now with China and to some extent Russia, and then you have rogue states like Iran and North Korea you have to deal with.”

There are important limits to the shift that Rubio described. For example, the Trump administration’s moves in the Middle East and Ukraine intensify the crisis faced by US imperialism.

The US has relied heavily on the alliances to maintain dominance for decades and can’t easily undo this web of control.

In the Middle East, Trump is pushing alliances with Egypt and Jordan to breaking point over his Gaza ethnic cleansing plan. But it’s not in US interests to see those Arab states go to another power.

He’s banking on using US leverage to get his way with allies—make them cough up more money and obediently toe the line.

The Ukraine plan doesn’t mean peace for millions of ordinary people.


Ukraine—no to Russian invasion, no to Nato escalation

As the bosses’ Financial Times newspaper said, “EU diplomats had unsuccessfully sought to lobby the Trump administration for a role in the talks. They stressed that Ukraine’s post-conflict state was a critical part of Europe’s security architecture.

“Instead, EU capitals believe they will be pressured to pay for whatever deal is agreed in money, arms and peacekeeping troops on the ground.

“‘How to implement any deal without Europe?’ said one Western official in response to Trump’s statement. ‘Cash and boots would be European’.”

The anti-war movement was right to say, “Russian troops out, no to Nato.”

We have to redouble our efforts to fight against imperialist wars and the system that produces them.

UK - Ukraine initiatives

Current and upcoming activities in solidarity with Ukraine

Saturday February 15th, 11.0 am — 4.0 pm, Conference: End the Russian invasion and occupation. National Education Union, Mabledon Place, London, WC1H 9BD. Register here.

Saturday February 22nd, 12.00 , Demonstrate at the Russian embassy. Assemble 12 noon – St Volodymyr statue,  London W11 3QY Rally 1pm – Russian embassy, W8 4QP

Tuesday February 25th

Ukraine’s biggest trade union body, the Federation of Trade Unions of Ukraine (FPU), is organising an international trade union conference in Kyiv to coincide with the third anniversary of Putin’s invasion.

Wednesday March 26th-27th

International conference in solidarity with Ukraine, in Brussels. Here trade unionists, progressive elected representatives, Ukraine solidarity committees, feminist and LGBTI+ groups, environmentalists, and defenders of democratic and civil liberties will come together to strengthen ties with their Ukrainian counterparts and develop practical solidarity initiatives.

—

EDM on companies breaking sanction on Russia

Early Day Motion 651

Chris Law MP (Scottish National Party, SNP) has tabled this Early Day Motion in the House of Commons.

 “That this House stands with the people of Ukraine against the illegal invasion and occupation of their country by Russia; believes that sanctions on Russian exports and, in particular, Russian-produced fossil fuels, are necessary to help reduce the ability of Russia to fund its ongoing invasion; welcomes that the UK government has prohibited the importation of Russian LNG into the UK; notes with concern, however, that British companies continue to be involved in the transport and sale of LNG from Russia to other countries; further notes with extreme concern that it has been reported that Glasgow-based corporation Seapeak Maritime Glasgow Ltd owns and operates six tankers transporting Russian LNG and at least twelve tankers transporting Russian gas through the Arctic Ocean have protection and indemnity insurance provided by UK-based insurers, including North of England P&I Association, Standard P&I Club per Charles Taylor & Co, and UK P&I Club; believes that companies involved in the sale and exportation of Russian LNG should not be eligible for government assistance, financial or otherwise; and calls on the UK government to close current loopholes that allow British-based companies to transport Russian LNG despite previous sanctions.”

Write to your MP to ask them to sign it. Seapeak Glasgow’s transportation of Russian LNG is financing Putin’s invasion of Ukraine to the tune of $4 billion a year.

—

Statement initiated by trade unionists in the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign

As friends of Ukraine, supporters of its self-defence and self-determination against Russian imperialism, we support the Ukrainian trade unions’ struggle to defend workers’ rights. In particular we salute their ongoing resistance to a proposed new Labour Code that includes numerous restrictions on the rights of the workers and their organisations; as well as draft law 5344d, restricting the rights and social security of people with disabilities.

(For a detailed summary of these attacks Ukrainian workers are facing, see here.)

We congratulate the Ukrainian unions on their recent victory, in January 2025, pushing the Verkhovna Rada to vote down anti-worker draft law 5054. Attacks on labour rights at work and in society are large-scale, ongoing, and frequent.

Ukraine’s workers’ movement has resisted and continues to resist Russia’s authoritarian assault on independent trade unionism and democratic rights in the occupied territories. Naturally it also rejects any attacks on workers’ rights by its own government.

The severe erosion of labour rights involved in the proposed new Labour Code is the latest in a series of such measures introduced under the cover of the war. This constitutes an attack on the very people who have sustained Ukraine’s war effort against the odds – its working class. Shameful in themselves, such policies also undermine both Ukraine’s self-defence and post-war reconstruction: and are strongly opposed by Ukrainian and international trade union confederations.

We call on the Ukrainian government to repudiate all such changes, reverse earlier attacks on workers’ rights, and change course.

We know that the former UK Conservative government actively promoted anti-worker changes to Ukraine’s labour laws. We call on the Labour government to work with trade unions in the UK and Ukraine to instead defend and promote workers’ ri

A tale of hope amid the horror of Holocaust—interview with Michael Rosen

Michael Rosen has published a new children’s book One Day—A True Story of Courage and Survival in the Holocaust. He spoke to Judy Cox about untold stories of resistance to the Nazis and why they matter so much today

Michael Rosen

Judy Cox 
Saturday 15 February 2025  

SOCIALIST WORKER Issue

SW: The book tells the story of Eugene and his father Oscar, Jewish members of the French Resistance. This is an inspiring story—why are stories like these not better known?

There were thousands of acts of resistance and not enough is known about them. There were groups of Jewish partisans who fled to the forests in Belarus and other places.

When people tell the history of the Holocaust, they rightly want to emphasise how awful it was. This means that acts of resistance are either unknowingly or knowingly left out and powerful stories got lost.

Lots of those who resisted were ordinary people. They did not write the hugely important Holocaust memoirs, like that by Primo Levi. After the war, many people from the resistance found it hard to be heard and to get published.

There were cells of Communists in Nazi Germany who were active throughout the war. They carried out acts of sabotage wherever possible.

We are told that Nazi Germany fell because of the pounding by the military forces of Russia and the United States.

But ordinary people had carried on fighting on the ground against the Nazis and against collaborators. This was very important because the Nazis did not just rely on their war machine and on terror—they relied on the collaborators who enabled them.

This was true in countries across Europe. And it was true of Britain. The Holocaust Memorial Day happens every year—they never mention the Channel Islands. In the Channel Islands, it was British bobbies who enabled deportations and concentration camps.


Michael Rosen’s new book

I recently debated with Ian Austin—a former Labour MP who is now in the house of Lords. People like Austin want to portray the British as the noble ones, who stood alone after the Nazi invasion of Poland.

But Britain was never alone. Britain relied on its Empire, on all the men and women who made huge sacrifices to help Britain win the Second World War.

I don’t want to belittle the sacrifices made by ordinary people during the war—but we have to raise difficult questions.

SW: How did the resistance operate in such difficult conditions?

There were many collaborators who enabled the Nazis. But there were thousands of ordinary people who chose a different path. In France people hid Jews in forests and caves—these were acts of courage and resistance.

In 1939, people in France were getting ready to oppose the Nazis. Then the Communists were told to stand down because Stalin signed the non-aggression pact with Hitler.


Partisans shot at Nazi tanks and they tried to ambush Nazi regiments.

Georges Guingouin was committed to the French Communist Party, but knew the call to stop preparing for the resistance was wrong. So he had to fight on two fronts—against the Communist Party and against the Nazis.

He led the resistance to the Nazis in Limousin. His partisans pulled off the only bloodless surrender of Nazis in Europe. His group surrounded them and they surrendered.

He was elected mayor of Limoges after the war, but the French Communist Party never forgave him—they actually persecuted him.

They apologised when he was in his 90s and he told them, “I am serene”—meaning he did not bear a grudge, but neither did he forgive.

SW: How difficult is it to recover the stories of resistance?

Researching the stories of the partisan groups is difficult because they were alliances of communists, non-communists, socialists and anarchists and they gave themselves names like the “sharpshooters”.

There is also an attempt to diminish the resistance—to call them hooligans, brigands and bandits. And there is a chauvinistic mockery from the Brits who like to say the French just surrendered without a fight.

There were villages who got the message that they needed to block the Nazis. People got out their old carbines from World War One which they kept because they thought there might be a revolutionary call to arms one day.

They shot at Nazi tanks and they tried to ambush Nazi regiments. And the Nazis punished them at places like Oradour-sur-Glane where the Waffen SS murdered hundreds of villagers.

I have met French resisters and commemorated their actions and heard their stories. Similar acts of resistance happened in Poland and across Nazi-occupied Europe.

SW: In the book, Oscar is sheltered by a French family who were not members of the resistance—just ordinary people. Could you say more about this part?

Imagine the courage it took to lie to SS officers to protect an injured stranger.

In the book Eugene, Oscar and the others jump from a train. They were on Convoy 62. Convoys, that is trains carrying around 1,200 people each, had already gone through.

By 1943, there were rumours about what was happening in the camps, about shootings and massacres. People talked about “Pitchipoi”—an absurd word for the place people went and did not come back from.

There were different layers of deportation. The Nazis in France were rounding up Jews for deportation. Some 77,000 were send to death camps and only about 2,000 survived.

They were also arresting communists and resistance fighters, sending them to Dachau and Sachsenhausen which were not death camps.


When people commemorate the Holocaust, they rarely mention the “I” word. But imperialism drove the forced labour, slavery and genocide

One resistance fighter I knew survived the war in Dachau because the Nazis never discovered he was Jewish.

Some 250,000 French workers were deported to work as slave labour in German factories and farms. That was the brainchild of a French politician, Pierre Laval, the arch collaborator.

SW: Is it true you only found out about Eugene’s story because you were researching your own family history?

My father’s uncle and his wife were on Convoy 62. They had escaped from the north of France to Nice, which was under Italian control. Jews were not being deported from there.

But once US president Dwight Eisenhower announced the defeat of Italy, Nazis marched into Nice and deported the Jews they found to Drancy transit camp.

My great-uncle and aunt had been very close to getting away in boats but instead they were deported on Convoy 62. They did not come back.

The man who arrested them was the same Nazi who tortured the prisoners in Drancy for building an escape tunnel in the book. His name was Alois Brunner.

He was Adolf Eichmann’s right-hand man. He escaped after the war and ended up working for the Assad regime in Syria.

Another of my father’s uncles was deported on Convoy 68. He was arrested in a French village by four French gendarmes.


The Nazis, antisemitism and the Holocaust

There is now a park named after him, Martin Rosen Park, and his name is on the town’s war memorial. This is important because sometimes the Jews who were deported were listed on memorials as numbers. Their names are not always recorded. The mayor and council in the village have done this to help combat rising anti-immigrant feeling.

The word “genocide” was invented during the Second World War by a Polish man, Raphael Lemkin.

At the outset I think it referred to both Jewish and non-Jewish Poles. About 1.9 million non-Jewish civilian Poles were killed. Heinrich Himmler thought of Poles in a very similar way as the Nazis thought of Jews—some 3 million Polish Jews were killed.

When people commemorate the Holocaust, they rarely mention the “I” word. But imperialism drove the forced labour, slavery and genocide. Just like the British empire needed slavery, imperialism often needs genocide to take possession of the land and the factories it takes over and controls.

The Jewish Holocaust, the enslavement of workers—we have to tell all these stories. They show what our ruling order has done and might do again. It is hard for some people to realise that our rulers do not act in our best interests, that they are capable of murdering their own people.

Resistance, solidarity, compassion—these all give us hope. People often say that the allied armies liberated Paris. But Parisians themselves rose up against the Nazis. We should not deny people their agency.

You see the pictures of people lining the streets of Austria giving Nazi salutes to welcome the Nazis. But not everyone was a collaborator, not everyone was submissive. The human spirit isn’t like that.

We have to tell the stories of those who resisted. And be inspired by them.

Robert F Kennedy uses mistrust of US healthcare to push conspiracy theories

Anti-vax politics has already led to a number of preventable outbreaks in the United States

Robert F Kennedy (Picture: Felton Davis/Flickr)

FEATURE

By Frankie Murden  

SOCIALIST WORKER
Friday 14 February 2025

Robert F Kennedy has been sworn in as chief of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Kennedy claims he wants to Make America Healthy Again (MAHA), but he is notorious for spreading conspiracy theories. He even questions the germ theory of medicine that birthed modern medicine as we know it.

He wrongly claims that “no vaccine is effective” and compares mandatory vaccinations to living in Nazi Germany. While leading the anti-vax advocacy group Children’s’ Health Defence, he pushed the widely disproved belief that childhood immunisations cause autism.

Anti-vax politics has already led to a number of preventable outbreaks in the United States. In 2000 the US declared measles eliminated from the country.

But in recent years some states have seen a 95 percent rise in measles cases, directly caused by unvaccinated groups.

In 2018, Kennedy sparked a scare campaign against measles vaccinations in Samoa. The following year a measles outbreak infected 57,000 people and killed 83 people, including many children.

Kennedy has also pushed “scientific racism” stating that he believes that Covid 19 was genetically engineered to spare Chinese and Jewish people.

His most recent book is devoted largely to HIV/AIDS denial. He claims that there is no proof HIV leads to AIDS, and that it’s simply a “harmless passenger virus”. This is the same ideology that killed up to 330,000 people in South Africa when then president Thabo Mbeki denied anti-retroviral drugs to AIDS patients.

A growing section of support for Trump in the 2024 election was from “MAHA moms”. They often homeschool their children, restrict processed food, are anti-vax and mistrust mainstream science.

Many people in the US are understandably resentful and mistrusting of a healthcare system which fails them.

Kennedy preys on the despair and mistrust people feel towards the government and healthcare. He poses as an anti-establishment figure while coming from one of the most establishment families in the US.

He is an opportunist who flip-flops on major issues such as abortion to maintain his power.

The US healthcare system is in crisis. That’s caused by insurance giants which profit from illness—a root cause Trump and Kennedy will never tackle.

Turkey is guilty of war crimes, says Rojava Peoples’ Tribunal

FEBRUARY 12, 2025

Lawyers at the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) on Rojava vs. Turkey in Brussels have found evidence that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, former Minister of Defence Hulusi Akar, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and Defence Minister General Ümit Dündar are criminally responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity and the international crime of aggression in North and East Syria from 2018-present.

The Tribunal was held at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), and was convened by nine legal and human rights organisations. The PPT is intended as a grassroots forum, to hear evidence of the crimes committed by Turkey and its proxies in North and East Syria (Rojava). It is hoped that the Tribunal’s findings will open pathways for Turkey’s war crimes to be examined at an official level.

The evidence against Turkey was presented by a prosecution team made up of renowned international lawyers Jan Fermon (Belgium); Şerife Ceren Uysal (Turkey); Rengin Ergül (Kurdistan); Urko Aiartza Azurtza (Basque Country); Efstathios C. Efstathiou (Cyprus); Socrates Tziazas (Cyprus); Dr Anni Pues (Germany); Barbara Spinelli (Italy); Declan Owens (Ireland); Ezio Menzione (Italy); Heike Geisweid (Germany) and Florian Bohsung (Germany).

A testament to the courage of the people of Rojava

The preliminary statement from the judges was read by Frances Webber, a retired barrister, and formerly vice-chair of the UK’s Institute of Race Relations. She began by acknowledging and paying tribute to the “courage” of the people of Rojava, northeast Syria.

The Tribunal’s judges found Turkey guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity and the international crime of aggression. As the judges put it:

“Turkey’s attacks on Syrian territory, without UN Security Council authorisation, amounts to an international crime of aggression. The pattern of attacks, bombings, shellings, drone attacks and atrocities against civilians, the forced displacements and demographic engineering through replacement of populations, the destruction of power and damage to water supplies, the environmental damage, the destruction of cultural heritage and educational institutions, the use of rape, torture, secret detention – are all contrary to international law, constitute crimes against humanity and war crimes, and are indicative of genocide.”

Webber and the other judges expressed “horror and outrage” at the crimes uncovered by the Tribunal, and found that Erdoğan, as well as Hulusi Akar, Minister of Defence between 2018 to 2023; Hakan Fidan, head of Turkish intelligence in the period and now Foreign Minister; Yaşar Güler, Chief of the General Staff during the period examined by the tribunal and now Minister of Defence; and General Ümit Dündar were criminally responsible for these crimes.

The Tribunal found that the international community had failed in its obligation to prevent the crimes being committed against the Kurdish people. Webber read out their statement:

“The international community is aware of the continuing suffering of the Kurdish people and the crimes of the defendants, but has taken no meaningful action. There is no state recognition of DAANES [the Democratic Administration of North and East Syria] and no possibility of domestic or international redress. It is vital that the experience of the Kurds of north and east Syria and the crimes against them are properly acknowledged, that those responsible are brought to justice, that DAANES is internationally recognised as an authentically representative and democratic self-governing administration, and that the international community immediately ensures the cessation of the attacks by Turkey, direct and indirect, on the Kurdish people of Rojava, in order to avert a fully-fledged genocide.”

The judges’ full statement can be read and seen here. Read more on the Peoples’ Tribunal evidence of Turkey’s war crimes in Afrin, Syria here. Read the Tribunal’s evidence on femicide here.

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rojava_cities.png Rojava cities. Author: WikiEditor2004, licensed under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

Palestine march rages at Trump’s Gaza ethnic cleansing plan

Amid a fragile ceasefire and Trump’s calls to ethnically cleanse Gaza, 175,000 protesters marched to the US embassy in London

National Palestine protest marches to the US embassy


Saturday 15 February 2025

 SOCIALIST WORKER Issue

Over 175,000 people marched to the US embassy in London on Saturday as part of the 24th national demonstration for Palestine.

They raged against Donald Trump’s plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza—and demanded the British government stop all arms sales to Israel.

“I think the Trump plan is nonsensical,” protester Mo told Socialist Worker. “But for the past 15 months every administration—whether Joe Biden or Trump—has appeased everything Israel has done.

“So you do have to take it seriously, laughable as it is.”

Nancy agreed, “Trump has no right to do that. I hope he isn’t able to but I’m concerned that he’ll try. Is anyone going to stop him?

“Even just saying that it is not okay would be a start, but Keir Starmer has not even done that.”

The ceasefire held on Saturday despite Trump giving Israel the green light to return to war.

Daniel, who travelled from Manchester, told Socialist Worker, “We shouldn’t be stopping at a ceasefire. Everyone here is here for full liberation and we shouldn’t stop until we get that.”

The British state is ramping up its repression of the Palestine movement. Police arrested 72 people—including chief steward Chris Nineham of Stop The War—on the last national demonstration on 18 January.

He faces public order charges as does Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) director Ben Jamal.

“I was here on 18 January,” said Mo on Whitehall. “We were peaceful, we were not inciting hatred.”


It is sheer hypocrisy and as some who voted for Labour I am profoundly let down and angry.

Mark, who volunteers with human rights groups, told Socialist Worker, “Repression worries me. We talk a lot about a lack of democracy in places like Russia but we’ve lost sight of what democracy should be about here.”

He added, “We have to keep fighting. We need to keep shouting and doing this.”

Protesters were angry at the racism of the Labour government. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch attacked Starmer last week over a Palestinian family who’d try to claim asylum in Britain under the Ukrainian refugee scheme. Starmer responded by saying it was “wrong” and the government would deal with it.

“There are obvious double standards,” said one protester who works as an academic. “Ukrainians are welcomed here, but all refugees should be welcome irrespective of what they are fleeing or where they come from.”

She added, “I always say, from Ukraine to Palestine, occupation is a crime. There’s the waffle that Palestinians are more likely to be terrorists, but there are very far right people in Ukraine.

“It is sheer hypocrisy and as some who voted for Labour I am profoundly let down and angry.”

Three members of the CWU union’s South Central postal branch joined the trade union block. “We’re here raising awareness. It’s our duty to show solidarity, to stand against oppression,” one said.

Another said that union leaders are “afraid of upsetting the leader of the Labour Party”. “Starmer’s response has been shocking,” he said. “There’s meant to be peace, but now the US is going to occupy it and no one does anything.

The CWU member added, “I was stood right here on Saturday 18 January. What happened shows these demonstrations are effective because the state is worried about us. It wouldn’t go after the movement, repress it as it did, if they thought we weren’t a threat.”

Protesters chanted, “Donald Trump, no way—Gaza is not for sale,” and, “Starmer, Lammy, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.”

Zarah Sultana—one of the left wing MPs who remains suspended from Labour—addressed the march outside the US embassy. “This is not just a political failure, this is a moral failure,” she told marchers.

“This is not just a conflict—this is a campaign of destruction and dehumanisation. Silence is not an option.

“Some tell us a ceasefire means the violence has ended, as if settler militias aren’t still rampaging through the West Bank. A ceasefire is not justice. A ceasefire does not build back the homes that were destroyed.”


Resist Trump’s plan for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza

Nineham told the march, “What happened on 18 January was a serious escalation and a serious assault on the freedom of assembly in this country. We will not stand by and allow our freedoms to be taken away.”

Jamal said, “Every time we protest and march, it matters—but some protests are more important than others. On 14 October 2023, it was crucial we came out. The political establishment tried to erase the reality of 76 years of apartheid colonisation and ethnic cleansing.

The struggle for the rights for Palestinian people is part of that struggle for that better world, and that has never been more true than it is now.

“All week they tried to convince us that it was the right thing to do to emblazon the flag of a state onto buildings responsible for those 76 years.

“On 11 November, it was crucial that we marched after Braverman spent weeks trying to drive us off the street and mobilise the far right against us.

“Today it was crucial that we marched and not just because we are facing a new attempt to repress our movement. More importantly than that, Israel is proposing to extend its genocide.

“We are here because we believe in a better world. The struggle for the rights for Palestinian people is part of that struggle for that better world, and that has never been more true than it is now.”

As Trump and Netanyahu threaten ethnic cleansing, the Starmer government will do all it can to maintain its “special relationship” with US imperialism.

We need mass and militant action to stop all arms sales to Israel, break the British state’s support for genocide and defy its crackdowns.

UK Activists to take to the streets in protest of Trump’s ‘grotesque’ plan for ethnic cleansing

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead 

Today
LEFT FOOT FORWARD

'Trump is woefully ignorant of international law and the law of occupation. Forcible displacement of an occupied group is an international crime, and amounts to ethnic cleansing.'

 Activists are gathering in London today – February 15 – to protest Donald Trump’s ‘grotesque’ plan to ‘take over’ the Gaza strip and forcibly remove the Palestinian population of more than two million.

Trump recently announced he wants the US to take over the Gaza Strip, send the Palestinians elsewhere, and redevelop the land as the “the Riviera of the Middle East.”

The plan was announced alongside Trump’s ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said it was “worth listening carefully to this idea.”

The protest is being organised by a coalition of pro-Palestine and anti-war groups, including the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Stop the War Coalition, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Muslim Association of Britain, and Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

The protesters are marching from Whitehall to the US Embassy to send a message to the UK government and Trump – “freedom for Palestine, no to ethnic cleansing, stop arming Israel.”

A joint statement from the organising groups condemns Trump’s remarks as a revelation of Israel’s long-standing plan for ethnic cleansing. It reads: “The grotesque statements by US President Donald Trump – that the US will ‘take over’ the Gaza Strip and forcibly remove the Palestinian population of more than 2 million – have exposed the long-standing Israeli plan for ethnic cleansing. For more than a year, Israel and its supporters have denied that the true aim of the genocidal assault on Gaza has been the destruction of the Palestinian population, and denial of all of their rights including the right to self-determination. Backed and supported by the USA for its own imperial interests, that objective is now explicit.”

The protest follows comments by United Nation’s top investigator on human rights in Palestine, who said Trump’s plan to displace Palestinians from Gaza is illegal under international law and “amounts to ethnic cleansing.”

In an interview with Politico, Navi Pillay, chair of the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, said:

“Trump is woefully ignorant of international law and the law of occupation. Forcible displacement of an occupied group is an international crime, and amounts to ethnic cleansing.

“There is no way under the law that Trump could carry out the threat to dislocate Palestinians from their land,” Pillay continued.

Image credit: PSC – X screen grab

Editorial:

Marching for Palestine – more vital than ever in the era of Trump


People take part in a national demonstration for Gaza from Russell Square to Whitehall in London, last year

MORNINGSTAR

CPGB
Friday, February 14, 2025

SATURDAY’S mass mobilisation for Palestine has a special significance.

It takes place at a key juncture for a ceasefire hanging by a thread. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz and US President Donald Trump used the same word, “hell,” to describe what they would unleash on Gaza from noon Saturday if Hamas even delayed the release of hostages in protest at Israel’s violation of agreements on the delivery of humanitarian aid.

We know this is no idle threat: hell was unleashed on Gaza for 15 months until mid-January, whole cities reduced to rubble, schools blown to smithereens, hospitals assaulted, with hundreds of Palestinian bodies uncovered in mass graves after the Israeli soldiers moved on.

We’ve seen evidence of the deliberate murder of medics, aid workers, journalists. Heard the pleas of a doomed child for rescue after her family were killed around her, in the knowledge that she and her would-be rescuers would be killed shortly afterwards. Watched horrific footage of a teenager on a drip in a hospital bed burnt to death by Israel’s bombs.

These unspeakable crimes have been justified by lies. That Israel was fighting Hamas, not the Palestinian people. That this operation was retaliation for the October 7 2023 attack by Hamas, stripped of the context of the 17-year Israeli siege of the impoverished territory or the decades of illegal occupation of Palestinian land: rather than a genocidal project for which October 7 was an excuse.

From both Westminster front benches, uninterrupted by the change in government, the lies have kept coming. That Britain was putting pressure on Israel for a ceasefire, while we continued to supply them with weapons and send surveillance missions to assist their war. That our government is committed to a two-state solution, a sovereign Palestine alongside a sovereign Israel, even as we supply, shield and grant privileged trading status to an Israel that is steadily colonising Palestinian land.

Now the mask is slipping. Trump is both the bull in the china shop and the elephant in the room.

His unabashed proposal to ethnically cleanse the entire population of Gaza, gleefully welcomed by Israel, shatters the pretence that this war is not about the erasure of the Palestinian people: he hints, at the same time, that he is soon to announce approval for Israeli annexation of the West Bank.

And the British response is to pretend everything is normal. To intone the old pieties about our commitment to a future Palestine, while avoiding any criticism of Trump’s plan. Challenged on it directly, Foreign Secretary David Lammy pleads that we can all agree Gaza needs to be rebuilt — an exercise in evasive cowardice remarkable even for him.

The government’s refusal to acknowledge reality is deliberate. It allows it to continue facilitating Israeli expansionism, now openly backed by the United States, without admitting the fact.

The government’s far greater concern at Trump’s disengagement from Europe adds another dimension. So far, appeasing Trump has involved pledges of ever greater military spending, offers to pay still more for the privilege of riding shotgun on the US war machine. Instead we must turn Trump into another argument for a completely new approach, a peaceful foreign policy independent of Washington.

Meanwhile the speed with which the “respectable” right, having rejected as a left-wing smear the idea that Israel was ethnically cleansing Palestine, now rush to cheer on ethnic cleansing is sobering: a Telegraph op-ed touting the advantages of removing the whole Gaza population to Somaliland no longer raises eyebrows.

It is up to us all to take a stand against a barbarism being normalised in newspaper columns, media broadcasts and ministerial briefings.

The last national march for Palestine was met with police obstruction and mass arrests. This weekend we must show the government, the police and the British state that we will not stop marching until Palestine is free.

UK

Palestine and the state’s new war on protest

The state is cracking down on protests, from Just Stop Oil to the Palestine movement. Arthur Townend looks at the roots of authoritarianism and who is being targeted

Police at the last national demonstration for Palestine (Picture: Guy Smallman)

 Arthur Townend

Monday 10 February 2025  

SOCIALIST WORKER Issue 2942


The shadow of authoritarianism hangs over Britain. The state has attacked climate activists, arrested those battling for Kurdish liberation—and is doing all it can to silence the Palestine movement.

On Saturday 18 January, the Met attacked the national Palestine demonstration. From the beginning, police set out to confuse, obstruct and intimidate protesters.

Their attempts failed as protesters got through police lines at the top of Whitehall. But police responded with repression and violence in an attempt to intimidate the movement off the streets.

They arrested 77 activists—­including chief steward Chris Nineham of Stop The War (STW). Afterwards police charged Ben Jamal of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) with public order offences.

The state has often used force to repress opposition, but the shift to targeting organisers represents an intensification of repression that aims to create a chilling effect on protest.

This flows from a deeper crisis. Major pillars of the British establishment—from the mainstream political parties to the police and big business—face a crisis of legitimacy.

Keir Starmer won the general election, but is widely unpopular. Mainstream politics is being undercut by the far right.

This was a long-time in the making. Decades of neoliberalism deepened inequality and, for all the talk of “choice”, handed more power to unelected elites. Living standards are in free fall, and costs are spiralling upwards.

But the Palestine movement exposed our rulers’ hypocrisy on a vast scale. The same British politicians who paint themselves as upholders of freedom and democracy spent the past 15 months supporting Israel’ genocide in the face of overwhelming public support for a ceasefire.

The state has sought to find ­resolution to its crisis of legitimacy in the baton.

The French Marxist Ugo Palheta calls refers to this trend as “authoritarian hardening”. It shows how liberal capitalist states increase the scope of state power in response to crisis.

This opens the door to increased state repression and violence. But this targeting of protesters should not be seen as an aberration. In fact, repression is a default response of the state to crises.

Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin wrote that the state is the “manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms”.

By class antagonisms, he means simply that the ruling class has interests that are directly opposed to the interests of the working class majority. These antagonisms are inherent in every class society.

Under capitalism, these antagonisms are what drives struggles. For example, workers want higher wages, but bosses have an interest in paying as little as possible.


Palestine, police repression and the new authoritarianism: interview with Chris Nineham
Read More

The state is not a neutral body—it is an instrument of class rule. Struggle can force concessions from the state, such as a minimum wage, or a legal limit to the working day.

But fundamentally, the ruling class uses the capitalist state to defend its core interest—the continuation of ­capitalist profit-making.

Lenin then highlighted how the state recruits “special bodies of armed men”—such as the police—to stop those class antagonisms exploding.

When those antagonisms increase—as we are seeing with the Palestine movement—the state can use those repressive forces to repress that challenge.

The movement is about winning liberation for Palestinian people. But that’s a fundamental challenge to the interests of Western imperialism and the British state.

Equally, the repression of climate activists shows how the climate ­movement challenges the ruling class’s interest. It profits from fossil fuel use.

It sees climate catastrophe as a money-spinner. Climate action doesn’t just advocate for climate protection—it challenges the interest of the ruling class.

The current escalation of state repression is not simply a response to increasing protest. It is the response of a state, plagued by crisis, crushing mounting threats to the capitalist class.

Crucially, it highlights that the battles we fight are interlinked, connected in how they challenge the whole, rotten system.
How corporations and the right demand criminalisation

There are subversive figures influencing the state’s crackdown.

In 2019, Policy Exchange released a paper called Extremism Rebellion, demand that climate group Extinction Rebellion (XR) be silenced.

The report said that the state’s response to XR “must be far more proactive”.

The state has indeed been more “proactive”.

In July last year, five Just Stop Oil supporters including founder Roger Hallam were sentenced to prison for “conspiracy to cause a public nuisance”. What is the most draconian is that they were charged for planning action in a Zoom call—no action had yet taken place.

Policy Exchange keeps its donors secret, but according to Open Democracy in 2017 it received $30,000 from oil and gas giant ExxonMobil.

It was Policy Exchange that helped Rishi Sunak’s draft anti-protest legislation, which the High Court deemed unlawful in 2023.

The Lord Walney—former Labour MP turned political violence tsar John Woodcock—released a report in May 2024 that largely capitalised on the tidal wave of Islamophobia and smears of antisemitism against the Palestine movement.

The report laments the drain protests put on police resources and urges the government to put “our prized liberal democracy first”.

It claims protests are “routinely driven by extreme activists”.

The report claims that the rule of law is “the bedrock underpinning our liberal political order”.

But as we saw on 18 January, the state can wield the “rule of law” as a baton to crush the right to protest. Walney condemns “environmental campaigns, anti-racism, anti‑government protest, anti-Israel activism, and anti-fascism”.

In other words, almost anything that challenges injustice and oppression in society, or anything that criticises capitalism.

He also urged governments to harness the insidious potential of new technology and use social media to spy on activists to prevent “mal‑information generated by hostile states and extremists”.

One year after being elected as MP, Woodcock was appointed as chair of Labour Friends of Israel. Unsurprisingly, he targets the Palestine liberation movement as one that “stands out as being a focus of incitement and intimidation”.
Who’s under attack?

Last February, three Palestine activists were arrested and charged with aggravated trespass.

Their crime? Peaceful protest outside General Dynamics, an arms company that profits from genocide.

Last week, they were found not guilty, which could set a precedent for similar cases.

Four Palestine Action activists were arrested after causing £500,000 of damage to Teledyne Technologies near Bradford.

The four Palestine Action activists directed their own defence, enlightening the jury to Teledyne’s crimes. The jury failed to convict them.

In Filton, Bristol, seven Palestine activists were charged after entering arms producers Elbit Systems’ research and development facility causing an estimated £1 million in damages.

They were not charged with terrorism offences, but police detained them for 14 days without charge under the terrorism act.

Journalist Richard Medhurst has documented Israel’s crimes. He was arrested at Heathrow airport in August. He was charged for expressing support for a proscribed organisation.

The British state is targeting Kwabena Devonish, a Palestine campaigner from Cardiff in South Wales. She faces charges under the Terrorism Act in connection with a speech at a demonstration in November 2023.

In a separate case, Kwabena faces charges that relate to a Palestine protest in Cardiff in June of last year. A group of people, known as the “Cardiff 19”, was arrested.

Kwabena’s trial for the terrorism charge could be delayed until 2027, but her next hearing is 1 August. If found guilty, it will have repercussions for the Palestine solidarity movement in Britain and beyond.

‘States want to silence the Palestine movement’—interview with Kwabena Devonish

Kwabena Devonish, a Palestine campaigner facing charges, spoke to Arthur Townend about the state, police and repression

Kwabena Devonish (Picture: Guy Smallman)

 Arthur Townend 
Monday 10 February 2025   

SOCIALIST WORKER Issue 2942

The British state is targeting Kwabena Devonish, a Palestine campaigner from Cardiff in South Wales. She faces charges under the Terrorism Act in connection with a speech at a demonstration in November 2023.

In a separate case, Kwabena faces charges that relate to a Palestine protest in Cardiff in June of last year. A group of people, known as the “Cardiff 19”, was arrested.

Kwabena’s trial for the terrorism charge could be delayed until 2027, but her next hearing is 1 August. If found guilty, it will have repercussions for the Palestine solidarity movement in Britain and beyond.

The repression is a way to crack down on people questioning the state or holding it accountable for its complicity in Israel’s genocide.

Anyone who called for solidarity with Palestinians was automatically called antisemitic. Anyone who criticised Israel was antisemitic. They’ve been using that for a long, long time and it used to work.

But the genocide is being streamed live to everyone in the world to see and people are able to make their own minds up. They can see the genocide for what it is. It’s not antisemitic to stand against something that’s inhumane—that’s what brought people to the Palestine movement.

And those tactics of saying, “You’re antisemitic for criticising Israel,” don’t work anymore—so the state is cracking down even harder and using the law.

On the marches one of the main demands is that we want a ceasefire. So now, Western governments are saying, “You have your ceasefire, so you have no right to be on the streets.”

But the movement has gone so far past just demanding a ceasefire now, because people see it as an anti-imperialist struggle.

When people are still being killed in the West Bank, what does a ceasefire mean in Gaza? When Israel has invaded Lebanon, when it’s invaded Syria, what does a ceasefire in Gaza mean anymore?

The crackdown, I think, coincides with the level of crisis and resistance to it.

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act was kind of the start of this phase—it was the state pre-empting the crisis getting worse.

Working class people across the globe are angry. They’re angry at their living standards. They’re angry about what’s going on in places like Palestine. That is what is causing people to be more politically active, to be out on the streets.

I think governments are scared of people coming together, uniting and striking, fighting back and putting pressure on them.

Our right to protest is something that we’ve kind of taken for granted for a long time. In a lot of other countries, the right to assemble and the right to protest is one of the first things to go.

But if the police use these laws against Palestine activists, they can easily use them against others. Climate activists, people on a picket line, people who are protesting because their hospitals will be shut down are all under threat. When people go out on these actions, that’s when the state comes down on them.

At the same time, it leads to people’s understanding of what the state is and how the state is not useful.

A lot of people in the Palestine movement have been radicalised, not just around anti-imperialism. They’ve been radicalised in how the state operates and how the police are actually there to serve and protect property.

We blocked the road on an emergency demonstration when Israel went into Rafah in June of last year. The police arrested one activist, so we went to the police station to protest over that arrest.

Subsequently, 17 other people were arrested. I wasn’t arrested that night, but I had the same charges brought against me. What that highlighted to me is that the police are not neutral, they want to scare people in the Palestine movement.

It just shows that the state is willing to go for people who they see as centrally involved in the Palestine movement. They feel that targeting them will put off other people within the movement.Support Kwabena’s campaign: justice4kwabena.substack.com

UK

Palestine day of action opposes Trump and defends the right to protest

Workers and students took part in protests up and down the country—and defended Chris Nineham and Waseem Yousaf in their court cases

Rally in Oxford

Thursday 13 February 2025 

SOCIALIST WORKER Issue


On Thursday, supporters of Palestine raged against Donald Trump’s plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza and the British state’s crackdown on the solidarity movement.

Trade unionists, students and others took part in the eighth national workplace day of action. It was called by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), Stop The War Coalition (STW) and others—and backed by the TUC trade union federation.

Over 200 people rallied outside Westminster Magistrates’ Court in central London in solidarity with Chris Nineham. Police arrested Chris who was chief steward of the Palestine national demonstration on 18 January.

STW convenor Lindsey German said, “We’re here to show solidarity with Chris who was arrested in the most unjust circumstances. But we’re here to do more than that as well, we’re here to defend the right to protest.

“Protest is under attack in this country, particularly protests that stand for justice, equality and freedom.

“I notice that a thousand tractors are able to block parliament, but when five people do the same for Just Stop Oil they’re put in prison.”

PSC director Ben Jamal was charged with public order offences after the demonstration. “I’m here to show solidarity with Chris and everybody who was unjustly arrested, unjustly charged as a result of the protest on 18 January,” he said.

And with “everybody who for months—beyond months now—has been unjustly arrested and charged because of their solidarity and activism”.

“What happened on 18 January represented a significant escalation in the repression by the state of our movement,” he warned.

He urged that it’s “crucial that we march in unprecedented numbers” at the national demonstration in London this Saturday.

Other speakers included PCS union general secretary Fran Heathcote and left wing MPs Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell.

On the same day around 70 people gathered outside the Thames Magistrates’ Court in east London to show solidarity with Palestine activist Waseem Yousaf. Footage shows police violently arresting Waseem in July, but the state is charging him with assault.

Outside the court, chants of “Met police, shame, shame—all the crimes in your name” rang out.

After his hearing, Waseem told Socialist Worker, “It should’ve been nerve wracking, but the gallery was full of supporters. It gave me a lot of strength and hope.”

“The truth is it’s about the flag I had on me, it’s not even about me. The Met attacked me because of the Palestine flag. So we’re going to fight this all the way, and we’re going to win with everybody’s support.”

Waseem told the rally, “I pleaded not guilty in court today, and the court has given me a date for 13 March in the crown court. I haven’t assaulted anybody at all.”

One protester said, “The police didn’t get charged—that’s the issue. When the police do this and there’s no accountability, it’s bad.

After the protest outside the court, people marched to Bethnal Green police station to highlight the Metropolitan police’s brutality. Waseem is one of the many people the British state is targeting.

Around 300 rallied outside KCL university in central London and drowned out a counter-protest to chants of, “Israel is a terror state.”

At north London’s City and Islington College (Candi), workers and students showed solidarity with Palestine.

Bill, film and media student, told Socialist Worker, “I’m here because people out there are being slaughtered and the United States and Britain are not doing anything. They are giving Netanyahu all the weapons he wants and saying ‘do whatever you want’.

“It’s up to the people to go to Number 10 and the White House and say, ‘No. No more killing, no more violence.’”

Merdos, an Iranian sixth form lecturer, told Socialist Worker, “The solution should be that people come together in one state with religious freedom. People should be treated as citizens with equal rights.

“We must be against the US—they are hypocrites just supporting the Zionists.”

UCU union member Sean Vernell said that it’s “great that a ceasefire of sorts is going on”. “But the idea that Trump will turn Gaza into some riviera is an insult”.

He added that the arrests of Jamal and Nineham were “a serious offensive by the state on the right to protest”.

A 60-strong rally in the centre of Newcastle heard speakers from the Unite, Unison, UCU and NUJ unions, the Green Party and students.

Healthcare worker Shumel spoke about paramedic Khalil Al-Sharif, who was killed when Israel targeted an ambulance. He explained that both Palestinians in the West Bank and in Britain are facing attacks on their rights to protest.

He said, “We need to defend the right to protest and defend our colleagues in court on trumped up charges.

“Today it’s about Palestine but it will be anti-racism, climate change and workers’ rights tomorrow.”

Student Georgia said that Northumbria University has accepted money from arms company Lockheed Martin.“We have seen these partnerships across universities globally,” she added.

“Lockheed Martin is gloating about using knowledge from our university to make their weapons of war more efficient.

“We need to stand up together and say not in our universities, not in our workplace, not in our city and not in our world.

“This is a symptom of a sick system where educational institutes, workplaces and our government put profit before people.”

In Portsmouth, around 40 people joined a lunchtime protest to mark the workplace day of action.

Jon Woods, a member of the Unison union, told Socialist Worker, “The Palestine network at the civic offices is growing and people took Palestine flags for their desks. Social workers were once again well represented.”

He added, “Two workers who sit near each other expect to be told to take the flags down. Unison will support them and point out the Ukrainian flag flies outside the civic offices every day.

“How can you work and not be able express your horror at the genocide?”

In Oxford, around 60 students and workers joined a lunchtime rally. Trade unions included the Oxford University UCU union and its branch banner, Unite and Unison union health workers and PCS civil service workers’ union members.

Rhodes Scholars for Palestine, Stop The War, Oxford Action 4 Palestine and Parents 4 Palestine joined the rally.

Julie, a Palestine campaigner in the city, told Socialist Worker “We condemned the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and demand an end to arms sales to Israel.

“It finished on a rallying call to build the biggest possible turnout for Saturday’s national demonstration for Palestine.”

Karen from Manchester told Socialist Worker, “Greater Manchester mental health Unison ran a solidarity stall this morning, raising money for Medical Aid for Palestine as part of the day of action. We had a cake bake stall inside all day.

“This is a team that is out on strike over mental health staffing levels and understands that the same government that’s cutting mental health is funding genocide in Gaza.”

In Brighton, UCU member Christian told Socialist Worker, “There were protests held in both the city centre and at Brighton University. Unite union members were at the forefront of the city centre protest.

“At the university our protest was small, but there was a great response from those passing as everyone is horrified by what Trump is threatening.”

At Aberdeen university, around two dozen students protested for Palestine.

UK

Continuing the fight – SHA’s leadership team reflect on 2024 and the challenges for 2025

FEBRUARY 14, 2025

By the Socialist Health Association leadership team

The Socialist Health Association is one of the 20 Socialist Societies affiliated to Labour. Like some unions, we have a (small) voice in the affairs of the Party. The current SHA leadership stands firmly for Labour’s traditional values. In health, that means restoring a fully free, fully comprehensive, fully publicly funded, fully publicly provided, and fully publicly run national health and social care service of the highest standard, fighting all forms of inequality in our society and promoting health and wellbeing through socialist principles, as we have done since 1930.

We pay tribute to our outgoing chair, Mark Ladbrooke, who now takes on the mammoth job of national secretary.

We are proud that, under his leadership, in 2024 we backed socialist MPs in the fight for a Labour Government. We endorsed them, helped to fund their campaigns and we volunteered!

At Labour Conference we celebrated victory over the Tories and explained the huge problems of using the market to provide public services.  We worked with union colleagues to demand the best from our incoming Labour government – to abolish the two-child benefit cap, to maintain winter fuel payments and to fund the NHS for winter pressures…  And we will continue!

Our conference motion warned of a two-tier health system with fully qualified doctors being increasingly replaced by rapidly trained physician associates with poor levels of professional support, regulation and accountability.

We contributed to the NHS review, spoke at CLPs and worked with fellow health campaigners as part of the SOSNHS coalition, challenging the drive to make the NHS a mere broker for health corporations. We support demands for a National Care Service to fix the wreckage of our privatised, fragmented, asset-stripped social care system.

Parliamentary briefings have gone to MPs (only possible with the expertise and enthusiasm of our members). Two new branches of the SHA have been launched.

We have returned to our roots as an internationalist organisation. Huge thanks to all who have participated – marching with us on the streets, joining rallies and demonstrations and speaking out at events all over the country. We know that our members demand justice for Palestinians and an end to attacks on health care and breaches of international humanitarian law.

Our SHA leadership team will maintain this stance and develop it in 2025.

Meet the SHA 2025 team

Chair – Dr Rathi Guhadasan Secretary – Mark Ladbrooke Treasurer – Esther Giles

Vice Chairs: Dr Jatinder Hayre, Lesley Spillard, Barbara Roberts, Mads Wainman.

Central Council members: Caroline Bedale, Tony Beddow, Carmel Cadden, Brian Gibbons, Terry Harper, Mark Howell, Judith Kramer, Julius Marstrand, Liz Peretz, Adrian Scandrett, Pat Schan, Harry Stratton, Carmen Williams, Julian Williams, Pam Wortley.

2025 is a crucial year. The NHS and social care remains in crisis, with no hope on offer for staff or patients. The new US administration has brought devastating threats to global health, with the most marginalised and vulnerable the worst affected.

Join the fight at https://sochealth.co.uk/

Photos: c/o SHA

UK

This government needs a lot more than a narrative

 February 10, 2025

Mike Phipps reviews Britain needs change: The Politics of Hope and Labour’s Challenge, edited by Gerry Hassan and Simon Barrow, published by Biteback.

From the outset, the editors of this collection are keen to emphasise that they take a more nuanced line than the standard view of Momentum and the left, which they characterise – simplistically – as: Keir Starmer is the betrayer of Corbynism and can’t be trusted on anything. The irony is that, in searching for what the essentials of Starmerism might be, one can’t avoid the fact that much of his leadership has been about defining itself against the left, rather than articulating a coherent set of policies that can tackle Britain’s multiple problems.

Some critics make a virtue of this incoherence: too much ideology, they argue, gets in the way of workable solutions. It’s better for Starmerism to be post-political, rooted in a technocratic managerialism. Yet behind this façade, we see the acceptance of the most pernicious ideas of neoliberal economic thinking, as in Rachel Reeves’ belief that the economy can be run like the finances of a private household. The likelihood of Keir Starmer’s government making a fresh start while clinging to such bankrupt notions seems remote.

Reeves’ orthodoxy is all the more bewildering, given that even Labour’s traditional opponents were expecting something more progressive from this government. Will Hutton goes so far as to say: “Starmer’s government faces none of the business and financial opposition and scepticism that Wilson, Callagan, Blair and Brown encountered. Rather the opposite.”

Labour’s ideological vacuum was filled in 2024 by short-term electoral tactics. Jeremy Gilbert argues the leadership positioned the Party to the right of the Liberal Democrats at the general election in order to more easily win Tory votes. The problem with this is that the ensuing government is basically a centre-right project, with the result that “Labour members who never voted for Corbyn are not going to be happy.”

Beyond diagnosing Labour’s problems, however, this collection does discuss some policy ideas that the Party could embrace, on the economy and public services in particular. The difficulty is with the more ambitious aim, on the part of some contributors, of constructing a narrative that Labour can elaborate regarding where Britain is and what can be done. The leadership’s adherence, however, to neoliberal economic errors, right wing talking points on immigration and stigmatisation of the sick and disabled makes this look like a lost cause from the outset.

This concern with the “story Labour should be telling” seems to have become a focus of some of the commentariat in recent weeks. John Harris wrote in the Guardian that Labour “needs a better story. Here’s one Starmer could tell.” He suggested a “solid social-democratic narrative.”

Jeremy Gilbert tweeted in response: “Starmer is never going to start telling the social democratic story that John wants him to. It would necessarily involve the government going in a direction that involves confronting some elements of capitalist power, and he’d rather lose an election.” It’s a harsh characterisation but  probably accurate.

Narrative is critically important during election campaigns, but is it so important to governments in office? Coherent policies should create their own narrative binding – and one can’t help but feel that the emphasis on “story” might be an attempt to shift the debate from what Labour is doing to how it communicates. It should hardly need saying that the government’s current woes cannot be reduced to a problem of communication.

This is not a new line of thinking. Anand Menon says in his contribution that the reason the Conservatives after 2010 found it easy to undo the Blair-Brown legacy was because Labour in office “practised social democracy surreptitiously”: they didn’t make the argument for it and embed it in the minds of the British public.

That’s one view. Another might be that the Tories were able to overturn some of the modest achievements of New Labour precisely because those achievements were quite limited and shallow.

The chapters on Britain’s place in the international order make even gloomier reading. Fewer than a fifth of people who voted for Brexit think it’s currently going well, but neither of the two main parties wanted to talk about that during the general election campaign. Unless the current government decides pro-actively what it wants its relationship with the EU to be, Britain will increasingly be defined as an adjunct of the Anglosphere, dominated by a protectionist and intolerant right wing United States.

Overall, this collection disappoints. The diagnosis of a Britain crying out for change is accurate, but the constitutional changes, favoured by the editors, which are necessary to make governance more effective, are unlikely to be top priority for either Cabinet or voters. It’s clear that Labour in office will be judged on how effectively it solves the cost of living crisis and repairs our derelict public services. Nor are these goals incompatible with a radical green agenda if the leadership has the courage to embrace it.

As for narrative, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour did quite well in 2017, when it turned the tables on its opponents, labelled them as ideologically motivated and doctrinaire, and proposed commonsense socialist solutions to fix Britain’s problems. That might be worth a second look.

Mike Phipps’ book Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow: The Labour Party after Jeremy Corbyn (OR Books, 2022) can be ordered here.