THATCHER'S BRITAIN

A Long Way To Wapping – GFTU

11th June 2025G1 Commenton A Long Way To Wapping – GFTU

“Media owners led the vicious, unremitting campaigns against the unions in support of the incoming 1979 Tory government. The struggle to save jobs across many industries and sectors during this period drew in hundreds of thousands of workers.”

In one of a series of history sessions launched by the General Federation of Trade Unions, the long experience of trade union organisation in the printing industry is being examined this week at the Marx Memorial Library – former union officer Ann Field takes a look at how it was built and attacked.

Two hundred years of struggle and progress for jobs, better conditions and justice for workers were put into reverse by government-promoted attacks in the 1980s. Still in operation today are those same laws curtailing workers’ collective rights. 

Solidarity action at work remains forbidden, indeed the concept of solidarity in general has been effectively outlawed (witness the imprisonment of environmental and Palestine activists). 

Print and other workers began their struggles hundreds of years ago. In defence of jobs and communities or pursuit of better conditions, print and paperworkers were transported or jailed. 

The first recorded strikes of bookbinders, compositors, printers and papermakers took place in the 1780s and 1790s.  Despite legal repression, workers’ mobilisation began to emerge during the early nineteenth century.  

The first recorded agreement in papermaking, the Rochester Resolutions was made in 1804; the first scale of prices (wages) for compositors was determined by employers in 1785, but not until 1847 was it negotiated by the trade union and employers’ representatives.  These scales were accepted within the trade as the norm: employers that did not observe them were deemed to be unfair, and union members were encouraged not to seek employment with them.  Print companies struck off the “fair list” for around 100 years for failure to comply included The Times, and Spottiswoods (the Parliamentary printer).

Craft print unions, formed during the 1800s, included rulebook provision for rates of pay and regulation of apprentice numbers.  Throughout the century, there were at least as many disputes and strikes against wage undercutting and reduction as for advancement in conditions.  

The 30-week strike by London bookbinders in 1839 resulted in recognition of their right to combine, reduction in the number of apprentices (used to undercut adult pay) and withdrawal of prosecutions.  

As print and paperworker trade union membership expanded among non-craft workers demand intensified for better working hours and conditions, inspired by the 9-Hour Movement in other industries. In 1911, after a fierce struggle a landmark agreement established steps towards a 48-hour week and settlement of disputes by conciliation.  

Propelled by the mass struggles of workers during the First World War and Establishment fears of revolution, the Whitley Report to the government recommended trades across all industries form joint industrial councils. Councils were formed for the printing industry and for papermaking.  

The Paperworkers’ Charter of 1919 established minimum rates of pay and reduction in hours for all paper mill workers including non-craft for the first time.

In strikes of 120,000 workers over a six-week period in 1959, print unions achieved the first 40-hour agreement for manual workers; later the 37½-hour week in 1982. Two hundred years to halve the working week. 

By mid-century most printworkers, union and non-union, and almost all national newspaper employees, benefited from terms and conditions of employment negotiated by the unions.  But extended battles took place over pay and conditions for non-craft workers, with particular pay and discrimination barriers for women in the industry to overcome.  

Printworkers used their industrial strength in support of other workers in struggle: strike action to release dockers imprisoned in Pentonville 1972; the 1982 TUC Day of Action in support of health workers and the NHS.  The Upper Clyde Shipbuilders occupation of the shipyards in 1971 inspired the occupation at Briant Colour Printing in 1972.

Notable examples of national newspaper workers using their strength to protest about scurrilous reporting in the press included railway workers in 1919, miners in 1926 (and again in 1984), and Grunwick workers in 1977.

Media owners led the vicious, unremitting campaigns against the unions in support of the incoming 1979 Tory government. The struggle to save jobs across many industries and sectors during this period drew in hundreds of thousands of workers.  Entire workforces were destroyed, collective agreements on pay, conditions, rights of representation and recognition were unilaterally ripped up by employers great and small.

The Tory government aimed to crush miners’ and printworkers’ trade unions supported by financiers, employers and the media. The Wapping dispute exploded within nine months of the end of the miners’ strike, and less than two years after the end of the Stockport Messenger dispute.

Egged on by other media owners, right-wing journalists and academics, Rupert Murdoch’s News International found a way to get rid of an entire unionised workforce. Supported by a chorus falsely denouncing Luddite printers opposing the advance of new technology and printers challenging editorial and press freedom, a strike was provoked to justify dismissal of 5500 workers.  

Nine decades of pay and conditions agreements were abolished. Trade union rights, organisation and customs were dissolved which had been present in the printing industry for two centuries. Despite no reinstatement or recognition by News Corp, Unite GPM&IT members fight on for rights and better conditions in the industry.  Commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the ensuing 13-month dispute will take place next year in 2026.

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• Ann Field is a former national officer for the Graphical, Paper and Media Union (now part of Unite).
• The GFTU’s educational course The Wapping Dispute and Printworker Organisation begins on Thursday 12th June at the Marx Memorial Library- you can find out more and register for this (as well as other free courses being offered) here.
• If you support Labour Outlook’s work amplifying the voices of left movements and struggles here and internationally, please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon.

Workers on a picket during the 1986-87 Wapping dispute (Photo credit: TUC)

 

Military spending is warping our economy to serve Trump imperialism – The Red Weekly Column 

9th June 2025Leave a Commenton Military spending is warping our economy to serve Trump imperialism – The Red Weekly Column 

“The militarisation of our economy is not only forcing cuts on day-to-day spend on social security; it’s also funnelling cash away from productive, job-creating investment… towards a less productive, less job-intensive defence sector – and thereby limiting future growth”

In our Red Weekly Column, Labour Outlook’s Sam Browse writes on the proposal to lift military spending to 5% of GDP.

Last week, NATO Chief Mark Rutte – with the avid support of President Trump – proposed that the defence budgets of those belonging to the military alliance should rise to 5% of GDP. Turning the screws on the British government, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth told journalists “we think everyone is going to get there, we really do. It’s important they do. It’s important that the UK gets there”.

The demand to increase budgets comes only months after a previous Whitehouse intervention saw the Starmer government pledge to raise military spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027-28, with an ambition to push this to £3bn by the 2030s.

Responding to the 5% figure, Britain’s Defence Secretary, John Healey, disturbingly indicated that the government ‘are up for that discussion’.

Calls for the rest of the NATO alliance to increase their military budgets are integral to the Trump administration’s reorientation of American foreign policy and attempts to maintain US global hegemony in the face of an ascendant China. As the US pivots to encircle its main enemy in Asia, withdrawing resources from Eastern Europe and reconfiguring its relationship with Russia in the process, it is insisting that its allies pick up the tab for their own military spend.

This demand – which the British Government has, so far, enthusiastically obliged – is already placing strain on the provision of social security, with £5bn worth of cuts to Personal Independence Payments one of the measures used to offset the 2.5% commitment, alongside a cut to the international aid budget.  

The human cost of the cuts is appalling and totemic of a wider series of wrong priorities – on winter fuel, the two-child benefit cap, and (non-)support for WASPI women. But subservience to US imperial interests also risks structurally warping the British economy, rigging it even more against workers.

In the Government’s Strategic Defence Review, published last week, the Prime Minister writes that British defence will become ‘the fundamental organising principle of government’. Starmer continues –

“We must drive a new partnership with industry and a radical reform of procurement, creating jobs, wealth, and opportunity in every corner of our country – this is the ‘defence dividend’ which we are determined to seize. It must drive innovation at a wartime pace, making the UK the leading edge of innovation in NATO and equipping our forces with the full range of conventional and technological capabilities. And it must foster a collective national endeavour through which the state, business, and society unite in pursuit of the security of the nation and the prosperity of its people.”

In short, military spending will become – not only an aspect of – but the central plank in Britain’s economic strategy. In this regard, it’s illuminating to note the capital spend for the next four years, set out in the Autumn budget. Investment is due to grow by 4.3% next year, 2.1% the year after, and falls to -0.9% and -0.1% in 2028-29 and 2029-30. On the basis of the 2.5% increase in military spending alone, the Institute for Fiscal Studies argues that –

“All of the increase in capital spending over the Spending Review period has already been implicitly allocated to defence. Given that, it will not be possible to also prioritise investments in public services, net zero and growth-friendly areas while staying within the envelope”.

While next week’s Spending Review will provide the details, the IFS is clear: even before any hike to 5%, current plans for defence spending already eat up any increase in capital budgets for the coming four years – gone any aspiration for additional spending on projects extraneous to the drive to war, such as those which tackle the climate crisis, or that invest in our crumbling hospitals or schools.    

And for those who think investment in military infrastructure has its own “defence dividend” as the prime Minister has termed it, there are far better ways of growing the economy and addressing inequality.  

A recent House of Commons Library report shows that investment overwhelmingly falls in the South West and South East – areas where poverty levels are lower than most of the rest of Britain. Rethinking Security argue that 56% of MoD spending is actually in London and the South, with 40% in a roughly 50 mile radius of Salisbury Plain.

The defence sector is high tech – and therefore less intensive in the amount of jobs it creates. As the Strategic Defence Review notes, military spending stood at 2.3% of GDP in 2023-24 and supported 1 in 60 (1.7%) of jobs in the UK. But that’s only a ratio of 1% of GDP to 0.74% of total jobs – hardly a “dividend”. It follows that there must be more efficient forms of investment that not only create more jobs, but do so across the whole of the country, and without handing billions of pounds in dividends to a handful of multinational companies in the process.

In other words, the militarisation of our economy is not only forcing cuts on day-to-day spend on social security; it’s also funnelling cash away from productive, job-creating investment in infrastructure, tackling the climate emergency, or delivering better equipped public services, towards a less productive, less job-intensive defence sector – and thereby limiting future growth, even in years where investment is forecast to grow.

Rather than militarise our economy, immiserate people even further, and make serving US imperial power ‘the fundamental organising principle of government’, we need a socialist industrial and economic strategy that serves people and planet – combined with a foreign policy that seeks peace and de-escalation. No to a Trump-inflated military budget – we must continue to say loudly and clearly: we demand “welfare not warfare”.     

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• The Red Weekly Column will appear each Monday on Labour Outlook from one of our regular socialist contributors.
• Sam Browse is an organiser for Arise Festival and a regular contributor to Labour Outlook. You can follow him on Twitter/X here.  
• If you support Labour Outlook’s work amplifying the voices of left movements and struggles here and internationally, please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon.

 

“Uncle Dickie”: A Personification – Lord Mountbatten’s sexual abuse at Kincora Boys’ Home

9th June 2025Geoff Bell, Ireland1 Commenton “Uncle Dickie”: A Personification – Lord Mountbatten’s sexual abuse at Kincora Boys’ Home

“The government has declared its files on Kincora so top secret that they will not be fully released until 2085. If they have nothing to hide, then what are they hiding?”

By Geoff Bell

Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas Mountbatten was born in Windsor on 25 June 1900. He was a great-grandson of Queen Victoria. He was a cousin of Queen Elizabeth II. He was an uncle of her husband Prince Philip. He was a great uncle to the present King Charles III. Charles has been reported by many as being very close to “Uncle Dickie” in his teenage years and early twenties.

Mountbatten joined the Royal Navy in 1916. In 1934 he received his first command of a destroyer. He was a British military leader during the Second World War. After the war he was appointed viceroy of India and then became governor-general of India until June 1948.

In 1953, Mountbatten returned to the Royal Navy, becoming commander of a new NATO Mediterranean command. In 1954 he became first sea lord, a position held by his father more than 40 years before. Finally, in 1959, he became chief of the defence staff; in 1965 he retired from the navy.

Oh yes. One more thing. He was a paedophile who raped boys.

This last bit of information is claimed and detailed in a new book, Kincora: Britain’s Shame by former BBC journalist Chris Moore, recently published in Ireland by Merrion Press.

The revelation concerning Mountbatten is one of many in the book. Its centrepiece is the story of a Belfast boys’ home, Kincora, which opened in 1958 and became a centre for child rape by the three men who ran it for two decades. One of the three was William McGrath who was also a leading organiser and theorist for unionism/loyalism and a member of the Orange Order. As Moore shows, McGrath – “the beast of Kincora” as he became known –   was also a paid agent of MI5.

Kincora had ugly rumours attached to it for most of the 1960s and 1970s, and many people who lived in Belfast then heard them, including myself. The problem was sorting out fact from fiction, innuendo from reality. This is what Chris Moore has now done.

He shows that Kincora staff subjected the boys and young men who were placed there to all manner of sexual, physical and mental horrors; and that it was also somewhere used by many others, especially from British and north of Ireland elites, who visited the home to rape the boys.

The involvement of MI5 was not an incidental sub plot. Rather, it was fundamental to the continued existence of the home and what went on there. Anytime anyone started asking too many questions about Kincora then MI5 and others, operating with the full knowledge of the British government, were warned off. Meanwhile, MI5 worked in partnership with McGrath to direct unionist/loyalist paramilitaries and, in return, covered up the child rape.

Lord Mountbatten was one of those who visited Kincora, but he also had Kincora boys trafficked to his estate on the other side of the Irish border. There were at least five Kincora victims of “Dickie” as he tended to introduce himself. Chris Moore tracked down and interviewed three of these. One, Arthur Smith, was eleven when he was raped. He and the others identified Mountbatten when his face was all over the newspapers after he was blown up by the IRA, on a boat in a lake near his southern Irish estate.

It is this connection, the author concludes, that explains why the government, mainly through MI5, covered up Kincora as best they could, although the M15/unionist collaboration was also a factor. There was a trial and guilty verdict of McGrath, the other two staff members and three others. There were other enquiries. But they were limited, usually deliberately so by the British government. Margaret Thatcher was one of those who, Moore shows, played her part in this.

The nature of Chris Moore’s enquiries means the book often uses unattributed sources and non-referenced documentation. But the essential veracity of the author’s account shines through. And there is one unchallengeable fact that backs up his account: the government has declared its files on Kincora so top secret that they will not be fully released until 2085. If they have nothing to hide, then what are they hiding?

 Of course, this question can be asked about much else concerning the British state in the north of Ireland during the Troubles. In that sense the story of Kincora, Mountbatten, MI5 and its partnership with loyalism doesn’t shock as much as it should: these days such revelations are almost commonplace. Nevertheless, the book is another important educational about the British elite in Ireland: Mountbatten is an apposite personification of that elite in that country.

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• ‘Kincora: Britain’s Shame: Mountbatten, MI5, the Belfast Boys’ Home Sex Abuse Scandal and the British Cover-Up‘ by Chris Moore was published in paperback on 15 May.
• Geoff Bell is an executive member of Labour for Irish Unity and the author The Twilight of Unionism – you can order a copy from Verso books here. 
• You can follow Labour for Irish Unity on Facebook and Twitter/X. 

 UK

Tommy Robinson’s release, why he is significant, & what is to be done

“It must be remembered that it is Robinson’s ‘patriot’ supporters who rioted through our cities & towns, terrorising & attacking people of colour.”

By Ben Liao

Tommy Robinson is out. Originally due to be released on 26 July, Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) was granted an early escape on Tuesday.

After being held at HMP Woodhill, in Buckinghamshire, Robinson emerged with a grizzly beard and grown-out hair. Pretending as if he had been stranded on a desert island. He then promptly made his way down to the barbers for a trim, posting on X that he was going from ‘hobo to hero’. 

Although it is laughable for us, Robinson is a hero to many of his far-right fans. His influence on British politics and ability to create space for extreme-right ideas is remarkable. It is worth remembering that Robinson has been at the centre of, or near to, most prominent far-right and racist street movements for quite a few years now. His ‘Unite the Kingdom’ marches have made huge breakthroughs for the far-right, bringing together an array of fascist forces like the BNP, Homeland and the National Front. 

He has played a huge role in the normalisation of far-right ideology, being one of the key causes of the terrifying regression around rejecting racism. Sending us back to what he might consider the ‘good old days’ of the heights of the National Front. 

While he may be a racist thug, we should not ignore his centrality as a political operator for the far right. It is difficult to imagine they would be doing anywhere near as well without him. Nigel Farage, being the ‘respectable’ side of the coin, of course, more than plays his part, but Robinson has cultivated the surging street movements.

It must be remembered that it is Robinson’s ‘patriot’ supporters who rioted through our cities and towns, terrorising and attacking people of colour. Again, it is difficult to see how we could have gotten to that point without his cultivation of a (relatively) united far-right. 

Almost immediately on his release from prison, Robinson announced a ‘Free Speech Festival’ in London on September 13th, which he claims will bring together ‘Unite the Kingdom’, MAGA (Make America Great Again) and MEGA (Make England Great Again). His claim to have speakers coming from America, Canada, Europe, and Australia highlights the seriousness and international connectedness of his movement. It is clear they aren’t going anywhere. 

Any thinking that their support could collapse into Reform UK as the latter rises will prove to be a pipe dream. The two will grow together, each one providing a form of legitimacy for the other. For Reform UK, Robinson’s far-right street movement provides a never-ending push at the boundary of acceptability when it comes to racist rhetoric. For Robinson, Reform UK gives a ‘soft edge’ and indeed some politicians who are willing to apologise for him, also allowing him to push the boundaries. 

So, what is to be done? There are three key elements to the struggle against Robinson and his far-right thugs. In no particular order of importance: anti-racist street presence, hardening anti-racism within our unions and social movements, and, once again, the need for a real alternative to disaster capitalism. 

Anti-racist street presence is crucial. While some question the strategy of counter-demonstrations against Robinson’s far-right hate fests, to leave them unopposed would be a mistake for multiple reasons. Firstly, to leave them unopposed would be to show a lack of resistance to their ideas. As anyone who has attended the incredible marches for Palestine knows, mass mobilisation breeds confidence and increases morale. To leave the far-right unattended would be to allow them to maximise this for their side. 

It is also a crucial outlet for people who have come under intense attack from across the political spectrum to stand up and fight back. The political climate of the last year has made many afraid. To march against the far-right who seek to terrorise us is to strike back against their hate. So on 13 September and beyond, when they march, we must mobilise to show them they don’t run our streets. 

We also need to redouble efforts to further anti-racism in our trade unions. The rise of Reform has shown potential fragility in the currently decent positions of our unions towards anti-racism. Some unions are starting to become more cautious in calling out the toxic narratives of the far-right as it becomes clear that relatively large numbers of members support Reform. For this reason, anti-racists must organise at every level to push our unions to have a proactive strategy to defeat the racism of the far-right. 

This is, of course, always said, but it is always true. The institutions of the working class must defend workers of all backgrounds. Any move otherwise would be a huge blow to solidarity and the legitimacy of the trade unions as institutions. We have to resist reactionary behaviour in these difficult times. Pushing for stronger anti-racism in trade unions must be a priority, not an afterthought. 

The same must also be done in other social movements and community organisations, many of which remain led and dominated by white people in many areas, from tenants’ unions to the climate movement, to student organisations and beyond. In the face of regression, we must use these forums to push fearlessly for progress.

Last but not least, the government. Many of us feel like a broken record at this point, but the collapse in living standards for many has led directly to the rise of the far-right. If your high street is barren, your local industry vanished many years ago, and you can’t access a home you can afford, crisis breeds insecurity. Insecurity is quickly swept up by the far-right. The deep and justified anger at the political establishment is easily subverted and pointed towards a scapegoat. The clamour on the far-right that British culture is being destroyed, speaks to that deep crisis and insecurity rooted in the material decline so many have experienced. 

There is no way out of this through capitalism, there will be no tinkering solution. As global capitalism slowly declines, it produces more reactionary movements and seeks to deflect societal anger onto the easier target, the migrant or person of colour. The primary goal – preservation of capital power – is maintained through this unnatural division of the working class. Capitalism divides us against each other, forcing us to compete for a smaller and smaller piece of the pie. As the crisis deepens, the tendency to divide, which fuels the far-right, will likely intensify. Capitalism tells us to ignore the gap between workers and the super-rich and instead punch sideways, onto people also suffering from exploitation.

A bold socialist government which redesigns the economy to prioritise allocation of resources to produce for need over greed, is the only holistic solution to this crisis. Only when we move to reduce the outrageous inequality in our society can we begin to heal the deep anger people fear. This inequality, the natural byproduct of capitalism, is key to the rise of the far-right and underpins the deep bitterness that they exploit. Only real change can heal these divisions long-term. As always, it is socialism or barbarism. 

So yes, there is much to be done. But the stakes are high. The far-right pretend to be on the side of workers when in reality their agenda will only lead to a further erosion of power, not a chance to regain control. For those who have lived our formative years in the 21st century, we are entering the struggle of our lives. This is not a time for despair – it is a time for action, no matter how difficult. 

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• Ben Liao is a socialist and anti-racist activist. You can follow him on Twitter/X.
• If you support Labour Outlook’s work amplifying the voices of left movements and struggles here and internationally, please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon.

Featured image: Birmingham Unison join the Stand Up To Racism demonstration against Tommy Robinson. Photo credit: Birmingham UNISON.

 

Rigged Justice: Laila Soueif’s hunger strike is a feminist call to arms

June 12, 2025HubMP2012

Janey Starling explains why Laila Soueif’s hunger strike to release her son imprisoned in Egypt raises broader questions about dehumanising incarceration, including in Britain.

Dr Laila Soueif’s hunger strike to demand the release of her son, British-Egyptian writer and political prisoner Alaa Abd El-Fatteh, is not just an act of protest. It is a reclamation of her dignity and rights as a mother — two things that prisons universally strip from prisoners and their families all over the world.

In the U.K., I run the ‘No Births Behind Bars’ campaign to end the imprisonment of pregnant women. Every week, our prison system tears children from their mothers. Prison cuts through the maternal bonds mothers have with their infants, bonds that form the very foundations of human life itself. Prisons destroy all that it means to love and raise your children in safety – all in the name of ‘justice’.

Dr Laila is fighting for justice – but not the legal kind. Something far bigger and far more fundamental: reproductive justice. Reproductive justice is about a woman’s right to have – or not have – children and to raise those children in safe and loving conditions. Speaking to the BBC, Laila has said that her hunger strike – which has now surpassed 250 days – is driven by her desire to get “all my children and grandchildren’s lives back on track.”

Protest often requires us to put our bodies directly on the line. But Laila’s chosen strategy of a hunger strike enables her to reclaim the bodily dignity that has been denied to her by two governments: the Egyptian regime with its pointless, apparently endless, incarceration of her son, and the British government, with its staunch indifference to Alaa’s detention. 

Hunger strike as an act of dignity is something Alaa himself wrote about in 2014, in the context of his own prison hunger strike. In his words: “There’s no dignity for a body deprived of the embrace of its loved ones.”

And this is what Laila’s hunger strike brings into focus: the dehumanisation and indignity of incarceration, not just for the person incarcerated, but their entire family. And in this case, not just by one carceral state, but two: both Britain and Egypt.

Globally, mothers are always on the frontline of the fight against prisons. When their children are in prison, it is always mothers and grandmothers who keep the home fires burning, take on the care of their grandchildren and fight like tigers for their children’s release from the state’s claws.

In the UK, mothers have spearheaded the national campaign against the barbaric Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentencing scheme, which has left thousands languishing inside prisons on indefinite sentences. Shirley DeBono, whose son Shaun was jailed for 2.5 years for stealing a phone yet ended up serving over ten years in English prisons with a never-ending set of extensions to his sentence, has tirelessly kept the IPP scandal in the national spotlight. IPP sentences, which operate in a way not dissimilar to how Alaa is being treated in Egypt, are now declared by UN experts as a form of torture. Without Shirley’s commitment to her son’s liberation, it would likely still be buried in the shadows of our justice system. 

It’s also mothers who are campaigning against Britain’s ghastly joint enterprise laws that send people to prison for murders they never committed, solely because they were present at the scene. Jan Cunliffe, whose 15-year-old, blind son was given a life sentence for a murder someone else admitted to, co-founded the campaign group JENGbA (Joint Enterprise Not Guilty by Association) along with another mother, Gloria Morrison, whose son’s best friend is also serving a life sentence under these laws. Writing about their decision in the Guardian, Jan said: “We could both see that the justice system was rigged.”

Dr Laila knows how rigged systems operate. She also knows that once a family becomes ensnared in the grinding, monolithic machinery of the criminal legal system, there is no fast way out and there will be no justice by the state’s mechanisms. The British state has left Alaa to languish in prison for over a decade now, not unlike the thousands of IPP prisoners in English jails. And in her love and her tenacity, Laila is indirectly united with Shirley, Jan and the countless other mothers fighting for their children’s release from the cages they have been locked in. Laila’s campaign for her son’s release is done in pursuit of what it truly means to live, and love – the two things that prisons are designed to disrupt and destroy. 

And on the other side, these mothers all share a common target: David Lammy. Lammy, while in opposition, decried each of the respective injustices they faced at the hands of carceral systems but, now in power, pretends as though he is powerless to act on any of them. 

When he was Shadow Justice Secretary, David Lammy promised that Labour would reform the “shoddy, outdated” joint enterprise laws. Lammy also labelled IPP sentences “cruel” and called for a cross-party effort to take responsibility for the issue. Now in power, his government has not changed either of these gross injustices.

 Similarly, when Lammy was Shadow Foreign Secretary, he was a strong supporter of the campaign for Alaa’s release. In 2022, Lammy called for the Foreign Office to leverage the UK’s £4bn trading partnership with Egypt to secure Alaa’s freedom. Now, Lammy is the Foreign Secretary, and it is firmly within his power to deliver on his own words and suspend trade until Alaa is released. 

Labour’s commitment to Alaa’s release must now move from diplomacy to disruption. We know that Keir Starmer has directly asked President El-Sisi to release Alaa over the phone, but to no avail. The UK is the largest single foreign investor in Egypt and holds a unique power to force Sisi’s hand. A suspension of trade and arms supply to Egypt is a surefire way to secure Alaa’s release.

There can be no further delay. Laila has already lost almost half of her body weight and doctors say her survival to this point “defies all medical explanation”. A trade and arms embargo should have already happened weeks ago – and all Labour MPs should be fighting for it to start today.

Like all mothers fighting against the cruelty of incarceration, Laila Soueif’s love for her son is stronger than the state’s iron fist. Now emaciated in her hospital bed at St Thomas’ Hospital in London, she is a stone’s throw from Westminster, the epicentre of the British political system. Keir Starmer and David Lammy cannot continue to turn their backs on her by paying lip service alone. It is within their power to suspend Britain’s trade with Egypt. In doing so, they will free not just Alaa, but Laila too. 

Janey Starling is co-director of feminist campaign organisation Level Up, which leads the national campaign to end the imprisonment of pregnant women and mothers.

 Image: Laila Soueif, c/o her daughter, Sanaa.

How the US covered up the murder of its own citizens in the Chilean coup

JUNE 15, 2025

Mike Phipps reviews Chile in Their Hearts: The Untold Story of Two Americans Who Went Missing after the Coup, by John Dinges, published by University of California Press.

During the Popular Unity years, from 1970 to September 1973, (when Salvador Allende’s democratically elected Socialist government was brutally overthrown by a military coup), some 20,000 foreigners went to Chile to solidarise with the political process. This book is about two young Americans, Charlie Horman and Frank Teruggi, who arrived in 1972 and a year later were secretly executed by the Chilean military.

The US administration’s hostility to Allende was such that President Nixon ordered the CIA to prevent him from even being inaugurated. When that failed, the US government began a covert campaign of destabilisation, culminating in the military coup of September 1973.

Horman and Teruggi were just two of the thousands of victims of the repression, but their killing had a significant impact in the US and inspired the Oscar-winning 1983 film Missing, starring Hollywood A-listers Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek. This new account by John Dinges aims to sift the facts from the fictionalised account, focusing on the issue of supposed collusion of US officials in the killing of the two men.

The author himself was in Chile at the time of the coup and shared the enthusiasm for the Socialist experiment of other internationalists. He knew Teruggi in particular. His investigation finds no evidence of advance US advance approval of the two executions, but demonstrates definitively that the US Embassy and State Department shielded the regime, “by hiding the truth, conducting a sham investigation, and sanctioning Chile’s official coverup of the murders.”

Charlie Horman was a middle class Harvard graduate, 30 years old when he went to Chile. He was a far more political figure than that portrayed in Missing, having been involved in the student movement to register Black voters in the Deep South in the 1960s and beaten by Louisiana police for his pains. He narrowly escaped another beating when as a journalist he covered the anti-war protests outside the Democratic Party National Convention in Chicago in 1968. In Chile, he and his wife Joyce threw themselves into film-making projects.

Frank Teruggi was just 22 when he arrived in Chile. From a more working class background, he had been an activist in the anti-war movement. In Chile, he joined the voluntary work brigades in the countryside to support the Socialist government’s agrarian reform programme, the centrepiece of which was the expropriation of the large latifundios. He was increasingly in contact with activists in the MIR, Chile’s largest revolutionary group.

The last year of the Popular Unity government was one of crisis. A transport strike by truck owners and small businessmen virtually shut down the economy for three weeks in October 1972. To defuse the growing crisis, Allende had given Cabinet posts to top military officers. Yet in March 1973, Allende’s party actually won seats in both houses of the legislature, demonstrating that it was likely that Allende and Popular Unity would be re-elected.

The possibility of a military takeover was real. In June 1973, a short-lived coup attempt left 22 people dead. Allende took to the airwaves to call on people to defend the government, “to act with prudence with whatever material they have at hand.” Horman did not hesitate to approach his New York contacts for financial help in providing workers’ self-defence.

Pinochet’s coup came on September 11th. Within a week, 4,000 people had been arrested within Santiago alone. Horman was one of them, seized on September 17th, his house ransacked. A day later, his body – although it would not be identified for a month – turned up in the morgue, with multiple gunshot wounds to the head.

On September 20th, five policemen came to Teruggi’s house and politely asked to search it. They then arrested him. His body, unidentified, arrived in the morgue two days later, with signs of beating, torture and gunshot wounds to the head and chest. Later testimony from people who had been interrogated alongside him confirmed that he had been tortured with electroshock and brutally beaten.

The situation of the two Americans was not unique. At least 840 foreigners had been swept into Chilean prisons in the coup and 49 killed. Many Embassies opened their doors not just to foreigners but also Chileans under threat. Not the US Embassy, however: Joyce Horman was one of many Americans refused protection when she went to the US Consulate. Nor is there any record of the US Embassy making any representations to the coup authorities between the time Frank Teruggi was seized and his execution nearly three days later.

As Dinges notes, “The Embassy’s duty to help its citizens was on collision course with its orders to cooperate with the government that was detaining and – in Horman’s and Teruggi’s cases killing – US citizens.”

Worse, as subsequent investigations took place, the US Embassy ignored and withheld from the families information gathered by its own personnel, as Dinges details here. It took over a month of pressure to uncover the truth about Horman’s murder and the Chilean military’s deliberate ‘disappearance’ of him. This new tactic was widely applied by the coup regime which ‘disappeared’ some 1,400 of its executed victims, which enabled it to deny responsibility for the mass killing it perpetrated.

Dinges spends a lot of time debunking the idea that Horman was perhaps executed, with the foreknowledge of US officials, because he “knew too much”, that is, had uncovered US involvement in the planned coup days before it happened. This narrative was advanced in the film Missing.

The truth is probably more banal. The political activities of the two Americans, their sympathy for the MIR, their possession of leftist literature – all this was more than enough to seal their fate during the ferocious repression in the first days of the coup. Those who ordered their execution probably reasoned that US officials, who had approved the military takeover would not be too bothered about what happened to the two individuals. On that, they were right. Many Chileans, it should be said, were executed for less.

The failure of the US to show much concern about the fate of its citizens may have had wider destructive consequences. It signalled to the Chilean dictatorship that it wished it to succeed, whatever the costs. Such an attitude may have encouraged the military regime to send assassins to Washington DC in 1976 to use a car bomb to kill a prominent exile leader, Orlando Letelier, alongside an American woman, Ronni Moffitt, who was riding with him.

As Pinochet’s power eventually waned, efforts were made to secure justice through the Chilean courts. The Horman family filed charges of murder and kidnapping in 2000. Sixteen years later, one of Chile’s notorious human rights criminals was convicted and sentenced and the two American families received financial compensation. The author went through seventeen volumes of judicial evidence as part of the research to reach his own conclusions about the case.

“It would be preferable,” says the author, “if the US government would allow alleged crimes and abuses involving US officials to be fully investigated by officially sanctioned bodies.” If that sounds far-fetched, it should be remembered that Chile itself has made significant efforts to uncover the human rights abuses of this period. But the US has shown little interest in examining its own role in the coup.

 In the absence of an official investigation into the fate of the two US citizens, journalistic efforts of this kind are virtually the only way to establish the facts. Horman and Teruggi were two of the thousands of victims murdered by the Chilean dictatorship, urged on by the US government. Most did not get a film made or a book written about them.  But in Chile they say “Ni perdon ni olvido”: “We will not forget and we will not pardon.”

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

 

The Class Struggle in UK Parliament: 

Richard Burgon MP, Socialist Campaign Group

June 14, 2025HubMP2012

In the latest episode of the Labour Left Podcast, Bryn Griffiths speaks to Richard Burgon, the Secretary of the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs, on the theme of the class struggle in Parliament and the crucial role of the Labour left.

The whole of the Left is currently debating strategy as we deal with the ongoing impact of our defeat in 2019 and  the consequent Starmer ascendancy alongside Morgan McSweeney – his Chief of Staff and henchman.

The first part of the podcast looks at the making of Richard Burgon’s political thinking and the huge debt he owes to the legacy of Tony Benn.

Richard Burgon meets Tony Benn for the first time.

The long-form discussion that follows ranges across Labour’s craven Atlanticism and its impact on Gaza, Richard’s challenge to ‘Reevenomics’, Kanagasoorium’s concept of a Labour ‘sandcastle majority’, Lord Glassman’s Blue Labour threat to anything recognisable as progressive politics and finally we consider the terrifying rise of Reform. 

On the Labour Left Podcast we always go beyond diagnosing the problem. The whole point is not to simply bemoan what is; the point is to actually change things.

So, what should we do? Looking at the options before us Richard considers whether proportional representation could be amongst the defensive measures we use to contain Farage. Moving to the left, we look at the Campaign Group’s continuing role in the context of an emergent Green Left and the constant chatter about a new left party.  We consider the Campaign Group’s role as a buckle and consider the historical precedent of a ‘twin track approach’.

As regular listeners know to expect, it’s not all serious stuff and we have a laugh in the face of adversity along the way.  So, prepare yourself for football angst,  Metalhead confessions and some blunt talk from Dennis Skinner.

If you are enjoying the podcast please subscribe on YouTube or your favourite podcast platform so you never miss a future episode.  If you like what the Labour Left Podcast is trying to achieve, please help us to get the podcast in front of more people by sharing, following, liking, rating and commenting on every episode you watch.

If you’re new to the Labour Left Podcast, please take a look at our back catalogue.  The last episode looked at the fight for a United Ireland with historian Geoff Bell; Previous episodes have included a conversation with Compass’s Neal Lawson; Rachel Shabi talking about her book The Truth About Antisemitism;  Bernard Regan of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign;  Prof Harvey J Kaye on the legacy of the Communist Historians; Prof Corinne Fowler, talking about her book Our Island Stories: Country Walks Through Colonial Britain; Andrew Fisher telling the story behind For the Many Not the Few Labour’s 2017 manifesto; Jeremy Gilbert, a Prof of Cultural and Political Theory, a champion of Gramsci, talking about Thatcherism; episodes with Mish Rahman, Rachel Godfrey Wood and Hilary Schan on the contemporary Labour Left; Mike Phipps, author of Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow, taking a long-term look at the Labour left;  Mike Jackson, co-founder of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, on the Great 1984-85 Miners’ Strike; political activist Liz Davies telling her story as the dissenter within Blair’s New Labour; Rachel Garnham, a current co-Chair of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy looking back at the history of the fight for democracy in the British Labour Party; and finally myself telling the story of Brighton Labour Briefing, a local Bennite magazine in the 1980s.

You can watch the podcast on YouTube, Apple Podcasts here, Audible here and listen to it on Spotify here  If your favourite podcast site isn’t listed, just search for the Labour Left Podcast. 

Bryn Griffiths is an activist in Colchester Labour Party and North Essex World Transformed. He is the Vice-Chair of Momentum and sits on the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy’s Executive. 

Bryn hosts Labour Hub’s spin off – the Labour Left Podcast.  You can find all the episodes of the podcast here  or if you prefer audio platforms (for example Amazon, Audible Spotify, Apple etc,) go to your favourite podcast provider and just search for the Labour Left Podcast.

 

Gaza Genocide: French Dockers Take A Stand

By George Binette

Dockworkers in the southern French port of Fos-sur-Mer, less than 30 miles from Marseille, refused on Thursday (6th June) to handle a container destined for the Israeli port of Haifa. The container holds 19 pallets of parts for machine guns allegedly used by IDF troops in the prosecuting Israel’s endless war on the people of Gaza. The parts in question, manufactured by Eurolinks SIPR Defence, serve to accelerate rapid bursts of fire from the weapons.

The dockers organised in a union under the umbrella of the CGT, France’s largest union federation, issued a statement declaring: “The port of Marseille-Fos must not be used to supply the Israeli army… dockworkers and port employees at the Gulf of Fos will not be complicit in the ongoing genocide orchestrated by the Israeli government.”

The dockers had last month prevented another ship bound for Israel from docking at their port, while members of the Swedish Dockworkers’ Union imposed a limited embargo this past winter on weapons shipments to Israel. This action appears to have triggered the sacking of Eric Helgeson, one of the union’s leading representatives at the port Gothenburg. Elsewhere, Moroccan and Spanish workers have also intervened to halt or at least delay vessels bound for Israel in recent months.

The vessel that was due to carry the shipment from France, operated by the Israeli-based ZIM shipping line, apparently set sail without the machine gun parts, heading for the Italian port of Genoa. Dockers there belonging to the Unione di Sindicale Base have mounted a picket line with the aim of ensuring the ship did not dock at Genoa’s harbour.

The CGT’s secretary general, Sophie Binet, told reporters at a press conference in Strasbourg:  “We are very proud of this action led by our comrades, and which is part of the CGT’s long internationalist tradition for peace.” She added: “It is unacceptable that CGT dockers should be the ones forced to uphold the fundamental principles of international law and French values. The government must immediately block all arms deliveries to the State of Israel.”

Meanwhile, politicians from La France Insoumise, including party leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the head of France’s Parti Socialiste, praised the dockers’ action. While officials in the Macron government have tried to suggest that the parts exported by Eurolinks SIPR Defence are not actually used by the IDF in Gaza, the company’s own representatives have so far remained silent.

In England, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign has called for a day of protests on Tuesday 17th June at three sites, which provide parts for F-35 fighter jets. The factories are located near Havant, Hampshire, Rochester, Kent and Sheffield. Of course, this poses the question of when dockers or other transport workers in Britain might follow the lead of their French, Italian and other international counterparts.

George Binette, a Massachusetts native, is a retired union activist, vice-chair of Camden Trades Council and former Trade Union Liaison Officer of Hackney North & Stoke Newington CLP.