In Memoriam: Carol Brickley
26 October 1947-16 September 2019
Five years after her death, we remember our comrade Carol, a founding member of the RCG and a revolutionary anti-imperialist to the end. Forty-five years ago, in the editorial for the very first issue of Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! she committed our organisation to stand alongside the oppressed and working class around the world in their struggle against British imperialism, and to expose the attempts of the opportunists to sabotage the building of a revolutionary, anti-imperialist and anti-racist movement in this country. That remains our commitment today, as we stand alongside the Palestinian liberation struggle and oppose the same attempts of the left and its hangers-on to divert the energy and anger of the working class into vapid electoral channels. It is the best tribute we can pay to her legacy.
RCG solidarity with Irish struggle distorted
It is cheering to read in Rut Nic Foirbeis’ recent book A History of Irish Republicanism in Dundee c1840 to 1985 that the immigrant Irish in Dundee, and their Chartist allies, chased the Orange Order down the High Street and stoned their police protectors on 12 July 1841. Fifty years later James Connolly’s Free Speech campaign, formed to challenge the magistrates’ banning of striking carters’ demonstrations, mustered 20,000 people. The same numbers marched in 1922 singing the Soldiers Song and the Internationale. All solid evidence of Dundee’s contribution to Ireland’s centuries-old struggle for freedom from British rule and for socialism… till a poisonous final chapter revises events in the last phase of that support.
The author recently made a speech in Edinburgh to mark the anniversary of the execution of Connolly on 12 May 1916. She was standing below a commemorative plaque which the Revolutionary Communist Group in alliance with the Edinburgh Irish Solidarity Committee had restored and rededicated in the early 1980s. It is the record of the RCG/FRFI in that period that the author derides and distorts. We were too ‘serious’, she snipes – as hundreds of Irish Republican prisoners fought for political status and ten men died on hunger strike. We ‘lectured’ working class youth as we sought to build broad and principled anti-imperialist solidarity with their struggle.
Aye, there were vigorous arguments and splits as the RCG sought to steer that solidarity away from the reactionary dead end of tailing Sinn Fein… without attacking Sinn Fein as part of the Republican Movement then, a difficult task. Watching Sinn Fein now chasing Palestinians out of its meeting in Belfast during the current genocide in Gaza begs the question as to who is serious about anti-imperialism! The author’s revisionist tripe has a purpose: to promote a deliberately un-defined ‘republican activism’ over a precisely defined and concrete position based on Marxism, that builds common cause between Ireland’s legitimate national struggle and the working class here in the oppressor country. That remains the goal and its success will be a fundamental contribution to socialist organisation. This book sets that struggle back by insidiously attempting to undermine the RCG’s contribution and that of those in Britain and Ireland who want more politics and more organisation built on the fullest opposition to imperialism.
MICHAEL MCGREGOR
Dundee
Manchester police: sexist and brutal
A damning report by the former Victims’ Commissioner Dame Vera Baird has exposed shocking practices within the Greater Manchester Police (GMP) regarding their treatment of domestic violence victims. The report reveals disgraceful and disturbing patterns of abuse and mistreatment by the GMP. One particularly harrowing testimony involved a woman who was choked by her partner until she passed out. Instead of being supported by the police, she herself was arrested and subjected to a demeaning intimate body search. Stories like hers are a grim reminder of how the system fails those it claims to protect.
The report criticises the GMP for ‘unnecessary or unlawful’ arrests and calls for changes to the GMP’s use of strip and intimate body searches. Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham commented on the report, stating: ‘What it reveals is a problematic culture and practices that must change.’ He added, ‘I want people here to have confidence in their police force.’ However, the abusive practices uncovered are indicative of deeper systemic issues inherent in policing.
Despite the GMP’s claims of improvements since being placed under ‘special measures’ in 2020, the brutal reality faced by many victims underscores the futility of expecting the police to undertake meaningful reforms. This violence is inherent to policing, recalling past incidents such as Child Q, Sarah Everard, and more recently in Harehills, Leeds, where police handcuffed and forcibly removed young children from their home.
What this report does is expose the true nature of the police—it is not just about isolated extreme incidents but rather the inherent harmfulness, brutality, and repression that define this institution. If we want to protect the most vulnerable in society, we need a complete transformation of the capitalist system NOW! We must fight for socialism!
AMEERA MAHMOUD
Manchester
Covid Inquiry: deadly mistakes
Britain’s official Covid inquiry has published its Module 1 report into ‘The resilience and preparedness of the United Kingdom’, the first of several due in the next decade. It concludes that the British government, civil service and devolved administrations ‘failed their citizens’ by not adequately preparing for a Covid-style pandemic. In response to the conclusions and recommendations of crossbench peer Heather Hallett, the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK group said: ‘Lady Hallett has not gone far enough in setting out how we can challenge, address and improve inequalities and capacity of public services as opposed to just understanding the effects of these failures’. Social inequalities and health service deficits caused by austerity measures imposed by the Labour and Tory parties, meant that the working class bore the brunt of the pandemic. The Covid-19-related death rate in local authorities with twice the average number of ethnic minorities was 25% higher. 400,000 people still live with Long Covid. The interim report fails entirely to address structural inequities, or the government’s prioritisation of profits over public health or the fact that the UK had higher excess mortality between 2020 and 2023 than all other western European countries except Italy.
As Hallett reiterates, another pandemic is inevitable. Urgent reforms to ensure the same deadly mistakes are not made again are needed, but history provides no reassurance any of Hallet’s recommendations will be heeded: following the 2006 ‘Cygnus’ pandemic response training exercise, just eight out of 22 recommendations had been implemented by June 2020.
CHARLES CHINWEIZU
Manchester
Imperialist hands off Congo’s minerals!
Racism and imperialism have not left the Democratic Republic of the Congo since they touched its soil. From enslavement and human trafficking to rubber and ivory to the cobalt and coltan that power your vape pen, phone, computer and anything in your day-to-day life that uses a lithium-ion battery, Congolese lives have been forever altered. Our overconsumption is what fuels governments and corporations to work together to extract not only resources but also freedom from Congo.
The history of the ongoing conflict in the region is dense. There are multiple countries within Africa, multiple Western empires, and multiple rebel groups which all want a part of that wealth. Ethnic identity has been used as a scapegoat due to the lack of transformative justice following the now three decades that have passed since the Rwandan Genocide. While Rwanda has pushed that hatred and anger outside its own borders, it lives on and continues to be funded by the leadership in Rwanda. The UK continues to fund Kagame’s regime and military forces. All these various actors participate in the chaos that plagues the mineral-rich region.
In the face of inaction and collaboration by leaders and corporations, it is up to us to spread awareness and shut these immoral companies down! Apple is preparing to launch the iPhone 16 and the latest Apple Watch Ultra this September, so educate people on where their batteries come from! We can survive without fuelling capitalism’s violent genocide, femicide, and centuries-long reign of terror on the Congolese community. We must stop buying new tech!
Jasper
Stand for Congo
Workers’ Party – racist party
In FRFI 300 (June/July 2024), your front page article ‘General election: don’t vote, organise!’ criticises electoral campaigns which revolve around individuals, citing George Galloway as one example. But you fail to mention that he is the founder of the Workers’ Party and offer no report or condemnation of the Workers’ Party’s racist campaign in the local election with their ‘Vote for British workers’ slogan and Union Jacks plastered over their election material.
Galloway’s reported view that ‘illegal migration’ is ‘out of control’ – and that therefore working people are right to be concerned about the impact on local services, etc – is the same as that of Nigel Farage. You state that ‘A vote for Galloway is a vote for a sexist, homophobic and transphobic charlatan’ with no mention of his racism and support for racist policies.
In the 26 June–2 July issue of Socialist Worker, the SWP reports that when asked about migrants and refugees crossing the Channel, Galloway demanded that the Royal Navy sink boats carrying migrants. He reportedly added: ‘We [the Workers’ Party] wouldn’t allow them to leave unmolested from the beaches of France’.
LIZ PITT
Manchester
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 301 August/September 2024
