Court case to challenge IPP sentences
Hello everybody. I wanted to put some words out there to hopefully generate some support for my upcoming trial, which will fight back against the IPP sentence.* FRFI has done a brilliant job of spreading awareness on IPPs, the discrimination within prisons and in society generally. I just wanted to say thank you for all that support, and to ask you all please to continue doing so for the IPPs.
When I was in HMP Frankland, we protested about Dominic Raab’s decision not to release IPPs. Three IPPs took their lives after that decision. Up till then, there had already been around 81 suicides, some of the most tragic suicides you can think of, truly heart-breaking. And since then, in two years, the numbers have jumped to about 130. The way that the prisons have managed to cover up their negligence and mistreatment is astounding.
I experienced this abuse when I was in HMP Frankland. I was designated an escape risk, and was held in one of the most secure segregations in the country. I’m on a special NHS prescribed medical diet but the prison wouldn’t provide it, no matter how much I complained through the proper channels. So, I began to damage the cells in protest – not aggressively, not violently, just being very disruptive. Sadly, that’s the extreme that some of us have to go through in this place. I did it to three cells, but I never did any violence to the staff and was compliant.
One day the prison guards opened the door and rushed in on me. They smacked me with a riot shield. They put me onto the floor. They punched me, they kicked me. They wrapped my arms behind my back and then they proceeded to drag me down the landing. Then, they put me in a strip cell, which is a concrete box, and pinned me to the floor. They got a pair of scissors and chopped the clothes off of me, stripped me naked and threw a suicide prevention smock on me, which was stinking like 50 men had worn it and had never been washed. One of them punched me in the side of the face as they got up; they walked out laughing, and they slammed the door.
After that, I knew I had to find a way out of the repeated abuse of my human rights. A few weeks later, I climbed the gates of the prison yard, damaged the cameras, and continued to cause as much damage as I could to ensure that I will be transferred out of Frankland.
There will be a court case about this incident in Frankland, which we are going to ensure won’t just be a court case regarding my treatment, but will be about the widespread abuse of IPPS, all those that have taken their own lives as a result and all these people’s families. When this court case happens, we need support. The case will be in July at Newcastle Crown Court. I ask anyone from your prison campaign groups, any prison support groups, anyone who can, to really get behind us. The JENGbA campaign for joint enterprise will be there and I hope to see a big turnout on the day. Thank you for your time, and God bless you.
JOE OUTLAW A1236AY
HMP Woodhill
*IPP stands for Indeterminate Sentence for Public Protection. A draconian sentence introduced by the last Labour government in 2005, it was abolished in 2012 but not retrospectively, and like Joe, many IPP prisoners remain trapped in the system.
Effects of the US blockade on Cuba
We are part of a group of eight students from British universities currently studying at the University of Havana as part of a four-month exchange in Cuba. On 19 March 2025, Airbnb cancelled our reservation, which we had made while in Cuba using a VPN, citing that our booking ‘does not seem legitimate’. This decision is clearly a consequence of the genocidal US blockade and its ongoing efforts to undermine Cuba’s economy—particularly its tourism sector.
Airbnb’s cancellation appears to have been triggered by a ‘suspicious’ IP address, likely due to the company’s attempts to comply with US sanctions on Cuba and avoid penalties. US law restricts US companies from engaging in certain transactions with Cuba, and this cancellation is yet another example of how the sanctions impact ordinary people.
During our time here, we have witnessed firsthand the devastating effects of the blockade and the economic crisis it has caused. From 14 to 17 March there was a four-day national blackout where there was no running water or electricity. International transactions face long delays, halting essential imports, while fuel and energy shortages persist, making it impossible to restructure the national grid. Seeing this has made it clear that we must take action against the blockade with the international 1 cent for Cuba campaign which was created to challenge the US sanctions against Cuba and raise awareness about its brutal impact.
DESTINIE SÁNCHEZ AND KIARA PRICE
Havana, Cuba
A letter to RCG from Gaza
We in Gaza deeply appreciate and follow your unwavering support for the rights of the Palestinian people and your powerful voice against injustice and racism. Your continued solidarity brings hope to us and reminds us that the voice of truth reaches every corner of the world, despite all challenges.
We would like to express our sincere gratitude for your relentless efforts in defending human rights and exposing the violations faced by our people. Your courageous stance encourages us to persist in our struggle for freedom and dignity, strengthening our resilience in the face of daily hardships.
We hope you will continue to raise your voice globally in support of the Palestinian cause, and that together we can build a future of greater justice and humanity.
ENGINEER HASSAN ELAGHA
Al-Maram Foundation for Development and Relief
Eventbrite censors support for Palestine
The South London branch of Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! held a successful screening in March of the film Leila Khaled: Hijacker at the Electric Elephant Cafe. The 2006 documentary follows Khaled, the first woman to hijack a plane, to uncover her lifelong commitment to the Palestinian revolution and against occupation. It shows her journey, born in Palestine in 1944, losing her home in the Nakba of 1948, to joining the Che Guevara commando unit of the PFLP. Khaled put Palestine on the map as she became a hero worldwide.
The film showing was too much for internet Zionists to handle, so they put in complaints to the ticket website Eventbrite, which cancelled our ticket sales days before the event. Unfazed by this, comrades reorganised immediately with a new ticket seller and proceeded. The venue stood firm. The film was shown to a packed room, followed by a discussion about why we must continue to oppose all criminalisation of pro-Palestine protesters and oppose the use of anti-terror laws on both the SOAS 2 and the Filton 18. All ticket sales from Eventbrite were obtained, a successful fundraiser and event to highlight the importance of this revolutionary icon.
ANTHONY RUPERT
South London
Upholding Marxism
The review ‘Dangerous Dreams of Class Conciliation’ in FRFI 296 is great, and something I am broadly in agreement with. The Trotskyist and more radical social democratic left have for most of my lifetime been trying to come up with new ways to avoid talking about crisis and are constantly travelling further from Marxism. Instead, we get an analysis based on ‘greedy bankers’ rather than an understanding that capital moves according to its own imperatives.
The marketplace of ideas is flooded with left ‘economics’ texts like this – from people like Grace Blakeley, Yanis Varoufakis, Paul Mason, who offer critiques that remain within the boundaries of left-Keynesianism or soft anti-neoliberalism rather than engaging with capitalism’s contradictions.
James Meadway, mentioned in the review as a co-author, is a fellow traveller of these people – a former member of Counterfire. I wasted a lot of time reading about modern monetary theory on the advice of these sorts of people.
BRIAN W
London
Cass Review: a year of opportunist shame
A year on from Dr Hillary Cass’s blitzkrieg against trans youth, the opportunist left refuse to organise the fightback. Silence has dominated, but from what responses that have emerged, so have two opportunist wings.
The Young Communist League (YCL) and Communist Party of Britain lead the first wing with a slurry of ‘gender critical’ transphobia when they praised the conclusions of the Cass Review in the Morning Star in April 2024. They’ve similarly platformed a tiny ‘gender critical’ Labour Party faction since 2018 and have cynically segregated trans women from the feminist movement in stating in a 2017 article ‘“Trans women are women” is a dogma that… erases women’s lived reality’ and ‘Trans women are not women – I know this, you know this, everybody knows this’. Said faction also supports the CPB’s ‘excellent Charter for Women’, which both demands ‘LGBT discrimination’s end’ and that women’s spaces be ‘protected’ from trans women.
The YCL published an editorial in June 2023 where – while claiming ‘working class’ people (like them) can’t accept genderqueer folk and trying to ‘disprove’ gender variance – they pout: ‘[We] do not believe gender identity ideology benefits trans people either, it diverts from material class struggles towards divisive identity validation struggles that confer no real power’.
Trans liberation may be a ‘divisive diversion’ to social chauvinists like the YCL and the labour aristocracy they represent, but for the working class’s oppressed majority they so despise, social liberation struggles are inseparable from revolutionary class struggle! No wonder their editorial on August 2024’s racist pogroms also rejected the Harehills uprising against police racism, again for ‘dividing the workers movement’!
The second opportunist wing parrots the leading NGO-charities’ progressive but limited ‘intersectional’ liberalism; treating imperialism as one of many disconnected oppressions, limiting itself to reform and claiming trans rights have been ‘made political’.
This includes the Socialist Workers Party and Revolutionary Communist Party who shamefully cover for Labour, indulging the fantasy that their rabid transphobia stems from their being ‘right wing’ or ‘mistakenly appeasing’ the Tories’ ‘culture wars’, rather than Labour’s structural role as British imperialism’s caretakers.
Socialist Worker (10 April 2024) ducks and dives around this, insisting: ‘The Cass Review… boosts Tories, bigots and transphobes’ and ‘The Tories will use Cass to go on the offensive—and Labour is going along with their transphobia.’ So, either Labour is conveniently not included with the ‘bigots and transphobes’, or their transphobia is just Tory mimicry! Their audacity to peddle this with the myth of a trade union movement willing to challenge this is stunning.
All the while, these so-called ‘socialists’ disgrace the world-leading example of socialist Cuba and its Marxist understanding of trans liberation as a necessity for full social liberation. Those who sever this connection deny the possibility of both.
FRANK KAASEN
Brighton
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 305 April/May 2025
