On 19 October, comrades of the RCG from across Britain met in Bolivar Hall, part of the Venezuelan consulate, for talks and discussions focusing on some of the most pressing political issues of our time.
It is plain for all to see that capitalism is in crisis. Inter-imperialist rivalries are intensifying. Competition for land, resources, and labour in the search for profit feeds an incessant drive to war. Attacks on migrants and black and Asian communities have increased in frequency across Britain as the state has tightened immigration controls, deporting greater and greater numbers of people. Imperialism has tightened its asphyxiating blockade on socialist Cuba and has doubled down on its attacks against Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution to try to destroy any successful example of socialism. The Zionist genocide in Palestine has waged on for over two years, slaughtering at least 100,000 people. Yet, the Zionist state has been unable to militarily defeat the steadfast Palestinian resistance and Israel has exposed its barbarity to the entire world. In our day school, we laid out our understanding of these urgent issues and defined what it is we should be doing as communists, socialists and anti-imperialists in Britain.
The state of the movement today in Britain
The day school opened with a session on the state of the movement in Britain, offering a communist perspective on some of the important developments in the British left: the political splits in Your Party and the need to organise against a growing racist movement. Considering Your Party, we made clear the limits of this proto-party in challenging imperialism or state racism.
‘Now that the Labour Party has been discredited by its blatant collusion with genocide and the accompanying repression, the opportunist left has no choice but to distance itself from Labour if it is to maintain a progressive facade. It needs a new vehicle for its dream of a more peaceful capitalism, one which is organisationally separate from Labour, but which is not an explicit political opposition.’ Chi Xin Hong
We also stressed the important opportunity presented by the political positions which have been put forward by Zarah Sultana, which are incompatible with Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour left, social democratic stance – there can be no place in a socialist party for compromise between an imperialist solution and a one-state solution for Palestine, between attacking a few ‘bad’ billionaires and opposing capitalism as a system, or between transphobia and LGBTQ+ liberation.
On racism, we made our position clear: imperialism – monopoly capitalism – is the material basis for racism. The attitudes of individual racists and their petit bourgeois agitators on the streets are the result of taking the state’s rhetoric and actions to their logical conclusion, which is that no migrants are welcome in Britain. George O’Connell set out what we need to be doing to build an opposition to British state racism and its reactionary auxiliaries; the racist ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rally in London in October and the state’s most recent attacks on migrants has made the urgency of this task clear. In contrast to the waving of Union Jacks, the Butcher’s Apron, we wave the Palestinian flag, that of anti-imperialism, internationalism, resistance and solidarity.
‘What does an anti-racist movement against the British state mean in practice? It means opposition to Britain’s racist immigration controls by building resistance to all its manifestations. It means protesting outside immigration detention centres and demanding their closure, and uniting with migrants resisting from inside as we have seen in recent years. It means defence against racist police harassment. It means fighting back against immigration raids and deportations.’ George O’Connell
Palestine: imperialist plans for Gaza, state repression at home
The second session focused on the Palestinian struggle: the relationship between national liberation movements and communists, and state repression. Kotsai Sigauke sought to answer what we should be doing currently as communists living in the belly of the beast, marked by the recent brittle ceasefire agreement and the devising of imperialist plans for Gaza.
‘In this crucial period, we must also oppose all imperialist so-called solutions for Palestine. The Labour Party, the trade unions and so-called ‘left’ MPs such as Jeremy Corbyn explicitly or implicitly push this illusionary framework of a two-state solution, none of them explicitly reject the legitimacy of the Zionist state. The Labour government frames its recognition of a Palestinian state as a step towards a two-state solution. This is not self-determination for the Palestinian people. We must be absolutely clear, Zionism is racism and the state of ‘Israel’ has absolutely no legitimacy – it is an attack dog for imperialism in the Middle East and must be destroyed.’ Kotsai Sigauke
In the face of increasing repression, Sarah Guebre-Egziabher made clear the need for greater solidarity and militancy in our movement if we are to successfully fight state repression. The prolific use of terrorism legislation to criminalise activists is aimed at intimidating any genuinely anti-imperialist movement, pushing it towards respectable politics which, in practice, abandons the resistance. We must oppose the Terrorism Act 2000 and demand all charges under it to be dropped!
‘The designation of anti-imperialist resistance as terrorism serves politically to delegitimise what is righteous struggle, legal under international law. The Palestinians are not passive victims – they are the protagonists in their struggle for freedom, and as anti-imperialists our role is to uphold their right to self-determination, “down to an uprising or war”, in the words of Lenin.’ Sarah Guebre-Egziabher
A rousing rally in defence of socialism
The day’s last session discussed internationalism, our solidarity with anti-imperialist and socialist struggles in Cuba, Venezuela, and the Alliance of Sahel States (AES). Cassius J Kalany outlined the political character and successes of the AES, which is liberating the Sahel from the yoke of French imperialism.
‘The AES will have deep and conflicting contradictions as it struggles for sovereignty, and it will necessitate internal struggles in an ongoing back-and-forth process, which the imperialists will no doubt use as a pretext to legitimise their schemes. However, for us here in Britain, our primary enemy is British imperialism and its collaborators, to whom we must wage an endless battle and pry their malicious hands away from these nations, which are forging their own paths and striking a blow against imperialism.’ Cassius J Kalany
Destinie Sanchez spoke about Cuba, and its socialist achievements despite the longest-standing blockade in human history imposed against it by US imperialism. We look to Cuba as the brightest example of the material gains that can be made by organising politics and the economy to serve the working class.
‘In Britain we need a movement that will fight for real democracy, not a box ticking exercise but living, breathing people’s power – where decisions are shaped by communities, workplaces and schools, not by corporations and ruling elite. Cuba shows us how this can be done. Its socialist principles have built a nation rooted in solidarity, not exploitation, where every policy serves the people – and this vision extends beyond its shores. Cuba recognises that it is “the duty of each nation to make common cause with the oppressed, colonised, exploited peoples regardless of their location around the world”, as cited in the 1960 First Declaration of Havana.’ Destinie Sanchez
Finally, Sam McGill explained the current situation in Venezuela, with increasing attacks on Venezuela by the Trump administration, as US imperialism has proved incapable in the
past decades of tearing down the Bolivarian revolution despite the attempted coups, sabotage, assassi-nation attempts and the multitude of sanctions imposed on this Latin American country.
‘Venezuela is a threat because it has declared its commitment to building socialism, creating space for direct, participatory democracy and social production through the communal movement, where communes identify their needs and organise to meet them, with the government channelling new funds into the communes through a series of popular consultations, where communities are directly involved in discussing proposals for their communities, deciding priorities, receiving the funds and overseeing the projects – community organisation and popular accountability cutting through bureaucracy and corruption, forging a new way of organising to meet community needs. As Chávez identified, the communes are the building blocks for the construction of socialism in Venezuela, now with the escalating US threats of invasion it is the comunas who are mobilising with the Bolivarian militias, the people are organised, armed and determined to defend their revolutionary project.’ Sam McGill
We were honoured to be joined for the final session by His Excellency Felix Plasencia, the Venezuelan ambassador to Britain, Wilfredo Hernández Maya, the Counsellor of the Bolivarian Re-public from the Embassy of Venezuela, and Pablo Ginarte Sampedro, the First Secretary of Political Affairs for the Cuban Embassy in London. We thank them for their important contributions, a testimony to the strong bonds of internationalist solidarity being built between the RCG and Venezuelan and Cuban institutions and individuals, who are doing the work of building socialism in today’s world. It is our responsibility to do everything we can in fulfilling this historic mission. Fight racism! Fight imperialism! Fight for socialism!
Sarah Guebre-Egziabher
