Across Britain, the Stop Trump Coalition, founded during Donald Trump’s first term as US president, has suddenly reappeared. The Coalition demands that European and British imperialism take a stand against the US. An article on its website condemning Trump’s claim to Greenland signally fails to call for self-determination for the Inuit people and instead approvingly quotes Ursula von der Leyen saying Europe needs to ‘push for independence’ from the US, adding ‘this long-overdue rhetoric must become action’. Promoting an imperialist counter-offensive against the US, the article continues:
To effectively stand up to Trump, Starmer needs to end his policy of fear and flattery. The government must join new anti-Trump alliances across Europe, Canada and the Global South. The UK must finally end its long-term dependency on the US and use its status as the world’s sixth-largest economy to rebuild and re-focus multilateral institutions on promoting equality and peace, ending its hypocritical approach to international law. As a campaign, we will fight to move Britain away from its position as Trump’s loyal lapdog and towards an independent foreign policy, supporting coordinated opposition to Trumpism.
It is shocking: Stop Trump is saying that there is a progressive imperialism as well as reactionary imperialism, and that Britain must become a progressive imperialist power to stand alongside Canada and Europe, even if Stop Trump does not use such direct language. This reasoning was used by so-called socialists to justify support for ‘their’ imperialist power against other imperialist powers in the 1914-18 war to re-divide the world.
Stop Trump Coalition is of course just another permutation of those forces which make up every opportunist campaign: CND, Stop the War, Stand up to Racism etc etc. In Nottingham, Notts Stop Trump has brought together the SWP, Socialist Party, the openly Zionist Alliance for Workers Liberty, Notts TUC and the Labour Party. Sponsors of this group also include Your Party, University of Nottingham UCU, Stand up to Racism and Nottingham Tesla Takedown, making it a true melting pot of British opportunism and social imperialism. Its first rally followed the ICE murder of Renee Good in Minneapolis. The highlight was a statement by the local Labour MP Nadia Whittome calling for a unified movement to finally force the British state to ‘condemn’ and put ‘diplomatic pressure’ on the US for the actions of ICE.
FRFI supporters sought to use the opportunity to link the struggle against ICE with the global struggle against imperialism, and most importantly, to turn the anger against the British state and the Labour government, which brags about the tens of thousands of deportations it has enforced and whose detention centres are no different from those of ICE. Horrified by this, Notts Stop Trump stopped us from speaking on their mic, resorting to the most absurd threats and violence. An avid defender of Whittome assaulted one of our comrades, others shouted that we were being ‘disrespectful’ and that ‘this is a vigil’. The main banner at the event bore the Ukrainian flag and the words ‘Stop Trump, Defend Ukraine’. When we condemned this support for imperialist war, we were accused of believing that all Ukrainians are Nazis. The event ended with one speaker telling the crowd that we were ‘far-righters’ and that we were ‘people pretending to be leftists’.
When these clowns announced a follow-up rally for 31 January, we asked them if there would be an open mic. They responded pompously that:
‘Tomorrow’s event is a rally intended to demonstrate the unity of labour movement activists, socialists, left-wing radicals and people in Nottingham with the revolt against ICE and Trump in Minneapolis across the US. We have invited speakers from sponsors of the event who are backing the message we are sending to Minneapolis after the event. Our aim is the widest and clearest expression of solidarity with migrants under the cudgel of the Trump administration and the US far right.’
No mention here of migrants under the cudgel of the Labour government, of course, because these wretches would have to explain why they do not see the need do anything about it. As it was, the ‘labour movement activists, socialists, left-wing radicals and people in Nottingham’ came out in awe-inspiring numbers – no more than 30 participants made the ‘widest and clearest expression of solidarity’. Who do they think they are kidding?
When we speak of opportunism, we mean organised censorship and anti-communist violence, as well as the most grandiose self-delusions alongside a constant covering-up of the role of the British Labour government. These people could not organise the proverbial piss-up in a brewery yet imagine themselves to be at the centre of anything that can have a progressive label attached to it. Their arrogance is breathtaking: who can imagine that anyone in Britain can ‘Stop Trump’? Or indeed think that such is the responsibility of the British working class? No, the responsibility of the British working class is to fight the racism of the British state and the Labour government, to build a movement modelled on that in Minneapolis and across the US. These people have already ruled that out in their cowardly focus on Nigel Farage and Reform UK while deliberately distracting attention from the racist attacks already being carried out by the British state.
Smash all immigration controls!
