Victory to the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance! Hands off Iran, Lebanon and Yemen!
Comrades from Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! in Newcastle, Glasgow, Dundee, Leeds and Manchester and Red Storm Collective, alongside individual activists, organised a march through the West End of Newcastle and into the city centre on 4 July in solidarity with people facing imperialist bloodshed in Palestine, Iran, Lebanon and Yemen! It assembled at the top of Stanhope Street. We protested outside the offices of Leonardo, the Ministry of Defence, and Barclays, exposing their role in imperialist warmongering.
Despite pressure from the police to stick to the paths we successfully took the roads for the entirety of the march and had an incredibly well organised, visible and principled protest. This was the first march in Newcastle against the wars on Iran and Lebanon.
We distributed over 7,000 leaflets; put up over 500 posters all over the city, Gateshead and South Tyneside; held stalls and protests throughout the West End and city centre; every single house in the Stanhope Street terraces got a leaflet through their door; we gave out leaflets at three mosques in the West End and one in South Shields; we sent out mass emails, messages and social media posts; and we even had an A-Board with giant posters displayed outside one of the shops on Stanhope Street for two weeks! For over two months we put everything we had in to organising and building for the march and we ensured it was at a high political level with meaningful demands. The march was organised through public, democratic planning meetings. The work really paid off.
In Britain, we have an historic responsibility to take action against Britain’s long-standing support for the racist, genocidal, Zionist state: the imperialist attack dog. So we organised this march to demand all-encompassing sanctions and a complete end to British support for Israel.
We heard from speakers including Dr Issam Hijjawi, an anti-imperialist Palestinian who came down from Edinburgh to support the march. He spoke about the kind of movement we need in solidarity with Palestine – a movement firmly rooted in internationalist principles which must oppose British support for Israel and stand in solidarity with the Palestinian resistance. Many other speakers spoke using our open mic.
Every left wing group in Newcastle was invited to attend and help promote the march, as well as having the freedom to speak on the open mic and be involved in organising it. The Revolutionary Communist Party attended on the day to show support, bringing with them a decent number of members, and they used the open mic.
The rest of the left boycotted the march and attacked it from the sidelines. Despite being the supposed leaders of the Palestine and anti-war movements, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and Stop the War Coalition (STW) were nowhere to be seen even though we sent invitations. This is completely sectarian. The PSC have demobilised the movement and StW have not organised one single march in Newcastle against the war on Iran, not one single protest against the war on Lebanon. People Against Rafael (PAR) who operate in the West End against the Israeli weapons factory there, chose to have a picnic on the day of the march instead. None of these organisations have any interest in building a movement that is genuinely in solidarity with Palestine and against war in the Middle East – they are no more than humanitarian campaigns which seek to sanitise the movement and control the narrative. It is essential that we fight to break their stranglehold on the movement.
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! and Red Storm Collective are committed to fighting for principled demands which see our main enemy as the British state. We are committed to working in a democratic, non-sectarian way and we are committed to putting our backs into everything that we do.
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Thanks to everyone who attended to stand in solidarity against British imperialist warmongering. We will keep up the fight on the streets. See you there.
