No to imperialist sanctions on Syria!
Syria is facing humanitarian crisis as Britain, the US and EU tighten sanctions aimed at further weakening the state and promoting regime change. It has become easier for Turkish troops and paramilitaries to cross the border than it is for Syrians to receive essential medical supplies.
In March, high-ranking European officials voted to extend the blockade of Syria, which already includes oil supplies, investments, a freeze on Europe-based banking transactions and a range of equipment and technologies. The Caesar Act now being promoted by the US Trump regime will attack ordinary Syrians and is opposed even by the mouthpieces of capital as hurling the country towards famine (Financial Times, 17 June 2020).
For all of its problems, prior to the 2011 ‘Arab Spring’ and the proxy war that followed, Syria had one of the region’s most advanced healthcare systems, free at the point of demand. But sanctions on oil have had a direct impact, from ambulance fuel to the difficulties of acquiring critical medical equipment. A national energy crisis has meant that many in Damascus and in rural areas have as little as two hours’ electricity per day. Important hospital cleaning agents like chlorine are banned under the blockade as Syria’s opponents claim they will be used to make chemical weapons.
Tory politicians have maintained arms sales and provided political cover for Turkish intervention. The arms of British-supplied dictatorships like Saudi Arabia have ended up in the hands of reactionary forces like Daesh and Al Nusra. Israel’s frequent bombings and colonisation of the Syrian Golan Heights pass by without a whisper from Labour or Tory MPs. The ongoing war was made in Washington, London, Paris and Tel Aviv, and ordinary Syrian people are on the receiving end. The sanctions regime must fall.
Hands off Syria!
A petition can be signed at https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/330608/
Louis Brehony
MANCHESTER
Blackburn and Darwen council Labour expulsion
Blackburn with Darwen Council’s deputy leader Andy Kay has been expelled from the Labour Party for alleged anti-Semitism.
The allegation was dredged up from 2014 when, following the destruction of Gaza’s only power plant in an Israeli airstrike, Councillor Kay, a Corbyn supporter, commented on Facebook: ‘The Jewish state has learnt nothing from the Nazis and the Jewish leaders are worse than the Nazis’. This was ‘liked’ by Kate Hollern and Councillors Salim Sidat, Pat McFall, Jamie Groves and Tasleem Fazal, who were all disciplined.
On 2 February 2015, whilst campaigning to become Blackburn’s MP, Hollern opportunistically promised an Asian audience that she would twin Blackburn with a town in Palestine. When she entered Parliament and became Corbyn’s PA, her pledge was conveniently forgotten. Instead of standing up for the Blackburn councillors with a ringing defence of the of the rights of the Palestinian people she gave a grovelling apology.
The local paper, the Lancashire Telegraph, is complicit in policing opinion. Apparently briefed by the IHRA, the editor Steven Thompson allows correspondence criticising the Israeli government but not Israel. Of all the atrocities occurring in the world, to single out Israel for condemnation must be anti-Semitic because Israel is the only Jewish state! Lisa Nandy expressed the same view when she became Shadow Foreign Secretary.
Pete Lynch
BLACKBURN
Multi-generational housing in Brum
According to a House of Commons briefing paper written in March 2020, Ladywood in Birmingham has the highest number of overcrowded homes outside London (15%). It also has some of the highest Covid-19 infection rates recorded outside the capital. According to Ladywood’s MP, Shabana Mahmood (Labour), this largely takes the form of multiple generations of Caribbean or South Asian people all living under one roof. As FRFI reported in March, these poor conditions make the spread of disease more likely and put people at risk.
One Birmingham resident, Fay Hunter, and eight other members of her family are crammed into a council house in Charnwood and she may be forced to make two of her adult children homeless (Birmingham Mail 17 June). And a case study of the conditions of Somali people in Birmingham by Human City highlights a married couple, five children and a grandmother crammed into a damp, two-bedroom flat.
The number of multi-generational homes has been steadily rising since 2008 to around 1.8 million today. It is a result of rising house prices that leave ‘generation rent’ at home to save money. The destruction of cheap childcare and falling wages also push new parents to lean on their family for support while they go to poorly paid jobs. All compounded by the fact that Birmingham council is selling off far more council homes than it builds.
Systemic racism has meant that Bangladeshi and black families are more vulnerable to these effects of capitalist crisis than other groups. Dismissal of multiple-generational homes as only a cultural choice deliberately obscures capitalism’s need to continually accumulate profits. The housing market has been a major source of profit and the focus on profitable – rather than social – housing will drive more and more of the working class to live in more overcrowded conditions, leaving us vulnerable to future contagious diseases. Anybody wishing to avoid this must push back against the profit motive and towards a planned economy in the interests of the mass of the working class.
Joe Smith
BIRMINGHAM
Fighting off Zionist attacks in France
We are launching an international campaign in response to a Zionist campaign of threats and defamation against the Palestine Vaincra Collective in France. Our group is a member organisation of the Samidoun network and is fighting in defence of freedom of expression and demonstration, particularly on the subject of Palestine.
The president of CRIF Midi-Pyrénées (the main pro-Israel lobby in France) has defamed and threatened us in various press articles and on the radio. In particular, he called on Zionists to dismantle our stalls that take place every month in the heart of Toulouse. They reproach us for our support for the Palestinian resistance, and our alleged links with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
This attack comes after two important successes of the Palestine solidarity movement in our city. Firstly, during the municipal elections we led a successful campaign against the twinning of Toulouse with Tel Aviv. We also brought together several hundred people on 1 July against the Zionist plan to annex the West Bank. It is not surprising that French imperialism is a strategic ally of the Zionist state and tries to pursue a policy of criminalising solidarity with Palestine, particularly by conflating anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. On the contrary, we affirm that anti-Zionism is anti-racism!
The best support for our campaign is to develop solidarity with Palestine wherever you are. This means supporting the historic demands of the Palestinian people: the liberation of all Palestine from the sea to the Jordan River; the right to resistance, especially to armed struggle; the right of return of refugees; the liberation of all Palestinian prisoners, including Ahmad Sa’adat and Georges Abdallah; and of course the boycott of the Zionist state.
Support our campaign at www.palestinevaincra.com.
Palestine Vaincra Collective
TOULOUSE
Building the anti-racist movement in Liverpool
While nationally the initial surge of Black Lives Matter may appear to have settled, it is certainly not, as Labour leader Starmer so snidely dubbed it, a ‘moment’. In Liverpool we’ve been working alongside many young people who felt, often for the first time, politically energised by the large marches and protests that had been occurring in the city. They, like us, feel that to instigate the kind of radical change we need to see will involve far more regular, sustained street activity and organisation.
An Anti-Racist Speakout event organised with a group of young Muslim women we met at Liverpool’s Justice for Shukri Abdi protest showcased the high level of creativity and energy that could be brought to the organising process.
The event itself attracted many more new faces, not only providing astute political analysis on the open microphone, but communicating brilliantly with the public about our petition against state racism. Working alongside young people who’ve been struck by a newfound political consciousness has proven essential in laying down the foundations for the future movements in this country that will be concerned with state racism and the struggles of working class Black and Asian people.
Joe
LIVERPOOL
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 277 August/September 2020
