On 3 January, in response to the barbaric US bomb attack on the Venezuelan capital, Caracas and the kidnap of the country’s democratically-elected president Nicolas Maduro, the Anti-Fascist International called an emergency protest outside the US Embassy in London. The RCG played a leading role in organising the demonstration which was announced in collaboration with AFI coalition members CPGB-ML, Lewisham and Greenwich CND, Posadist IV International and Red Wiphalas. A sea of Venezuelan flags, interspersed with the banners of socialist Cuba, of Palestine and of Ireland, fluttered on the pavement outside the non-stop Palestine encampment on Nine Elms Road, making clear the unity of the struggles of oppressed people against imperialist war and genocide – a unity that Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution has been in the forefront of defending.
Dozens of speakers took advantage of the open platform to denounce imperialist US aggression and the role of Britain in supporting it by sequestering £3bn worth of Venezuelan gold in the Bank of England. All the speeches reflected the importance of international solidarity with those resisting imperialism across the world, and particularly today in Palestine; many, such as the speaker from the Revolutionary Communist Group, made clear Britain’s role as a leading imperialist power in perpetrating war, racism, barbarity and injustice.
Chants of ‘Viva viva Venezuela!’ and ‘El pueblo unido jamás séra vencido’ were loud and clear despite the freezing temperatures. Apart from the RCG, speakers included representatives from the Revolutionary Communist Party, Socialist Workers Party, CPGB-ML, Your Party, Lewisham and Greenwich CND and speakers from Venezuela and from neighbouring Trinidad and Tobago, as well as an independent councillor from Hackney who left the Labour Party over its stance on Palestine.
We then marched across the road to the US Embassy itself, only to have our path blocked by rows of police, demonstrating once again their role in defending the forces of war and reaction. When the protest refused to disperse, continuing with speeches and chanting that echoed outside the embassy forecourt, the police eventually used Section 14 of the Public Order Act to clear the area.
This emergency protest is but a foretaste of the kind of resistance that must come, as the war criminal Trump threatens to ‘run Venezuela’ and Britain’s ‘human rights lawyer’ Labour prime minister Keir Starmer equivocates over whether the unprovoked bombing of Venezuela and the kidnap of its elected head of state is in breach of international law! What is clear is that the Venezuelan people have taken to the streets in their hundreds of thousands in support of the gains of the Boliviarian Revolution, to protest against this vicious US act of aggression, to defend their country and demand the return of their president. Venezuela, as they say ‘ni se vende, ni se rende’ – it neither sells out nor surrenders; its popular militias are armed and ready. Like the people of Palestine, the Venezuelan working class stands on the frontline of resistance to imperialism. That battle requires our solidarity.
