People of Glasgow! We have entered into a new period. Apathy and isolation is giving way to anger and community. Food bank visits threaten increasing numbers of people in and out of work. Necessity is driving new people to political unity, organisation and action. The political representatives of this rotten criminal system are worried and so they should be!
On 30 October in Glasgow city centre Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! comrades joined with other supporters of Scottish Independence to hasten this awakening against the Scottish Labour Party. Hundreds gathered and joined the protest outside the Party’s National Gala Dinner in rejection of the Labour Party’s racist, imperialist, anti-democratic, anti-working class, British unionist politics. A Party Fit For Imperialism! One could sense the fury and nervousness of leading Labour party war criminals such as Jim Murphy as they passed into the building under police escort – heckled, physically hassled and booed. Disgraced head of Glasgow city council Gordon Matheson was forced to slip in through a side entrance.
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! fully supports the call for no more Labour Party and will unite with all others who recognise the need to destroy this political arm of the British state. That the Socialist Workers Party, Communist Party of Great Britain and others on the old left were absent from the protest comes as no surprise.
On 4 October SWP members and Stop The War Coalition supporters physically and verbally abused FRFI supporters for challenging a Labour Party speaker during a protest against the imperialist bombing of Iraq and Syria. As we stated at the time ‘On 26 September 2014, 191 of the 215 Labour MP’s in Westminster voted to bomb Iraq and left open the possibility of targeting Syria. The twenty four who voted against must leave this racist imperialist party immediately or leave anti-war platforms!’. On 11 October we picketed the SWP’s Marxism in Scotland 2014 event for giving Bob Thomson, former Scottish Labour Party Chairman and leading supporter of Labour for Independence, a platform to promote this ruling class party.
In the coming days, weeks and months the old left will tell us there is hope and opportunity for an alternative within the bankrupt structures of the Labour party as their members attempt to remould (‘we need a socialist agenda’) and rebrand themselves (‘Labour for Scotland’, ‘Independent Labour Party’…). For the mass of the working class and oppressed the Labour Party offer no alternative to the Tories (and never have done!).
It will be the job of these new forces and all progressives and socialists in the coming days, weeks and months to make not just a complete break from Labour but to actively organise for their defeat in the coming Westminster elections.
No more cuts, no more wars, no more Labour Party!
Socialist democratic Independence for Scotland!
Join us for a book launch uncovering 100 years of Labour Party austerity and imperialism
‘Labour: A Party Fit For Imperialism’
Launching the second edition of this excellent anti-imperialist history of the racist imperialist Labour Party with the author Robert Clough
‘For a view of the Labour Party outside its red rose and double-breasted suit image, this is a valuable work.’
War Journalist John Pilger
Dundee
Saturday 8 November, 2.30pm,
Room G8, Dundee University Tower,
Nethergate, Perth Road
Glasgow
Sunday 9 November, 2pm,
Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA),
350 Sauchiehall St, G2 3JD
