Scenes from Italy’s general strike
Maciej Zurowski was involved in the general strike taking place in nearly 100 cities in Italy on 22 September and shared his personal account with FRFI comrades.
I won’t spare you this detail from Monday’s general strike. I volunteered as a USB steward and was part of the cordon walking ahead of the Bologna demonstration. Late in the day, we all marched to the outskirts to occupy the ring road and part of the A14 motorway. Turning around, I saw thousands upon thousands pouring onto the motorway behind us, like a Biblical exodus, as the sun set and ‘Io ero Sandokan’, a 1974 song about the Italian partisan struggle, played on our van’s sound system. It was incredible, like a scene from a movie – I’ll never forget it.
Maciej Zurowski
Bologna
Appreciation for FRFI
I want to commend you on the most recent edition of Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! – it is an excellent paper. The coverage of the practical and tactical issues of legal and political defence is very strong, but what makes the paper stand out is the balance: exposing and opposing opportunism, while at the same time articulating the group’s standpoint with clarity.
The insistence that any new movement must be democratic, militant and educated is crucial. As you rightly suggest, we need to be more explicit about what is often left implicit.
I would also like to add an observation. The way most people now consume news – whether through rolling television or fleeting updates on phones – creates only a superficial sense of being informed. What is missing is depth, context and political education. That is precisely why a newspaper such as FRFI is so necessary: it not only educates but also serves as an organising tool – a means to build organisation and raise the funds required to meet the political challenges ahead.
PAUL MALLON
Glasgow
Venezuela solidarity in Moscow
Comrades in Moscow held a rally in support of Venezuela and the Bolivarian revolution. The ambassadors of Venezuela, Cuba, Palestine, and CPRF members of the Russian Parliament were in attendance. As an FRFI supporter and former political prisoner, I addressed the rally and gave a speech, telling the crowd of the work RATB does in support of Cuba and the tireless work that FRFI does in support of Venezuela and the Bolivarian revolution. FRFI supported me throughout my prison sentence and made sure I received the newspaper.
BEN STIMSON
Moscow
MAPPA used to silence and repress prisoners in Britain
On 30 November 2024, I was the victim of a racially motivated attack by prison officers at HMP Woodhill. Unlike my time at HMP Lindholme – where I had managed to write regularly to Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! – Woodhill’s high-security regime operated with a brutal arrogance. They believed they had the right to block all communication that might expose their oppressive practices. My attempts to speak out were met not with support, but with punishment.
The latter part of my sentence was plagued by the mental fallout of that attack and compounded by personal loss. Instead of receiving care, I was penalised. Yet one light remained on the horizon: the promise of freedom. For years, freedom had been a distant dream. But on 22 May 2025, that dream arrived. I walked out of prison feeling like a low-key Nelson Mandela, ready to sing my own freedom song. But I was wrong. There is no freedom for a Black man who has been labelled a Multi-agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA) nominal.
You might ask: isn’t MAPPA for sexual offenders or the most violent criminals? According to the legislation, yes. Category 1 is for sexual offenders. Category 2 is for violent offenders. Category 4 is for terrorists. Category 3 –where I’ve been placed – is for individuals who do not meet the criteria above but have committed an offence ‘indicating that they are capable of causing serious harm.’
So, what was my offence? Making YouTube videos that breached family court orders. That’s it. To understand how such a charge could be twisted into a justification for multi-agency surveillance, we must return to prison – where the Offender Management Unit (OMU) decided I was a threat. Not because of violence, but because I wrote about racism. Because I shared my lived experience. Because I dared to speak.
Only one newspaper stood by me during that time: the one you’re reading now, FRFI. It gave me a voice when the system tried to silence me. And for that, I was labelled dangerous.
Since release, I’ve been treated like an animal. Probation insists I can only be seen by two officers at a time. I’m banned from uploading to social media – violating my Article 10 rights. I’m prohibited from attending lawful protests. MAPPA, like the SUS laws and the gang matrix before it, is used as a tool to control and degrade Black men. It casts us as predators, even when we’ve never committed a violent offence.
When I was locked in the hell of the penal system, I drew strength from knowing that readers of this paper stood with me. I never imagined I’d need you again so soon. But the truth is: I never left prison. I am not free. I am a prisoner of a racist system that fears one thing more than the Black man himself: the Black man with a voice.
I believed that, upon release, I would finish the book I began behind bars. That there would be a fairytale ending. But my book, my voice, and my Black soul have been silenced. So, I cry out to you now, as I did then – from the midst of oppression. Stand with me once more. Let your solidarity be the strength I need to keep resisting.
ELAVI DOWIE
Burnley
An Irish Republican speaks out
In 2015 I was charged with directing terrorism and membership of Óglaigh na hÉireann (ONH), later changed to membership of the IRA once it was pointed out that ONH was not and is still not a proscribed organisation. My legal team and I knew the directing charge would not stand, but it had been added simply to ensure I was denied bail.
The alleged offence took place in County Louth. Had it been pursued in the South, the trial would have collapsed – the recordings were obtained illegally. The DPP in the South knew this. Yet on 13 October in Dublin’s Criminal Courts of Justice, a judge ruled the material could be handed to the PSNI. Within days, six of us were arrested and charged in the North.
After two years I secured bail, but the conditions were so restrictive that it was prison without bars. I was tagged, confined to a five-mile radius, barred from using private vehicles, and prohibited from attending political events or meeting named individuals. The cruelty of such conditions was made clear one New Year’s Day, when my aunt, a lifelong resident of Muckamore, was dying. She was five and a half miles from my home – half a mile outside my permitted radius. I asked permission to travel to her deathbed. I was refused. She passed before I could see her. That is the reality of ‘bail’ for Irish republicans.
In 2023, after being returned to prison, I became subject to the so-called ‘Multi-Agency Review Arrangements’ (MARA), the new mechanism for managing republican prisoners. MARA did everything possible to block my release. When I was freed, I faced yet again an open-air prison: curfews, tags, monitoring of my phone and internet use, bans on political activity, association, public speaking, and even work. On two occasions, when I found employment in the security sector, the PSNI turned up at events and told management I was a ‘terror threat’ who could not be employed. MARA then accused me of breaching my licence by working without their consent. Even when offered courier work, they demanded the employer’s details, vehicle list, and daily route. The truth is simple: MARA rendered me unemployable.
Let us be very clear: these conditions are not about public safety. They are about control. They are about silencing political opinion, gathering intelligence, and suppressing the narrative of resistance. Dozens of other republicans today live under the same regime of coercion.
Today my MARA licence ends. I still face eight and a half years under counter-terrorism licence conditions, but without the daily shackles I will speak out — for all republicans suffering under MARA and repressive bail restrictions. To me, a republican is a republican, whatever their group or background.
I owe a debt of gratitude to my family and friends who stood by me through the last decade, and to my comrades in the IRPWA whose solidarity sustained me in prison. I also note that some individuals sought to compound the state’s efforts with smear and falsehoods for their own purposes. I ignored them. Their accusations are hollow, and history will vindicate us.
Victory to the republican prisoners.
Solidarity to those on bail and under MARA.
Justice for the Craigavon Two.
CARL REILLY
Belfast
5th Pan-African Congress in Manchester: 80 years on
Eighty years ago this month, from 15 to 19 October 1945, a group of anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist delegates from across the globe congregated in Chorlton-on-Medlock’s Town Hall for the 5th Pan-African Congress. This Congress was revitalised and inspired, with delegates fierce and militant in their demands for the liberation, autonomy and independence of Black Africa. They wrote, ‘we are unwilling to starve any longer while doing the world’s drudgery, in order to support by our poverty and ignorance a false aristocracy and a discredited Imperialism. We condemn the monopoly of capital and the rule of private wealth and industry for private profit alone.’
A few weeks ago, I visited the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, where I watched Liberation, a dynamic dramatisation of the 5th Pan-African Congress written by Ntombizodwa Nyoni and directed by Monique Touko. This play, which has just finished its run at the Exchange, was coupled and delivered with a compelling exhibition produced by the University of Manchester’s Race, Roots & Resistance Collective. Together, they explored and animated the very local, very human intricacies of the Congress and its delegates, and celebrated their pivotal global impact. They challenged us, as the audience, to be loud and unwavering in our own anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist demands, echoing those of the Congress 80 years on.
CAIT
Manchester
