Imam Jamil al-Amin dies behind bars at 82
Jamil al-Amin, formerly known as H Rap Brown, died a political prisoner in a US federal prison on 23 November 2025. Amin is best known as the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and briefly served as the Black Panther Party’s minister of justice. His militant advocacy of black Americans’ rights to armed self-defence earned him a top spot as a target of the FBI’s Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO). After going underground in the late 1960s, he was convicted on spurious charges of armed robbery of a bar in New York. During his first stint in prison from 1971 to 1976, he became a Muslim, and as an imam, a pillar of the community in Atlanta, Georgia. His mosque was the site of continual police harassment and in 2000 he was framed for the murder of two Sheriff’s Deputies – the confession of another man to the same crime was never admitted as evidence in his ‘trial’.
Al-Amin’s legacy should inspire us to redouble our efforts to free all political prisoners. His 1969 autobiography is available at historyisaweapon.com
MATT GLASS
West London
Sultana: proudly anti-Zionist
FRFI 307 (August/September 2025), defines Your Party as a ‘reactionary utopia’, and frankly, if the outfit consisted solely of Corbyn’s political line – or worse still, his line combined with that of the ‘Independent’ MPs visibly to his right – such an attitude would be fully justified.
What I believe makes it somewhat one-sided can be summed up in two words: Zarah Sultana. Early in the Your Party campaign, the dynamic duo was asked if they were anti-Zionist. Corbyn’s response was thoroughly equivocal; Sultana was a breath of fresh air. She said she was anti-Zionist and proud of it and favoured a single-state solution in which Arabs and Jews would live together with equal rights. On top of that, she said Corbyn’s Labour had fundamentally stuffed up by constant concessions to the Zionist lobby.
Let’s not split hairs: this analysis is pretty close to ours. Of all the differences between Corbyn and Sultana, this is the one that matters (the rest seem to consist of organisational trivia of no relevance to workers and oppressed people anywhere and of no use save as a cure for insomnia).
What I’m suggesting is that we try to engage positively with Your Party with a view to assisting and politically strengthening the left proto-communist wing around Sultana. These reflections are admittedly tentative – whether we should be part of Your Party is a question I have no answer to as yet – and may be overtaken by events.
Years ago, you published a letter of mine about the Zionist lobby smearing the Sandinistas in Nicaragua as anti-Semites, because among other things they refused to pay Israel for arms it had supplied to Somoza to drown the people’s insurrection in blood. Not only that, but the Sandinistas broke off relations with Israel and handed over its embassy to the Palestinians. I remarked then that I could not imagine Corbyn doing likewise. I still can’t, but I can imagine it being done by Sultana…
MIKE WEBBER
Aylesbury
PSNI praised by liberal activists
On 22 November, a Defend Our Juries demonstration took place in Belfast and Derry. No arrests were made under the Terrorism Act, generating a wave of giddy applause from certain political commentators in Britain. Patrick Corrigan of Amnesty International could barely contain his delight at the spectacle of Crown Forces ‘simply standing back’. It warms the heart! A British police force in Ireland manages not to arrest people for holding placards, and suddenly they are worthy of commendation.
This naive celebration of ‘good behaviour’ speaks to the liberalism of Amnesty International, and countless British liberals in the comments sections on social media than it does about the PSNI. The PSNI, like the RUC before it, is not a neutral service gone slightly astray; it is a central pillar of British rule in the North. It upholds a political order maintained through surveillance, harassment, and the quiet grinding down of resistance. The PSNI has no need to replicate the overt theatre of policing seen in London; it has the institutional machinery of a counter-insurgency force, not a metropolitan constabulary. As every activist in the Six Counties knows, the PSNI – assisted by its intelligence wing, C3, or if you’re lucky enough to be the ‘wrong’ type of Republican, MI5 – already has the names, addresses and political affiliations of most people who dare show their faces at a protest. The summons arrives via armed Crown Forces personnel days later, long after the headlines praising ‘restraint’ have faded.
More than 374,000 stop-and-searches have taken place in the past decade – an astonishing figure given the size of the population – 35,000 of them being children predominantly from Republican/Nationalist areas. The arrest rate that results from this dragnet is one of the lowest of any police force in Britain. Yet somehow this does not prompt concern from those so deeply moved by a peaceful demonstration.
Irish republican communities do not need Amnesty International to welcome the conduct of the PSNI, nor moral instruction from British commentators thrilled by the novelty of a polite police cordon. What we need – and what we will continue to argue for – is the dismantling of the PSNI as an instrument of imperialist and capitalist control. We understand this will only be possible through a continued movement for national liberation and socialism.
ODHRÁN O’FLAHERTY
Castlewellan, North of Ireland
Editor’s note:
Meanwhile in Britain, the remarks of Defend Our Juries (DOJ) themselves were equally appalling. In a press release comparing the 90 arrests made in London to the zero arrests in the North of Ireland, their petit bourgeois politics come through clearly in their characterisation of Irish republican groups. In a comment about three previous arrests made enforcing the ban of Palestine Action in the North of Ireland, a DOJ spokesperson stated: ‘In order to keep the peace, the Police in the North of Ireland regularly turn a blind eye to those showing support for proscribed loyalist or republican groups which have murdered hundreds of people. So it is completely disproportionate that the PSNI have been arresting people and sending warning letters for allegedly showing support for a domestic protest group who has killed no-one and was proscribed only on the basis of criminal damage.’ DOJ condemns Irish Republican freedom fighters, whom the Terrorism Act was created to repress in the first place, in order to divide the movement between those who support ‘real terrorists’ and themselves. This gets at the heart of DOJ’s reactionary politics. They do not oppose the racist, imperialist Terrorism legislation in and of itself. Where they refuse, we must continue to demand: Scrap the Terrorism Act! Resistance is not terrorism! Drop the charges now!
The British left parrots imperialism
As Venezuela’s communal movement celebrates another nationwide consultation, allocating funds for communally managed projects and the United Socialist Party elects 3 million coordinators via huge grassroots neighbourhood assemblies, the British left deny reality to justify its lack of solidarity. The Revolutionary Communist Party (formerly Socialist Appeal) tells us Maduro ‘has bureaucratically stifled all instances of popular participation’, with Jorge Martin, at their RevFest in November, absurdly claiming, ‘Everything the Bolivarian revolution had done [under late President Hugo Chavez], Maduro reversed’. This is how the RCP defends ditching its ‘Hands Off Venezuela’ campaign as the threat of war escalates. Meanwhile the Socialist Workers Party, who have never lifted a finger for Venezuela, equivocate ‘We oppose imperialist intervention and militaristic aggression aimed at regime change, but we do not give political support to Maduro and his corrupt, repressive circles against the working people.’ Such statements, repeating the lies of the BBC and Guardian, provide cover for imperialist intervention. These armchair socialists understand nothing of what is required to build a revolution. They are happy to align themselves with imperialist forces in Britain, calling for a vote for the genocidal Labour Party in every election, but their support for struggles on the forefront of the fight against imperialism is conditional – it is a betrayal of the Venezuelan people in the face of imperialist war.
SAM McGILL
Newcastle
Venezuela advances participatory democracy
In the midst of US aggression, Venezuela continues to strengthen its participatory democracy. On 8and 9 November 2025, over 100,000 neighbourhood assemblies were held, where Venezuelans showed their commitment to continuing their revolution. Over 3 million people elected Comprehensive Bolivarian Grassroots Committees, to serve as a collective base of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela. Through these committees, individual leaders are replaced with a collective leadership, backed by a popular mandate. These committees are responsible for ‘political education, propaganda, community action, territorial planning and preparation for comprehensive defence’, continuing the project of the Bolivarian Revolution by strengthening local communities as a force capable of training leaders and organising the masses.
The restructuring of Venezuela’s participatory democracy is following the vision set out by former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, continued by President Maduro, reaffirming the centrality of grassroots support to the Bolivarian Revolution. This approach to democratic engagement of people is a contrast to the absolute lack of meaningful democracy in Britain, where our politicians have no means of accountability to the people, serving only the ruling class. The Venezuelan struggle for socialism continues to be an inspiration, and I will continue to stand by it as an example of what is possible, and as a beacon of inspiration. Now more than ever, Venezuela needs our solidarity for the things to come.
GEORGE SHAW
Newcastle
Erratum
Whilst reading the article ‘Imperialism, resistance and the Palestinian state’ on page two of the last issue of FRFI (October/November 2025), I noticed an error. The article states: ‘The intifada was effectively aborted by the Oslo Peace Accords, signed by [Yasser] Arafat and Zionist premier Yitzhak Rabin on the White House lawn in 1993…’
The Oslo Accords were not actually signed by Arafat and Rabin. The two were present when they were signed and shook hands on the White House lawn, but the documents themselves were signed by Mahmoud Abbas for the Palestine Liberation Organisation and Shimon Peres for Israel.
While endorsed by Arafat, it is important to point out the treacherous role played by Abbas throughout his career and the rewards he subsequently received as president of the Palestinian Authority.
MARK MONCADA
Newcastle FRFI
