IN MEMORIAM Trevor Rayne
7 December 1949 – 2 March 2022
In these most turbulent of political times, we miss our comrade Trevor Rawnsley (who wrote for FRFI as Trevor Rayne) more than ever. A lifelong champion of the international working class, he would have relished analysing the accelerating drive by rival imperialist powers towards conflict and war in their desperate struggle to prop up a teetering capitalism. He would have written and spoken in his hallmark passionate and erudite terms about British complicity in the genocide in Gaza. No doubt he would have seen with regret the intensified attack on the Kurdish liberation struggle – one always close to his heart – and the erosion of the gains made by the freedom fighters in Rojava. But most of all, as a new generation of activists is drawn into struggle, recognising that today in the world there is only imperialism on the one side and, standing against it, the forces of progress and socialism, we miss Trevor’s talents as a communist educator and mentor. His writings and speeches (on our website under ‘Trevor Rayne’) remain a treasure trove of Marxist analysis and knowledge which all new comrades should avail themselves of to better prepare themselves for the struggles that lie ahead.
Understanding state power
I wanted to thank you for this important publication and its many illuminating articles. In particular in FRFI 309 the article entitled ‘The Question of State Power’, which set out so clearly the struggle to defeat the savagery and barbarism of the ruling capitalist class in defending their profiteering interests. Robert Clough exposes the ‘fantasy that governmental office is the same as possessing state power’. He explains that this has never been the case and that state power is firmly in the hands of the ruling class – the capitalists. ‘The suppression of Palestine Action’, he explains, ‘is an object lesson in the exercise of that state power, of that corporate pressure on government’.
This understanding of the state is vital to our understanding of what is important when struggling for justice, human rights, and dignity for all people as well as animals and due care for this planet that sustains us. The capitalist class has shown already over and over the extent of the destruction on all life it is prepared to carry out to maintain its power. They warn now that you will need to be prepared to sacrifice your children in their next world war, as they once again seek to wreak the greatest profit from the rape of the world by redividing the spoils. The genocide of the Palestinian people which we have watched for over two years has not simply been at the hands of a nationalist, supremacist, racist, Jewish state, as some like to paint, but funded and backed by the most powerful Western imperialist states whose capitalist classes have found a playground and laboratory for the weapons they intend to use against challenges to their power anywhere in the world. The simple understanding of who controls the state is essential and needs urgently to be learnt by all who hope to live in a kind and caring world without exploitation and violence.
FIONA MACLEAN
London
Life of a People Project debuts in Birmingham
On 22 November 2025, Life of a People Project (LOP) – a North Birmingham arts collective which includes supporters of the
Birmingham branch of the Revolutionary Communist Group – hosted a zine-making workshop at Hood Futures’ People’s Archive event in Ladywood, in collaborations with Shelby X Studios’ Rebel Zine Club. The event drew on LOP’s living archive of Birmingham ‘street scenes’, poetry and music themed around migrant rights, gender liberation, racism and imperialism, serving to introduce the project’s revolutionary purpose as a bridge to organising.
Participants at the workshop moved through a series of stations, brought to life with Reflections filmography. The first outlined the radical, DIY ethos of zines, with blank paper and a looping instructional video. The second was an inspiration hub with example zines and legacy RCG pamphlets. The third encouraged pairing Reflections pieces with FRFI newspaper cuttings to link artistic expression with documented struggle. A final station provided polaroid cameras to photograph finished zines. The atmosphere was engaged and collaborative,, sparking discussions on the role of art and organisation with participants inspired towards action with FRFI.
The political line was clear: art is a functional tool for class struggle, one that educates, agitates, and belongs to the people. In practice, the zines created were not mere souvenirs but a living counter-archive which directly rejects the ‘exploitative archive’ that uproots, shelves, and neutralises radical community art in Birmingham. LOP embodies this principle, holding that ‘art plus anger equals action’. It uses worker photography as a soil in which songs, poetry, and film pieces can grow. Excluded voices are amplified – carers, asylum seekers, economic migrants, precarious workers of the global majority, who directly confront their material struggles from housing injustice to exploitative labour.
Reflections Volume 1, which compiles the living archive, is available soon. Follow @lifeof-apeopleproject for updates!
CHARAN KAUR
Birmingham
From Rojava to Gaza – smash imperialism!
There was a Rojava protest in Newcastle on 21 January organised by Kurdish activists in solidarity with Kurdish resistance in Syria. There were over 300, mostly Kurdish, people. FRFI supporters attended. The politics on Kurdistan were encouraging: no support for HTS; a lot of Kurdish-Iraqis supporting Kurdish people in Syria; and a call for Yaka, yaka, yaka! (One Kurdistan!)
We took a Palestinian flag to draw links between the struggles. We were told to put it away or leave. Things got heated. We hustled and decided to put it away so we could engage with the crowd. An organiser told us we were welcome at the protest. I asked if I could make a speech and was immediately ushered to the plinth, put next in line and given a very warm welcome.
I spoke about the need to overcome divisions created by our enemies by finding common ground to fight British imperialism and remember the shared demands of the Kurdish and Palestinian people who have historically stood together to fight for a free Kurdistan and a free Palestine.
I was hugged by one of the people who had shown hostility to us earlier. He apologised and said he did not realise which organisation we were part of. We went around the crowd and received a lot more solidarity, with people saying that while there are divisions, they support Palestine.
Palestine, Kurdistan – Intifada, Serhildan!
MARK MONCADA
Newcastle
Response from author of Capital Condensed
Paul Bullock’s review of my book Capital Condensed in Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 309 suggests that ‘capital as imperialism is where the book should have started’.
I’m sure some books should start there, but as its title suggests, my book is a condensed version of Marx’s Capital, a book investigating the origins and development of capital, not my views on how modern imperialism has developed.
Capital Condensed follows the 18 parts of Marx’s investigation in the three volumes of Capital. Marx starts this investigation by looking at the simple commodity, not imperialism or capital, in order to explain how money, capital, profit and so on develop logically and historically from commodity production.
This was Marx’s method, which he regularly contrasted with the bourgeois, Ricardian method of starting with the immediate reality of capitalism, or nowadays imperialism. I’m surprised Paul suggests I abandon Marx’s method when summarising Marx’s work.
Paul is wrong to say that quotes are not referenced. As explained in the introduction, all quotes refer to the online version of Capital at the Marxists Internet Archive – not the traditional, academic way of doing things but much more useful to readers.
COLIN CHALMERS
Brighton
Reply
Colin Chalmers’ response seems to have overlooked the fact that at the start of his work he clearly states that capital has become an ‘ecocidal process of expansion’, with a world ‘hurtling towards catastrophe’. Consequently, I expressed my concern that he ought to have explained that this was a result of the violent struggle for resources that specifically marks out the imperialist stage of capitalist accumulation. I stated that we find in Marx’s Capital an explanation of all the forces that would create the conditions of imperialism. I would therefore have expected Chalmers to have pointed to the dynamic, maturing or ripening, of the social relations discovered by Marx which have led to the present ecological crises. The capitalist relations of production are not a series of static unchanging categories. Marx’s method was aimed at explaining the ‘immediate reality of capitalism’, which today is imperialism. He starts his work with a statement of the way capital appears. I certainly don’t suggest that Chalmers ‘abandon Marx’s method when summarising’ Capital but rather explain to the reader that the method is not trapped in the nineteenth century, and so not only applicable to its ‘progressive’ stage.
With respect to referencing, simply directing us in footnote 3 to Capital in the Marxist Internet Archive (MIA) website, with no further specific reference against any of the quotes to any page or section or volume of Capital anywhere in his book, makes searching for them, presumably with an internet device in the other hand, chapter by MIA chapter, even with a search button, almost impossible.
Paul Bullock
Kanak prisoners: freed but not liberated
In summer 2024, the people of Kanaky (‘New Caledonia’) rose up against French imperialism after it attempted to crush any hopes the indigenous people had for independence. At the time, France responded with severe repression; nearly 2,000 people were arrested, and over 140 detained, including the leaders of the Kanaky independence movement.
Most of the independence leaders were imprisoned in ‘metropolitan’ France, over 10,000km away from their families and community networks, an intentional move to isolate the political prisoners. Christian Tien, a major figure in the independence movement ,was kept in solitary confinement for over a year before a court of appeals authorised the conditional release of him and four others. While many of the charges against him have been dropped, he remains under investigation for conspiracy and armed robbery.
The French administration has dragged its feet in issuing Tien a passport so he can return to Kanaky, a deliberate move to keep him away from developments in the archipelago. After scrapping the electoral reform which sparked the protests in 2024, Macron put forward the Bougival accords in July 2025, rolling back some of what was initially in the reform, but reaffirming French control over Kanaky. The Kanak National and Socialist Liberation Front, which Tien represents, opposed the accords. Other freed prisoners face conditions such as not being able to return to Kanaky or a ban on speaking to co-defendants.
The movement for Kanaky continues to face harsh repression from French colonial forces, and the legal battle for the movement leaders is far from over. They need our solidarity. You can send money to the USTKE, the main Kanak independentist union, earmarked for their funds of support for those facing state repression:
USTKE/SOLIDARITES
IBAN: FR76 1749 9000 1319 0881 0206 218
BIC: BCADNCNN
Domiciliation: BCI Mairie
Free Kanaky! Down with French imperialism!
SARAH GUEBRE-EGZIABHER
London
