Communist Party of Britain and Morning Star

As matters stand the balance of scientific opinion is that the Covid-19 pandemic probably started by a virus jumping from an animal host to humans in the Wuhan wet market or elsewhere. But we don’t know and may never know. The Biden administration in the USA is launching an investigation, which includes considering the idea that the virus leaked from a lab. Of course the Biden administration will have political motives in including that idea, just as the Chinese authorities had their motives for promoting the theory that the virus came from outside China. But it is not pursuing Donald Trump’s...

“Whataboutery” is an old trick favoured by Stalinists whenever difficult questions about human rights under “socialist” (or, these days, “anti-imperialist”) regimes are raised. So, in the old days of the Stalinist empire, they would respond “what about racism in the US?” to questions about the lack of democratic rights in the USSR and Eastern Europe. The other old trick of that sort is “my enemy’s enemy is my friend”. Some of the most blatant cases you’ll come across involve the Morning Star and its efforts to deny or justify the Chinese state’s treatment of the Uyghurs. The editorial (25 May)...

I appreciate Luke Hardy’s response (Solidarity 591) in both tone and content to my letter (Solidarity 589) re the Communist Party of Britain (CPB), the Party’s programme Britain’s Road to Socialism, and the concept of the broad, democratic, anti-monopoly alliance.

The return of the Anti-Monopoly Alliance, by Jim Denham Anti-monopoly doesn't mean backing small capitalists, by Andrew Northall Coaxing small capitalists, by Jim Denham A reply on the Anti-Monopoly Alliance, by Andrew Northall Alliances, "anti-monopoly" and other, by Luke Hardy Defending the Anti-Monopoly Alliance, by Andrew Northall

If you have tears, prepare to shed them now: Chelley Ryan has resigned from the Labour Party! Naturally, this news has come as a crushing blow to the entire UK labour movement and warranted nearly a thousand words, in the form of an open letter to the Socialist Campaign Group, in the Morning Star of 18 May (“Leaving Labour is a legitimate choice”). Mind you, it wasn’t an easy decision for poor Chelley, who’s “wrestled with this decision for 13 months”. And she’s “sorry if I’m disappointing you.” But Chelley, you see, is speaking for a lot of “distressed people who have fought tirelessly for...

Climate science predicts that different crises will unfold at different time scales and under different emissions scenarios. The purpose of my article (Solidarity 589) was to argue that economic convulsions will be an early rather than a late impact of climate change, and may well begin in anticipation of the major civilisation-rocking crises like sea-level rise. Further, that these convulsions will occur at a time when the dawning realisation of climate change — that the future is one of escalating and multiple crises piling up and compounding each other — becomes hegemonic. I expect these...

Having supported Labour in all elections while Jeremy Corbyn was leader, the Communist Party of Britain (CPB) has started standing candidates again. TheMorning Star, which poses as a broad labour movement publication but is in reality a mouthpiece for the CPB, quoted the party’s general secretary Robert Griffiths in its May Day edition: “That we are fielding numbers of candidates unprecedented in recent decades is no accident... The latest edition of our programme — Britain’s Road to Socialism (BRS) — has struck a chord with many militant working class voters, especially the young...” There is...

When loyalist violence erupted in Northern Ireland in April, the Morning Star responded with an article (15 April) by one Lynda Walker that concluded: “The cause of the problems which the unionist and loyalist communities have cited, the border and policing, must be solved politically. In addition to those orchestrating the violence, the British and Irish governments, the EU and the DUP should be held responsible for this situation.” The words “statement” and “bleedin’ obvious” spring to mind. At least Walker’s article includes the British government in its roll-call of those to blame. Back in...

On 1 May a “May Day manifesto” by John Hendy and Keith Ewing was published in the Morning Star, under the headline “A New Deal for Workers”. A New Deal for Workers is a slogan that has been used by the TUC and various unions, particularly the CWU [Communication Workers' Union]; this is a new attempt to flesh it out. There is much in the document worth comment and discussion. On the crucial issue of the right to strike and repealing the anti-trade union laws, it is weak. Hendy and Ewing are leading lights in the Institute of Employment Rights (IER). In recent years the IER has focused heavily...

Andrew Northall, in his reply to Jim Denham on the “Anti-Monopoly Alliance” in Solidarity 589, writes: “Jim says... the Labour Party and unions are the arena for the debates and struggles that take place within the British working-class movement’. Really? So Black Lives Matter, Reclaim These Streets, the Sarah Everard protests, opposition to the Police Bill etc., are down to the Labour Party and the trade unions or not relevant to ‘the British working class movement’?” By contrast, Andrew writes: “The strategy of the BRS [Britain’s Road to Socialism, the Communist Party of Britain program] is...