Communist Party of Britain and Morning Star

A once-familiar name returned to the pages of the Morning Star last week, banging a familiar and well-worn drum: Brian Denny, Europhobe and Little Englander par excellence. For the EU referendum of June 2016, CAEF signed up with Leave.EU, the group run by Nigel Farage and his sidekick Arron Banks, responsible for some of the most racist propaganda during that campaign (e.g. the notorious “Breaking Point” poster and the claim that a millions Turks were about to arrive in Britain). Banks sent money to TUAEU and in his book Bad Boys of Brexit, published in October 2016, described how he worked...

Just over a year after Jeremy Corbyn was elected, in September 2016, the new Labour Leader addressed the Burston Strike Rally in Norfolk.

Elections for the Assistant General Secretary and National President positions are currently taking place in the National Union of Rail, Maritime, and Transport workers (RMT). Supporters of Workers’ Liberty active in the union are backing Alan Pottage (AGS) and Sean Hoyle (National President). The past year in RMT has seen outbreaks of conflict within the union over the application of its rule book and how much power should be held by union officers and staff, as against lay bodies like the National Executive Committee. The former General Secretary Mick Cash retired early, following claims...

The Russian invasion and occupation of Afghanistan was as brutal as the USA’s, in fact more so, involving indiscriminate bombing, the napalming of villages and the deliberate destruction of crops. It cost an estimated million lives. It was more a war of colonial occupation than the USA’s, in that the Russian government wanted to permanently conquer Afghanistan, whereas the USA’s plan was to punish the Taliban for 9/11, clear out al-Qaeda, install a stable government it could do business with, and then get out. (It didn’t work out like that, of course). In one respect, however the Russian...

The Morning Star (unlike some other left wing publications) did not hail the fall of Kabul and the Taliban takeover as any kind of “triumph” or “victory” for “anti-imperialism”. In fact the Morning Star of 16 August described the situation as a “disaster unfolding” and quoted a member of the Afghan diaspora now living in Norway saying: “Dark times are ahead as women and ethnic groups like the Hazara will face the same fate as they did in the 1990s”. But it has been completely incoherent on the underlying politics. The Morning Star claimed (editorial 17 August) that any suggestion that the Stop...

TheMorning Star’s editorial of 13 July, defending and promoting English “patriotism” (aka nationalism) against “those on the left who turn their backs on their own nationality” and listing “good reasons why English people can rightly feel patriotic” was no one-off aberration. In the edition of 21 July, one Harry Dobson (almost certainly a pseudonym) pursues the patriotic theme, with an added element of psycho-babble: “people like to feel like their identity is distinctive... Refrains such as ‘We’re the worst drinkers, aren’t we?, or ‘I’m so embarrassed by English people abroad, we’re a...

Click here for the ongoing debate to which this is a contribution Much of what Andrew Northall argues in his reply to my letter about the "Anti-Monopoly Alliance", no socialist with any sense of the reality of the world we live in would disagree with. He advocates "a comprehensive range of economic, social, political and democratic demands which proceed from what working people actually need and deserve in the here and now, not what capitalism or its media says is 'realistic', 'credible' or 'affordable'. In many cases they proceed from demands made by workers in struggle and by progressive...

Although the Labour leadership's new bans on four organisations have been justified mainly in terms of the issue of antisemitism, the question of Marxist and Trotskyist politics has also been raised. We republish this article written by one of our comrades for socialist Labour Party magazine The Clarion in February 2017, which discusses the issues in the form of a reply to Labour right-winger Luke Akehurst. At the time dozens of Workers' Liberty people had recently been expelled from the Labour Party. Do revolutionary socialists have a place in Labour? By Sacha Ismail Some activists on the...

Everyone who takes even a passing interest in politics knows that Johnson’s government is waging a “culture war” or “war on woke” against so-called “liberals” who oppose racism and other forms of prejudice. It is also well known that this is a worked out strategy, developed by Johnson’s advisers Dougie Smith and Munira Mirza — a couple who have close links with the “libertarian”-right Spiked outfit. This strategy began over five years ago in an anti-EU campaign based upon hostility towards other European countries and the demonisation of immigrants. Every politically aware person in Britain...

The Morning Star appeared to welcome Labour’s victory (albeit a narrow one) in Batley and Spen: “Labour activists are breathing a sigh of relief... The result is a welcome sign that Tory advances across northern England are not unstoppable... it also shows the importance of locally rooted politics...” I say “appeared to welcome” the result because those words come from an editorial published in the 3-4 July edition — two days after the result. Before then, there was nothing to indicate that the paper was supporting Labour and a lot to suggest that it didn’t. In fact, even that editorial went...