
The Times (18 May) has splashed our denunciation of the wearing of the old Russian imperial emblem, the St George Ribbon, by some members of Lewisham Momentum. The incident is only a specially gaudy display of the general political trend of the section of the Labour supposed-left which gravitates around the Morning Star.
The Morning Star is the continuation of the Daily Worker, which for decades from 1930 was a mouthpiece for the regimes of Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev. It saw the old USSR as âsocialistâ. It based that claim largely on the fact that all sizeable industry in that regime was government-owned. There were no individual, private capitalists.
Demoralised by the collapse of the USSR, the Morning Star continues to side with Russia today. Its authoritarian regime is no obstacle. Neither is the fact that the industry is now owned by loot-flaunting private oligarchs. It sides with Russia in a demoralised, mealy-mouthed way. Its real enthusiasm, as we shall see, is for the Chinese regime.
On Ukraine, for example, the Morning Star declares: âThe West has characterised Russiaâs attempts to defend ethnic Russian populations in Ukraine [i.e. its military intervention in eastern Ukraine] and its âannexation of the Crimeaâ as further evidence of its expansionist aims and aggressive policiesâ (5/12/18).
The Morning Star doesnât say straight out that it supports Putin in Ukraine, but gives its readers to understand that since âthe Westâ objects, Putinâs course must be basically healthy. On Syria, the Morning Star hailed the conquest of Aleppo by the Assad dictatorship, with Russian support, as âliberationâ (13/12/16) It has mostly been more roundabout in its arguments. On 21/12/18, it derided âBritish politicians and media [who] will scoff at Russian ambassador Alexander Yakovenkoâs suggestion that Sergei and Yulia Skripal may have been injected by British authorities with a nerve agent produced at Porton Down.
âThey will be equally scornful of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrovâs declaration that Moscow has âplenty of evidenceâ that Britain staged the alleged chlorine gas attack in the Syrian town of Doumaâ. They made no clear claim that the Putin regime and Assad were innocent. It just said that anyone rejecting the Russian story lacked âscepticism over news we are fedâ. They denounced the charge by despised âliberalsâ against Donald Trump of connections with Putin, calling it âthe big lie of Russiagateâ.
âThe interminable Mueller investigationâ, it declared, was out of order because⊠the US too had interfered in other countriesâ politics. The Morning Star does criticise Trump, but its indignation against the âliberalsâ and âhuman rights indignadosâ is hotter (5/1/19). On Europe, the Morning Star has exactly the same policy as Nigel Farage. âBritain should leave the EU on World Trade Organisation (WTO) terms to free a future Labour government from single market ruleâ (27/1/19). It denounces the Tory government as being too pro-EU â âthe pro-EU Tory minority regimeâ (27/1/19) â and especially condemns any customs union with the EU. Like the Tory right and Farage, they claim that the British government has no obligation or responsibility to prevent the re-erection of a hard border within Ireland. The whole border issue, it says, is just âa concoction of cynical and reckless politicians, commentators and top bureaucratsâ from the EU, the USA, and Dublin (18/4/19).
As in the old days of Stalin and Brezhnev, the attitude to governments across the world is chiefly governed by their diplomatic alignments and alliances. Its comment on the popular revolt against Nicaraguaâs crony-capitalist (and Russia-allied) ruler Daniel Ortega is: âWhat happened in Nicaragua last year was without doubt a US-inspired attempted coupâ.
The Morning Star denounces Amnesty International for âdenyingâ that (26/2/19). In Venezuela, there are indeed attempts at a coup with US support, which Solidarity has condemned. They ignores tjough the facts that the Maduro regime has already carried out a âcoupâ of its own against the National Assembly elected under its own supervision and relies mainly on its support in the military, and that the actual big-power troops in Venezuela are Russian (backing Maduro). They gushed: âTens of thousands poured onto the streets of Caracas to defend the socialist Bolivarian government from a US-led coup⊠The democratically elected leader addressed crowds from the Miraflores palaceâ (24/1/19).
The Israeli government has good relations with Russia and China, but the Morning Star sees it as the worst of the âWesternâ camp. It is the most vehement campaigner in the labour movement for boycotts of Israel, including of Israeli trade unions (2/5/17). They are formally for âtwo statesâ, but says they are against âa Jewish stateâ (it suggests that any âJewish stateâ must be exclusivist, but national self-determination for the Hebrew nation in Israel no more automatically excludes full rights for minorities than does national self-determination for any other nation with minorities among it, that is, almost every other nation in the world). They ran, for example, an approving review of Thomas Suarezâs State of Terror, a book portraying the whole existence of Israel as an arbitrary ideological act of âterrorismâ, and the solution as âuntangling the injusticeâ back to pre-1947 or even pre-1914 (3/1/17). Israel is the axis of evil in their view of the world â after all, they cut even Trump some slack, on the grounds he is attacked by âliberalsâ.
China is the axis of good. The criticisms and demurs in their coverage of Russia are absent on China. A statement from CPB-backed candidates in the 2008 Greater London Assembly elections, for example, denounced Tibetan protesters as âa minority of violent thugsâ and claimed that their supporters âecho the rhetoric of the far rightâ and âput British Chinese people at risk of racial discrimination and violence from such elements as the fascist British National Party and the National Front. The recent well-funded activists in Athens, London, Paris, San Francisco and elsewhere constitute an attack on the constitutional and territorial integrity of the sovereign republic of China.â
Editor Ben Chacko claims that China is socialist, and indeed a refreshing improvement on âtop-downâ socialism. âThis vision, of a party educating, agitating and organising in farms, factories and mines across China to give working people the tools to fight for their rights, is a fascinating departure from âtop-downâ socialism and may owe something to the methods used by the PSUV in Bolivarian Venezuela, a country the Chinese see as a close allyâ (6/1/14). Challenged by the South China Morning Post, in an interview, about Chinaâs ban on free trade unions, Chacko replied: âWe wouldnât want to sit here and judgeâ.
Non-state companies, including foreign- invested enterprises, account for more than half of total economic output in China. It is a thoroughly capitalist regime, only one with a fascistic level of suppression of workersâ and democratic rights.
Yet Chacko told the SCMP: âfor [the US and Britain] to say, âOh Chinaâs got a problem with human rightsâ, is just totally out of orderâ. And if Chinese workers and students to say the same thing? No, Chacko tells them, âthere [is] a lot more participation by ordinary residents in local decision-making in politics [in China] than Iâve ever seen in Britainâ (10/5/18).
And on the repression of the Uyghurs, the Morning Star responds: âChinaâs Foreign Ministry told US politicians today to stop poking their noses in the countryâs business and posing as human rights authoritiesâ (30/8/18).