politics – Page 2 – Avanti Populo

US and Israel complicit in war crimes

5^th June 2025

Out on a limb – the US once again vetoes a ceasefire in Gaza at the United Nations

The so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) is nothing more than a trojan horse created by the United States and Israel to facilitate the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza. The BBC and international media continue to report on its activities as if it had some credibility when in reality it has none.

Established two weeks ago, the GHF was set up to bypass the work of the United Nations and other international aid agencies, who have tried and tested methods of delivering international aid through well established local networks.

The Israelis claim that aid through these routes is being hi-jacked by Hamas and is not reaching the people who need it. They have produced no evidence whatsoever to back up such claims. The GHF, which is not run by experienced aid workers, but is staffed by private US security agencies, lacks local knowledge, local networks and has only four centres from which aid can be accessed.

The UN and international aid agencies have 400 sites across Gaza from which aid could be accessed should the Israeli military allow. The GHF have a limited number of sites in the south of Gaza, where the Israelis are attempting to drive the Palestinian population, and they are only accessible by civilians going through known combat zones. Nearly one hundred civilians have been killed by Israeli troops and hundreds more wounded in the past two weeks, attempting to access aid at GHF hubs.

The hubs are located in Israeli military zones, where journalists have no access.

To reach the sites in Rafah, Palestinians must walk for miles along a designated route where GHF says the Israeli military keeps security. In statements to the public, GHF has warned people to stay on the road, saying leaving it “represents a great danger.”

Distribution usually starts at 5 a.m. each day but thousands of Palestinians start walking hours earlier, desperate not to miss out on food. That means large crowds passing by Israeli troops in the dark.

Israel admitted on Tuesday for the first time that its forces shot at Palestinians. In a statement, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said troops fired shots near a food distribution complex after noticing “a number of suspects moving towards them”.

This was the third time civilians had been killed by the IDF in three days.

Mirjana Spoljaric, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), told the BBC on Wednesday that conditions in Gaza had become “worse than hell on earth” and that states are not doing enough to end the war, end the suffering of Palestinians and secure the release of Israeli hostages.

The recent killings has resulted in at least one of the GHF hubs being closed temporarily.

That Israel is pursuing a policy of starvation, ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza, in addition to approving more illegal West Bank settlements, is clear to the world. The British government’s continued complicity in the war crimes carried out by the Israeli regime was challenged in the House of Commons this week, in a Bill presented by Independent MP, Jeremy Corbyn, calling for a public inquiry into Britain’s “military, economic, or political co-operation with Israel since October 2023.” The Bill was endorsed but has little chance of being translated into action without government backing.

This week the United States, for the fifth time, vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for an “immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire” in Gaza. All other 14 countries on the security council voted in favour, including Russia, China, France and Britain. The resolution also called for the “immediate and unconditional lifting of all restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza and its safe and unhindered distribution at scale, including by the UN and humanitarian partners”.

US secretary of state Marco Rubio said in a statement after the vote,

“The United States will continue to stand with Israel at the UN.”

Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Gideon Saar, thanked the US “for standing shoulder to shoulder with Israel and vetoing this one-sided resolution in the UN Security Council.”

Both countries are clearly guilty of direct engagement and active support for war crimes and international pressure must continue to be brought to bear, in order to bring them to justice for their actions.

Strategic Defence or weapons wish list?

2^nd June 2025

British troops – in even greater danger following defence review

Within days of taking office last July one of the first acts of Keir Starmer’s government was to commission a Strategic Defence Review (SDR). Today that review, headed up by former NATO General Secretary, Lord Robertson, has been published. On one level it holds no surprises, though the suggestion that Britain needs to move to “war fighting readiness” may come as a shock to many. The review is predicated on the assumption that Britain faces “a new era of threat” as justification for its belligerent tone.

As a nuclear power, a big spender on the military, a permanent member of the UN Security Council and with pretentions of still playing an imperial role in the world, the British ruling class has for decades been eager to bolster its ailing power and influence over global affairs.

The Empire upon which the sun never set, and the blood never dried, may be no more but Britain still exercises a powerful neo-colonial reach through the Commonwealth, as well as being one of NATO’s two European nuclear powers, alongside France.

No Labour government has ever challenged this so called defence framework, designed by the ruling class, for the ruling class and benefiting the ruling class and their cronies in the military industrial complex. There has broadly been bi-partisan agreement between the leadership of Labour and the Tories that the military is untouchable and, however inefficient its use of resources, its budget is maintained.

With Labour elected on a commitment to increase the military budget to 2.5% of GDP, increasing to 3% it is no surprise that likely spend by 2034 is predicted to be 3.5% of GDP. Six new munitions factories are proposed to facilitate making weapons to meet this upsurge in spend, billions will be wasted on renewing the pointless and US controlled Trident nuclear submarine fleet and, as part of the AUKUS agreement with the US and Australia, Britain will maintain an aircraft carrier presence in the South China Sea, to help defend against the ‘threat’ posed by China.

The SDR also commits Britain to building 12 nuclear-powered attack submarines as part of the AUKUS alliance, the first of which will launch in the late 2030s, replacing seven Astute-class submarines, tasked to operate around the world.

According to a report in The Guardian (2/6/25),

“Ministers are also considering whether to restore an air-launched nuclear deterrent by buying F-35A aircraft which have been certified to carry the US B61-12 gravity bomb, which has a maximum explosive yield of 50 kilotons, more than three times the size of the 15kT bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.”

China, along with Russia, Iran and North Korea are cited as the main reason behind this arms spending spree, with China deemed to be a “sophisticated and persistent challenge” to Western ‘interests’.

As ever, a bogie is needed to justify spending more on weapons rather than schools, hospitals, housing, roads and green infrastructure, all of which would be of direct benefit to working class families. The Cold War template of accelerating arms spending to counter the mythical Soviet threat is tried and tested, so is being dusted down once again and given a further airing with the assistance of a supine press and BBC.

One sided and clearly partisan reporting of the Russian intervention in Ukraine has heightened public alarm, while the Chinese ‘threat’ to Taiwan, internationally recognised as part of China, is being prepared as justification for intervention in South East Asia.

At a recent summit in Singapore US Defence Secretary, Pete Hegseth, stated that “any attempt by Communist China to conquer Taiwan by force would result in devastating consequences for the Indo-Pacific and the world.” Hegseth further called for other countries in the region to boost their military spending, though this has met with a mixed response, given widespread scepticism in the region regarding the Trump administration’s assessment of the degree of threat China poses.

Only fourteen nations internationally recognise Taiwan and the US is not one of them, so the interest which the US has in Taiwan is merely as a possible stick with which to beat China and to ramp up tensions in the region.

That the British government should be complicit in the misinformation drive to demonise China, Russia and others is ultimately a betrayal of Labour’s working class roots and a drain on even the remote possibility that a capitalist economy could continue to provide anything of significance for the working class.

Warmongering while wrapped in the Union Jack may have a patriotic ring but it will sound increasingly hollow when the consequence of more weapons is the shrinking of the health, education and housing infrastructure even further than they have been reduced over the past 30 years.

Labour’s so called Strategic Defence Review is little more than a wish list for weapons, none of which will defend working class communities but, deployed in other parts of the world, will make working class men and women targets. Continued support for movements such as CND and Stop the War will be essential to try and stem the tide of Labour’s warmongering stance.

The case for a non-nuclear, non-NATO, non-aligned foreign policy could not be clearer. Increasing the stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction will only benefit the arms manufacturers and do nothing but make working class communities potential targets.

Real change needed

5^th May 2025

Nigel Farage – delighted to see Reform UK take over Durham County Council

After UKIP and the Brexit Party, the latest incarnation led by right wing nationalist, Nigel Farage, is Reform UK. As with the previous manifestations of the Farage ego, Reform UK is a party of the rich, for the rich, run by the rich, masquerading as the voice of the people. The Farage brand, the ordinary bloke down the pub with common sense opinions, is as phoney as any marketing ploy adopted by the leaders of other parties to try and burnish their fading fortunes.

Like US President Donald Trump, Farage presents himself as an outsider, the scourge of the establishment, the man with a mission to ‘drain the swamp’, stop the waste of taxpayers money, root out corruption, a real man of the people. All part of the branding.

Farage, like Trump, is not against the establishment he is just another, more vicious manifestation of it. The attacks upon concepts of equality, diversity and inclusion; the trashing of targets for net zero carbon emissions; the anti trade unions stance; the attacks upon local government; and the massive emphasis upon reducing migration to Britain are all simply extensions of policies which have been lurking on the right wing of the Tory Party for years and sound like easy solutions to the deepening crisis of capitalism in Britain today.

In taking over control of Durham County Council in the North East of England Farage was quick to pronounce that any staff working on equality schemes or the green agenda should be looking for new career paths. The idea that money spent in such areas of local government activity could be diverted to address the problem of potholes in roads was flagged by Durham CC Reform Cllr Darren Grimes, a man who has recently posted,

“Not a chance I’ll support migrants getting keys to homes while locals get kicked to the kerb.”

This posing of one issue against another, equality work versus potholes, migrants versus homelessness, is classic right wing demagoguery, which is a cover for not wanting to reveal the fact that the entire capitalist system is failing working people and needs to be overthrown in its entirety.

The rise of Farage and his ilk is only possible because the party with the deepest roots in the working class and trade union movement, the Labour Party, has abandoned any notion of tackling head on the real issues faced by working class people in Britain. The shrinking of opportunities through advancement in education; the decimation of local government services on which the most vulnerable rely; the creeping privatisation of the NHS; the waste of money on weapons of mass destruction; the need to invest in green infrastructure in order to create jobs and prosperity.

The Labour Party leadership is afraid of its own shadow, is afraid to stand up and say that we do not have a migration crisis in Britain, that the numbers of migrants is small and can easily be accommodated. The Labour leadership is afraid to say that weapons of mass destruction do not create jobs, they simply divert resources away from more socially useful production while making Britain a target. The Labour leadership is more concerned with clinging to its illusion of power than making the case for real change for the working class of Britain. It’s not that they won’t go down without a fight, it’s that they won’t put up a fight in the first place.

All of which leaves a void to be filled by the ‘bloke down the pub’ politics of the likes of Farage, with no-one piping up to point out that the bloke down the pub is usually half tanked and talking bollocks.

Reform UK gaining 677 councillors and control of eight local authorities, as well as overturning a 14,000 strong Labour majority in the Runcorn and Helsby by-election has to be awake up call. Whether the Labour leadership has the political acumen or nous to realise this is another matter. They clearly have no understanding of the depth of the crisis US imperialism faces globally, with the growing efficiency of the Chinese economic model, even less understanding of that for the British economy and seemingly no clue as to how to begin the process of carving out a place for an independent socialist Britain which could truly address people’s needs.

Pundits across the press and media have been proclaiming the end of the two party system in Britain over the past few days, following the 1^st May election results. What they fail to realise is that, whether there are two parties or five, what is broken is the entire system which, whatever combination of parties make up the House of Commons, remains geared to serve the interests of the banks, corporations, the City of London and the military industrial complex.

Begin to challenge that and real change may then be possible.

Trump turns up heat on ‘allies’

17^th April 2025

US President Donald Trump pointing in which direction the US economy is heading

In the midst of the apparently chaotic approach to the international economy taken by United States President Donald Trump, there is an underlying objective which was made clear by the Wall Street Journal this week. The newspaper cited internal sources in the Trump administration confirming that the plan is for the US to use “ongoing tariff negotiations to pressure US trading partners to limit their dealings with China.”

The Wall Street Journal states that,

“U.S. officials plan to use negotiations with more than 70 nations to ask them to disallow China to ship goods through their countries, prevent Chinese firms from locating in their territories to avoid U.S. tariffs, and not absorb China’s cheap industrial goods into their economies.”

The so called Liberation Day ‘reciprocal’ tariffs, announced on 2^nd April, saw the US propose a wide range of tariffs upon trading partners based upon the trade deficit they had with the US, a methodology which famously included the Heard and McDonald Islands, only inhabited by penguins.

The British government, far from being outspoken in opposition to the tariffs, expressed relief at only being in the 10% tariff band, a category which is now occupied by everyone but China, faced with an outrageous 145% tariff on goods exported to the US. The 90 day hiatus on implementation of the tariff bands subsequently announced by Trump is supposedly to give countries the opportunity to negotiate.

What this means in reality is that those countries who rely significantly on trade with the US are expected to bend the knee to US imperialism or be hit with more punitive action once the 90 days is up. In particular, the negotiations will be a means by which the US tries to compel nations to limit their dealings with China.

The US is used to getting its own way, either through economic manipulation of international bodies such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, or through the use of military force.

The clearest example of economic pressure is the illegal blockade of Cuba, which has stood up to US imperialism for over 60 years and continues to survive in spite of the attempts of the US to strangle its economic development.

More recently the US has adopted similar tactics in relation to Venezuela in an effort to enforce regime change. Threats to annexe the Panama Canal and take over Greenland are current indicators of US intentions, while the people of Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria can attest to the fallout of direct US military intervention in the Middle East. The people of Gaza and the West Bank are the ongoing victims of the genocide perpetrated by the US’s proxy in the Middle East, Israel.

The unipolarity which US imperialism enforced following the defeat of the Soviet Union in the early 1990’s is now threatened by the rapid economic development of the Chinese economy.

The latest World Economic Outlook data, published by the IMF in January 2025, indicates growth of 2.7% for the US in 2024, the EU at 0.8%, Britain at 0.9% and China at 4.8%. While this only provides a snapshot it is indicative of the trend globally, that capitalism as a model is failing and that economies structured with more centralised state control are on the ascendant.

In recognising this the US trade war, launched by Trump, is a clear attempt by the US to bully so called ‘allies’ back into the US camp. The pressure upon members of the NATO Alliance to increase their military spending to 5% of GDP is also part of this strategy. Not only will public services across much of Europe be impoverished but the main beneficiaries will be the US arms dealers who have access to the most up to date weapons technology.

China’s response to US tariffs has been to impose tariffs of its own, at 125%, on US goods imported into China. Chinese President, Xi Jinping, has undertaken a tour of Southeast Asia this week, as part of an anti-tariff campaign and offering a more stable alternative trading partner to US uncertainty.

As part of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) Alliance, China is already engaged in a process of exploring alternatives to the US dollar as the default international currency measure. The Global South generally is suspicious of US actions and intentions in relation to both economic issues and military threats.

While tariffs will undoubtedly hit the Chinese economy the capacity of China to withstand the impact is arguably greater, as it can more easily replace what it imports from the US from other sources. US exports to China are heavily agriculture focused such as soya beans, cotton, beef and poultry. Conversely the US relies on China for imports of electronics, machinery and processed minerals, far more difficult to source from elsewhere.

Also, as a result of tariffs imposed upon China in Trump’s first term, China has consciously reduced its share of imports from the US, down from 21% in 2016 to 13.4% in 2024, all of which underlines why the US is also putting pressure upon so-called allies to reduce trade with China.

China controls more than two thirds of global rare earth production and more than 90% of processing capacity. The US relies on China for many rare earth metals, essential for electric vehicle batteries for example, which means Trump’s trade war could well backfire even more spectacularly than it already has.

The real danger for the world is that if the economic arm twisting tactics of US imperialism do not work the usual recourse is to military force. Anti-Chinese propaganda is now widespread across Western media and the possibility of action over Taiwan could well be the occasion for a military flashpoint. The peace, trade union and labour movement need to be alert to this possibility and be ready to expose the machinations of US imperialism rather than be fooled by the illusion of a US/Britain ‘special relationship’, which will certainly not be special for the working class if world war is the outcome.

Spring statement: For the few, not the many

27^th March 2025

Chancellor Rachel Reeves – not winning friends amongst the working class

In a classic guns not butter statement yesterday Britain’s Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, hammered the poor in order to enrich the arms industry. To add to the £2.9 billion already earmarked for the military budget next year Reeves found a further £2.2 billion, a grand total of £5.1 billion extra next year alone, with the promise of more to come.

In order to build this additional military capacity, to defend against a mythical Russian threat, Reeves not only hammered the poor in Britain with welfare cuts but cut the overseas aid budget further, just to ensure that the pain was spread at an international level.

Reeves claims to have cut welfare in Britain by £4.8 billion but the Resolution Foundation think tank calculates that about 800,000 claimants will have reduced personal independence payments, saving the government £8.1bn by 2029-30. It is estimated that this will affect 3 million families.

While Reeves pins her hopes on economic growth and getting people into jobs to offset the slashing of welfare, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) halved Britain’s economic growth forecast for next year from 2% to 1%, which hardly suggests a boom in employment of any kind, let alone one which could compensate for the ripping away of the welfare safety net for many.

A recent economic analysis by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, projects that living standards for families in Britian will be worse in 2030 than in 2025, with those on the lowest incomes declining twice as fast as middle and high earners. The report indicates that the poorest third are being disproportionately affected by rising housing costs, falling real earnings and frozen tax thresholds. Increased military spending, along with the other measures in the Spring statement, will further exacerbate this trend.

Even the Treasury’s own impact assessment estimates that 250,000 more people, including 50,000 children, will be left in relative poverty after housing costs by the end of the decade as a result of the government’s squeeze on welfare.

Just to add to the wider uncertainty about the economy US president, Donald Trump, this week announced a 25% levy on car imports to the US, with the possibility of further measures to come. The danger of being sucked into a trade war, due to the actions of Trump, will further undermine the notion that Britain has a ‘special relationship’ that will allow it to be excluded from Trump’s wider tariff war.

However, speaking on Sky News, Reeves was firmly wedded to her deluded projections saying,

“I am absolutely certain that our reforms, instead of pushing people into poverty, are going to get people into work. And we know that if you move from welfare into work, you are much less likely to be in poverty.”

Given the nature of capitalism, as an exploitative system dominated by private sector companies whose main objective is to increase profit, not wages, Reeves vision is at best utopian, at worst simply an attempt to mislead and dissemble her way out of the fact that the cuts proposed are not out of necessity but are from political choice.

Of course, Reeves is not a one woman band. She has the full backing of Labour leader Kier Starmer, the Cabinet and a majority of Labour MPs, so responsibility runs deep within the Parliamentary Labour Party, even though approval for the actions of Labour’s leadership is not shared by many trade union affiliates or local party activists.

Unite leader, Sharon Graham, condemned Reeves for rigidly sticking to her self imposed financial rules with the evidence of ruin in working class communities all around, stating,

“Rachel Reeves is right; the world has changed but why is it always everyday people that have to pay the price. They paid the price after the 2008 crash, the Covid pandemic and are now expected to pay the price again. It is simply wrong.”

Unfortunately Graham is unable to make the link between attacks on working class communities and the increase in military spending, going on to congratulate the government for pledging to “invest in our defence in an uncertain global world”.

GMB General Secretary, Gary Smith, was more succinct stating,

“Tackling huge economic problems is a historic challenge. That’s why we need proper investment in key industries – and must nationalise them if necessary.”

On behalf of the TUC General Secretary, Paul Novak, took issue with the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), stating,

“It is time to review both the role of the OBR and how it models the long-term impacts of public investment. Short-term changes in forecasts should not be driving long-term government decision-making.”

Posting on X former Labour leader and Independent MP, Jeremy Corbyn, was absolutely clear,

“This Labour government could have taxed the wealthiest in our society. It is disgraceful that they are choosing to go after the poor and disabled instead.”

Unity around the concepts of jobs not bombs, welfare not warfare and organising society in the interests of the many, not the few, are key to moving towards lasting socialist change. There is clearly still work to be done across the Labour movement and within working class communities to build support which recognises that these issues are linked and the common denominator is capitalism.

Ongoing mass extra Parliamentary action will play a key role in building that support and that political understanding, vital in the progress towards a socialist future.

Coalition of the Wilting

20^th March 2025

Israeli action in Gaza continues to hit civilian targets

While the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) resumes its genocidal bombing campaign against the people of Gaza, the leaders of European nations gather to work out how they can protect the right wing nationalist government of Volodymyr Zelensky from the Russian ‘threat’ in Ukraine.

Israel has treated international law with impunity for decades while the West has not just turned a blind eye to the treatment of Palestinians but has armed Israel to the teeth in the process. The United States has by far been the biggest arms supplier to Israel but Britain has provided more than its fair share of weapons used to keep the Palestinian population under the jackboot of the IDF.

As the Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) indicate,

“By the end of 2023, the USA had delivered 39 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters to Israel. Israel has a further 36 on order. Israel has been using the F-35s extensively to bomb Gaza, operating them at a far higher rate than normal. This has depended on a constant supply of spare parts from the US and other countries producing components, including the UK.”

Working out direct British involvement can be complex as CAAT point out that licences for components go via the US for use in weapons manufactured by them. While the government has instituted a partial suspension of export licences “it left in place licences for equipment such as components for trainer aircraft and naval vessels, as well as for components going to Israel’s arms industry to be included in equipment for onward export.” (https://caat.org.uk/data/countries/israel/)

By comparison to the actions of the IDF, the Russian action in Ukraine has not involved the subjection of an entire population, is not aimed at eradicating a nation, or displacing its population from their land. On the contrary, the action of Ukrainian forces against the largely Russian speaking population of the Donbas region, which resulted in 14,000 civilian deaths between 2014 and 2022, precipitated the Russian action but has gone largely unreported by the Western media.

This version of events, does not fit the NATO narrative of an expansionist Russia looking to swallow up the neighbouring states, in advance of an onward march towards Western Europe. NATO bosses would have us believe that the only possible defence against such an eventuality is to spend more on weapons to guard against the so called Russian threat. The British government is committed to increasing spend on the military to 2.5% of GDP with a rise to 3% being mooted. Calls have come from the US for NATO nations to be committing to 5% of GDP spend on the military.

It is hard to see this as anything other than a drive to war and certainly a drive towards greater profits for arms manufacturers who must be rubbing their hands with glee.

The right wing Polish government are asking for nuclear weapons to be stationed in Poland, minutes away from a strike on Moscow, to ‘defend’ against Russian invasion. This in spite of the fact that as a member of NATO any attack on Poland would, under article five of the NATO Treaty, bring the whole of NATO to its defence. Nuclear weapons in Poland will not add to that capability.

In spite of the Western commitment not to move NATO one inch eastwards the incorporation of Eastern Europe nations into NATO has effectively completed the encirclement of Russia over the past thirty years, with Ukraine being virtually the last piece in that jigsaw.

The ‘Russian threat’ bogie is a repackaging of the old Soviet threat myth from the days of the Cold War, when the NATO bloc had to have an ‘enemy’ to defend against, in order to justify its proliferation of nuclear and conventional weapons.

If history is played out first time as tragedy and second as farce then the so called Coalition of the Willing, convened by British Prime Minister, Kier Starmer, should be in the running for a comedy award. Having been cut loose by the US, in relation to the strategy of defending Ukraine at any price, European leaders are scrambling around like latter day Keystone Cops wondering which way to turn.

However, it will be no joke should they make good on their threat to increase spending on weapons, which will only impoverish the European working class further and rob them of much needed social provision in the form of homes, schools, medical provision and transport infrastructure. It will be less than amusing for working class families if their sons and daughters are sent to the frontline in ‘defence’ of Ukraine and find themselves embroiled in an unwinnable conflict.

The grandstanding of Starmer and Macron, the main drivers of the wilting European coalition, needs to be exposed and the priorities for a just settlement in Palestine and an end to war in Ukraine emphasised, as the key foreign policy objectives.

The drive to sustain the war in Ukraine, while ignoring Israeli genocide in Gaza, is a double threat to world peace. Mass action on both fronts must continue while being linked to the struggle for jobs, health and homes, all of which will be threatened by the drive to war.

Wealth tax reform not welfare cuts

13^th March 2025

Work and Pensions Secretary, Liz Kendall, ignoring UN warnings on poverty in Britain

In April 2024 the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Disabled People (UNCDRP) published a report into its findings regarding provision for disabled people in Britain, including the impact of welfare reform. The UN found that Britain has ‘failed to take all appropriate measures to address grave and systematic violations of the human rights of persons with disabilities and has failed to eliminate the root causes of inequality and discrimination.’

As signatories to the UN Convention on the Rights of Disabled People the British government agrees to periodic reviews of its provision for people with disabilities, the latest being initiated in 2023 and its report concluding in 2024 finding that ‘grave and systematic violations’ of disabled persons rights had taken place since 2010 and that welfare reform had “disproportionally and adversely” affected the rights of people with disabilities.

The report concludes that there has been no significant progress with independent living rights and active regression in relation to work and social security rights, recommending urgent measures be taken in relation to improvements in these areas.

Given that much of the period of the review was covering the 14 years of Tory government such harsh attacks upon the rights of people with disabilities comes as no surprise. The ‘skivers not strivers’ narrative is one that the Tories and their right wing media allies in the Mail, Express and Telegraph have been pursuing for some time, in order to deflect attention away from the obscene profits made by the super rich and the increased wealth of billionaires in Britain, which rose by £35 million a day last year.

This month the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) issued a series of recommendations to tackle poverty in the Britain. The report urged Keir Starmer to reverse the five-week wait for universal credit in a warning that the British government is infringing human rights with the ongoing poverty crisis.

The report highlighted fears over the Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP) welfare reforms that have resulted in severe economic hardship, increased reliance on food banks, homelessness, negative impacts on mental health and the stigmatisation of benefit claimants. It further urged government to up spending on benefits, remove the benefit cap and scrap the two-child limit, which prevents parents from claiming child tax credit or universal credit for more than two children.

Labour’s Work and Pensions Secretary, Liz Kendall, does not seem too perturbed by the UN’s findings. With a Spring statement from Chancellor Rachel Reeves due on 26^th March welfare reform, a euphemism for cuts to benefits, is clearly high on the agenda of both Kendall and Reeves.

Kendall’s stated position is that,

“I think the only way that you get the welfare bill on a more sustainable footing is to get people into work. And you know, we will be bringing forward big reforms that actually support people into work, that get them on a pathway to success.”

All of which may sound fine in a press conference but in the real world of de-industrialised, zero hour contract, low wage economy Britain it has a hollow ring.

Labour’s claim is that welfare reform is necessary to fill the fiscal black hole Reeves has discovered due to the economy not growing fast enough. Kendall has refused to deny that the Treasury is looking for £5 billion of cuts to her budget.

As ever, government economic decisions are about political choices, whatever issues may arise in relation to the world economy. The current Labour government has ditched the notion of ‘jobs not bombs’ and gone for bombs, £12.8 billion to Ukraine alone, before the cost of supporting Israeli genocide in Gaza is factored in, or weapons sales to dictatorships such as Saudi Arabia.

There is clearly a case for reform of the welfare system in Britain, as the UN has pointed out, but that is not the same as making a case for swingeing cuts which will plunge people into further poverty. There is certainly a case for reform of how the wealthy are taxed in Britain. As Nadia Whittome MP for Nottingham East has pointed out,

“If we implemented something very moderate, like a 2% tax, a threshold of assets over £10m a year, that would only impact an estimated 20,000 people in the UK but would raise £24bn.”

These are the real choices a Labour government faces, yet again. War or peace, rich or poor, capitalism or socialism? Currently Keir Starmer and the Labour leadership are getting it wrong on all three counts. There is clearly some pressure from progressive Labour MPs within Parliament but only mass extra parliamentary action will apply sufficient pressure to move the Labour leadership. Putting wealth tax reform ahead of welfare cuts would be a step in the right direction.

Recognising the Stranger

On Palestine and Narrative

by Isabella Hammad

Book Review

A sense of timing and an eye for synchronicity are common concepts deployed by authors in the construction of a narrative. On 28 September 2023 the British-Palestinian novelist, Isabella Hammad, gave the Edward W Said Memorial Lecture at Columbia University, now published as Recognising the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative.

Hammad could not have foreseen that only a week later, on 7 October 2023, the Qassam Brigades of Hamas would, in response to the ongoing Israeli occupation and blockade of Gaza, launch a military attack upon Israeli military bases and kibbutzim. The attack resulted in over 1,000 deaths and the taking of over 200 hostages, to be held until the 5,000 Palestinian political prisoners held in Israeli jails were released.

Hammad’s lecture would have been relevant and a percipient insight into the situation of the Palestinian people had the events of 7 October and their aftermath, not have happened. However, given the Israeli response to the Hamas attack, Hammad’s lecture and subsequent Afterword: On Gaza, written in January 2024, take on added relevance.

In her original lecture Hammad is concerned with considering turning points, ostensibly in literature but also in the personal and political spheres. Those points in a fictional narrative when characters have moments of recognition, when an aspect of the plot, which may have been clear to the reader, is revealed to the characters and what has been, up until then, a mystery falls into place.

Hammad suggests that in the personal and political spheres the concept of a turning point is “a human construction, something we identify in retrospect” (p.2) but that the moment in which we now live “feels like one of chronic ‘crisis’” (p.2).

Hammad explores the role and function of the novel in the contemporary world, competing against the wide range of other ‘entertainments’ on offer, yet still powerful and relevant enough to find a mass audience and speak to the need for narrative, storytelling and a search for meaning.

Hammad links the concept of turning points in literature to those in real life through the example of writers visiting the Palestine Festival of Literature and experiencing for themselves the reality of life for the Palestinian people under Israeli occupation.

“They visited Hebron, and saw the soldiers patrolling, guarding settlers; they visited the destroyed town of al-Lydd; they navigated checkpoints; they travelled through Jerusalem and crossed in and out of the West Bank; they listened to statistics of killings and imprisonments and night time raids and asked careful questions.” (p.21)

Hammad goes on to analyse the wider international debate regarding the position of the Palestinian people, the incremental retreat from insistence upon a two state solution, with Palestinians having a right to their own state, while the international community in the Global North, largely accept and reinforce the state propaganda and Zionist supremacist ideology of the Israeli regime.

Hammad does recognise that there is a shift in awareness amongst many ordinary people across the world, including amongst Israelis, a recognition that Palestinians have human rights. She cites what co-founder of the Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, Omar Barghouti, calls an aha moment,

“…talking specifically about the moment when an Israeli realises, in a turning point of action, that a Palestinian is a human being, just like him or her.” (p.25)

While Hammad’s lecture inevitably focuses upon the work of Edward Said, as a prominent Palestinian intellectual, his literary criticism and her own practice as a writer, she does not shy away from exploring the reality of the stateless position in which Palestinians are forced to exist and the implications of this for their culture.

In her Afterword: On Gaza Hammad is clear that the action of 7 October in itself represents a turning point, comparing it to “an incredibly violent jailbreak” and asserting that,

“It also signified a paradigm shift: it showed that a system in which one population is afforded rights that the other population is denied will be safe for neither.” (p.61)

Hammad robustly condemns the Israeli response to 7 October stating starkly that,

“Ten thousand dead children is not self defence.” (p.62)

A figure which has escalated significantly in the year since her afterword was written. Hammad condemns the extent to which the Western powers, the United States in particular, have supplied Israel with weapons to continue the bombardment of Gaza and the role of the US in vetoing ceasefire arrangements. This position may have changed for the moment but there is no guarantee that Israel will maintain it.

As Hammad states, as she moves towards a conclusion,

“The possibilities faced by the Israeli state for at least twenty years have been: maintain apartheid and forfeit the claim to being a democracy; return to the pre-1967 state borders and allow for the creation of a Palestinian state; break down the system of apartheid and enfranchise the Palestinians in a one-state reality; or conduct large scale ethnic cleansing. They are choosing the last option.” (p.75)

Just over a year since that Afterword was written, it is clear that this is precisely the path that the Israeli regime has taken and that solidarity with the Palestinian people is more vital now than ever.

Isabella Hammad is the award winning author of ‘The Parisian’ and ‘Enter Ghost’. In 2023, she was included as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists.

Redrawing the map

18^th February 2025

European leaders ponder what to do as the US pushes for a deal with Russia

European leaders have been in Paris this week wondering what to do about the apparent maverick actions of the United States, in relation to the NATO proxy war in Ukraine. What at first seemed like a straightforward NATO vs Russia scenario, in defence of right wing nationalist Ukraine, has been complicated by the return to office of Donald Trump. Not that Trump’s attitude to Ukraine should come as a surprise, he has been trailing it on his campaign journey for over a year, but Europe, including Britain, has been taking an ostrich like approach to the possibility of Trump’s return and they are now having to face the consequences.

The US has signalled bi-lateral discussions with Russia, underway in Saudi Arabia, in order to achieve a settlement, no doubt to be followed by conversations with Ukraine to persuade them to accept any deal. There will inevitably be a quid pro quo in terms of US arms being sold to Ukraine, in exchange for access to resources such as mineral wealth. Russia will incorporate the Crimea and Donetsk regions, in line with the stated wishes of those populations.

The European Union plus Britain may tub thump about the prospect of Russia extending its reach and invading the Baltic states and Moldova etc but this is largely a bogie of NATO’s own creation for internal consumption, to justify the persistent increase in arms spending. The likelihood of Russia precipitating a response from NATO by overstepping its existing boundaries must be rated as very small in reality. Europe’s Cold War anti Russia scaremongering is likely to wear thin as US priorities change.

So what is the endgame of US imperialism? Russia, as it has been historically, is the weak link in the imperialist chain. While rich in resources and still a significant nuclear power it does not pose a direct threat to the dollar based economic order. However, in alliance with China, an actual economic threat to the US, and the wider BRICS network of nations, the role of Russia is more significant.

It is certainly in the interests of the US to drive a wedge between the current alliance of Russia and China. Trump has also made it clear that the aim of the BRICS nations to move away from the dollar as the default international currency is not something he will tolerate. Bearing in mind that Trump speaks, not purely as an individual but as the mouthpiece of US imperialism, his words take on greater significance.

The potential market which Russia represents for US firms, and the resources which it controls, are vastly greater than anything Ukraine can offer and certainly more than the European Union can lay claim to.

European leaders in Paris have continued to bleat about the abandonment of Ukraine, British Prime Minister, Kier Starmer, referring to a “generational” security challenge posed by Russia and reiterating his commitment to deploying British troops if necessary. The continued warmongering on the part of Starmer and other European leaders, with talk of a 5% of GDP spend on the military, is a recipe for a massive crackdown on public services which will hit working class families hard. The economics of war may work for the military industrial complex, it will not work for the working class citizens of Europe.

Against this backdrop it may just be that the US has its eye on the bigger goal of competing with the rising economic might of China and positioning itself to reassert its grip on the international economy.

Ironically, it may be that Zelensky’s wild call for a European army, at the Munich Security Conference last week, may be the first recognition of this possibility. While the media, as ever, portray things in terms of personalities it is not a Trump/Putin love in that we should be wary of but a strategic US/Russia alliance which would truly redraw the map and reshape the international order, creating a powerful economic and military bloc containing most of the planet’s nuclear arsenal.

What the EU/Britain could do in the face of this would be very tame and even China’s economic strength would pale by comparison. They could huff and they could puff but it would be quite a house to try and blow down.

Towers of Ivory and Steel

13th February 2025

Review by Steve Bishop

Maya Wind’s detailed and incisive study, Towers of Ivory and Steel, charts the role of Israeli universities in systematically denying Palestinian freedom. It should be a wake up call for any British university engaged in collaboration with Israeli counterparts, urging them to address distortions of academic practice and acknowledge the internationally recognised rights of Palestinians to equality of access to education.

British universities will not see themselves as colluding in the settler colonialism of the apartheid Israeli state. They will rationalise any joint work as being on a purely academic basis, not part of a systemic exclusion of Palestinians from access to intellectual expression and freedom.

Maya Wind’s analysis debunks such liberalism and demonstrates how the Israeli university system is an embedded part of the apartheid state of Israel, actively supporting the settler colonial narrative of Zionist supremacy, and denying any Palestinian historical agency in land they have farmed, worked and lived on for generations.

Since October 2023 the world has once again seen the sheer scale of Israeli brutality towards the Palestinian population through the genocide in Gaza, backed by support from the United States, Britain and the European Union, culminating in the proposal of US President Donald Trump to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians.

This is the undeniably savage side of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF), the consequences of its actions filling news broadcasts around the world. However, as Wind demonstrates, behind the smokescreen of liberalism in Israel’s universities there lies an ongoing and pervasive denial of access for Palestinians, a denial of study of their history, suppression of any student activism and an active collusion with the Israeli military and state by the university authorities.

In disciplines which under any circumstances should require objectivity and academic rigour, Wind shows how Palestinian dimensions are excluded. Archaeological excavations led by Israeli academics at a site in Susiya, for example, revealed evidence of a synagogue and a mosque, illustrating both Jewish and Muslim heritage, yet as Wind notes,

“Ruins of a mosque were also found on the very same site as the synagogue, yet these were swiftly erased from the historical record; there is no mention of them in the official documentation or at the site itself.” (p.26)

Wind demonstrates how legal studies are skewed to justify the actions of the IDF and the Israeli government in the international arena, “constructing interpretations that justify Israeli state and military policies” (p.40) while routinely processing arrested Palestinians under the Israeli military court system, rather than a civilian legal process.

In the field of Middle East Studies, Israeli universities actively collaborate with the state and the military, to reinforce a particular version of history. The forced exclusion of over 700,000 Palestinians from their land, in the Nakba in 1948, is not covered for example. As Wind indicates,

“What began as repression of academic research on the Nakba and Israel’s founding has since expanded into public scrutiny of syllibi addressing Israel’s military occupation and apartheid and, most recently, into a broader purge of any critical discourse on the military and the racial violence of the Israeli state.” (p128)

Any attempt by Palestinian students to commemorate the events of 1948 are violently shut down. Such actions are facilitated by having uniformed soldiers on campus, as part of their training in military and intelligence work. This presence is inevitably intimidating for the few Palestinian students tolerated at Israeli universities and reinforces the close links between university hierarchies and the military.

Wind provides detailed evidence of how Palestinian students are subject to arrest, incarceration, and torture for engaging in what would be regarded in most parts of the world as routine student activism. For the Israeli state any degree of activism or expression of support for Palestinian statehood is treated with suspicion.

Launched in 2004 the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) has worked to raise awareness of the role of Israeli universities in the repression of Palestinians and to call on “international scholars to initiate a boycott of Israeli academic institutions”.

Closely allied is the Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions (BDS) Campaign launched in 2005 to exert pressure on Israel to meet its obligations under international law to, “first, end the colonization of Arab lands and dismantle the military occupation and the wall; second, recognise the right to full equality of Palestinian citizens of Israel; and third, respect and promote the right of Palestinian refugees to return.” (p.5)

Maya Wind is clear that support for the PACBI and BDS campaigns is a necessary step on the road to justice for the Palestinian people. The research and analysis provided in Towers of Ivory and Steel is an important contribution to moving forward on that journey.

Towers of Ivory and Steel book review