This letter was sent to organisations that have had members arrested for their views on the genocide of the Palestinians. It is imperative that this be challenged by the organised labour movement.
To: Revolutionary Communist Group, Socialist Labour Network, Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist), and to the wider labour movement.
Dear Comrades,
We note the criminal, racist arrests of members of the RCG on various fake accusations, of a leading member of the CPGB-ML, comrade Ranjit Brar on absurd accusations that selling a book explicitly indicting Zionism for racism and anti-Semitism, is a “hate-crime”, and the outrageous arrest of Tony Greenstein (and Mick Napier in Glasgow) on fantastic lies that they are in some way ‘supporters’ of Hamas. These are the tip of an iceberg of police attacks on Palestine solidarity activists and ordinary demonstrators, orchestrated by Tory politicians with Braverman’s ravings as the starting point, whose anti-democratic essence continues to this day. None of these attacks will be opposed by the Labour Party under Starmer. They clearly support this genocide, and the attacks against Yemen whose purpose is to protect Israel’s mass murder.
We propose that a united front should be created to confront this policy publicly and point out its purpose – police-state methods to repress opposition to the genocide of the Palestinian people. Such fraudulent arrests and harassment, and punitive bail conditions in some cases to forbid political activism, as well as the draconian ‘conditions’ imposed on completely peaceful mass demonstrations in support of the Palestinians by the police, amount to political support for Israel’s genocide by the Metropolitan police, the Glasgow police, and no doubt police forces around the country.
We think it would be worthwhile to take an initiative to confront the police politically over this, by initiating a protest at Scotland Yard and seeking broader labour movement support, against this political persecution of left-wing activists for opposing an obvious genocide. It fits in with the admission by the head of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, Gavin Stephens, that the UK police are “institutionally racist” based on too many terrible cases to list, and other appalling actions of the cops, like their arrests of women demonstrators protesting the murder and rape of Sarah Everard by a serving cop.
We should note that the large-scale murder of unarmed civilians in Gaza, including women, children and even premature babies, and the brazen support for it by ruling-class politicians here, indicates what these politicians are quite prepared to do to ordinary people here if they feel threatened by resistance to their own crimes. The labour movement therefore has an overwhelming class interest in defeating these attacks on democratic rights and defending free speech on this question above all. This needs to be confronted head-on.
Comradely
Ian Donovan,
