Revolutionary Communist Group
Coalition declares class war / FRFI 216 Aug/Sep 2010
FRFI 216 August/September 2010

This is the declaration of class war. It has to be resisted by millions of working people, young and old, in work and unemployed, determined to halt the destruction and privatisation of our public services’. Grunwicks strike, 1976
The arrogance and self-confidence of the new ConDem coalition government was highlighted by George Osborne’s emergency Budget presented to Parliament on 22 June 2010. It amounted to a wholesale assault on the public sector. No less than the Financial Times chief economics commentator, Martin Wolf, was driven to say that ‘nothing in the election campaign could have prepared the British public for this bloodbath’. It was a declaration of class war. DAVID YAFFE looks at this remarkable turn of events.
It is important to understand the Labour Party’s role in this development. Just as the Labour government began the attack on the public sector in the mid-1970s and laid the ground for Margaret Thatcher’s neo-liberal counter-revolution, so the Labour government’s planned deficit reduction in its pre-election March Budget opened the way for the ConDem’s coalition programme to dismantle and privatise state welfare over the next parliament.
Read more: Coalition declares class war / FRFI 216 Aug/Sep 2010
Oppose political policing in Govanhill
Strathclyde police are stepping up harassment against Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! supporters in the Govanhill area of
These latest events demonstrate that Strathclyde police are preparing the ground for further attacks on democratic rights in preparation for wider attacks on living standards among the wider Govanhill community as the economic crisis develops. The majority of officers involved in the harassment are part of the Southside Central Community Policing Team based in the New Gorbals Police Office. The police are using legislation from the Civic Government Scotland Act, which in part regulates street trading in Scotland. Section 39 (3) (a) of that act is very clear; it states that no licence is required for the sale of newspapers only. The police are arguing that Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! is not a newspaper.
Build an anti-imperialist movement against racism and fascism!
On Saturday 17 July, 500 members of the English Defence League (EDL) rampaged through Dudley in the West Midlands, attacking Muslim and Hindu residents. The EDL is fast developing in the direction of a new organised and violent fascist street movement, which offers a focal point to sections of the working class who support Britain’s wars in the Middle East and are prepared to physically confront public opposition to those wars.
The EDL represents a popular reflection of government strategy. Its rhetoric focuses on Islam, in a context in which Britain’s wars in the Middle East, Israel’s occupation of Palestine, and attacks on Muslims in Britain are all depicted as part of a battle against ‘Islamic extremism’. The EDL first developed out of a violent response to an anti-war demonstration by a small group of Muslims in Luton in March 2009. In the months before this thousands had come out on the streets to protest against the Israeli massacre in Gaza, with sections of Muslim youth playing a leading role. This was not the first time, with predominantly working class Asian youth playing a leading militant role in the anti-war and Palestine demonstrations during the early anti-war movement in 2000-2002.
Read more: Build an anti-imperialist movement against racism and fascism!
Spies on Campus
On 13 July Conservative Home Secretary Theresa May announced the government’s plans to conduct an ‘urgent review’ of counter-terrorism and security powers and the dismantling of the Labour government’s ‘Prevent strategy’. The Preventing Violent Extremism Programme (known simply as Prevent) provided funding for surveillance, intelligence and counter-terrorism against Muslims in Britain, with specific focus on a number of areas, including mosques, community centres, prisons and universities. Whether the change in government will in practice signal a reduction in such activity remains to be seen. At University College London (UCL), the Provost, Malcolm Grant, is currently heading a new university-wide commission on how to ‘best protect academic freedom while taking appropriate action to prevent violent extremism’. Following the failed Christmas Day bombing allegedly involving former UCL student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the UCL student union handed over the details of over 800 members of the Islamic Society and Medical Islamic Society to the Metropolitan Police. This information will now be shared with international intelligence agencies. This means that innocent citizens have been placed on watch lists and no-fly lists.
Voices of Resistance, 10 July 2010, Glasgow
On 10 July, Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! organised a lively and well attended dayschool in Glasgow city centre under the title ‘Voices of resistance: fighting imperialism across the world’. The meeting saw over 60 people attend throughout the day, with FRFI members and supporters from Glasgow, Dundee, Newcastle, Sunderland and Manchester. There were also representatives from various Irish republican organisations, people from the Basque country and individuals from as far a field as Germany and Latvia as well as many local people met on the streets of Govanhill and elsewhere. Members of Republican Sinn Fein provided security in the wake of loyalist threats against comrades leafleting in the run-up to the meeting.The meeting was introduced by a local FRFI member who stated that “there should be no doubt that voices of resistance today need to be heard.” Recent weeks in Glasgow had seen Armed Forces Day and mass orange walks celebrate the worst traditions of British imperialism and triumphalism. “The fact that these two events were given free reign of the city, while progressive political activism is being attacked, is a reminder that those in power are clear as to who serves their interests.” This was confirmed subsequent to the meeting, on 13 July, when police in Govanhill illegally confiscated a stall and copies of FRFI from activists on the streets. The dayschool was organised as an open reminder that anti-imperialist and class struggle politics are still very much alive. As the working-class faces savage cuts, the choice now is between anger or resignation, resistance or acceptance.
‘This is class war’
So said women in Deptford in south east ‘Overall, everyone will pay something, but the people at the bottom of the income scale will pay proportionately less than the people at the top. It is a progressive budget,’ claimed Chancellor George Osborne. This brazen lie was quickly exposed even by the ruling class’s own Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Financial Times. The emergency budget will cost £113 billion by 2014-15, that is £4,300 a year on average for every household in the country. But the cost will not be borne equally; the incomes of the poorest fifth of the population will decline by approximately 8%, those of the middle fifth by 4% and the richest fifth by less than 3%. We are not all in this together: the poorest are being pushed into complete misery to try and maintain the capitalist system. From
Bloody Sunday Inquiry: apology is not enough
On 15 June, Lord Saville finally published his inquiry into the events of Bloody Sunday, 30 January 1972, when British paratroopers shot 26 Irish nationalists at a mass demonstration in In the immediate aftermath of Bloody Sunday, the British government set up the whitewash Widgery Tribunal, which promptly gave the soldiers the all clear. The victims of state violence were then targets of a vicious propaganda campaign designed to paint them as ‘gunmen and nail bombers’, which Widgery himself endorsed. The British government only agreed to set up a new inquiry when political expediency required a concession to the nationalists as part of the Good Friday peace process
More Articles...
- The first cuts will not be the deepest / FRFI 215 June/July 2010
- Cuba: Defending Socialism, Resisting Imperialism
- Viva Palestina!
- Israel’s murderous assault on the Gaza flotilla
- End immigration detention!
- General election: ruling class remains in power
- Greek workers rise up
- General election: general fraud / FRFI 214 Apr / May 2010
- General Election: The Spectacle
- PSUV speaks in Liverpool and Manchester
- Defend Socialist Cuba Against Media Lies
- Street Parliament' in the centre of Newcastle - 24 April 2010
- Let the markets decide
- Lucasville prison uprising – April 1993
- British imperialism in the world today and the task of the British working class.
- Remembering the Poll Tax
- General Election, General Fraud!
- Twentieth anniversary of the Strangeways prison uprising 1 April 1990
- Defend the right to protest! Defend the Gaza Demonstrators!
- Red Road flats, Glasgow: no suspicious circumstances?
- Close Yarl’s Wood and all immigration detention centres! Support the women in struggle!
- Labour's privatisation plans: bad for our health / 27 February 2010
- Edinburgh: Scottish Defence League routed
- The Real Bolivarian Youth
- Ireland: agreement over policing reached
- SWP tells us to vote for imperialism, war, racism and repression
- Close Yarl’s Wood and all immigration prisons! Support the protesting detainees!
- End detention of children!
- Venezuela: confronting reaction
- Haiti: troops out! Cancel the debt!
- Stop the deportation of Lili and Keiran to Cameroon !
- BRITAIN Parasitic and decaying capitalism / FRFI 194 Dec 2006 / Jan 2007
- 'Che Guevara' The Economics of Revolution
- Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! is 25 years old / FRFI 182 Dec 2004 / Jan 2005
Page 1 of 6
Editorial & Welcome
Build an anti-imperialist movement against racism and fascism!
On Saturday 17 July, 500 members of the English Defence League (EDL) rampaged through Dudley in the West Midlands, attacking Muslim and Hindu residents. The EDL is fast developing in the direction of...
Read More...Defend the right to protest! Defend the Gaza Demonstrators!
The British state has moved to marginalise those who want to resist imperialism in this country, and especially to criminalise those who take a militant stance against Zionism. In the course of 2009, 119...
Read More...Close Guantánamo Torture Camp!
On Monday 11 January 2010 the London Guantánamo Campaign held a demonstration outside the US Embassy in London to mark 8 years of the Guantánamo Bay torture camp. A vigil by protesters in orange...
Read More...No to the BNP! - No to the racist Labour government!
The BBC has invited Nick Griffin of the British National Party on to its flagship debating show, Question Time, where he will share the platform with the Labour Party representative Jack Straw and others....
Read More...FRFI! Newspaper
FRFI 2010 Fund Drive
Help us raise £10,000! The ruling class is stepping up its offensive on the working class and we want to ensure that FRFI is able to influence the resistence that is bound to develop. For that we need your financial support. Use Paypal or make a cheque payable to Larkin Publications and send to FRFI, BCM Box 5909, London WC1N 3XX
Latest news
- Sponsored Bike Ride 2010
- Oppose political policing in Govanhill
- Build an anti-imperialist movement against racism and fascism!
- FRFI 216 Aug / Sep 2010
- FRFI 216 Aug / Sep 2010
- The lion roars: Fidel Castro warns of danger of US and Israeli aggression / FRFI 216 Aug/Sep 2010
- BP oil spill –the murky waters of finance capital / FRFI 216 Aug/Sep 2010
- EVENTS / FRFI 216 Aug/Sep 2010
Coming Events
-
Sponsored Bike Ride 2010 Monday 30 August 2010 Please donate via Paypal or cheque, however large or small. Please...
-
Monthly readers and supporters group Discussion of FRFI articles Contact us for details of reading material and venue. For further details,...
-
Picket of Marks & Spencer Every Thursday 6-8pm Picket of Marks & Spencer, Marble Arch end of Oxford Street - click here...
- 1

















































































