Revolutionary Communist Group

Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 131, June/July 1996

Assata Shakur was a political activist in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. As a member of the Black Panther Party, she was targeted by the FBI under its counter-intelligence programme, COINTELPRO. She was framed for the murder of a New Jersey State Trooper and sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1979 she escaped from prison and since 1985 has been in political exile in Cuba. David Yaffe spoke to her there on behalf of FRFI.

Read more: Assata Shakur, former Black Panther, speaks from exile in Cuba / FRFI 131, June/July 1996

FRFI 224 Dec 2011/Jan 2012

As we go to press, the City of London Corporation is applying for a court order to evict OccupyLSX from its camp opposite the entrance to Paternoster Square by St Paul’s Cathedral. A press campaign against the occupation is now in full flow: ‘Junkie health hazard at St Paul’s’ screamed the London Evening Standard headline on 23 November. It shows the extent to which the Occupy protest has unnerved the ruling class since it set up camps in cities across the country on 15 October following the example of Occupy Wall Street in the US. Having worked hard to transfer blame for the crisis on to excessive public spending, the ruling class now faced a movement which pinned responsibility firmly back where it belonged: on to the banks and the financial sector. BARNEY MITCHELL and THOMAS VINCENT report.

Read more: OccupyLSX: resistance and the City/ FRFI 224 Dec 2011/Jan 2012

Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism 224 December 2011/January 2012

The Egyptian masses’ demand for democracy has confronted the Egyptian military command. That command is the main agent of imperialism in Egypt. Having presented itself as on the side of the revolution by getting former President Mubarak to resign on 11 February 2011 and restraining the use of troops, the army is now exposed as a murderous instrument of oppression. After seven days of protests in Cairo, Alexandria, Suez and other Egyptian towns and cities, 41 people have been killed by riot police and soldiers and 2,000 have been injured. 80% of Egypt’s 500,000 soldiers are conscripts. Imperialism – and the generals _ will calculate how reliable they are as the masses mobilise with tremendous determination and courage for an end to military rule. TREVOR RAYNE reports.

Read more: Egypt: the anger explodes/ FRFI 224 December 2011/January 2012

A week, Prime Minister Harold Wilson once cynically declared, is a long time in politics. It took little more than a week for TUC leaders to prepare the ground for selling out over public sector pensions following the huge strike on 30 November. Trade union leaders first agreed to postpone any further discussion of action until 10 December, and then agreed to a TUC drive to hold separate negotiations on the different NHS, local government employee, teacher and civil service pension schemes.

Read more: Public sector pensions: trade unions start to capitulate

Following the death of President Kim Jong-il on 17 December 2011 the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK-North Korea) is again the target for British ruling class media vilification. Kim Jong-il is portrayed as mad and corrupt, the better to present North Korea as dangerous and its state worthy of overthrowing. In January 2002 former US President George W Bush said that Iraq, Iran and North Korea constituted an ‘axis of evil’. Four months later the US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton added Libya, Syria and Cuba to the list. When the US and Britain invaded Iraq in 2003 Bolton said that North Korea, Iran and Syria should ‘draw the appropriate lessons’.

Read more: North Korea vilified

Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism 224 December 2011/January 2012
Photo: US soldier harassing Iraqi workers in Fallujah, 2007

Nearly five years ago, in FRFI 195, we discussed an article by Charles Post about the labour aristocracy. FRFI has repeatedly argued that, in the imperialist countries, there is a ‘labour aristocracy’ – a privileged section of the working class, enjoying some of the spoils of imperialist exploitation and which behaves as the political agent of the ruling class. We have shown how this section has consistently betrayed the interests of the US, British and international working class by its actions. Post attempted to demonstrate that there is no such section, mainly by claiming that imperialist booty – the swag looted by the US imperialists from the exploited nations – is an insignificant part of the income of US workers. We argued that it is very significant and is quite sufficient to provide the privileges enjoyed by better-off US workers. Now Post has republished his article, with some minor modifications, in the academic journal Historical Materialism.¹ Post’s absurd denial of the existence of a labour aristocracy undermines the struggle against racism and imperialism and covers up the betrayals of social democratic organisations like the Labour Party. We don’t have room to revisit our entire argument (see RCG website²), so we are going to bring the numbers up to date, correcting them and including all sources of booty. We believe FRFI readers will be interested in knowing the extent of US exploitation of oppressed nations. STEVE PALMER reports.

Read more: Imperialist booty: how much does the United States loot from the rest of the world?/ FRFI 224 Dec 2011/Jan 2012

On 5 December The Guardian began to publish the findings of the first phase of ‘Reading the Riots’, a research project jointly undertaken by the newspaper and the London School of Economics, looking into the causes of the August 2011 uprisings in English cities. The research, which is based on interviews with 270 people who participated in the riots in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Salford, Liverpool and Nottingham, gives the absolute lie to the government and its media allies’ repeated insistence for the past four months that the events of 6-10 August were motivated purely by ‘criminality’ and greed, had no political motive and were largely the work of violent gangs.

Read more: Anger at police harassment was main cause of August riots

In a time of global crisis, Cuba represents a unique reality for women. Understanding that sexual equality is necessarily bound with economic and political equality, women's emancipation is crucial to the ongoing process of revolution. The huge grassroots political involvement of the people, and the planned economy driven by their needs, means that society actively works to challenge sexism and inequality. Accordingly, Cuba stands out in The World Economic Forum's study on gender disparity and economics - despite its small economy and the blockade which attempts to strangle development, its women rank highly in health, education, political and economic equality. The index shows Cuba's gender disparity has improved; Britain, despite its imperialist wealth, is only four places above Cuba, and has fallen in ranking.

Read more: Women, the crisis and the cuts - Cuba shows the alternative