Revolutionary Communist Group

On Saturday 27 February London FRFI joined the march to stop the closure of the A&E department at Whittington Hospital, North London.

FRFI supporters formed a lively contingent at the back of the march and chanted all the way from Highbury Corner, along the Holloway Road to the Hospital in Archway. Around 2,000 people marched, shoppers and pedestrians stopped and some joined in, drivers hooted in support and there was that uplifting feeling of strength of a campaign that involves everyone, from babies to pensioners, from doctors and nurses to patients and relatives, and all local residents.

Read more: Labour's privatisation plans: bad for our health / 27 February 2010

On 20 February, Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! supporters joined hundreds of people in Edinburgh to protest against the racist thugs of the Scottish Defence League (SDL). The SDL is an offshoot of the English Defence League, whose latest mobilisation saw around 1,500 fascists rampage through Stoke on 23 January. There was no repeat of such scenes in Edinburgh. The day marked a victory for the hundreds of antifascists determined to confront the small numbers the SDL managed to mobilise; a victory made possible by an increasing turn away from the opportunist politics of Unite Against Fascism and its middle class allies. A massive police operation involving officers from Lothian, Strathclyde and Northumbria ensured the fascists remained protected at all points.

Read more: Edinburgh: Scottish Defence League routed

From International Media reports and hysterical blogs on the internet, you could be forgiven for thinking that all the students in Venezuela are engaged in a struggle for free speech and against repression from the Chavez “dictatorship”. However, last Friday 12 February, in celebration of “the Day of Youth” tens of thousands of revolutionary students marched in support of the Bolivarian Revolution with a new focus on campaigning for the National Assembly elections this September.

The 10km march departed from the National Experimental University of the Armed Forces (UNEFA), through the opposition controlled wealthy eastern suburbs of Caracas to the Bolivarian University, past the revolutionary barrio of San Agustin (now served by the new metrocable connecting them to the city centre) and arriving at 5pm at the Miraflores Presidential Palace.

Read more: The Real Bolivarian Youth

On 5 February the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), following consultation with the Orange Order, finally announced that it had agreed to the transfer of policing and justice powers from London to Belfast on 12 April. The Hillsborough Castle agreement ends the impasse since Sinn Fein agreed to support British policing in 2007. While Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams hailed the settlement as ‘a hugely important, as well as symbolic moment’ and continued ‘This is the political parties in the north of Ireland demonstrating our ability to negotiate a successful agreement together. It marks a new phase in the [peace] process’, in fact it was yet another step in Sinn Fein’s capitulation to British imperialism and in practice to Unionist supremacy. DUP leader and First Minister Peter Robinson was much more accurate in saying that the agreement represented ‘a good day for Unionism which will further cement Ulster’s place within the United Kingdom’.

Read more: Ireland: agreement over policing reached

Let us be absolutely clear. A vote for Labour is:

• a vote for British imperialism and the City of London.
• a vote for more wars.
• a vote for state racism: attacks on asylum seekers and immigrants, racist policing and racism in prisons.
• a vote for more repressive laws to add to the legion the Labour Government has passed since 1997.
• a vote for more privatisation of the NHS and education at the expense of the quality of provision for working class people and for savage cuts in public spending.

Yet the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP), which has the nerve to call itself revolutionary, is telling us to vote Labour at the forthcoming general election. Socialist Worker (13 February 2010) reports that the SWP’s National Committee has agreed that ‘we will…vote Labour against the Tories where there is no serious left of Labour candidate.’

Read more: SWP tells us to vote for imperialism, war, racism and repression

Over 80 women detained in Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre in Bedfordshire have been staging a hunger strike since 5 February in protest at their continued detention and treatment. On 8 February private company Serco, which runs Yarl’s Wood, tried to end the protest by force, but the women have continued to stand firm and 50 remain on hunger strike.  The UK Borders Agency has issued several statements claiming the protest is over, but despite brutal reprisals and the removal of some women to criminal prisons, the protest continues.

Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! opposes all immigration detention and stands in total solidarity with the Yarl’s Wood protesters.  We reproduce in full a statement from protesting detainee Mojirola Daniels, circulated by the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns

Read more: Close Yarl’s Wood and all immigration prisons! Support the protesting detainees!